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At first it was quiet at home, it was private, and Bitty really much preferred it. Of course, there was Mama’s chattering—at the TV, on the phone, to the baby, to Emmy Krause next door, to him. He’d been down there just at Easter; hadn’t he noticed? The Wilkinsons moved away, finally, and suddenly it was this nice Jewish family, a young lady who looked about Bitty’s age with her husband, the new GP at the urgent care clinic, their twin brand-new Prius cars, the driveway freshly repaved, and no kids, not yet.
“Where’d y’all come from, again?”
“Me? From Baltimore,” Emmy told Bitty, “and Timmy’s from Cleveland. We met at BU, but Tim did his residency at Duke, moved down here from the Triangle.”
“Oh, BU,” Bitty said, grasping on to what he knew, and trying to hitch the baby up his hip. “I went to school in the area.” When she didn’t ask, or reply at all, he added, “At Samwell.”
She was properly baked for Georgia: curly brown hair, dark eyes, terracotta on her thick lips—but, jaded, so jaded. “I know,” she said, pulling off her gardening gloves. She had a tattoo, a bucking horse, on her fleshy upper arm—Bitty could see its hind legs clearly under the sleeve of her old T-shirt. The rest of it seemed faded under fabric, general shape only.
“I forget sometimes,” Bitty told her, “that people know my story.”
“How do you forget something like that?” She tossed her gloves on the ground. Half the yard was dug up; silently, Bitty hoped Mary Wilkinson never got wind of it.
At a loss, Bitty held up the baby. She was good to show off, her golden curls in gingham bows and her pinafore on straight. “This is Greer,” he said slowly. “Meet Mrs. Krause, sweetheart, can you say hi?”
Maybe Greer would’ve, but Emmy interrupted: “It’s Ms. Krause, or just Emmy—Tim’s a Weissberg.”
“Oh!” Bitty firmed up his grip as Greer reached out, crying, “Lady!” for Emmy’s—just for Emmy, it seemed, or for the spade she leaned on. “Sorry,” he said, “I just—"
“No worries,” she said. “Back to work, though, right?” She knelt to pick up her gloves.
“Back to work,” Bitty agreed, trudging back toward the house. Greer was now repeating, “Lady, lady.”
“Let’s see what your moomaw’s baking,” Bitty told her.
Dinner wasn’t for three hours. Was it really only 4?
The days were the same: up with Greer by dawn, and exhausted by the time Mama and Coach came down for breakfast. “You gotta learn to let her sleep sometime, Junior,” Bitty’s father would chide.
“I was up with her all night when she had colic,” Bitty would explain, “and now I guess we’re in a habit.” Habits, Bitty thought, died hard. He must have read a hundred books when he was waiting for Greer to come, but once she had arrived he was sure of just one thing: what did he know about taking care of a baby?
“You maybe want to get her into a playgroup, if you’re staying long-term,” Bitty’s mother would suggest, tipping pancake batter from the jug into the skillet. “Are you staying long-term?”
“Don’t know,” Bitty would say, “don’t know, and let’s not talk about it.”
“What round is it?” Coach would ask.
At first it was the first round, then the second. Then it was the third round, and Bitty had to answer, “It’s conference finals.”
“There’s a good mom-and-me group at the church, you know,” Suzanne said. “Parent-and me, I guess, parent and baby. You ever take her to one? It helps socialize the babies.”
“I know what baby playgroups, are, Mother. I’m perfectly capable of socializing my own baby.”
“You know, I took you to baby playgroups.”
“Yeah? That so?”
“Your mama’s right, Junior. You grew up very social.”
“Y’all could drop in.” Suzanne wasn’t looking at them; she was lifting the skirt of the first pancake, looking for the doneness she needed. “I’m sure they’d let y’all drop in to try it out without having to pay the whole set of tuition or fees or whatever they charge there. Not that you need the break, mind, I suppose.”
Coach was hovering, as he would do, when summer was near and his players scattered to camps and part-time labor. “You gonna throw out that first one? Come on, Susie, don’t do that.”
“Always throw away the first one,” she said. “First one’s never quite right.”
“Give it here,” Bitty said. “Greer’ll take it, she doesn’t know the difference.”
“She eats pancakes?” his father asked.
“She’s never had one before. She won’t know the difference.”
“You’re the daddy.” Bitty’s mother laid the first pancake on the plate and handed it to Coach, who handed it to Bitty. Seemed perfect, actually; it did not seem abnormal, like a first pancake.
“Thanks, Mama.” He kissed her cheek, and took the pancake to the highchair. “You know what this is, darling?” Greer reached for it, looking up at him, asking. “It’s a pancake.”
Of course she didn’t know what it was, or maybe she knew in an abstract, primordial way: this was her birthright, these buttermilk pancakes. Bitty left her in the chair, stretching for them on the table, pleading, “Want, want.” Other babies learned nouns first, and so had Greer: boy, lady, pie, iPad. But then she learned a verb, want. And she wanted, little Greer did, all the damn time. Bitty wanted, too—he wanted the jar of toasted pecans his mother kept in the pantry. And so he wound his way there, around his mother as she prodded at the second pancake and his father as he ground coffee beans in the burr mill Bitty had brought down for them not last Christmas but the one before, when Greer had been only an abstraction, an unnamed, imminent thing. Bitty got the pecans and the squeeze bottle of table syrup beside it. There was salted butter on the table already; they had pancakes basically every morning.
“Want,” Greer said.
“I know, baby, so shush. I know you want.” The pancake had cooled off a little, and Bitty tore an edge away. A little crispy, there—he ate that piece and ripped off another, from the middle, a softer piece, airy and light. It wasn’t her first solid food, absolutely; she’d had purees and light yogurts, scrambled eggs and overcooked beans. Making a pie with his mother just last weekend, Bitty had given her a pinky’s worth of cooked cherries, thickened with cornstarch. They must have been too sour because she’d hollered, poor baby.
Bitty grinned as she ate the pancake, her wide old eyes a mash of emotion: “this is new” and “this is good” and “this is weird” and something else. “It’s a pancake,” Bitty said, tearing off another bite. She took it, and first-first, smashed it into her mouth. “Pancake,” Bitty repeated. “Your moomaw’s pancakes.”
“She like it?” Coach asked, shaking the coffee grounds into a filter.
“Seems to,” Bitty said. “Look.”
In front of him, Bitty’s mother set a plate with a short stack upon it—very short, just two. “That’s adorable. You’re adorable, you precious girl, I could eat you right up if I weren’t saving room for breakfast.”
“Ah, that’s a little creepy,” he said, though he certainly knew what she meant. “You wanna—Mother, I think the skillet’s smoking.”
“All right,” she said, chucking the baby under the chin on her way back to the cooktop. “You eat that first one, baby, and I’ll make you a real one.”
“She doesn’t need more than one.” There had been a time when Bitty’s phone was never out of reach, but with Greer—and he’d been up for hours already—and though perhaps he shouldn’t he felt stupid asking his father to get it for him, but they’d both done enough for Bitty already—and sometimes, he thought to himself, sometimes he’d rather just be in the moment, and watch Greer eat her first pancake.
“You love pancakes, don’t you,” he said, handing her the rest of the one she’d been eating.
She grasped it with two hands, shaking it.
“You eat it, baby,” he told her. “That’s a pancake.”
“Pahcake,” she said.
“Pan,” he emphasized. “Pancake, pancake.”
“Pie cake,” she said, throwing it on the floor.
Bitty bent over, sighing. No one else should have to get that for him.
Fed her pancakes, Bitty wrote. She ate two whole bites before I gave her the entire pancake, which she promptly tossed on the floor.
Baby’s first pancakes?
Her very first. She loved it. Mama was so pleased.
Got a picture for me?
No, sadly. Would’ve made a cute video. Sorry.
I want to see.
Well, you can’t, Bitty wrote, suddenly angry. You’re not here.
Don’t you think I want to be?
I can’t believe you gave her pancakes without me.
Bitty wanted to write, I give her everything without you. Instead: Don’t worry about it.
How could I not? What am I supposed to do?
Worry about game 2.
Yeah, well, I’m worried about that, too.
You’ll be fine, Bitty wrote, though he doubted it.
To get to the farmer’s market Bitty would strap Greer into his father’s pickup, along with a bag he’d packed the night before: a darling floppy hat for her, a snapback for him, mineral sunblock to smear on her pale face and fat arms, his mother’s shopping list, one of those metal pouches of fruit slurry for Greer to suck down if she got whiny, change of clothes, extra diaper, his cell phone. He always forgot something; this time he forgot a toy. “Stupid,” he told himself, rolling over the gravel of his parents’ driveway and looking both ways before making the turn out onto the road. He never used to check, used to just do it. It was too hard, going back: to park again, to unfasten the baby, to carry her into the house, to answer the questions (“Back so soon?” “I forgot a toy” “Which toy you need, Junior? I’ll get it for you” “Thanks kindly, but no need”), to get the toys, to carry the toys and the baby back down to the truck, to buckle her back in, to worry about lost time—he did not want to have to change her in the mud at the farmer’s market, boots and flip flops just paces from her writhing body. It was miserable, doing that. Best avoided.
So, he just went.
She cried at the Lilly Brook Farms booth where he picked out his carrots. She cried while he talked with Zelda at her booth about her strawberry-only pies.
“Ran out of rhubarb,” she explained. “Cannot get enough of it, this year. Cannot make enough rhubarb pies.”
“I didn’t make any rhubarb this year,” Bitty explained, envying, trying to ignore that both of his shoulders felt like they were about to pull off of his body—Greer in her carrier leaning to the left, and pounds of carrots in a market bag on his right. “These crusts look beautiful, though, good crimping—what’d you do?”
Zelda puffed up like a bag of popcorn, like a cat’s tail, like she’d never been more flattered in her life. “Ah, glad you noticed. It’s all butter.”
“Couldn’t be,” said Bitty, sticking his dirty fingers in Greer’s mouth. “I don’t believe you.”
“Don’t believe me if you can’t,” she said, “but it’s all butter, no Crisco, no lard.”
“Zelda Frances,” Bitty said, wishing he didn’t know the middle names of everyone from his high school class. “You did not get an all-butter crust to hold its shape like this in May in Georgia, and I accuse you of fibbing.”
“Accuse me of what you want,” she said. “I stick by my methods.”
“I bet the freezer’s involved.”
“Come by the shop one afternoon and I’ll show you if you’re right.”
“Maybe I will, if I can get rid of this one.”
“Aw, she can come,” said Zelda. “You swing by after we close at 3 and the place’ll be deserted. Consider it a peace offering. I forgive you for leaving me to yellow ribbons all those years.”
“That’s awful nice of you to say,” said Bitty. “I deserved those wins, every one of them.”
She pursed her lips, like she meant to criticize. Whatever Bitty thought was on her mind, though, instead she asked, “How long you here for, anyway?”
What to say to that? “Oh, it’s not up to me,” he said, wiping the saliva from his fingers on a napkin he’d grabbed from under a can of condensed milk on Zelda’s table.
“Who’s it up to, then?”
“New Orleans,” he said, “and the Los Angeles Kings, I suppose.” Bitty sighed, letting Greer pull the napkin from his hands. “This could be over by the end of the week, you know. Or it could last all the way to July, practically.”
“That’s an awful lot of hockey,” she said. “I thought it was a winter sport.”
“It’s a sport for all seasons,” Bitty told her. “Much to my annoyance, some days.”
“Oh?” she asked.
But he was never going to tell her. He did not buy one of her pies.
He saw Emmy Krause across the lot; he was inspecting the various pints of snap peas, and she was in line for pie now, or no, it looked like Zelda was boxing up morning buns for her. Small town, he told himself. Should he wave? Greer was reaching for the snap peas. “I don’t have to wave,” he said, “I have a baby.”
“Want,” she said.
“These got dirt on them, Greer,” he told her, though it was ultimately pointless. “You can have one when we get home and I get them rinsed off.”
“Want,” Greer repeated, because she didn’t listen. “Pie?”
“We’re not going back to the pie booth,” he said, “but we can make strawberry-rhubarb back home, if Mama has rhubarb in the freezer, which between you and me, I bet she does. We should make a rhubarb pie. Yep, we should do that.”
“Want!” she said, straining for a pint of peas.
“Okay, sure,” he agreed. “We’ll get this one.”
He handed it to a middle-aged woman, who croaked out, “Seven dollars.”
“That’s an awful lot for peas,” said Bitty.
“It’s an awful lot of work growing things,” she sniffed, sticking her hand out.
He proffered a ten-dollar bill. “You got change?”
She did, a stack of cash. She flipped through it, pulling out three singles. “Need a bag?”
“Paper, thanks,” said Bitty. He wasn’t paying attention. Emmy Krause was unlocking a bicycle that she had secured with a chain to the light post in the middle of the lot—right in the middle! Amazing. He took his bag of pea pods.
“Can I get a look at your little one?” the middle-aged woman asked. “This must be the baby what cost one-hundred-thousand dollars.”
“More than that,” Bitty snapped. “Excuse me.”
It was a long walk up a shallow hill to the garage where he’d parked Coach’s truck.
Watered the plants, Shitty texted. Deadheaded the petunias on the deck. Took in your mail. A few packages, some were big.
Bitty was jarred. Is one from Buy Buy Baby? Could be diapers. Shit, he thought to himself. Look at me, I should’ve changed that delivery up, it’s not gonna do me any good down here, is it.
Shitty wrote, They’re here when you need it.
I guess, Bitty replied. Thanks for helping me out. He’d already sent the message when he realized he should have written, “Helping us out”—there were two of them, Bitty told himself, three with Greer. I’ve been up since only the lord knows, he told Shitty, for no reason, and she’s napping, finally. Finally. So thanks for helping us out, Bitty wrote. Jack would despair forever if his precious bird’s nest fern didn’t make it.
Forget about the fern. Bet he’s more worried about tonight.
I bet, Bitty agreed. But what a shame to lose and come back to all your plants dead?
You think?
I think the Kings really want it, Bitty wrote, but what he was thinking was, there’s more than one thing Jack could lose; there’s more than one thing he’ll have to go home without. Thanks again, I really mean it.
Any time, Shitty told him. Any time.
Gonna watch? Jack texted.
Oh, I guess, Bitty told him. Nothing else to do around here.
But that wasn’t true, not quite—he was stirring sugar and tapioca into rhubarb; his mother was observing, and holding the baby. “That’s not much sugar,” she said. “Pie’s gonna be awful bitter.”
“How many sweet pies have I made over the years?”
“Who could count?”
“So this one’ll be bittersweet,” Bitty said. “You put sugar in something and it covers up the fruit flavor anyway. That’s fake—that’s not what rhubarb tastes like.”
“Not what rhubarb tastes like,” Suzanne repeated. “Who’s to say what it tastes like? You wanna eat it by the stalk?”
“Why’d you save so much of it, anyway?”
“Shortage,” she said. “You know, just hoarding it a little. Figured I could make a batch of preserves or something.” When Bitty said nothing, she sighed. “You want me to put this one down? She’s nearly passed out.”
“Big day for her,” said Bitty. “Pancakes, farmer’s market. Sour pie.”
“You’re a regular Edna Lewis.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You watch yourself, Dicky.” She sniffed, and took the baby upstairs.
Another tired evening. Another miserable loss. Bitty’s phone was going crazy, his baby drooling on his gym shorts.
I dunno about this, guys. 0-3, that’s hard to come back from.
My sources say there’s a 1.9% shot at a game 5, 7% shot they make it to game 7 from 3-1
Sources, Justin?
Don’t have time to do the math exactly
Yes, but who are your sources???
???
I hope everything works out!
Bitty would have thrown his phone at the wall, but where would that have left him? Stranded, sort of, afloat in a sea of well-wishes, his past erased, Greer an anchor and his life preserver carried away by ocean currents. Between his thighs she was curled around his old stuffed rabbit, her breathing even, her hair loose. Bitty reached behind for his phone. He’d never been able to help showing off.
Game was too exciting for some of us, Bitty wrote. He attached the picture. He sent it to everybody.
Pearson was at the Thursday market. “Finally,” said Bitty’s mother, “I thought the season was never gonna start.”
“What’s the rush?” He was loaded down with too much; he ought to start bringing the stroller, just to have somewhere to put it all. Bags of carrots, purslane, snap peas, and garlic scrapes in one hand, Kyoto with sweet cream in the other, and Greer on his chest in the sling.
“Peaches only in season for so long, Dicky,” she said, drawn to the table loaded with pints and quarts piled so high, so precarious. “It ain’t really summer until the peaches are here.”
“It ain’t really summer until June twenty-first,” he said, following. From nowhere, quietly: “The goddamn season never ends.”
She didn’t hear. “Do you think we can get two cases in the truck? I oughta get one for Judy.”
“She can get her own peaches, Mother.”
“Well, you get a few for everyone, and then they get a few for you. You think Emmy next door wants peaches?”
“I think she can get her own peaches. I saw her creeping around Zelda’s booth last week.”
“Oh.” Suzanne paused in her tracks. “But, you think we can carry two trays?”
“If you hold the baby I can carry anything.”
“Maybe we ought to get a market cart. Three is too many, right?”
“Absolutely too many,” Bitty insisted. “It’s only mid-May.”
“They’re in Fort Valley,” Suzanne said. “That’s off 75, by Warner Robbins. We could go down there. Wouldn’t be a long haul.”
“To what point?”
“To go peach-picking,” she said. “Greer’s never been before, has she?” Suzanne hitched up her voice leaning in: “Has she?”
“Maybe,” Bitty agreed. “Here, Mother, you take the baby,” he set his coffee and the bags of produce down, “so I can get the peaches.”
“Let me get my wallet before I take her.”
“Don’t worry about that, Mother, I can pay.”
“Oh,” she said, surprised. She shouldn’t have been.
“Here.” Bitty reached behind his waist, unfastening the sling. “You go with Moomaw.”
Greer said, “iPad.”
“That’s your daddy,” Bitty told her.
“Going into the third period, and you’re trailing four-two,” said a reporter, just one of many reporters, over two teams, and many years.
“Lady,” Greer said. “Lady, iPad.”
“You want the iPad?” Bitty asked. “That’s a lady reporter, and that’s your daddy.”
“How do you respond to an aggressive LA offense? What do you tell your team when you’re in that second intermission, and you’re at a critical juncture in the series, you’re down three games, and this is it—”
“It’s a tough spot.” Jack was tired; Bitty could see. Fourth game, third round, eleven seasons, two teams, three concussions, one year-old baby who didn’t know his name. “You just keep fighting,” Jack continued. “And, you know, you hope—you hope it works.”
“Well, it worked tonight. Can you come back and do it three more times?”
“I think so,” Jack said, “I mean, you have to think so, don’t you? You don’t—you don’t go into the dressing room and tell the guys, just this one, and then we get to be done, we get to go home and do—go back to our families, or whatever. You tell your team, we’re here to get to the finals, we win tonight so we can keep fighting—”
“And the team responds to that, clearly.”
“All the guys on this team feel the same way,” Jack said. “Great guys, great team.”
Bitty sees through it.
“And now it’s back to New Orleans for a well-earned game five. Congrats on that last goal to bring it home—”
Before Jack could say “thank you,” Bitty turned off the TV.
Hey, Bits, how’s it going? Shits said you got extra diapers by mistake?
Not extra, Bitty wrote. Like a fool I forgot to reroute the delivery. Why, girl, you need diapers?
Anything you wanna tell me?
Nope.
I mean, yep.
My department is sponsoring a family from Turkey, a mom and two kids, diapers are on the list.
Greer is 13-4 months so they should be the right size?
Please!!! Please go ahead and take them!
I was going to go to BabiesRUs but why waste more disposable things?
Please take them. Please. She’s a size 3 which is pretty variable because diaper-sizing is a scam.
She’s 24 lbs which is big for a girl going on 13 months, you know where she gets that from.
(Not the Phelps DNA, lol.)
LOL.
Thank you!!! I’ll have Shits grab em when he goes over tomorrow.
Any time, girl. <3
Bitty couldn’t watch. It was too much, a train wreck. His parents had already bowed out: “I’m gonna cube that butter for tomorrow, you want me to cut you some?” “Don’t accuse me of being a fair-weather fan, Junior, but this ain’t good.”
“No, it ain’t,” Bitty agreed. His phone was—he picked it up to 149 unread messages, put it on silent, turned the TV off. “All this diaper talk is awful fitting, huh?” he asked Greer, hefting her over his shoulder. “I’m not gonna expose you to the end of this,” he said. “At least I can tell your daddy you didn’t see it.”
On the way to the stairs they passed by the kitchen, where Suzanne was slicing up butter with her ten-inch chef’s knife and waggling her ass, thinking herself unseen, to Steely Dan coming over the Bluetooth speaker.
“Pie pad,” Greer said.
Bitty was too tired to figure out what that meant.
It was after dinner when Bitty heard the car come up the driveway. Emmy Krause and Tim Weissberg had gone out—at first Bitty thought it was them, and didn’t bother looking up, no need to catch the sight of one of their Prius cars and have to watch them get out and fall against each other before heading to the door. Bitty was content here, on the porch with his iPad, the baby down for the night, his drink sweating through a jam jar by his side—peach mashed into the bottom, bits of it discoloring the prosecco. At least there’s no hockey to watch, was his last thought before Jack interrupted him.
“Christ!” Bitty said, nearly dropping his glass, and unsettling the porch swing. “What the fuck.”
“Can I sit down?”
“You could have texted!”
Without being invited, or given permission, Jack sat, all 200-something pounds of him pushing the swing back. He must have dropped weight over that awful run, but he’d always been big enough to disturb things—physically, whatever. Bitty set his tablet down.
“You can’t just show up!” he said, trying his best not to shout.
“It’s only an eight-hour drive.”
“Is your head okay?”
“It’s fine,” Jack said.
“I highly doubt that,” Bitty replied, “’cause if it were you wouldn’t’ve done such a fool thing as to show up here uninvited.”
“What was I supposed to do?” He sounded miserable. “We lost.”
“No shit. You shouldn’t’ve been playing.”
“I didn’t do so badly.” Jack paused. “I didn’t do good enough.”
“You did fine considering you got the sight knocked out of your head four months ago.”
“Well, what did you want me to do, Bittle? They told me to play.”
“George would’ve never.”
“George put me in an expansion draft.”
“Well, why’d you let her do that?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Jack said, “I didn’t let her. My agent—”
“I’m not having this argument again.” Bitty stood, collecting his tablet from the floor and his drink from the table. One nice thing about Georgia was the late days—some terminal sunlight caught the golden hue of the wine as Bitty sipped it. The stupid peaches weren’t ripe yet—he shouldn’t have wasted this one on a drink. It was worth trying, he figured; he didn’t know it was a bad idea when he’d gotten it in his head. “I’d better go tell my parents you’re here.”
“Wait—”
Bitty paused. “I’m waiting.”
“I want to see the baby.”
“She’s asleep.”
“Bits, I woke up this morning—”
“We all wake up in the morning, Jack, that doesn’t make you special—”
“—and I went to three meetings about how both guys on my line are out as soon as the season’s wrapped, and how our defense is too old, and how they want to give me the C.” He swallowed. “I had to talk to every network, which sucked. I’ve only eaten protein bars today, and I’ve been holding my bladder since Mississippi. I just drove here because I didn’t know what else to do. I just wanted to see you guys, and I thought—”
“What’d you think?” Bitty asked.
‘I guess I thought I’d pick you up, and we could just drive back to Providence.”
“You don’t have to go back to New Orleans?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “I haven’t asked.”
“Let me put this stuff down,” he said. “Sit tight.”
Bitty didn’t wait for an answer before storming into the kitchen. “Jack’s here,” he announced to his mother, who was pitting cherries.
She dropped the pitter. “Oh!” she said. “Is he okay?”
“Okay as he ever is.”
“I thought I heard something come up the driveway. Guess I thought it was—” She sighed. “I dunno what I thought it was.”
“Well, it’s too late to send him away now.”
“He can afford a hotel if he wants to go out by 20, I mean, if you don’t want him here, Dicky. Or he’s welcome to say, I guess.”
Bitty dumped out his drink, rinsing the jar. “He’ll want to see Greer in the morning.” From the roll by the sink Bitty snagged off a paper towel; from the crate by the toaster he grabbed a peach. He rinsed it under cool water, watching the violet sky give up its last streaks of bloody red out the window, the many pricks of starlight emerging over Morgan County. “Bet he’s hungry.” Bitty shook the water from the peach. “I’ll give him this.”
“Those are still a little hard,” said Suzanne.
“Not everything is ready for Jack when Jack is ready for it. He oughta learn that by now.” He swaddled the peach in the paper towel, gripping it too hard as he marched it outside.
“Peace offering,” Bitty said, handing it over. “Bet you’re hungry.”
Jack took it, nodding. “Thanks, Bits.” He didn’t bite into it—just held it between his hands.
Bitty cleared his throat. “You can’t just show up here, you know. I got things going on. I got a routine.”
“I didn’t realize, when you said—I wasn’t sure what you meant, I thought, maybe…”
“When I said I was done, it wasn’t an ultimatum. The ultimatum was the ultimatum. I wasn’t fucking around. I wasn’t being cute.”
The porch light wasn’t much, but Bitty could see—Jack looked like shit. Stitches over his brow, bags under his eyes, too gaunt, barely managed to shave himself clean. The sight of him lit a little fire of pity in Bitty’s heart.
“That was quite a series,” he said, softly. “I’m sorry about that.”
Jack stared at the peach in his hands. “Wasn’t your fault.”
“Doesn’t make it any easier.”
He didn’t miss a beat: “That’s not what matters.” He looked up, wiping his nose, blinking his stupid, sad eyes. “That’s only one thing going wrong. It’s not the worst thing.”
Bitty could see that Jack was squeezing the peach tightly. “You eat that,” he said, “and come on in—I’ll make up the couch for you.”
Jack nodded, and Bitty stepped away.
Jack came in with his hockey bag. “Where should I put this?” he asked.
“Guest bathroom’s fine.”
“And what about this?” He held up the peach pit, crushed into the juice-stained towel.
“You gimme that,” said Bitty. “Come on, give it.” He brought it to the kitchen, washed his hands, grabbed the monitor. “I got something for you, too,” he said, stepping back into the den.
“What’s this?” Jack took the thing in his hands.
“I haven’t had a full night of sleep in months,” Bitty said. “Not since last summer, I don’t think. I’m gonna sleep past 7. Maybe I’ll sleep past 8.”
“What do I do?”
“If she cries,” said Bitty, “you go get her.” He didn’t wait for a response. “Good night, Jack."
Jack said, “Good night, Bits, I love you,” but Bitty was halfway up the steps by then, and responding would have been awkward.
It was the most normal thing in the world, and the least: Bitty woke up to Greer’s babbling through the wall, got her up, changed her diaper, put her in a little outfit—ruffled dress, her mint-green bows, darling knickers. “Here we go,” he told her. “Ready or not.”
“Knock knock,” said Bitty, at the door to the den.
“I’m up,” said Jack, though he was still in bed, or rather, on the couch, shirtless, showing off tits and bruises both, the great welts that marked his half-clad body. “Sorry, I didn’t hear the monitor.”
The baby’s arms flew out toward him: “iPad!”
“Baby,” Jack said.
“iPad.”
“Oh, Greer.”
“Daddy,” she said, to Bitty, like she wanted him to know: “iPad.”
Bitty sat on the ottoman. “That’s one nice thing about babies,” he said. “They’re always happy to see you.”
Jack was barely constraining tears: “She’s not happy to see me,” he said. “She doesn’t know who I am.”
“Course she does. You’re the man we talk to on the iPad.”
To Bitty’s surprise, Jack didn’t start crying, not even when the baby starting smacking her palms on his pecs. “You guys could come to New Orleans,” he said, and it sounded so pathetic.
“For the last time—”
“You’re not staying here, Bits. You hate it here.”
Bitty sucked in a breath. “I don’t hate it here. I ain’t gonna stay here, no, but I don’t hate it, and I ain’t going back to Providence, neither.”
“Where you gonna go?”
“I’ll think about it.” He stood up. “But, let’s start at the beginning. I’m going to the farmer’s market, and maybe I’ll stop at Perk Avenue for coffee and a biscuit. You know my friend, Zelda? Maybe I’ll swing by her bakery—she makes an all-butter pie crust that holds its shape real good, and she told me to come by so she could show me the trick to it. Maybe I can do that this afternoon. Anyway, point is, I can do whatever I want, but first I gotta get dressed, so I’m going upstairs, and you’re gonna watch her.”
“Okay,” Jack agreed. “I can babysit.”
“It’s not babysitting when it’s your kid.”
“I can watch her.”
“When I get back,” said Bitty, “we’ll talk about what’s next. We got the same lawyer—I need my own.” Tears were springing to his eyes: “And we gotta tell—we gotta tell people. And I.” He grasped at something on his finger. “And this is yours, I think.” He pulled it off and set it gently on the table. Now he was full-on crying: “And she’s yours, too. She always will be, okay? We’re always gonna have that. That’s important. I oughta tell myself.”
“How did all of this happen all of a sudden?” Jack asked, his words all sloppy, his nose running.
“iPad,” said Greer. “Daddy?”
Bitty ignored her—she was in her father’s lap, and she was fine. “It wasn’t sudden,” he said. “It takes a lot of growing up—well, I’m not gonna throw your words back at you. Things happen.” He was surprised at how callous he sounded, for all the crying he was doing. “I am thirty-two this year, and I have a daughter, and I have to be grown-up now, okay? And for me that means—well, I don’t know what it means, but I’m gonna think of it, and I’ll let you know.”
“Oh yeah?” Jack asked, and there was meanness to it: “When’s that gonna be, Bits? Tomorrow? At Tara?”
“I’ll let you know,” he said. “She eats pancakes now so if you don’t want to mess around in the kitchen wait until my mom is up, okay? I need to go sob and I definitely need a shower.”
“I can’t believe this,” Jack cried.
Bitty was crying, too: “Well, I can, and that’s the problem.” He bit his wrist and hurried out of the room.
Marching up the stairs, he didn’t feel any better—just lighter. He couldn’t hear anything from the den once he turned on the shower.
There was a lot to wash off: Desitin and baby powder; a night of sweat such as Bitty had only ever experienced on the top floor of a badly ventilated house in Georgia; the peach juice from the night before, which had stained all up and down his forearms. Bitty wasn’t sure why he hadn’t noticed it when he’d washed up last night, until he reached for his shampoo and it all came coursing back.
It was the first time in a long time he had really been alone.
He could think now, finally, about what he would do with his life.