Kids These Days (12 page)

Mid said, “Are they hatching?”

“Come on,” she said. “Hurry. It's amazing.”

What I was thinking as we trailed Delton down the beach: Even if he does go to jail, somebody still has to run the pizza shop. Somebody still has to sell sunglasses, rent kayaks. Also, I was trying to do long division in my head, simple messes like 42 into 613, remainders and carry the one—because seeing those numbers lining themselves up gave me some little corner of order, let me feel like I was back at the desk, with my own pencils, my own paper, my own phone lighting up and being for me. There'd be some deal we were putting together, the numbers run, the facts and figures, the due diligence. A word like
client.
Like
account.
Thirty-year fixed. Five-year balloon. Home in the car through traffic I knew to a house I owned, the familiar rhythms of weeks unfolding one after another—

Delton stopped, looked around. “I thought it was right here,” she said. “But that lady's gone.”

Mid said, “What lady?”

“The turtle lady. Walter knows.”

“The pickup?” I said.

“Right. And there were all these people. She kept making them turn their flashlights off. She said the babies get confused and think the light is the moon.”

Mid said, “Are you sure it was here?”

“I think so.” She walked up to the dunes, up to one of the taped-off nests. “Yeah,” she said. “This was definitely it. I guess they're gone.” She came back toward us. The moon was up over the water, about three-quarters full. Everything was lit up white. “OK, look.” She pointed at the sand. “You can see the tracks. Oh, man, you guys should have seen it. It was unbelievable.” She started telling us about how small they were, about how they crawled up out of the nest and aimed themselves toward the water. And if you stood right, you could see the tracks in the sand, like she said—like someone had dragged a bunch of thin reeds from the dunes down to the ocean. “There were people picking them up,” she was saying. “If they started crawling the wrong way, you were allowed to pick them up and turn them around. I didn't do it, but people were doing it. There must have been a hundred of them. They were tiny. It was incredible.” Her phone rang. She answered it. “Hey, Mom,” she said, and walked away from us. “No. I'm with Dad.”

“My daughter, international woman of intrigue,” said Mid. “Savior of the animal kingdom.”

“On the beach,” she said into the phone. “Looking for turtles.” She paused. “Like sea turtles. One of the nests hatched.” Another pause. “At the grocery.” She gave Mid a shrug. “Having ice cream. We ran into each other. I just felt like it.”

“Close enough,” Mid said.

“Yeah, he's here, too,” she said, and then handed me the phone. “Aunt Alice wants to talk to you.”

I said, “Me?”

“I'm pretty sure,” said Delton.

“Hello?” I said.

“What are you doing?” Alice asked.

“Delton found some turtles hatching, and now I guess we're looking for them.”

“I called your cell,” she said.

I checked my pocket. “I must have left it at home. Sorry.”

“I'm bleeding again. I called the hotline thing, and they want us to come in tomorrow.”

“Are you alright?”

“It's more than before. But the nurse said we didn't need to go to the hospital.”

“What color is it?” I said.

“Redder than last time.”

“How red?”

“Not that red.”

“What else did they say?”

“They said it could be fine, or that it could be not fine. They don't know. All they really said was that we could wait until tomorrow.”

“That's got to be good, right?”

“I'm trying not to look things up. The nurse said not to. She said doing that was a bad idea. She said I was supposed to try to relax.”

“Do you need me to come over there?” I said.

“No,” she said. “I'm OK. We're OK.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost ten. I'll come home in an hour or so.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“It's not your fault.” She sounded worried, but calm. She did not sound like she was bleeding.

“How's everything else?” I said.

“You mean like Carolyn?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he right there?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Not so good,” she said. “It's pretty much a mess. How's he?”

“Same,” I said, trying not to look at him. “The same.”

“Will you talk to me a minute?” she said. “Can you? Are you busy?”

“I'm not busy,” I said. “I'm good.”

She said, “I think I'm getting afraid.”

“About the baby?”

“About everything. There was a news report about earthquakes. Now I'm afraid of earthquakes.”

“I don't think Florida has earthquakes.”

“The news seemed to know a lot about them,” she said. “We're all going to die, I think.”

“We're not all going to die.”

“The news says we are.”

“The news always says that.”

“The news also says crime is up.”

I said, “I have to say that actually seems right.”

“Is ten-thirty OK for the doctor tomorrow? That's the earliest they had.”

“Any time is fine,” I said.

“Do you need to check with Mid?”

“I'm sure it's fine,” I said. “Ten-thirty. We're good.”

“I should go,” she said. “Maggie's still not asleep. Carolyn said she's been awful all week. I think we've read her a thousand books. I'll bring you the one about the horse and the seahorse.”

“Sounds riveting,” I said.

“They learn to share. Tell me not to worry.”

“Don't worry.”

“I'm worried,” she said.

“I know. Me, too.”

“What if something's really wrong?” she said.

I looked south, back down toward where our complex was. I was pretty sure I could actually see it from there, the outline of the buildings sticking up above everything else. I had ten different answers for her. I chose the easiest. The one I was least sure of. “Then we'll try again,” I said.

“Do you promise?”

“I promise,” I said. I felt like if I didn't dig my feet in just right, I might float up off the beach, fly away.

She said, “You three are eating ice cream?”

“More or less,” I said.

“That sounds nice.”

“It is, sort of.”

“I just really wanted to talk to you,” she said.

“I'm right here,” I said. “It's good you called.”

“I love you,” she said.

I said, “I love you, too.”

She botched the hanging up on her end, so the line stayed open another minute or so. I could hear Mid's house in the background, Alice and Carolyn talking, Maggie doing something that wasn't quite screaming. Then we'll try again
,
I heard myself saying. It was problem enough to be pregnant. That was plenty. But to have something go haywire—I stood there with the phone up against my ear, the beach running all the way to Miami in front of me, and then the skinny kid walked out of the dark with Roscoe. He had the dog leashed with an extension cord. “Hey,” he said to Delton. “Thanks for your help.”

“I know,” she said. “I'm sorry I lost you.”

“No, I really mean it. That was cool of you to even try.”

“Nice leash,” Mid said.

“Some dude down the beach caught him. Roscoe ran straight up to him. He gave me the cord right out of his place.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, man,” the kid said. “You know what I like? How some people will just help your shit out when you need it.”

Mid said, “I like that, too.”

Delton never had a chance: Skinny kid, muscles, beach dog, extension-cord leash. It wouldn't have been too hard for me to be in love with him. The kid stuck his hand out, the wrong hand, the one he wasn't holding Roscoe with. He said, “I'm Nic. It's short for Nicodemus.” Delton giggled and told him her name was Olivia. Mid took a couple of steps back, looked up at the sky. It was time for me to go home. I asked him if what looked like our place was in fact our place. He said it was. It was maybe a mile away. I told him I'd just walk it, and I told him about Alice, about the bleeding, asked if it would be a problem for me to take the morning. Of course not, he said. He said he'd call to find out how it went. Delton was down on one knee, patting the dog around the neck. The kid was asking her if she surfed. “You're alright here?” I asked Mid.

“Don't worry about me,” he said. “For now, you is who we worry about, OK? You and Alice.”

“She's fine,” I said. “She's got to be.”

“Good luck,” he said. “You won't need it, but tell her we're thinking of you guys.”

“I will,” I said, and I left him there with the dog, the kid, Delton, the party.

I watched Aunt Sandy's TV, all the higher channels fuzzy for a reason I couldn't figure out. It got worse the further up you went. I could see them trying to sell onyx necklaces well enough, but I couldn't find the ball in the Marlins game. I tried to watch a movie I was pretty sure was about cowboys. I couldn't follow what was happening, though, couldn't tell who to root for, so I gave up, turned the TV off, sat in the dark. I kept thinking of Alice, just Alice, no Florida, no kid, no nothing—just Alice on one of those blank blue screens they did the TV weather against. And I didn't mean to, but I fell asleep.

I woke up on the sofa, not sure where I was, morning light bombing in through the sliding glass doors, the sound of something being torn in another room. I wandered down the hall, the cool of the tile on my feet something I still wasn't used to. That and the pervasive smell of Aunt Sandy in the rooms, the drawers, the closets. Powder. She was haunting us via powder. I found Alice in the front bedroom, and found the sound: She was tearing long sheets of aluminum foil off the roll and thumbtacking them to the window frames. She was running masking tape along the seams. “I tried not to wake you,” she said.

“I'm sorry I fell asleep,” I said. “I tried to wait.”

“Don't you want to ask me what I'm doing? Don't you want to tease me?”

“Yes,” I said. “No.”

“Carolyn told me they did this for Maggie, to make it completely dark so she'd sleep. Last night she said they were thinking about putting it back up in her room. Here,” she said, and held out the box of foil. “Hold this.”

I said, “But why are you doing it now?”

“I'm getting a head start. I'm practicing. It's good to be ready.”

“This ready?”

“Just let me do it,” she said.

“The bleeding,” I said. “Are you still—”

“Not this morning. A little more last night.”

“Aren't you supposed to be getting rest? Or sitting down?”

“They didn't mention that on the hotline.”

“I thought Maggie had some kind of nightlight,” I said, watching her tape edges. “I thought she didn't like it dark.”

“She hates her nightlight now. She hates everything except books. And chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs. Have you seen those?”

“Why didn't you wake me up when you got home?” I said.

“You looked so peaceful, I just left you. I thought if you woke up, you'd come to bed, and if not, you were fine where you were.” She took the foil back. “How was your night?”

I rubbed my face, trying to sift out what was dream and what was not, trying to account for what to tell her. I decided to go with everything all at once. “Mid might be going undercover,” I said. “And also broke. Delton beat up a pirate at the grocery store. A kid in her class tried to arrest us in the parking lot.”

Alice stopped herself mid-motion. She did not turn around. Then she started again, pulled a new sheet off the roll. She put a couple of thumbtacks in her mouth. “Start over,” she said, quietly.