the first night Lisa Fay slept away from her son she woke up gasping, her palms wet with sweat, thinking she’d lost him. Jerry Skink went on snoring next to her on the mattress and through the open door she could see dark spots on the floor of the next room, the bodies of people (Her friends? Were these her friends?) who lay where they had fallen. They had all smoked a little much, they had done too many mushrooms, dropped a bit much acid—these were not her friends. Lisa Fay threw off the sheets and stood. She found her clothes and a clock: 3:15. On the streets at 3:15 in the morning. But it had to be better than here.
Jerry Skink showed up on the outside steps to her room the next day in time for lunch. Lisa Fay looked gray and soggy. She had downed half the bottle of Wrecker’s orange pills and felt no better for it. She was toasting white bread on the hot-plate burner, mechanically smearing on margarine and sprinkling sugar and cinnamon. She couldn’t keep up with the kid’s appetite but she was trying. Focus was hard. When she answered the knock on the door and stood looking at Jerry Skink, fresh-scrubbed and dandy in a new woven poncho, her efforts at focus slid off the plate of her mind. The son of a bitch. She stood waiting for his apology. She wasn’t sure what he should apologize for but felt fairly certain he should.
Jerry lifted his little upturned nose, nonchalant, and sniffed. He meant to say, “What’s for lunch?” but it came out, “Your kitchen is on fire.”
Lisa Fay turned and watched the last piece of sliced bread go up in a flame of glory. Wrecker cried. He didn’t like burned toast. He was still hungry.
Jerry stepped the three paces to the hot plate and switched it off. Then he smothered the flame with a cloth diaper that doubled as a dishtowel. He shot Wrecker a look that shut him up. Then he turned to Lisa Fay and said, all sugar, “I know a place on Gough makes great hamburgers. What do you say we go?”
Lisa Fay’s mouth watered for meat. She meant to say, “I have potatoes in the drawer. I have to get Wrecker to the sitter by two and be at work at three,” but it came out, “Medium rare. With fries and a vanilla shake and Wrecker likes pickles.”
Jerry smiled. “I have a car,” he said. “Let me take you out.”
Every silver lining has its cloud. Jerry Skink had time on his hands and access to a borrowed car and enough cash to every now and then treat mother and son to a day on the beach, to a meal out. They grew into a familiar routine. Saturday mornings Jerry Skink would come by with the car and ask Lisa Fay to cruise with him, down the peninsula some days, up to Muir Woods, and Lisa Fay would agree on the condition that Wrecker come along, and Jerry would suggest, tenderly but as the weeks went by more forcefully, that Wrecker be left with a friend, that he would have more fun with children his own age, that it was improper for a child to be kept in a car so long, that in fact much of the way Lisa Fay treated her son was not correct, that in fact the experts said—not that Jerry was an expert, what did he know about children, a single man, but he did read—the experts said, actually, to be fair about it, that Lisa Fay’s style of mothering was all wrong.
Wrecker was napping. Lisa Fay was sitting opposite Jerry at the table, snacking on the cheese sandwich crusts Wrecker had left in his wake. She was lifting the bread with her right hand and slowly, unconsciously, her left elbow slid on to the table and moved forward to shield the plate from Jerry and her left hand lifted and positioned itself on her forehead to shield her face from his view. She put back the scrap of bread and left her right hand in her lap.
“Hey. Whoa.” Jerry reached over to squeeze Lisa Fay’s upper arm. “Didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
It was just—well. He was getting attached. He only wanted what was best for the little guy. Didn’t she?
Of course she did. And so Wrecker’s day-to-day life changed considerably as Lisa Fay submitted to Jerry Skink’s tutelage. It was not best