Praise for Pizza Girl

‘Jean Kyoung Frazier brings a flawless ear for language, great inventiveness, unfailing intelligence and empathy, and best of all a rare and shimmering wit. This novel has immense appeal’

Richard Ford

‘Sharp and surprising, Pizza Girl shows us how obsession can fill the empty spaces in a young woman’s life’

Julia Phillips, author of Disappearing Earth

‘Sublime … irresistible and bold, brutal and sweet, with an ending that will thrash your heart’

Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light

‘Luminous, brooding, and, frankly, awe-inspiring … Frazier has given us a gift’

Bryan Washington, author of Lot

‘A sly, poignant glimpse into the wilds of suburbia, where intergenerational queer love and alienation from labor go hand in hand’

Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

‘A funny and moving debut, full of wry observation and deep humanity’

Sam Lipsyte, author of Hark

‘Darkly comic, unsentimental, subversive’

Elissa Schappell, author of Blueprints for Building Better Girls

JEAN KYOUNG FRAZIER lives in Los Angeles. Pizza Girl is her debut novel.

Pizza Girl

Jean Kyoung Frazier

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright © Jean Kyoung Frazier 2020

Jean Kyoung Frazier asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2020 ISBN: 9780008356422

Version 2020-05-26

Note to Readers

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 Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008356415

For my family, blood and chosen

Contents

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Publisher

1

HER NAME WAS JENNY HAUSER and every Wednesday I put pickles on her pizza.

The first time she called in it’d been mid-June, the summer of 2011. I’d been at Eddie’s a little over a month. My uniform polo was green and orange and scratchy at the pits, people would loudly thank me and then tip me a dollar, at the end of shifts my hair reeked of garlic. Every hour I thought about quitting, but I was eighteen, didn’t know how to do much of anything, eleven weeks pregnant.

At least it got me out of the house.

The morning she’d called, Mom hugged me four times, Billy five, all before I’d pulled on my socks and poured milk over my cereal. They hurled “I love yous” against my back as I fast-walked out the front door. Some days, I wanted to turn around and hug them back. On others, I wanted to punch them straight in the face, run away to Thailand, Hawaii, Myrtle Beach, somewhere with sun and ocean.

I THANK GOD that Darryl’s boyfriend fucked a Walgreens checkout girl.

If Darryl’s boyfriend had been kind, loyal, kept his dick in his pants, I wouldn’t have answered the phone that day. Darryl could make small talk with a tree, had a laugh that made shoulders relax—he manned the counter and answered the phones, I just waited for addresses and drove the warm boxes to their homes.

But Darryl’s boyfriend was having a quarter-life crisis. Ketchup no longer tasted right, law school was starting to give him headaches, at night he lay awake next to the man he loved and counted sheep, 202, 203, 204, tried not to ask the question that had ruined his favorite condiment, spoiled his dreams, replaced sleep with sheep—is this it? One day, he walked into a Walgreens to buy a pack of gum and was greeted by a smile and a pair of D cups. The next day, Darryl spent most of his shift curbside, yelling into his phone. The front door was wide open, and I tried not to listen, but failed.

“On our first date you told me that even the word ‘pussy’ made you feel like you needed a shower.”

It was the slowest part of the day. A quarter past three. Too late for lunch, too early for dinner, pizza was heavy for a mid-afternoon snack. The place was empty except for me and the three cooks. They waved hello and goodbye and not much else. I couldn’t tell if they didn’t speak English or if they just didn’t want to speak to me.

“You know you’ve ruined Walgreens for me, right? I’m going to have to drive ten extra minutes now and go to the CVS to get my Twizzlers. God damn it, you know that I can’t get through a day without my fucking Twizzlers.”

I was sitting on an empty table, turning paper napkins into birds and stars and listening to my iPod at a volume that allowed me to think, but not too deeply. I couldn’t remember the name of the boy I used to share Cheetos with in first grade. I wondered if I had ever used every drop of a pen’s ink. All shades of blue made my chest warm.

Our boss, Peter, napped around this time. Every day, at 3:00 p.m. without fail, he’d close his office door and ask us to please, please not fuck anything up. We never fucked anything up. We also didn’t get much done. I stared at a large puddle of orange soda on the floor and made a paper-napkin man to sit among the birds and the stars.

“Oh God, tell me you wore a condom.”

The phone rang then. I was about to call for Darryl. He started shouting about abortion.

I’d be lying if I said I don’t look back on this moment and feel its weight. I could’ve just let it ring—no one would’ve known. I didn’t. I hopped off the table, walked to the counter, picked up the phone, and heard her voice for the first time.

“So—have you ever had the kind of week where every afternoon seems to last for hours?” Her voice was heavy, quivering, the sound of genuine desperation. Before I could reply, the woman kept talking. “Like, you’ll water your plants, fold your laundry, make your kid a snack, vacuum the rug, read a couple articles, watch some TV, call your mom, wash your face, maybe do some ab exercises to get the blood pumping, and then you’ll check the clock and thirteen minutes have passed. You know?”

I opened my mouth, but she kept on going.

“And it’s only Wednesday! I’m insane, I know. I’m insane. But do you know what I mean?”

I waited a few beats to make sure she was done. Her breathing was loud and labored.

“Um, yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

“Yes! So—you’ll help me?”

I frowned, started ripping up an old receipt. “I think you may have the wrong number.”

“Is this Eddie’s?”

“Oh, yeah. It is.”

“Then this is exactly the right number. You’re the only person who can help me.”

I remember shivering, wanting to wrap this woman in a blanket and make her a hot chocolate, fuck up anyone that even looked at her funny. “Okay, what can I do?”

“I need a large pepperoni-and-pickles pizza or my son will not eat.”

“I can put in an order for a large pepperoni pizza. We don’t have pickles as a topping, though.”

“I know you don’t. Nowhere out here does,” she said. “You’re the sixth place I’ve called.”

“So what are you asking?” I rubbed my lower back. It had been aching inexplicably the past couple of weeks. I figured it was the baby’s fault.

“We just moved here a month ago from North Dakota. My husband got an amazing job offer and we love it here, all the palm trees, but our son, Adam, hates Los Angeles. He misses home, his friends, he doesn’t get along with his new baseball coach.” She sighed.

She continued: “He’s on a hunger strike. A couple days ago he came up to me and said, ‘Mommy, I’m not eating a damn thing until we go back to Bismarck.’ Can you believe that? Who has ever said that? Who likes Bismarck? And that potty mouth! Seven years old and already talking like a fucking sailor. How does that happen?”

I wasn’t even sure if she was talking to me anymore. I looked at the clock and saw that I’d been on the phone for over five minutes. It was the longest conversation I’d had with someone other than Mom or Billy in weeks. Darryl too, I guess, but that felt like it didn’t count.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I just still don’t understand how I can help with this.”

“There was this pizza place back home that used to make the best pepperoni-and-pickles pizza. I swear, I’ve tried doing it myself, just ordering a regular old pepperoni pizza and putting the pickles on after. He said it wasn’t right, and when I asked him what wasn’t right about it, he just kept saying, ‘It’s not right,’ over and over, louder and louder, and wouldn’t stop until I yelled over him, ‘Okay, you’re right! It’s not right!’” She paused. “I just thought maybe if I could get him that pizza, something that reminded him of home, this silly hunger strike could end and he could start to love Los Angeles.”

There was a long pause. I would’ve thought she’d hung up if not for that loud, labored breathing.

When she spoke again, her voice was softer. I thought of birds with broken wings, glass vases so beautiful and fragile I was afraid to look at them for too long. “It just feels like I’ve been failing a lot lately,” she said. “I can’t even get dinner right.”

I thought of a night two years ago. Dad was still alive and living with us. The Bears game had just started. He wasn’t drunk yet, but by halftime he’d have finished at least a six-pack. Some nights, I was the best thing that ever happened to him, his pride, his joy; he talked often of buying us plane tickets to New York City and taking me to the top of the Empire State Building. On other nights, I was a dumb bitch, a waste of space; sometimes he’d throw his empties at me. I didn’t want to find out what type of night it was. My window opened out onto the roof. I climbed out of it to sit and smoke, try to find stars in the sky. I was about to light up when I looked down and saw Mom’s car pull into the driveway.

I watched as she took the key from the ignition, killed the lights. I waited for her to come inside. She didn’t. She sat in the driver’s seat, just sat. Five minutes went by and she was still sitting, staring out the windshield. I wondered what she was staring at, if she actually was staring at anything, or if she was just thinking, or maybe trying not to think, just having a moment when nothing moved or mattered—I wished that she was at least listening to music. She sat and stared another ten minutes before going inside.

There was a supermarket not far from Eddie’s. Pickles were cheap. “What’s your address?” I asked.

THE COOKS EYED ME FUNNY when I came into the kitchen with a brown paper bag. They looked only slightly less nervous when I pulled a pickle jar out of it.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m just helping this lady out.”

They stared blankly at me.

“Her kid isn’t eating.”

Silence.

“Can you guys get me a large pepperoni?”

They looked at each other, shrugged, and started pulling the dough. I chopped a couple pickles into uneven slices and wedged myself between the cooks, sprinkled the pickles over the sauce, cheese, and meat. I told myself that it only looked off because it was raw, but the cooks didn’t seem to know what to make of it either. One sniffed it, another laughed, the third just stared and scratched his head. They eventually shrugged again and put the pizza in the oven.

While I waited, I walked out of the kitchen and to the front of the shop. Darryl was off the phone and back inside, pouring rum into a soda cup. We stared at each other for a moment. His eyes were red and puffy; his face looked strange without a smile.

I coughed, just for something to do. “Any calls?”

“Just one,” he said. “Midway through, the guy decided he wanted Chinese and hung up.”

“Cool. I picked up one while you were—when you—” I coughed again. “Cool.”

I thought about asking him if he was okay, decided to mop the floor instead. Peter would be waking up soon and didn’t need much to start yelling at us. Darryl sipped his drink and wiped down the counter.

I mopped half the shop before my mind began to wander. There was a slip of paper in the back left pocket of my jeans with an address and the name Jenny Hauser scribbled above it.

“I’m Jenny, by the way. Jenny Hauser,” she’d said after she thanked me for the third time. “My grandma also had the same name. I don’t remember much about her except that she made real good rhubarb pie and hated black people.”

I’d thought she sounded too old to be a Jenny. She should be a Jen or a firm Jennifer—Jenny had a ponytail and scrapes on her knees, liked the crusts cut off of her PB and J’s, fought with her mom but always apologized, had never really been in love but had plenty of crushes on boys in her class, teachers who showed her kindness, Jenny believed in God and Kenny Chesney—I couldn’t stop imagining what she looked like.

“Yo,” Darryl hollered. “Order up.”

MY DAD DIDN’T HAVE ANY MONEY to leave us. He did have a ’99 Ford Festiva.

The paint job was faded, the driver’s door dented; there was a questionable yellow stain on the back seat; the A/C was broken, stuck on high, freezing air pumped through the car, even in the winter. Simply put, the car was a piece of shit.

I’d told Mom we should sell it for parts, take whatever we could get. She shook her head and said she couldn’t, she remembered him bringing it home for the first time. “He looked so handsome stepping out of it. He bought me flowers too,” she said. “Sunflowers.” I didn’t remember that. I did remember him teaching me to drive in it. He’d smoke and sip from his red thermos, flick ashes on me whenever I drove too slow or forgot to signal. Once, I sideswiped a car in a Popeyes parking lot and he made me iron his shirts and shine his shoes every Sunday night for a month.

When Mom got a new car last year—a used ’07 Toyota Camry that didn’t have dents or stains or broken radios, was a sleek shiny silver—she dropped the keys to the Festiva on my bedside table. I let the car sit in front of the house a week before I lost all willpower.

I spent that whole day driving, every song sounded good on full blast. It was a Los Angeles winter day, seventy and cloudless. Everything looked crisp and clean through the windshield. The full gas tank and the open road made my fingers and toes tingle. A man was selling oranges on the shoulder of a highway. I bought four bags and shouted along with a song that was about a girl and a goat and Missoula, Montana.

THE RADIO WAS OFF when I was driving to Jenny’s house for the first time. My palms were sweaty against the steering wheel and I had that tight-chest feeling I sometimes got when I drank too much coffee. I hadn’t had any coffee for over a week. Billy said it was bad for the baby, he didn’t want to have a little girl or boy with twelve toes and poor reading skills.

The address took me to a nice part of town where all the homes were big and uniform with perfectly mowed front lawns. I saw three different golden retrievers being walked by three different women in tracksuits before I pulled up to her home. I was relieved to see that, though her home was big, it didn’t annoy me. It was one of the smaller ones on the block, and her lawn was slightly overgrown and yellowing in some places.

The coffee chest–feeling increased as I stepped out of my car and started walking to the front door. I appreciated then how good I felt on a daily basis, calm and centered, how little fazed me, my ability to walk tall and look straight ahead. Three weeks ago I peed on a stick, and when the little pink plus winked up at me, I walked downstairs, opened the freezer, and ate a Popsicle, thought about what I wanted to watch that night, a rom-com or an action movie—both would have broad-chested dudes, did I want to cry or see shit get blown up?

There was sweat in places I didn’t know I could sweat. I was confused why this instance of all instances was making me damp behind the knees, between my toes. As I knocked on Jenny’s door, three times hard, I reminded myself that she was just some lady with some kid. Then she opened the door and I wanted to take her hand and invite her to come with me whenever I ran away to Myrtle Beach.

2

I’D LIVED in the same house my whole life. It was small, in a neighborhood with some crime, rarely bad crime. Only four or five people a year got stabbed, a shooting here and there, rarely fatal. The worst that usually happened was some chubby boy getting kicked in the ribs and mugged, a rock thrown through a window, bikes swiped off the front lawn, walls tagged, sidewalks crowded with empty cans and chip bags, whatever shit happened when people were drunk, or high, or bored, or all three.

Dad had often been heard arguing with people who said the neighborhood was shit. He’d often repeat himself:

“It’s called Character Building. If I didn’t get knocked around every now and then, I wouldn’t be who I am today.”

“It’s called Natural Selection. If you’re dumb enough to leave your shit out, it should be stolen.”

“It’s called Being Proactive. If you don’t like trash, bend down and pick it up.”

“It’s called Shutting the Fuck Up. If you don’t like it, move somewhere else.”

I’d never hop onto his side of an argument, holler and spit in people’s faces, but I didn’t mind where we lived either.

BACK AT HOME, Billy had a surprise waiting for me in bed.

“Where the fuck did you get a cat?”

A fat orange tabby lay on my pillow, licking itself. His eyes were large and green and watched my every move. I went to the other side of the room to hang up my coat, and his eyes followed me the entire time. I immediately knew we were not going to get along.

“Super-cute, right?” Billy flopped on the bed and started rubbing the cat’s belly. He stretched and purred and, I swear, he smiled. “I feel like if he was a human he’d be chubby and his clothes would be stylish, redneck chic. A NASCAR dad that also reads The New Yorker. A lover, not a fighter.”

The cat’s purring grew louder and I wasn’t surprised—four legs, two legs, whatever, you’d have to be crazy not to love Billy Bradley.

When I first brought him home to meet Mom, he took his shoes off at the front door and ate every scrap off his plate, told Mom it was the best meal he’d had in a while, maybe ever. As he got up to go to the bathroom, she whispered loudly in my ear, “Hold on to this one.” He finished two more helpings and, before he left, kissed me on the cheek, and gave Mom a good long hug, told her he’d definitely be back. The second the front door clicked behind him, Mom was gushing. “Lovely! An absolutely lovely boy!” She adored everything about him, especially his Americanness. His very name made her want to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” A year later, when I told Mom that I was pregnant, she cried tears of joy—her daughter would get to stay under her roof and she’d have an American husband and a true American baby.

“The Halperns’ little girl found him next to a dumpster behind the 7-Eleven. She wanted to keep him. Her parents wouldn’t let her, said he could have fleas.” Billy worked for his uncle’s landscaping company. They had a couple city contracts, but made most of their money mowing large lawns in rich neighborhoods.

“Lucky us.”

Billy frowned, sat up quickly. “Wait, are you mad? Please don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad,” I said. “I just—”

“Look, you won’t even have to do any of the hard stuff.” He grabbed my wrists and kissed the back of my hands. “I’ll feed him, water him, change his litter box, you can just pet him and love him, read to him, maybe. I bet he would love it if you just sat with him in your lap and read from your books. I thought it could be a nice way to get ready. Plus, you know Billy Jr. is going to love having a furry friend around.”

He wrapped his arms around my waist, buried his face in my neck, pressed more kisses there. “Please don’t be mad.”

It took me a second, but I hugged him back.

“I’m not mad.” I kissed him once, on the cheek, pulled away, and looked at the cat. “I guess he is kind of cute. Does he have a name?”

“We’ll come up with something. We can ask Mom.” He pulled me back into his arms. “Why don’t you shower and change and come downstairs for dinner when you’re comfortable?”

One more kiss and he was out the door. I reached over to pet the cat and he hissed at me, ears flattened and eyes wild.

BILLY AND I wouldn’t have met if his parents hadn’t celebrated their twentieth anniversary in Costa Rica.

I was a junior with a bad haircut who ditched classes to smoke weed and nap in my car, had a few friends out of social necessity, sat quietly at corner tables in the cafeteria and read, repeating platitudes in my head like “Life is only just beginning,” trying to make them ring true. Billy was an honors student, the captain of the baseball team and the Mathletes, sat at a table in the center of the cafeteria and entertained his overpacked table—his laugh could be heard even once I’d dumped my tray and went outside.

But Billy’s mom wanted to go zip-lining and see a real live toucan, lie nude on beaches and drink colorful fruity drinks. Billy’s dad wanted what Billy’s mom wanted.

The trip was perfect until, on their last night, it began pouring rain and a sheep escaped from its pen. Excited by its newfound freedom, it ran into the street where Billy’s parents were driving, doing their best to imprint every detail of the Costa Rican landscape into their minds. Billy’s dad was a veterinarian; he swerved hard to avoid hitting the sheep, and their car spun on the slick road and off a cliff. The doctors said they both died instantly, painlessly.

Dad had died a week earlier. Soon, Billy was sitting across from me in a circle of other people who were dealing with Grief and Loss of a Loved One. The meetings were held in the local church every Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. The cookies were stale. Fortunately, the coffee was strong. We sat and listened as people wept and worried that they’d never be the same. Billy and I were the only two who never cried, although he did look sad, different, unlike the large, laughing boy whose warm presence I’d taken for granted.

One day after the meeting, he asked me if I liked ice cream. I said not really, but that I would go with him.

We sat in silence as he ate three separate cones. I was about to tell him that he could’ve saved money and just gotten a triple scoop when he blurted out that he felt bad that he didn’t feel more bad.

“Things really haven’t been so different since they died,” he said, looking down at his empty, sticky hands. “I didn’t see them much. They always seemed to love each other more than me, were always going on romantic dates or taking trips together. I kind of felt like their third wheel, an afterthought. The house has always been quiet.” He looked at me then, only for a second. “I just see all those people in there sobbing and I’m so damn jealous.” He chewed on his lip, began shredding the napkin in front of him, and I felt something in me twist and soften—I had the same nervous habit. “Sorry,” he said. “That was fucked up.”

I noticed his shoulders then, how strong they looked, like they were made of beef and steel. I pictured trees, mountains, boulders, birds’ nests, all of the Los Angeles skyline resting upon them.

I grabbed both of his hands in mine, tight. “Do you want to come back to my place?”

I LOCKED THE CAT in my room and went downstairs. Mom was knitting tiny sweaters in neutral colors while Billy was in the kitchen making pajeon shaped like barnyard animals. For the past couple weeks, Mom had been teaching Billy how to make basic Korean dishes: “The baby can have your hair. He’s going to have our taste buds.”

Mom came to the United States after her mom’s brother wrote to her that he’d found the promised land: Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. He owned a convenience store and could always use more help. After months of paperwork and waiting in long lines, Mom and her family were on a fourteen-hour flight straight to Chicago.

She was seventeen when they got there—young enough to be molded, not so young that she hadn’t already begun to want certain things, big things. She worked long hours at the convenience store, and when it was slow, studied English, determined to lose her accent, dreamed of the University of Illinois. All the UI students who came in to buy candy, cigarettes, condoms, and booze seemed so attractive and happy. She became obsessed with Americanness, wanted nothing more than to be a part of the red, the white, the blue.

One of the university students came in every morning to buy a pack of Luckies and two forties. He was tall and broad and 100 percent American, always smiled at her, asked her how her day was going, remembered her name, said it with a soft Midwestern twang as he walked out of the store. At night, he’d come back, buy two more forties, and wait until closing. They’d sit on the bus bench outside, talking for hours, passing the bottle back and forth, even though Mom hated beer.

Two months later, they were moving to Los Angeles. He wanted to write movies and make millions. She wanted him and to wake up every morning, look out her window, see the Pacific Ocean. Eleven months later, I was born.

I stopped on the edge of the staircase and stared at Mom as she knitted and thought about how our house was thirty minutes from the beach.

She looked up and noticed me, smiled wide. “How are my babies doing?” Billy turned around and smiled too. They stopped what they were doing and got up to hug me. They formed a warm, loving wall around me, rubbed my belly, and whispered to it. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

We sat down and they started talking about what they always talked about.

First, they asked how I was feeling, and after I gave my usual “Fine, good. Yeah, I’m good,” they launched into more important subjects—what gender the baby would be (they both were sure it was going to be a boy), strong manly names (John, Matthew, Jacob, other Bible men, even though we weren’t religious), color of the nursery (a classic blue or a bold red), potential godfathers and godmothers (lots of names of family members I didn’t know), should we already start saving for private school (absolutely, yes), etc.

I nodded and smiled, said “uh-huh” at the right times. I was feeling fine until Mom brought up the name “Adam,” perfect for a first child.

My face stayed normal and I managed to eat more than half my plate, but I was gone, done for; my mind was on Jenny Hauser’s ponytail.

HER PONYTAIL was the longest I’d ever seen on a woman her age.

Most moms in my neighborhood kept their hair short or bobbed, muted, as if to have physical proof of their seriousness, their superior mothering ability—my thank-you card is nicer than your thank-you card, don’t you dare try and sign up for more Neighborhood Watch shifts than me, this marijuana is medicinal. Jenny’s hair spilled down her back, didn’t stop until it was hovering just above her butt.

She had to be at least forty, probably closer to forty-five. Her body looked soft, once fit. Her jeans were baggy and shapeless and there was a stain on the collar of her shirt. I hoped that the stain was new. It seemed more likely that she’d been wearing the same shirt for several days. There were lines around her eyes and mouth, two deeper ones on her forehead. I wanted to touch them with my fingertips, smooth them out. When she spoke, her voice cracked on the first word, like she hadn’t said anything out loud in a while.

“Jesus Christ,” she’d said. “Your uniforms are truly terrible.”

“I know.”

“Green and orange. Like Kermit the Frog fucked a pumpkin.”

“The Hulk ate a bunch of Doritos and took a shit.”

She laughed and her eyes got squinty, crinkled at the edges. I didn’t want to smooth out all her lines. “Truly, though, thank you for this,” she said. “I can’t believe you actually came.”

The air turned thick and I found it impossible to look her in the eye. I wanted to be wearing a big jacket and a hat I could pull down low. I mumbled, “No problem,” and handed her the pizza.

I was about to turn and sprint back to my car when she said, “Oh! I have to pay you!” She slapped her forehead. “And tip you! I absolutely have to tip you. Hold on, my wallet is lying around somewhere.”

She disappeared into her house and I stood there awkwardly, shifting my weight from foot to foot. I planned on politely waiting there, staying outside, but the door hung wide open and something caught my eye.

The home’s entrance was pristine, a word I’d never used to describe anything before. An intricate Persian rug, shoes lined up evenly on both sides, a center table topped with a vase of real flowers, fancy flowers, not corner-market $9.99-for-a-dozen roses, all of this underneath a crystal chandelier—none of this was what interested me.

The front of the house may have been pristine, but just beyond, into the living room, it was chaos.

There could’ve been another beautiful rug, there could’ve just been carpet, it was impossible to tell. Clothes covered every inch of the floor. On the couch there was an empty bag of Hot Cheetos, a half-eaten salad, a tub of cream cheese. The table was crowded with magazines and paper plates covered in various pools of paint. Seven chairs looked like they’d been brought in from the dining room and were serving as easels for her paintings.

I had never been alone in someone else’s house. Slow steps forward, a pause after each, a moment to consider the wrongness of what I was doing—how rude of me to violate her private space with my eyes, to let the bottoms of my shoes sink into her carpet and leave behind the filth of where I’d been, she would be back at any moment, what would I say then? The next minute I’d see something new that would wipe the guilt from my thoughts and leave behind only curiosity, bright and shiny and begging to be stroked—I couldn’t stop thinking about how, at one point or another, everything in the room had been touched by her hands. I walked through Jenny’s living room turning my head left and right, fists clenched at my sides.

I went to the nearest chair and inspected its painting closely—it was terrible. They were all terrible. Two were rudimentary portraits of turtles, two were blocky houses in open fields, one was full of unintelligible blobs, one was just three different shades of blue, the last was blank, still lovely with possibility.

“Yikes. Hi.”

I turned around to see Jenny standing behind me, a twenty in hand, and a look I couldn’t read on her face. We stood facing each other in silence among the clutter and paintings. All the apologies I could think of sounded more like pleas—I’m sorry, please, I do things without thinking and I don’t know how to stop. Before I could say anything, she surprised me again by laughing. “So—I guess now you really think I’m crazy.”

She cleared her throat. “So let me explain.”

She pointed to the floor. “Old T-shirts to catch any paint that I spill.”

She pointed to the couch. “I actually attempted a healthy lunch, but my mouth got bored. Have you ever tried dipping your Hot Cheetos in cream cheese? What? No? Do it. One-hundred-Michelin-star rating.” She paused. “Now, the paintings. What do you think?”

“Oh. Well.”

She laughed again and I found myself becoming used to the sound. “It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to worry. This isn’t a hobby of mine. I have no secret burning desire to become a painter. I was just in my son Adam’s room earlier and I realized he had no decorations on his walls and I thought I’d try and make some for him, brighten the space a little. As you can see, I forgot a very important detail.” She spread her arms wide. “I suck at art.”

“I like that one turtle,” I said. “His head is weird and dented. Like he got hit with something hard.”

“Yeah? Thanks. Turtles are Adam’s favorite animal. He wants to go to Hawaii so he can swim with them.”

I checked my watch; I’d been gone for way too long. I was about to ask for the money when I felt my lunch rising in me—a slice of pizza and a Snickers bars—ran toward a closed door that looked like it would lead to a bathroom, but was actually to a closet. I sunk down to my knees, grabbed the least expensive-looking thing, a rain boot, and puked in it.

The puke was watery—I could see a full, undigested circle of pepperoni—I puked some more and felt a hand on my shoulder, turned around to see Jenny hovering behind me. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I—”

“You’re pregnant.” She helped me off the ground, her smile stretched and warm, and I wished that a detail other than my pregnancy had made her look that way. “Congratulations! You doing this favor for me is proof you’re going to be a great mom.”

I almost puked more, but swallowed it down.

I didn’t know if I was noticeably showing yet and I was doing my best not to find out. In the mornings, before I showered, I’d undress with my back to the mirror. When I walked, I’d keep my head up and eyes focused straight ahead, I avoided looking down. It made my palms itch to think about the day when I wouldn’t be able to fit into any of my clothes.

My hands went to my belly as if to cover it. “Thanks.”

She frowned. “You’re not excited.” It wasn’t a question. She said it firmly, unblinking, a statement.

I lied often. It was just simpler that way. As a little kid, I remember being told repeatedly that lying was bad, lying never fixed anything, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and never lied. But no one ever told me how wonderful and easy it was to lie, how many conversations it would save me from and the stares it would avert—“Yeah, I’m fine!” “What? No, I’m not mad!” “Don’t worry, it’s okay!”—and did Abraham Lincoln really never, ever lie? In bed at night during the Civil War, did he toss and turn and soak his sheets with sweat and eventually wake Mary Todd to tell her, “Hold me, I’m scared, I think I fucked up,” or did he lie awake and sweat quietly, working his hardest to remain still, to keep his mouth shut, to let Mary Todd sleep soundly and unaware?

Lying was simpler. I repeated this in my head over and over as I stood in Jenny’s living room looking at everything except her—each shitty painting, the blank canvas, the tub of cream cheese, the old T-shirts on the ground. I kept returning to one T-shirt. It was purple and had a large cobra head in the center with the words “Excellence is” underneath. The rest of the sentence was cut off by a Hawaiian shirt.

“Hey, you okay?”

I looked away from the cobra and back to Jenny. She was staring at me with wide eyes, her mouth hanging open a little. I noticed a piece of lettuce stuck between her bottom front teeth and I desperately wanted to reach over and pull it out, let my fingers linger in her mouth and spit, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to lie, even if it was easier.

“No,” I said. “I’m not excited.”

She looked away from me and I regretted saying anything, regretted that I spoke truth and it revealed my ugliness, let it breathe and writhe in the daylight. Then she looked back at me and said, “Good.”

“What?”

“It’s good you’re not excited. Or it’s good you know you’re not excited.” Her voice was different now, more like it was when I first heard it on the phone—low, trembling, a voice standing on the top of a ladder, the lip of a skyscraper, the peak of a mountain, a voice that can’t help but look over the edge even though it knows this will serve only as a reminder that it’s a long way down, a voice that needed to be cradled, tucked in gently each night. “People will always love telling you how you’re supposed to be feeling and it will always make you feel less than when you don’t feel it. I’m sorry if I was being one of those people.” She shook her head. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“I’ll tell you what I wish someone told me when I was eighteen—it never goes away.”

“What is ‘it,’ exactly?”

“All of it, any of it, just it.” Suddenly, she reached out and pushed a loose strand of my hair behind my ear. “Jesus, you’re so young. Of course you’re not excited.”

She kept staring at me and I was worried that she was going to ask more, that I would dump the weight of my life among her living-room clutter. She just turned, grabbed the turtle painting, and handed it to me. “For the baby. Boy or girl, everyone likes turtles.”

I wasn’t much of a crier—Billy and I had rented Toy Story 2 last week and the collar of his shirt was damp by the end, mine dry. As I took that shitty painting I felt weirdly close to tears.

“Here’s money for the pizza, keep the change.” She handed me a twenty and pulled out another, pressed it firmly into my palm. “And a little extra for you, my savior.”

She walked me to the front door and hugged me and I didn’t mind. She smiled and I wanted to bottle it up, pour it over my morning cereal. “Take care, Pizza Girl.”

The door shut and I stared at it, tried to come up with reasons to knock and bring her back.

IT WAS A BLESSING I didn’t get into a car accident. I spent the rest of my shift in a daze. My hands and feet felt and behaved like bricks. I knocked over a stack of boxes and dropped a napkin dispenser I was trying to refill. As Darryl bent down to help me clean up, he asked me if I’d taken pulls from his Bacardi.

I mixed up orders. Drew Herold got Patty Johnston’s Meat Lovers, extra bacon. Patty Johnston got Drew Herold’s Very Veggie, no sauce. “You might as well just get a salad,” she said, shaking her head, inspecting a mushroom between her fingers. She was nice, an older mom type who looked like she was used to dealing with youthful incompetence. She didn’t mind having to wait while I drove back to retrieve her pizza, just told me to include garlic bread sticks for free next time she called in. Drew Herold was less nice, told me that meat was murder, he’d be calling Domino’s in the future.

When I got back to the shop, I went to the bathroom and didn’t notice the seat was up. There was toilet water on my pants as Peter yelled at me. Driving home, I missed the turn for my street three times. I kept getting distracted by lamppost lights—I saw Jenny standing underneath each one. She was still lovely, even under their harsh orange glow.

AT NIGHT, after Billy was snoring in my ear and I heard Mom flick off the TV and double-lock the front door, I’d run my hands through Billy’s hair twice and then quietly get out of bed. I’d tiptoe down the stairs and into the backyard, walk across the lawn, and go inside Dad’s shed.

In his last years, Dad spent most of his time in here. When he got home from whatever his current job was, when Mom or I pissed him off, when he just needed a breath, some “Me Time,” he’d throw open the screen door and stomp across the lawn, lock himself in the shed for hours.

The shed was always padlocked. He repeated over and over that Mom and I were forbidden to go inside. A little after he died, I got a hammer and swung at the lock until it broke off.

I didn’t know what to expect, but I realized then a part of me hoped that whenever he went into the shed he’d feel bad about what he’d said, how he acted, his boozy, sour breath. He’d feel bad and he’d grab his toolbox or notebook and try to make us something to apologize, would write long letters to us promising to be a better man. I pictured him whittling little sculptures, painting them bright, hopeful colors. His letters would contain beautiful, flowery language.

When I went inside there were no tools, or papers, or paints. There was just an old armchair, a small TV on a table barely big enough to support it, a mini-fridge. Empty beer cans and cigarette butts covered most of the floor. There were a pile of old newspapers and a foam football in the corner.

I thought about going back into the house and getting a book of matches, watching the shed burn before my eyes. I didn’t. I sat in the armchair and cried for the first and only time since he died.

Ever since Billy and I decided we’d be keeping the baby, I’d been coming to the shed most nights. I’d sit in the armchair and flick on the TV to the infomercial channel—there was something weirdly peaceful about people enthusiastically trying to sell you things. After a while, I’d open the fridge and pull out a beer. It was lite beer, I reasoned, basically water. I would only have one, sometimes two if the day had been long and my head and body both felt heavy. I’d drink slowly, try and empty my mind, focus on the infomercials and how much better my life could be if I had a Snuggie, or a Shake Weight, or Ginsu Steak Knives—I’d be warm, fit, and able to slice through anything.

It was the best part of my days.

I was halfway through my third beer when I remembered. I walked out of the shed and to the front of the house and unlocked the trunk of my car, grabbed Jenny’s painting.

There were no nails to hang it, so I just leaned the misshapen turtle against the wall with the TV. It looked good there.

3

“AT TWELVE WEEKS, the baby is the size of a plum.”

The clinic doctor told me this with a smile as he squirted gel onto my belly. The gel was a translucent blue, felt slimy and cold. Alien spit, I thought.

“Like what type of plum? And how ripe is it?” I shivered as I watched him spread the gel around. “At the supermarket, plums come in lots of different sizes.”

The doctor standing above me was an old man with hair coming out of his nose and ears. His hands looked older than the rest of him—large and gnarled, veins popping out, deeply lined palms—I wondered when the last time he had sex was, what those hands felt like against bare thighs. His name tag literally read Dr. Oldman and I would’ve laughed if I hadn’t been lying on my back, shirt up, sweaty and alone. I couldn’t stop imagining a plum in my stomach.

“You’re a funny girl,” he said.

I imagined the plum growing arms and legs and trying to communicate with me. I couldn’t or wouldn’t understand. The plum quickly gave up on me and started banging its tiny fists against the inner walls of my stomach, dug its teeth into me, and drew blood. I shivered again.

The night before, Billy had rubbed my shoulders and offered to come with me, but the appointment was at nine. Landscaping crews did their biggest jobs before the sun reached its full power—a few parks, schools, one cemetery—since hard work was a little less hard when sweat wasn’t pouring into your eyes, the back of your neck wasn’t red and burnt, thirstiness was a feeling that started in your throat and spread to your mind. I kissed both of Billy’s eyelids and told him that I would be fine, he shouldn’t skip work, we couldn’t afford that.

The money Billy’s parents left him had been huge in helping us with bills, groceries, a fun trip to the movies here and there, and we both tried not to think about how the total was deflating at a rapid rate. Mom was a checker at Kmart and the job sucked—she’d been working there for ten years and had only just received her first raise, a dollar more per hour—but we were lucky they provided insurance. I held Billy’s large, sweet head between my hands and told him to go to work, I’d be fine, would make sure to bring home the first picture of Billy Jr.

As I lay there watching Dr. Oldman set up the ultrasound equipment, I tuned out his small talk about his daughters—there were five of them, all named after famous mountain ranges—and forced myself to wonder why I really didn’t want Billy to come with me to the appointment.

Yes, it was true that there was a never-ending list of things Billy and I needed and that most of those things were tied to money. At night we’d strip naked and cuddle in bed, taking turns being big spoon, and going on and on about how dope life would be if we had a bottomless bank account.

No question, we’d quit our jobs. Mom had been good to us, we’d buy her her own place, one with a front- and backyard, a kitchen worthy of her skill, finally by the ocean, close enough that if she opened the windows sand would get blown in by the sea breeze. With Mom taken care of and our schedules open, next we’d buy a new car, something fast and flashy and gas-inefficient, red or yellow, maybe a sharp electric blue, good-fucking-bye to that goddamn Festiva. Billy had a book of U.S. maps. We’d pore over the pages and debate where to drive first, where we wanted the baby to be born—“How cool would it be to say you were from Zzyzx, California?” We’d go back and forth for a while until Billy would shrug and smile. “Let’s just go everywhere, literally every city in America. I want to go everywhere with you. The baby will be cool no matter where he’s from.”

This was all talk, though, something to occupy our minds and fill our sleep with big, bright images. Billy was content with our life, what we had was more than enough for him, and I was pretty sure it was enough for me too. We would find ways to make money and get by. He could’ve definitely skipped work to come with me to our baby’s twelve-week ultrasound.

In the week leading up to the appointment, every time I pictured Billy standing by my side and holding my hand, sweat would begin to collect on my upper lip. Mom always told me that this was how she knew when I was nervous, Dad used to nervous-sweat too. She remembered on their wedding day standing at the altar before him, hoping that he’d wipe his lip with the back of his hand before he kissed her.

Even just picturing Billy next to me at that moment in the clinic, I could feel the lip sweat forming. He would’ve been his lovely, charming self, making small talk right back with Dr. Oldman, asking polite questions while also being funny—“What’re your daughters’ names? I can only guess one: Sierra Nevada. You didn’t name one Kilimanjaro, did you?” Their joint laughter echoed in my head, and I felt the pits of my shirt begin to grow dark and wet.

Dr. Oldman must’ve noticed the sweat. “Hey, now, there’s no reason to be scared.” He patted my shoulder warmly. “This is a happy day. Let’s go take a closer view of this baby.”

He pressed the transducer against my belly and rubbed the gel around. I couldn’t look at the screen, so I closed my eyes and imagined more of what Billy would be saying if he were there—“Doc, are there ways we can make the baby left-handed? Lefties are harder to pitch to”—I didn’t know when I started being able to predict what Billy would say or why, even in my imagination, he annoyed me.

My thoughts were turning poisonous. I wished I had my iPod, something to help keep me steady, my mind a little fuzzy and unfocused. I was so stupid not to bring my iPod. I was about to ask Dr. Oldman if he had a CD player, a boom box—anything that could play music, any kind of music, preferably something heavy on beat, light on lyrics—when his voice cut through the air: “There! Open your eyes, see for yourself.”

The image on the screen was grainy and the baby didn’t look much like a baby, didn’t look like a plum either. I could tell that it had a head and a body and feet, but if I squinted a little, it became nothing, a smudge on a screen.

“Everything looks great. Your baby is healthy, has toes and everything,” Dr. Oldman continued. “Would you like to know the sex?”

“No.” I said it too quickly.

I tried not to squint, kept my eyes wide open, struggled not to blink, stared at this thing—no, this Fully Formed Human Being—growing inside me.

“It’s breathtaking, isn’t it? The creation of life.” Dr. Oldman looked close to tears. “These are the moments that make my job worth it.”

I felt bad for all my bad thoughts about Dr. Oldman, about Billy, about everyone. I wanted to be the type of person that walked with their back straight, the dirt under their fingernails pure. I didn’t want to be a chain saw, I wanted to be a plastic baggie. No shredding, just holding. I wondered what animals lived under the shadows of my bones. I hoped they were animals of nobility—lions and eagles and horses with long manes—and not what I feared—vultures and wolves and drooling hyenas. I spit in a customer’s pizza last week because he called me a bitch over the phone, but maybe he was having a bad day, maybe he spilled coffee on his favorite shirt, stubbed his toe, missed the bus to work, someone close to him died, maybe I really was just being a bitch.

Dr. Oldman rubbed his eyes, cleared his throat. “Sorry, you just remind me a lot of my youngest.”

I thought, This is your chance, this is where you can start, ask him about his daughter, how we’re alike, is her name Appalachian? I knew he wanted me to ask, I could see it in his clear brown eyes. I just smiled weakly. “It’s okay. Really.”

I LEFT THE CLINIC with an armful of pamphlets and a list of prenatal vitamin brands. It was only 10:00 a.m., it felt like it was 2:00 p.m., my sweating was only going to get worse. I threw the pamphlets, the list, and the ultrasound photo into the nearest trash can. I was halfway to my car when I stopped, sighed, ran back, fished out the ultrasound photo, and stuffed it into the front left pocket of my jeans.

The inside of the Festiva was boiling hot, the steering wheel hurt to touch. This was my nineteenth summer in Los Angeles. I should’ve known to park somewhere shaded.

I opened all the car’s doors and paced in circles around it. My shift at Eddie’s wasn’t for over two hours and I had no idea what I was going to do with that time. Everyone I knew was always bitching about how they wanted more free time and I wanted to shove them in their chests, hard, tell them how lucky they were that each of their days contained boring, beautiful structure.

I kept replaying the last thing Dr. Oldman had said to me before I left the office. He’d hugged me tight. “Congratulations on the end of your first trimester. It’s only just beginning.”

He’d said it with both rows of his crooked, yellow teeth showing, said it to excite me. But the words just banged around the inside of my head and made me feel lopsided, like I was dehydrated, even though I had just finished a whole bottle of water.

I blinked hard and then opened the car’s trunk, searched every corner of it. Nothing. I checked the glove box. Nothing. The overhead compartment. Nothing. I was about to give up when I reached under the driver’s seat and felt my fingers brush against glass. I curled them around the body and pulled out a half-full bottle of Evan Williams.

That fucking fuck, I thought. I knew it, I fucking knew he would have a bottle stashed somewhere in here, that fucking asshole.

I took a deep swig and got into the car, turned on the radio, pulled out of the parking lot, and fiddled with the volume, started driving west. West seemed right.

I GOT TIRED OF DRIVING EVENTUALLY, pulled over about a mile from Eddie’s. I still had an hour to kill and I didn’t want to drink any more of Dad’s bottle.

The sidewalks were busy. Unlike me, people were dressed appropriately for summer in tank tops and shorts, their flip-flops smacked pleasantly against the pavement. I reached down and untied the laces on my sneakers, started pacing back and forth along the block.

I stared hard at every person I walked past. If they didn’t tell me my shoes were untied, I cursed them in my head—Fuck you, how dare you not warn a pregnant woman that she could fall—and if they did tell me my shoes were untied, I cursed them in my head—Fuck you, leave me alone, I can do whatever I want.

I SHOWED UP FOR MY SHIFT at Eddie’s soaked in sweat. My uniform polo was a dark green, and loose strands of my hair were plastered to my neck and forehead.

Darryl lowered his magazine and eyed me up and down. “You better clean up before Peter sees you. You know he’s been extra bitch-ass ever since we dropped to a ‘B’ rating.”

I shrugged. Darryl shrugged back. “Whatever,” he said.

He looked back down at his magazine and added, like he’d only just remembered, “Oh, by the way, someone called asking for you. Some woman.”

“A woman?” My head snapped up. “What woman?”

He raised his eyebrows, picked up a scrap of paper, and handed it to me.

I held the paper delicately in my hands, ran my fingers over the words, and repeated them softly under my breath. “Adam loved the pizza. You’re amazing. Come today at 4:30 p.m. Same order. Jenny Hauser.”

“So? What’s all that about?” Darryl asked. “Customers don’t like you, much less use any word close to ‘amazing’ to describe you.”

“I’m likable and amazing, thank you.” I flicked Darryl off as I stuffed the note into my jeans pocket, the same pocket as the ultrasound photo. “Excuse me, I have to pee.”

I went to the bathroom, didn’t pee. I squirted pink, watered-down soap into my hands and scrubbed my face, neck, arms, any sweaty exposed body parts. I combed my hair with my fingers and tucked in my polo, untucked it, tried to look presentable.

4

UNFORTUNATELY, it was a while before 4:30 p.m. and there were other people hungry for pizza.

A nursing home having a bingo birthday party. Two roommates, both accountants at the same firm, who were ditching work and playing Xbox in their underwear. A couple at a bar already drunk and arguing over a bag of Doritos. The lady so large that it was hard for her to get off her couch, who always hollered at me to come in—the door was unlocked, leave the pizza on the couch next to her, money was on top of the TV set. A dude who smiled and tipped well, but was certainly an asshole—no non-asshole has a lime-green Camaro. The guy who worked at the crematorium who once told me, “I like to get high and burn bodies”; he also liked pepperoni, sausage, and onions.

Fortunately, one of my favorite regulars also called in.

Rita Booker and her husband, Louie, gave me hope that it was possible to make it into your thirties with the same person and still be in love.

They’d always answer the door together, wrapped around each other, usually minimally clothed. They barely looked at me as they paid. Rita would ask me how I was doing, how was that man of mine, wasn’t life wonderful?—all while staring directly into Louie’s eyes. Sometimes she would stroke my face and smile at Louie. “Look at this caramel. I hope our future babies are as pretty as she is.”

When they answered the door that day, he was shirtless and in basketball shorts. She was naked underneath one of his button-downs and I could see her nipples through the soft pink material. I handed her their large Buff Bleu Chick and made sure to keep my eyes on hers.

“How’s it going, girl?” Rita smiled at me, was immediately distracted by Louie nibbling on her ear. He gave me a quick grin, a wink. I knew she didn’t need an answer, so I just smiled back. “That’ll be $19.99.”

Louie pulled a wad of bills out of his shorts and handed me a twenty plus a solid tip as Rita fixed her attention on his neck. They laughed and ran their hands over each other’s bodies, searching, mapping, squeezing spots that spoke to them. I normally didn’t break through their haze, just took the money and walked back to my car, but that day I had to know—“How do you guys stay so happy?”

They turned to me and their cheeks had a lovely rosy flush, and if I’d had a camera I would’ve snapped a picture of them right there. Once I got home, I would’ve stared at the photo and pulled out a set of paints, mixed until I got the exact color of their cheeks.

Louie shook the box in his one hand and played with the collar of Rita’s shirt with the other. “Pizza and sex seems to help.”

“Seriously, though,” I said.

“I mean, we’re being pretty serious.” Rita looked at Louie, a stone-melting look. “Like, yeah, pizza and sex is not all it is, but when you’re with someone that you love—like, really love—you work through whatever shit that’s managed to stick to you over the years, and when you want to punch walls, or rip out your hair, or if you feel like if you opened your mouth only screams would come out, you remember those pizza-and-sex days.”

They started kissing with tongue, so I thanked them and wished them all the best.

I CIRCLED AROUND THE BLOCK three times and still got to Jenny’s house early. It was 4:23 and I didn’t want to look overeager. I parked my car a few houses down and put the radio’s volume at 10, 11, 12, back to 11, stared at the clock.

4:24

The song that was on the radio said the word “release,” over and over. The drumbeat was too aggressive and I felt it weirdly in my elbows and knees. I changed the station and focused on making my thoughts unfocused.

4:25

A Christian Rock station. The song wasn’t annoying, wasn’t saying anything like “I love you, God. You are everything, God. God likes his steak rare.” The song was slow and soft, not many lyrics, just a few “Hallelujahs” exhaled here and there.

4:26

Would I ever carry a briefcase? How many times in a row did you have to listen to a song you loved before it became a song you liked hearing every now and then? Is it only called a nervous breakdown if there’s someone there to point at you and be, like, “Yo, get your shit straight, you are nervous and you are breaking down”? The heart of a shrimp is located in its head.

4:28

Dad used to carry a briefcase, even when he was working jobs like graveyard-shift mall security, office janitor, mover—and there was an odd stint when he had a paper route—he’d put his briefcase into the bike’s front basket as he cruised around the neighborhood tossing the L.A. Times into people’s front yards.

The briefcase never had much in it: a sci-fi paperback, a few sheets of paper, pens stolen from dentists’ offices and car dealerships, jelly beans. Dad would put a couple green ones in my hand, my favorite, and say, “You need the briefcase. People don’t take you seriously without the briefcase. How would it look if I was walking around with just a pack of jelly beans in my hand?”

4:30

I got out of the car and hit the lock button twice, started walking toward Jenny’s house.

I ONLY HAD TO KNOCK ONCE before the door swung open and a little boy in dirt-stained clothes answered.

We stared at each other and I tried to think of something to say, but I found quiet children to be strange, unnatural. I would’ve been less alarmed if he’d answered the door hopping up and down, screaming. He just stood there, staring, mouth closed and tight; even his blinks seemed solemn.

We were saved by Jenny sliding into view, nearly falling over. “I forgot how slippery these floors get when you’re wearing socks.” She hugged me, and I was rigid for a moment, shocked by the easy intimacy, and then I leaned into it and breathed deep. “I see you’ve met the most beautiful boy in the world. I swear, he’s not usually this dirty. He just got home from baseball practice.” She ruffled his hair. “This is Adam.”

Adam remained staring. His eyes were the same shade of brown as Jenny’s. “Adam,” Jenny said, “can you thank this nice lady for the pizza? Remember how good it was last week?”

“It was okay,” he said. “Thank you, though.”

My chest twisted at this muted, muttered thank-you. A part of me wanted to shake the kid, change his face, and the other felt achy, bruised, a flash of recognition and fear. I remembered being a quiet little kid, constantly aware and uncomfortable with the ways grown-ups talked to me, how much they seemed to want from me.

Jenny took the pizza and handed me another too-much tip. “So—how’re you doing? You look a little more worn out than the last time I saw you.”

“I’m doing okay,” I said, wondering if my equally bland response would catch Adam’s attention, warm him to me.

“Well,” Jenny said, “if you’re not, there’s a support group that meets every Thursday at eight-thirty p.m. at that little church between the hardware store and the doughnut shop. It’s for expecting moms and current struggling moms. They used to be two separate groups, but they joined them together after funding was cut. The group isn’t bad, and there’s always hot, fresh cookies.”

I almost told her that the church was Catholic and called Holy Name of Jesus, and that the cookies weren’t fresh, just microwaved before the group started. I didn’t want to talk about how I knew that, though, the many afternoons I’d spent there listening to strangers grieve.

She put the pizza down and took my hand in one of hers, Adam’s in the other. We formed a chain. “Please come. I go every week, and some of these women are just nasty. I need a friend.”

I looked at Adam and, I can’t be sure, I thought I saw him nod. Just once, not even a nod, a slight tilt of the head. I knew what it meant—“Go, watch, protect her.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

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