Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,24

he doesn’t work.”

“Ever?”

“Sometimes,” she acknowledged. “He works for his uncles at their garage. But no real work.”

She lifted the sandwich from her plate & bit into it miserably.

“And is he a good person?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes. The girl does not hold back what she is feeling, you see.

“Plus he used to date this girl and she’s still calling him. It’s complicated,” she said.

Clearly it was.

We sat together silently & then she asked if she could turn on the television & I said of course she could.

We watched the news for a while.

“These are good,” she said finally, & I noticed she had eaten all the Pop’ems.

“Yes, I like those too,” I said. & I realized it was the first time I had ever referred to my eating in front of her.

She seemed considerably happier after a while, & she even asked if I would tell her a story, which I took to be her way of humoring me, so I said, “Did you know that in 1960 there was a huge plane crash right on Seventh Avenue and Sterling? & that as a young boy I saw it?”

“Not that kind of story,” said Yolanda.

So instead I told her the story of Deirdre of the Sorrows & her valiance and strength.

After a couple of hours she said she had to go.

& I was worried about her because she did not have a ride but she said she could take the subway, no problem.

“I’ll pay for a cab,” I said. “Please let me.”

“No, thank you,” she said, very polite.

“Please be careful,” I said, & then she was gone.

It was only one o’clock in the afternoon. I had a number of emotions rattling around inside of me and the whole day before me to mull them over. If I were a pacer I would have paced, but I am a sitter so I sat.

I am embarrassed to admit I was thinking of what it would be like to adopt Yolanda, sort of, to tell her that she could live with me & grow her child here. That I could really care for her & help her. That I could help her child. Wild crazed fantasies, all.

For one thing I rely on television shows for all of my ideas about being a parent. No, not the terrible sitcoms—but the reality shows. I sometimes watch a program that shows real couples as they prepare for the birth of their child & then actually have it.

I can’t watch them without crying, silly as they are. I have a favorite type of father: young working-class fathers, especially ones who wear baseball caps and trainers. I feel somehow that these will be the best fathers of them all. These will be the ones who toss balls with their children, whose children will use them as jungle gyms. These are the fathers who kneel by their wife’s side & kiss her hands as she pushes & sweats & groans out the baby. Then when the baby is born these are the fathers who cry out in ecstasy, who lean over their wives & put their faces close to them & tell them I love you, I love you.

Of course I would be nothing like these fathers but they move me. When I was a younger man, only a bit older than Charlene’s son, I thought I would certainly have children: it was just something that one did. Alas it has not happened.

But I still think about it. Holding a wet purple baby against your chest, knowing that it is yours, knowing that you will be in charge of it. This is what is waiting for Yolanda.

I was in a brown study. There was a trembling inside me. I felt that something in me had broken, like my ribs themselves had been cracked open and something wanted to get out. Since I have been bound to my home, I have often felt that it has become a physical manifestation of Plato’s cave, and that I am the man in it. & that my mind is bouncing off all of the walls and ceilings even if my body cannot. I felt a bit claustrophobic & I longed to go outside so instead I opened the doors & then I inhaled deeply. It was cold out and I stood there in the doorframe and allowed myself to shiver for a while.

Then, without giving myself enough time to really mull things over, I walked back inside and lifted the phone and