Craig was too big for Sarah’s doublewide. They were watching a Broncos’ game. Craig sat on the sofa, tapping his foot, looming over the jar of Picante salsa and bag of Doritos on the coffee table. Angie and Sarah were in the kitchen washing up. The baby was finally sleeping in a bassinette. Ray Jr. was outside, shooting hoops.
Craig had turned up on Saturday morning, the day after Angie was arrested, with a tall tale of having lost his cell phone and his truck getting stuck in the snow because he didn’t expect snow so early and forgot his tire chains at home. He had quickly taken charge.
No fuckin’ way was he gonna allow his wife to lose custody of their kid, he proclaimed. He’d hire a lawyer on Monday and they’d prove it was all a gigantic misunderstanding.
What meth? His wife didn’t do meth, he asserted. They couldn’t prove a thing. End of discussion.
He only reluctantly agreed to leave Tyler at Sarah’s house until the entire mess was straightened out, but just to avoid any more complications. They would all stay there together.
Sarah seemed to buy it wholesale, grateful that someone was taking charge and though Tom was skeptical he was also happy enough to cede authority to the blowhard. He wasn’t even sure why he’d accepted Sarah’s invitation to a Sunday afternoon barbecue.
“You could really do something with that paper,” Craig said.
“What do you think?” Tom asked.
“Running a paper, you like, run the town. You probably never have to pay for anything. Just trade it all out. Trade favors. Trade for ads.”
“Not quite. The printer requires cash.”
“I might like to run a newspaper someday,” Craig said. “I could see myself doing that. Writing stories. Write down what happens. That can’t be hard. But not here. This goddamn town is too fuckin’ small… Shit!” he exclaimed as Champ Bailey failed to deflect a pass. “What the fuck is wrong with that guy? For the millions they pay him, fuck! I could have picked that fucker off myself. Goddamn donkeys!”
He leaned around to shout at Angie in the kitchen.
“Hey hon, could you bring me another Bud? I think Tom here could use another one, too.”
“I’m fine.”
“I’m working on this house up near Telluride, twenty-fucking-thousand-square-feet,” Craig said. “Plus a caretaker unit. Guy started up some cable channel or something. We’re doing this media room, fuck, it’s like a movie theater, a private movie theater, with a row of those seats they have at the movies that rock back, except bigger. And there’s a room just for wine. A wine cellar. It’s got a hot tub on this deck in the back, and we’re building a pond, you know, their own private trout pond or something. It’s up at about 10,000 feet with this view of the San Miguels.”
He sucked on his beer, and looked off into the distance as if he were formulating a thought. Then he slapped Tom on the knee.
“What the hell is wrong with us, huh, Tom?” He laughed. “How come you and me don’t have a media room and a wine cellar?”
“Good question.”
“We’ve got to finish the house by Christmas because they’re coming up for the holidays. These rich assholes are gonna come up from sea level for Christmas and they’re gonna find out that they can’t fuckin’ breathe at that altitude. Ha! Serves ’em right.”
His attention was suddenly diverted by the television.
“Wooo-hoo! Donkeys score! D’you see that, Angie? Great fuckin’ pass!”
Angie set a bag of Oreos on the table and sat across from Craig.
“Get your sweet butt over here,” Craig said, patting the empty space on the sofa next to him. Angie obeyed and Sarah took Angie’s place on a tattered armchair.
“Well, I guess Angie and I don’t need to ask if we can leave Tyler with you and go catch a movie in Junction,” he grinned. “You signed a fuckin’ paper taking responsibility for him!”
Thump. Thump. Thump. Pling. The sound of Ray Jr. outside, shooting hoops. Thump, thump….
“Craig’s got no idea what kind of trouble he’s in,” Tom said. “And you are gonna end up raising the baby.”
“I can’t think about that right now. I’m just glad Angie’s out of jail.”
As they sat there quietly, Tom’s thoughts were leaping ahead. Sarah couldn’t think her newlywed drug-addicted teenage daughter was going to suddenly turn into a responsible mother. He felt like he knew too much and the walls of the doublewide were closing in on him.
“I need to get out of here,” he said.
Sarah nodded. “I can’t blame you, I guess,” she said.
“Fresh air.”
But he didn’t move.
Thump. Thump. Pling. Thump. Swish.
“She was probably doing meth when she was pregnant with him. The social worker is right. That’s what’s wrong with him. Not colic. He was born addicted to meth. He’s probably disabled. He’ll have all kinds of learning disabilities, and that’s if he’s lucky.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“Foster care might not be such a bad thing.”
“That’s not right.”
“What’s not right?”
“He’s my grandson. I can’t give him to someone else. And anyway, Angie is going to raise him.”
“Angie is a drug addict who got herself pregnant by her drug-addict boyfriend. The two of them couldn’t take care of a puppy! What kind of life will their baby have?”
“They are not addicts.”
“They are.”
“I wasn’t much older than Angie when I had her,” Sarah said.
“And look how well that turned out,” he muttered.
“What did you say?” Tears sprang to her eyes. “I can’t believe you said that.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Tom said. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Oh, yeah, you did.”
“What the fuck am I doing here? I should go.”
“Yeah, you should.”
He stood but still couldn’t move. He had hurt her with the truth and he felt terrible about it.
“All right then,” he said.
He headed for the door.
“I don’t understand you,” Sarah said. “Nobody chooses who they’re born to.”
“No, but people sure as hell can choose whether or not to have a baby.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Thump. Thump. Thump. Pling.
People should choose, Tom thought, his hand on the door, but perhaps Sarah was right. Maybe in real life, certainly in real life as it was lived on the West End, they don’t. They just had sex out of boredom or lust and the women got married off and pregnant young and the men were trapped in dead-end jobs, and it all seemed inevitable, as if they had no idea how babies were made. The condoms discreetly on display at the Merc were probably covered in half an inch of dust and had long since passed the expiration date.
“Maybe that’s how you were born, and how Ray and Angie and Tyler were born,” Tom said. “Some bored kids went to a movie at the Uranium Drive-In and nine months later a baby just sort of happened. But it doesn’t have to be that way, does it? Not for Tyler, anyway. Or even for Ray Jr. Not yet. Maybe they still have a chance.”
“Angie still has a chance. She can be a good mother.”
“She won’t be. She can’t be. You’ll end up raising her baby. How will you manage that? How will you keep your job? Who’ll watch him when you’re at work?”
“I guess none of that’s any of your business.”
He felt lightheaded and knew he really had to leave.
“I’m going,” he said. And he walked out, firmly closing the door behind him.
Tom nodded to Ray Jr. as he walked toward his car.
The boy stopped dribbling and rested the basketball on his hip. Surely, he had heard their raised voices.
“Hey,” he said hopefully, as Tom climbed into his car.
Tom sat behind the wheel for a few minutes but did not turn the key. He and Ray Jr. stared at each other, neither one moving. For a moment, Tom felt as if he was looking back in time, at himself when he was Ray’s age. Was their transaction reciprocal? Did Ray, in Tom, see himself thirty years into the future? That was doubtful. Instead, Tom thought that Ray must be praying for his own reasons, transmitting his hope to Tom, begging him to go back inside, just as Tom had recently prayed to the social worker.
Tom expressed receiving the message in the form of a frown, and slowly got back out of the car.
“You’re right,” he said to Ray.
The kid nodded sagely.
If Tom was going to walk out of Sarah’s life, there were things he had to say to her first