Joe thought we should dress up as the Holy Family for a Christmas card. “Since nobody knows who Eli’s dad is.” That kept him in the doghouse well into January. I don’t know why Mom got so bent up about it; I thought it was hilarious. I suppose she took it as a remark about her character. Or maybe she was just mad because it’s not true; she knows who my father is, she just won’t tell a soul. I asked, of course, when I was little. “Do I have a dad?” She just said, “There was a man who gave me a son before he left. A dad is who sticks around.” Joe, of course, basically raised me, so I didn’t ask that much anyway. And when I was older, she just said, “It’s better if you don’t know,” and I took her at her word. You’d have, too, if you heard the way she said it.
Joe just took the joke too far. She thought it was funny enough to dress as the Holy Family for the card. We go to church but we’re not exactly religious, if you know what I mean. But Joe just kept on a minute longer than he needed to, which is what Joe tends to do.
Late in January there was a thaw. He fixed up the toolshed in her backyard and made it an exercise studio. Suddenly he was out of the guest room, and just in time, too, because you could see the baby’s foot pressing out the skin on Mom’s belly. One night after dinner we sat around the dinner table, watching it kick.
“Life is gross,” Joe said, and Mom agreed.
By March, the Holy Family debacle had been largely forgotten. The baby was imminent. Mom was tired of both Joe and I, on account she would be dozing on the couch or easy chair and open her eyes to find either one of us staring at her, making sure she hadn’t started yet. She threw a pillow at me and a remote control at Joe. She told us she needed space. The baby would come when it would come.
“Go play horse,” she said.
So Joe and I played horse. The basket hung over the garage door; there was a hole in the net that made it droop like my grandad’s face. Sometimes the ball would get stuck in the net, and our attempts to free it would become part of the game. “Jumping off the garage door, hitting the net!” Joe was too heavy to jump off the garage door so that was an automatic L for him. “Son of a HOR,” he said then, immediately, “Don’t tell your mother I said that.” Then, later, when he had HORS and I had HO, he asked, “You think I’m a good dad?”
“Yeah,” I said and went for a lay-up. But at the last minute I biffed my wrist on purpose and hit the rim. Joe was never any good at layups. “Damn.”
“Don’t say damn,” Joe said. “From downtown!” And when it missed, “Fuck!”
“Don’t say fuck,” I said.
“Alright, boys!” Mom had waddled out the front door, duffel bag in hand. It had been sitting next to the front door for about two weeks.
“Fuck,” Joe said.
“Joe,” Mom said, but without much feeling. “Who’s winning?”
“Me.”
“The car or the truck?” Joe said. He took a few steps to the right, then left, like a spooked horse. “Do I get the truck?”
“The car,” Mom said. “I have the keys in my pocket.” She set the duffel bag down. “Pass me the ball.”
I passed her the ball. Bounce passed. Joe looked like he was going to be sick.
“From downtown,” she said and made her shot, granny-style. It was an airball. By about five feet. She laughed.
“Sorry, Joe, I’m not sure how athletic this one will be.”
Joe didn’t say a word. Not then and not in the car and not, according to Mom, in the hospital room. They decided I was old enough to sit in the waiting room by myself. I watched The Price Is Right until Joe came to tell me it was finished. A baby girl. Mom had done amazingly. Joe looked pale. “I’m never doing that again.” It wasn’t immediately clear what that meant. We went to where you could watch them measure and weigh the baby and wipe her down while she screamed, mostly soundlessly on our side of the Plexiglass.
“She looks like a thumb,” he said.
“She takes after you,” I said, and Joe laughed, and a little color returned to him, and he looked down at me and said, “Watch it,” in a voice on the far side of threatening. I thought, in fact, he was going to reach and put his hand on my head, but he could still be so unsure of his affection. So unsure of mine. I leaned into him, my shoulder to his ribs. His arm fell across me and squeezed with the relief of love, and we looked on as the nurse swaddled the infant child.
William Hawkins has been published in Granta, ZZYZYVA and TriQuarterly, among others. Originally from Louisiana, he currently lives in Los Angeles where he is at work on a novel. Read more of his writing at oncetherewas.substack.com.
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