Shivering Mind

Chapter 36

“I’ll have that, then. Sir.” I’m standing straight and stiff in front of him, practically saluting. Or genuflecting.

“Max, relax!” Derek pulls this big rocking chair that’s over in the corner of the room toward me, tips it so it rocks a little, pats the seat. Her grandfather gives her a sharp look over his granny glasses, then goes back to mashing something up in a big wooden bowl with this mallet-type thing.

Cal’s nearly fast asleep, his lips still twitching.

Waldo plunks a large hand-blown glassful of orange-red liquid next to me. “Here’s your drink.”

“It’s not alcoholic, is it?” I eye the glass, praying for a “no,” because right now I’m not sure I wouldn’t pound it even if it is.

“Just watermelon and ice. I know you’re in the program now. I respect that.”

Derek, who I didn’t notice had left the room, returns with a picture. “That’s my gran,” she tells me, her raggedly trimmed index finger tapping the face of a gorgeous brunette laughing, her head thrown back. “There’s Waldo. And here’s my mom.”

Ah. Derek’s missing mother. I’ve wondered what her story was, how she died, all that. I squint at the photo. Uh, she looks quite a lot like Madonna in her Like a Virgin phase. Fake pearls, crazy hair, shiny bustier displaying a s**t-ton of tit. This is Derek’s mom?

“When did your mom, uh”—not croak . . .—“pass away?” I ask.

Derek and Waldo both laugh.

“She’s alive and well,” Derek assures me.

“Lives in Vegas. She can still kick it as a showgirl,” Waldo says with a trace of pride. “Got her mother’s legs and her sense of rhythm. Not a damn thing of mine, lucky girl.”

Not the background I would have pictured, if I even imagined one for Derek. More like the double strand of pearls and the blue blazers. No showgirls. No Vegas. I glance at Derek for a sec. She’s so orderly, controlled-looking. Well, no wonder, I guess. Her grandfather is the lead guitarist of the Grateful Dead, her mother, Madonna. How else could she rebel but to be Nancy Drew?

I sip the watermelon thing cautiously, trying not to jiggle Cal awake. “I should probably put him to bed.”

“It’s this way.” Derek stands up and leads me upstairs . . . to her room.

Which kinda breaks my heart.

It’s a kid’s room, that’s all I can say. Pink flowy curtains, flowered bedspread, concert stubs and movie stubs and those pics in vertical rows of four you get at booths in the mall—Derek and some girls—all shoved into the corners of a mirror. Worn, well-loved-looking teddy bear on the yellow pillow.

Lots of chick-type books—Jane Eyre and Twilight—all that.

“Calvin’s crib’s in here.”

Not in her room. Through her room in a hallway. Plus it’s one of those port-a-crib type things, not like some ancestral cradle carved from ancient oak. Plain sheet, plain blue blanket, no stuffed animals—not even a sock monkey. I mean, it’s not like Cal lives the life of luxury at the garage apartment. But, ya know, he’s got his plastic keys, and this stuffed duck I found, and the weird blanket with bears Mrs. G. lent me that he likes best—he always sucks on a corner of it. This is like the baby equivalent of a Motel 6. It screams “just passing through.” I ease Cal onto his back. He waves his arms, screws up his face like he’s ready to blast us, but gives in to sleep faster than I could snap my fingers.

We tiptoe out, back through Derek’s room. She’s walking in front of me. I touch her on the shoulder.

“I know I apologized before. But I am sorry. I’m so f*****g sorry I screwed up your life.”

Derek drops down on her bed. “Max.” She blows out a long sigh. “I don’t know how different forgiving you would be from now. I don’t blame you for what happened. It was just as much my fault.”

“I was the one who was plastered, Hes.”

Her eyes fill with tears.

“Oh s**t. Don’t do that.” I look wildly around the room for tissues or whatever. “Don’t cry on me. Hes . . . stop it. Please stop it.”

“It’s just weird. That’s what you called me that night. You kept calling me ‘Hes.’” Her chin wobbles. “I liked it. Derek’s so formal. It’s odd to me that you don’t remember anything else, but that nickname keeps slipping out. I keep thinking maybe you’re lying and you do remember.”

Not even a sliver of light in that blackout. SomeMaxes I get little flares of lost days or nights, but that one—tiki bar, her—

“There’s nothing there,” I say, as gently as possible.

She sniffs and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand briskly, then sniffs again. “Not one thing? Not even the color of my bra? You didn’t have any trouble getting it off. Do you remember that at least?”

“Uh . . . pink?”

“It. Was. Navy blue.” She pounds the heel of her hand against her forehead.

I rub my own through the hair at the back of my neck, look out the window at my car.

“I don’t know why it matters to me. It’s just . . . right before we, you know . . .”

There’s a pause, and I feel like a bastard, and also totally pissed off. You know? Can’t you even say s*x, Derek? You have a baby. We all know how it got here.

“I kind of realized how drunk you were, and I said we shouldn’t . . . because you wouldn’t remember. And you said, you said”—she stops to grab a Kleenex by the side of the bed and blow her nose—“‘Of course I’ll remember. Why wouldn’t I? How couldn’t I?’ Like I was so special, I’d be unforgettable. And . . . I believed you. And . . . and . . . you just didn’t.”

Now she’s sobbing away, and it’s starting to get loud and either she’ll wake up Cal, or Waldo will come charging up with his handy-dandy machete. No idea what else to do but sink down on the flowery bedspread next to her. Not too close.

“It had nothing to do with you, Derek. That’s just . . . not the way it works. I’m an alcoholic and I was an active one then and I just blacked the f**k out because of how I am—was—not because of anything about you. You could have been . . . Marilyn Monroe . . . and it wouldn’t have made one bit of difference.”

Her sobs quiet down. She looks up at me through her damp lashes, and then lowers her eyes. Edges a little closer. Flips back the dark hair that’s fallen over one side of her face.

Her eyes shift to my mouth.

I’ve kissed a ton of girls. They didn’t matter to me. I didn’t matter to them. I didn’t even matter to me.

I know what Derek’s going for here . . . some way to think of what happened with us as not just random. Believe there was actual feeling going on, not just biology. And Bacardi. But . . . I can’t. I’m a d**k, but not that much of a d**k. Not anymore, anyway.

I jerk my hand away from her back, shove it through my hair, jolt to my feet. “Man, I’m starving. Is your grandfather as good a cook as it smells?”

Derek’s head remains lowered, her hair parting to show the nape of her pale neck. I suddenly remember George Garrett telling me that showing your neck or your stomach were “the most vun-rable thing” animals could do, their softest, most easily destroyed parts exposed. I hate myself more than usual.

“Derek!” Waldo shouts up the stairs. “You two come on down. Dinner!”

“He’s great. A great cook.”

Waldo looks at us from under bristly brows as we enter the room. “Baby take a while settling down?”

“Not at all,” Derek says, just as I say, “Uh, yeah. Sort of.”

“Hmmph.” He pulls this wooden tray over and starts whacking at the round pieces of bread on it. Thwack. “About Calvin.” Thwack. “How much nuts-and-bolts talking have you two done?” He points the knife at me, then Derek.

“We’ve talked . . .” she says slowly.

“More about how he got here than what to do with him now that he is,” I blurt. Waldo’s face darkens. Derek turns red.

He ladles out a stew thing that includes shrimp with their tails still on, poking freakishly out of the broth, slides the wooden bowl toward me. “You two are on the threshold. This is the space between the questions. How are you going to walk through and come out enlightened?” He gives both me and Derek this hardcore stare, like he can pull the enlightenment out of us and slap it on the table next to the stew.

Uh . . . I dip a spoonful of steaming rice into the bowl and slurp it down, buying Maxe. Derek sighs, shoulders slumping.

Minutes pass and we’re all staring down at our plates. Waldo starts eating, and then looks up through that forest of eyebrows at each of us again. “Well?”

“I just want to get back on track,” Derek says.

“I’m just hoping to come out of this sober,” I add.

“On track. Sober.” Waldo takes a mouthful of stew. “Those are destinations, for sure. But for now, there are doors known and unknown.”

Derek drops her spoon with a clatter. “Grand. So help me God, if you quote Jim Morrison at me one more Maxe—I don’t want to hear it. He was as big a mess as Max.”

Her voice is low, shaking. Waldo’s eyes widen for a second and he stops chewing.

“Bigger, even,” I say. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in leather pants.”

Waldo chuckles. Derek picks up her soup spoon again.

“Sooo. Where are we with the adoption agency?” I ask.

She’s right back to straight-A student, like her outburst never happened. “Obviously we’re not going to have any trouble placing him. The adoptive parents have to prove themselves to us more than we ever do to them—home studies, health tests, all that. That’s their job.” She’s scooping up broth with her bread. It’s hot as hell. I took one sip, my eyes watered, and I pounded back my entire glass of watermelon stuff. She doesn’t even blink. Waldo has actually picked up his bowl now and is drinking from it.

“So the question is the next step,” Waldo says. “The way through the woods.”

“We’re taking our Maxe,” Derek assures him.

We are? There’s a “we”? My temples are starting to pulse.

“I’m all for doing this fast, like right away,” I say. “I mean, take the bull by the horns, bite the bullet.”

I have never used either of those expressions in my life.

“This is why it’s good that Max’s involved,” Derek tells Waldo. “We’re on the same page here, as a couple.”

Waldo looks at me; back at her. “You’re both very young for this, Derek. And you two are not exactly a couple.” He smiles at me, but it’s a little like baring his teeth.

“Exactly,” I say. “We’re not.”

“You’r

e his father,” Derek says, looking down at her bowl like she’s reading tea leaves. “I’m his mother.”