Chapter Twenty-Four: Gestating
Leaving a smoothly run exchange of money for nothing in the Skid Row encampment, I’m all about telling Jeff and Brenny about how I’m pregnant. Obviously, been preggers for a while now and It’s like a weight’s been lifted off my shoulders just saying it. Had to happen; you know? And all because I didn’t want it to. That’s how cosmic jokes work. Mom’s dead and she’s laughing up from hell. Neither Brenny nor Jeff have said anything since the words escaped my lips because what could they say to that? Jeff knows I’ve been taking oral contraceptives and we’ve been using condoms to prevent just this sort of thing, and yet it happened.
Another thing is that Bradford’s been visiting me in my sleep again. Tapping my shoulder in the blue light of a 90’s horror movie my little man’s been pinning me to the bed and telling me events that on awakening happen just like he said. Legs astride me he mounts my chest and locks down my fear of the unknown with a sweet titter. He’s the one who first informed me about my impending parasitic cuteness and how Jeff and Brenny would react. In these dreams, much like in his and the dreams of the sleep paralysis group, I can’t move or breathe. Unlike them it’s not a cryptic message but the exact truth.
Went to my doc weeks ago because when I slipped in the shit at work, I’d hurt my hip pretty bad. Still have a bruise on my leg right now that’s so purple it’s almost black. After telling me it’s not broken, the doc asks about my recent weight gain. Fifteen or so pounds. My pants are getting tighter. Yet because of the genetic compliment, I just thought it was muscle. He had me lie back and did some cold handed pressing on my belly, then after I sit up, he asks if I’ve been vomiting in the morning or having any inexplicable mood swings. Yes, of course, but only when thinking of Charity. And Bradford. And Brenny. But that’s it. All else is just the stress of trying to maintain a work-life balance, I fooled myself. Took a pregnancy test then an ultrasound. There’s for real a thing gestating inside me.
Dream Bradford was right. Went to my car after the appointment sat and smoked half a cigarette before I saw myself in the rear view mirror exhaling the carcinogenic mix into the air then threw the butt on the ground. Wondered if the two most genetically perfect people were to have a baby could it too smoke and not feel a thing? To protest my propriety, I lit another and this time finished it while watching teenage and geriatric mothers go in and out of the clinic with their big bellies. Wow the dirty looks they gave me. Across the lot were the usual Christian protesters with posters of aborted fetuses next to thimbles for size. Thought to ask one of them if they had a coat hanger so’s I could to it right there in the parking lot. Wanted to hand them the years-asked-for fetus and tell them to resuscitate it right then and there like as if they were Jesus Christ. But for all my childish machinations, I just drove away from the clinic without aborting. Felt like a feather but also a bowling ball.
The truth’s rendered my boys silent. Swaying side to side in the van, trees passing by their unmoving faces, staring, gaping at me. It’s not as if having a baby is much of a monetary problem, just since I lost Bradford, and since Brenny is a little sex fiend, and Jeff’s not prepared, I thought I’d never be good at any sort of mothering. Even my fiddle fig leaf inevitably withered away some time ago. The gaudy terrarium that occupied my living room for so long, obviously it dried up and all that’s left of the life before with the Walmart cult and Brad died too. Couldn’t tell you where the gorgeous angiosperm is. I allowed everything to happen, you know, because I’m just no good at keeping things together. There’s too much trauma to explain. You know because I’ve told you. Most of it anyway. But if you want me to…
As before, Brenny snickers at me and covers his mouth, takes up his phone to text someone. Gave it back to him on his good behavior and the promise that he only text his ONE boyfriend, Rich. Kid’s not bad, just lost like Brenny. Like me. Like Jeff. On the promise that he’s being safe with him, not starting a cult like my brother, Brenny’s been able to have some alone time to express his sexuality in a healthy way. This boy, this Rich, he’s so pretty I can’t stand looking at him. Like an amalgamation of all the best features you want in a kid’ve been smooshed together.
He’d met Dick while the boy was shopping with his mother at Walmart. On the CCTV, I’d noticed Brenny’s stool was unmanned and so looked to every screen to find him. Found him in electronics longing for something just off screen. Head lilted to one side, hip out, our Brenny was swooning like I’d never seen before. On the other CCTV screen was the curly haired brown eyed Richard, leaning over some new Xbox game. Breaking his reverie, or growing a pair, Brenny walked on jelly legs to the kid and leaned over a rack of DVD’s almost knocking it over in attempt to act casual in the face of the pretty boy. Crazy how boys can change their whole personality when they’re smitten.
He was in love, and as it flowered, and I was witnessing its first budding blossoms. Couldn’t hear them but I’m sure my Brenny had some magic in him. After a few seconds talking, Dick hands Brenny the game he was inspecting and Brenny shakes his head, takes the keys from his pocket, unlocks the display, and takes out another and hands it to Dick who smiles that smile I can’t get used to. There’s little more talk before they both take out their phones and I suppose exchange numbers and text to ensure it’s all real. Dick leaves with a floating goodbye and Brenny’s just standing there all doe eyed. It’s not long before he’s going back to his post not looking up at anything. Tripping over himself and knocking over displays and staring dreamily from his stool like as if the world didn’t matter.
Wasn’t five minutes before our toilet guarding teenager jumped, motions for his pocket and smiles so deeply I felt like all the woes of his past had gone away. Thumbing his phone, it’s like he could eat the words from the chat. So happy.
Looking from the dashboard to the moving trees to me, Jeff’s got a look on his face like as if he’d farted in the shower but was okay with his own bouquet. A half-smile, half-disgust snarls his upper lip. He turns to look out the windshield, shakes his head of offending thoughts. Is he the type of man who once he’s fathered a child loses all sense of who he is and so has to repair it all by looking at it through the lens of fatherhood? We’ll have to see but for now he’s blank. Empty.
Dream Bradford’d also told me, yes it really is Quinten trying to upset the balance of our socio capitalistic Walmarts for revenge. I know he came up so late in this story, but I didn’t know how else to tell it. The ponytailed greaseball disappeared after Bradford died and the cult disbanded. Not even Jo-jo or Yuri or Ruzan knew what happened to him.
Here’s the kicker, dream Bradford had said all watery, while the things you’re doing are great, it’s meaningless unless there’s a fundamental change in the human heart. From Q’s point of view the people need to accept their station for the greater good of the whole. Even unto being subservient to middle managers and sleeping on beds made of lesser materials, like rocks. He believes that the wealthy really are keeping us safe from the dangers of the universe along with the aliens who house and protect us from spreading our disease. Though Q did challenge convention and live a strange life, paradoxically, he’s the biggest bootlicker you’ve ever known. I know you don’t accept this, and you believe there’s room and food for all people. But in Quinten’s eyes abundance breeds laxity, dear sister. He’s bent on the principle that humans create from suffering. That work is good for the soul. Trust me, I know because I was his lover. Heard every word. He’d said every time a utopian society has been built; it crumbles.
From his seat, still looking out the window, Jeff asks, “how far along are you?”
I say, “enough I know it’s a boy.”
Jeff purses his lips, reconsidering everything. I could see whatever plans he’d had for our future being redirected, recalculated, shuffled around. Didn’t even ask if I was going to keep it. He knows it’s up to me. Bradford knows I’m going to keep it too and says so. Says about how Quinten had a good idea, but Brenny’s idea was better. Disparate groups of people banded together with a shared commonality, oppression.
You’re a fool if you think he disbanded the Hope Club, Tabby. Young people always find a way. Think of how you and I were able to accomplish so much even under father’s thumb. That boy, Brendan, he’s my spiritual brother, a mirror of me including the suffering. But without the initial means of support to aid his mental health he’s done it all on his own. He’s brilliant and I would have given anything to have him as a friend when I was younger. But seriously, sissy, the Hope Club still exists just not at your house. Now they rotate between empty homes where parents are out working.
Smiling, Brenny texts Dick, then puts away the always suspiciously closed phone. That Dick he’s dating, kissing, the boy’s very quiet. Always smiling at everything we’re able to treat him with. Plane rides, amusement parks, rides in the Duesenberg. Before us, he’d never even seen a butler in real life, just thought they made it up for the movies. Jeff and I’d talked to Dick’s mother and father over dinner at our place and it seems they’re like minded about the boys. That they’re genuinely good and don’t mean any trouble with their shenanigans. Shenanigans meaning a pig pile teenage sex club which in any case had been halted so far as we and they knew. But Brad had said different.
I ask Jeff, “how do you feel about this?”
He says, “I’m not ecstatic about it. This was the thing we wanted the least. Wasn’t it?” Not what I was expecting but he is right. It was one of the things we’d originally bonded over. So, it’s not like I could get upset. Hours of discussion had gone into it. Still, it’s here, the event we thought would never happen has happened and I need for Jeff to say something, anything.
Brenny says, “well, I’m ecstatic, Tabby.”
Like as if the now 15 year old finally realized his new lease on life. Someone new is coming into the world and Brenny wants to meet them. Momentarily, in the rear view, Brenny becomes solemn, looks into his lap, asks, “you’re not getting rid of me are you?”
As if he’d tased us, Jeff and I look at each other with shock, then dangerously turn completely around and look at him and in unison we say, “no,” then turn back.
Brenny says, “oh, okay,” then texts and looking up from his phone again, says, “Hal wants to know what you’re going to name it.”
Gods, once you name something it’s yours forever. Though it is a might early, it’s as if I can feel the thing kicking around inside me. Pissing and shitting and making plans of its own. Famous comedian Louie CK once said you’re not a woman until children walk out of your vagina and step all over your dreams. Though what my dreams were I didn’t have a clue. Was it to save the world? Smash capitalism? I can’t even remember because all thoughts, all feelings, all dreams, and all aspirations for the past few weeks have been shoved aside to make room for him. Can’t even remember how to care for the fiddle fig leaf, but here I am gestating a human being.
I say, “I don’t know yet.” Then, I ask Brenny, “can see your phone, please?”
Brenny formerly bright eyes go blank, his lower lip warbles, he asks, “why?”
Dream Brad had said, there’s no other way to tell you this but you could be doing even better than giving your money away. Has it even occurred to you that you could pay someone else to do that? Frankly, it’s unsafe. While that’s taken care of you could be taking it easy on yourself. You trust Jeff, don’t you? He’s very capable of doing it or finding someone else who’s capable so you two can spend time plucking the strands of this web.
Brenny says, “name it Bradford. After your brother!”
I say, “don’t change the subject. Let me see your phone.”
Brenny says, “you’re driving.”
With Brenny it was easier because he was already a whole cloth teenager by the time he came into our lives. Baggage and all. Sure, he’s got his problems, like that after we thought we’d stopped his weekly sex parties he started sleepwalking into our room and watching us. That we caught him naked on the kitchen floor eating printer paper. That I know he’s still communicating with the Hope Club in an effort to resume his extracurricular activities. Teenagers always find a way. Now they’re’ll be a screaming kicking shit machine whose desires I can’t divine. Can’t see evidence of its wants.
Brenny says, “name it Halcyon!”
I reach behind me for Brenny’s phone, and reluctantly he gives it to me. It has no passcode like I’d asked, and I hand it to Jeff. No need to ask what I’m looking for. After a moment of wide smiles at lovey-dovey messages of hearts and stars and photos of Brenny and Richard hugged up together, Jeff pauses for a long time at something. Perhaps Brenny thinks we don’t know what to look for. Bradford told me. Jeff’s not looking at nudes, or telegram, or Grindr requests for sex with underage boys. What he shows me are photos of abandoned homes around the neighborhood we live in. Due to the fact of rising inflation and the increasing value of McMansions in the area there are lots of opulent empty spaces to host a party. In the bottom right-hand corner of each photo is the address and a time for each meetup.
Jeff turns around, and I glare at Brenny in the rear view. The boy’s looking into his lap like the escape is there.
Brenny asks again, “are you getting rid of me.”
Again, we say, “no.”
All this to say I’m messed up and don’t know what to do. What’s in a name? Could let Jeff name it to let the load off my mind. Poor guy’s just been along for the ride through all of this, not making decisions about much. Just the meticulous flotsam of his likes and dislikes. Simple things really. Like chocolate or vanilla. What restaurant should we go to? What side of the bed he likes to sleep on. His management style doesn’t differ from mine and we’re a united front when it comes to Brenny and how to treat and raise him. Seems like he’s just been letting me do the thinking for him. Far cry from the man who’d once pulled a gun to keep an unruly crowd of rabble from tearing us and Brenny to pieces. He’s been comfortable for a little too long.
Everything’s changed.
I say to Brenny, “we’ll deal with this later,” and handing back his phone I say, “cancel your plans tonight.” Then coasting through traffic in silence, I cut the tension by asking Jeff, “what do you want to do?”
Jeff looks to me like he’s awoken from a Rip Van Winkle nap. There’s a sort of melancholy apprehension in his eyes. No one’s ever asked him a question like this before.
He says, “it’s not up to me,” like as if he’s just saying what he’s been told to say by all the feminists he’s read.
For the first time since meeting him, I’m annoyed. All else has been adorable fumbling and bumbling through our relationship but this is the first adult thing that’s been asked of him ever and he can’t even think. It’s like how a Star Trek robot gets confused on the simplest of philosophical conundrums. He’s all locked up and has no answer.
Letting the air sit on his tongue for a long time, finally he says, “we have to deal with Brenny first, then this. The baby’s not going anywhere.”
I say, “you name it.”
Looking over me, puzzled, vexed, Jeff asks, “what?” I don’t answer, so after a few minutes thinking he says, “why not Halcyon Bradford… Graves. Your name sounds better than mine. Ketchum. I hate my last name.”
Though he’s in the doghouse, Brenny looks up from what’s probably his frantic texting of a dozen or so boys to warn them the jig is up, says, “I like it.”
Our world is imperfect, but with just this one thing solved there’s relief. I nod.
“Halcyon Bradford Graves.”
Brenny asks, “can I still be with Dick? I mean obviously not tonight, but can he still be my boyfriend?”
Jeff and I nod and wide smile creeps across Brenny’s face like as if he still held all the cards.