Found it!” Emma said.
I put down the antique beer stein I was looking at and came over to the display case she was waiting by. “You definitely did find it. That is the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen.”
She beamed proudly.
We’d just gotten out of dinner. We were on our third antique store and in each one we looked for the creepy baby doll. This one had a half-closed eye, the tufts of what was left of some blond stringy hair, and it was slightly green for some reason.
“I think I love it,” Emma said, cocking her head.
I looked back and forth between her and the case. “This. You love this.” “I do.”
“It’s missing an arm.”
She peered around the case. “There it is.”
I leaned to see what she was pointing at, and she was right, the severed arm was next to the doll on the shelf.
“The arm is missing fingers,” I said. She shrugged. “It gives it character.”
I squinted at the tag hanging off the hideous baby. “Eighty-five dollars?
For that?”
She tried to give me a disapproving look, but she was fighting a smile. “You think it comes with the arm or is that extra?” I asked.
“That doll was someone’s favorite thing once, Justin. Some child probably took it everywhere, slept holding it, cried when it was lost.”
“I thought you weren’t sentimental about things.”
She looked back into the case. “I am about things like that.”
I watched her gazing at the doll, and I thought about Stuffie, her decrepit, limp unicorn, and I wondered if her ability to be sentimental got shut off when she was a kid. It stalled out at ancient hideous dolls.
I nudged her with my elbow. “Do you want me to buy it for you?” “Do you want me to buy it for you?”
“Uh, no. I don’t need anything that ugly. I already have my dog.” She laughed.
I peered into the glass case. Mom would have thought this was hilarious.
She would have really liked Emma.
Emma must have noticed the change in my body language. “What are you thinking?” she asked.
I breathed out deeply. “I’m thinking that I wish you knew my mom.” Her face went soft. “She goes away tomorrow, right?”
I nodded.
“Should we go back? Do you want to spend time with her?”
I shook my head. “No. I already stopped by earlier and I hung out with her as much as I could this week. She’s with Leigh tonight. I see her in the morning. It’s how she wants it.”
“So you move into the house tomorrow then.” “I do.”
“How do you feel about it?” she asked.
“Like I’m in shock,” I said, talking to her but staring at the ugly baby. “Like it’s not really happening.”
“And how are the kids?”
“I think they’re in shock and feel like it’s not really happening too.” I glanced at her. “How did you handle so much change when you were a kid? I mean, that had to mess with you, right?”
She shrugged and looked back at the baby. “Yeah, it messed with me. I think you’re doing the best thing for them that anyone can do. Keep them where they are. Minimize the fallout.”
I looked ahead. “Yeah.” “What?”
I paused. “What if I mess them up?” I asked quietly. She smiled at me gently. “What if you save them?”
She looked at me so earnestly she made me believe that maybe I would.
I cleared my throat. “Maddy had less stabby energy today.” “She’s a fan of yours,” she said.
I raised an eyebrow. “Is she…?”
“Yes. She appreciates that you’re willing to endure dinners with Neil and Amber for me. Gets her off the hook.”
“And you don’t appreciate this?” I grinned.
“Of course I do.” Then she reached up, wrapped her arms around my neck, and kissed my cheek. She did it casually. I don’t think she had any idea the effect it had on me.
She came down from her tiptoes. Her arms were still around my neck and the place where her lips were on my cheek tingled. I was contemplating if kissing her in an antique store in front of a maimed ugly baby doll was tacky when my phone rang. Mom.
“Sorry,” I said. “I should take this.” I stepped away from her and hit the answer button. “Mom, what’s up?”
“Justin! What are you doing right now?” Leigh. Drunk Leigh, by the sound of it.
“I’m just at a store, why—”
Shuffling. Then Mom came on the line. “Justin? Can you give us a ride?” Also drunk.
Mom never drank. This was rarer than a solar eclipse. I could hear Leigh roaring with laughter in the background and Mom covered the mouthpiece giggling and hushed her.
“I’m still on my date, Mom.”
“Oh! That’s right!” she said. “I forgot. I’m sorry I called you, never mind—”
“Justin!” Leigh said in the background. “Give me the phone. Give it to me. No, give it to me—” Shuffling. “Justin? It’s Aunt Leigh. You need to come pick us up. Your mother and I have been overserved.” She slurred on “served.”
“You can’t call an Uber?” I said. “Can’t.” She hiccupped.
“Why not?” “Banned. Lyft too.”
“What? Then use Mom’s account.”
“We’re both banned. We’re pariahs.”
“How did you both get banned from two separate rideshare apps?” I asked.
“It takes commitment and ingenuity.” Slurred on “ingenuity.” Mom cracked up in the background.
I took in a deep breath and locked eyes with Emma. She looked amused. “It was my ex-husband,” Leigh went on. “He works for Lyft. Did it just
to stick it to me one last time and threw Christine in there just to piss me off
—and it did. It did piss me off.”
“And your Uber accounts?” I asked.
“Well, that is a very interesting story that I’d love to tell you, when you pick us up.”
I glanced at Emma. I didn’t mind picking them up, but Emma didn’t want to meet my mom.
I put the phone to my other ear. “Can you call Brad?”
“Already did. He’s at dinner with Benny, and they’re drunker than we are.”
I heard Mom whispering. The phone shuffled and they both giggled. Then Mom was back on the line. “Justin, I don’t want to interrupt your date. We’ll figure something out.”
“What are we gonna do, Christine?” Leigh said. “Walk? From here? You only have one shoe! Plus you got prison tomorrow. I gotta get you back by midnight or you turn into a pumpkin.” They both peeled into giggling.
“Where are you?” I asked, rubbing my forehead. “Hudson.”
Wisconsin. Only fifteen minutes from here. It wasn’t even really out of the way.
Emma must have read my mind. “If it’s an emergency, we can go get them,” she said, her voice low.
I put Mom and Leigh on mute.
“You said you don’t want to meet my mom.”
“It’s okay. I’m invested now, I want to hear the story about how they both got banned from Uber.”
I snorted.
I took my mom off mute. “Send me your location,” I said. “And stay put. Don’t make me come looking for you.”
I hung up and we went to collect our drunks.
When I pulled up to the bar fifteen minutes later, Mom and Leigh were sitting on the curb with their purses in their laps. Leigh’s mascara was running. Mom’s sandal was duct-taped and she had leaves in her hair for some reason. They waved and grinned when they saw us and climbed into the back.
Mom leaned in between the front seats. “Hi! I’m Christine!” “Hi.” Emma twisted to shake her hand.
Leigh scooted in next to Mom. “Leigh.” She jutted out a hand full of gaudy rings.
“Are either of you going to throw up in this car?” I asked. “We can hold our liquor,” Leigh said, offended.
“We cannot hold our liquor,” Mom whispered.
Emma pulled two Ziploc bags from her purse. They had Wheat Thins and celery in them. Probably her work snacks. “I trust this zipper seal with my life,” she said, turning to hand them to our passengers.
“Thanks,” Leigh said. “Can we eat these?” She started eating a cracker before Emma answered.
We made brief eye contact, Emma smiling and me looking exasperated. “You two smell like you showered in Patrón,” I said. I dug in my center
console for a water bottle. “Drink some water.”
“Water?” Leigh said. “That stuff that killed everyone on the Titanic?” Mom burst into giggles.
“I’ll wait for Diet Coke,” Leigh said, taking the water and thrusting it into Mom’s hands. “Drink this. We don’t need you hungover your first day in the clink.”
“If you couldn’t get a rideshare home, what exactly was the plan?” I asked, pulling away from the curb. “And how’d you get here?”
“My date picked us up,” Leigh said. “Supposed to take us home too, but his wife showed up! That son of a bitch said he wasn’t married! He looked plenty married to me, getting hauled out by his collar. J-named men are the worst.”
Emma was laughing now. “Hey—” I said.
“Not you, you don’t count,” Leigh said, loudly crunching a celery stick.
Emma leaned over and whispered, “I agree, you don’t count. So,” she said over her shoulder, “how’d you get banned from Uber?”
“Oh, this is good,” Leigh said. “Because it was your mom’s fault, Justin.”
“We had to do it,” Mom said. “They were too little, they would have died.”
“We found some baby raccoons,” Leigh said. “Real young, maybe five, six weeks old. Mama Coon was dead in the street and so Christine’s like, ‘I can’t leave them,’ so she gets on her hands and knees and pokes around the bushes until she catches ’em. I told her to put them in her purse and I’d take them to the wildlife rehabilitation center in the morning. So we get in this Uber, and we’re not a block from the place and one of ’em gets out and jumps right on the driver. He’s hooting and hollering, and he pulls over and kicks us out. So that’s how I got banned.”
Emma was laughing. “And how did Christine get banned?”
“Same thing, not fifteen minutes later, only this time on her account. We figured out how to keep ’em calm after that. They like sleeping in your shirt. See? Show ’em, Christine.”
“Wait, WHAT?” I started braking reflexively. “You have raccoons? In this car? Right now?”
“Well yes,” Leigh said, like I was being ridiculous. “All this happened tonight.”
Emma was dying.
I looked at my mother and her wasted best friend in the rearview. “You didn’t think to mention this? That you have wild animals in your bras?”
“Only three,” Leigh said, like that was better. “What if they have fleas?” I asked.
“We washed ’em in the sink at the Circle K,” Leigh said. “A little Dawn soap, dried ’em with the hand dryer.”
Emma looked impressed. “That does work.” “Emma, you want to hold one?” Mom asked. She gasped. “Yes!”
A hand emerged from the back seat with a tiny chittering raccoon in it wrapped in a bar towel. “This is George Cooney.”
Emma took it and held it to her chest and looked at me with hearts in her eyes. “Look at his little hands!” she said.
“Oh my God…” I muttered.
“Justin, how can you be mad about this? They’re heroes,” Emma said,
stroking the little gray head. “These sweet babies would have died.” “Thank you,” Mom said. “I feel like a hero.”
Leigh leaned over the seat. “Now, you just tuck that little trash panda into your cleavage. Quiets him right down.”
Emma pulled her shirt open and put the swaddled raccoon inside.
“Are we even sure this is safe?” I asked, glancing at the lump under her shirt.
“If they’re not safe, why are they cute, Justin?” Emma said. “It’s the forbidden puppy,” Mom said.
All three women started laughing.
I tried to look serious, but I couldn’t. Emma was having too good of a time—and Mom and Leigh were actually pretty hilarious drunks.
“Good Lord, these hot flashes,” Leigh said, plucking her shirt in my rearview. “Lets me know I can’t go to hell because I can not take the heat. Justin, you taking us to Culver’s or what?”
“You two don’t think you’ve derailed my night enough?” I said, getting onto the freeway.
“I do not appreciate that tone,” Leigh said. “I feel like I need to remind you that I used to wipe your butt.”
“Uh, you do not need to remind me of that,” I said.
“He had the cutest little baby butt. Do you remember, Christine? Like a little apple.”
“It was soooo cute,” Mom said from the back seat.
Leigh tapped Emma on the shoulder. “Is his butt still cute, Emma?”
“It’s really cute,” Emma said, smiling and waving her raccoon’s little hand at me while I shook my head.
She hadn’t seen it. Not bare anyway. But I couldn’t help but hope that she’d looked.
“Yes, I will take you to Culver’s,” I said.
“Thank you,” Leigh said. “Christine, how we doing on the list?” Leigh asked.
“What’s the list?” Emma asked.
“Prison prep,” Leigh said. “Memorizing your important phone numbers, dying your hair back to your natural color so you don’t see your roots come in, fixing anything wrong with your teeth—I’m gonna put money on your books the second they let me, hon. I’m gonna come every week to visit
you,” Leigh said. “Press my boob against the glass.”
Mom laughed. A deep, tipsy belly laugh. And then the laughter tipped and dwindled into crying. Leigh started crying too. She wrapped her arms around Mom, and Mom sobbed.
“Hon, I’m gonna be there with you every step of the way,” Leigh said. “I’m gonna help Justin take care of those babies and I’m gonna send you pictures and we’re gonna get through this.”
I could see Mom’s crumpled face pressed into Leigh’s shoulder in the rearview. The tail of a baby raccoon snaked out of Leigh’s cleavage and flicked under Mom’s chin. She still had leaves in her hair. The whole thing was like some fucked-up sitcom. The plot of a dark comedy.
Emma glanced at me as she pulled tissues from her purse and handed them into the back seat.
I think I would have been embarrassed if I’d been on a date with anyone else. My mother, sobbing drunk the night before she left for prison. But I knew Emma didn’t judge. That’s just not how she was. She judged this situation less than I did.
When she finished handing out Kleenex, Emma stayed turned in her seat. “You know,” she said, “I worked for three months in a women’s prison.”
Mom raised her head.
“I have never met cooler people than the women in prison,” Emma said. Mom sniffed. “Really?”
“Yeah. You’ll make lots of friends. They had a cosmetology school for the inmates. You can get your hair done. And you get to do soooo much reading.”
I glanced in the rearview and I could see it. The sudden hope in Mom’s eyes that maybe prison wouldn’t be as bad as she’d built it up in her mind.
Emma sat back in her seat and twined her fingers in mine between us.
Her turn to comfort me.
After that, Mom stopped crying. Leigh and Mom went back to laughing and giggling. They got their Culver’s. They held their baby trash pandas and ate their sundaes and Emma chatted with Mom and Leigh. And even though it was the last night Mom would be here and it was awful and sad, it was also sort of all right.
