If Not for My Baby

One

Devoting your entire life to the pursuit of another person, when human beings are all so inherently flawed, and expecting said flawed human to fix all the broken parts of you just so you can convince yourself that you're whole is a recipe for disappointment." I reach for another chip and dunk it halfway into the salsa. "In fairness, it used to make a lot more sense. Once upon a time a woman needed a romantic partner to guarantee a roof over her head, or to put food on the table. And men needed a wife to produce an heir for their cobbling business or kingdom or whatever. Things are different now, you know? It's kind of antiquated."

I pop the chip into my mouth. Only then do I notice the wide-eyed disbelief splattered all over the face of the man sitting in the booth across from me. His perfectly gelled hair doesn't move as he takes a slow sip of water through his straw. Mariachi music plays too loudly throughout the restaurant and embarrassment begins to creep up my neck.

"You think love is . . . antiquated?"

I finish chewing, trying to find the right words. "I think striving for a relationship above all else is antiquated. It seems pretty hard to find one worth keeping. And even if you're lucky enough to do so, you're still going to suffer one way or another. There are just less painful pursuits in life, don't you think?"

"Yeah . . ." He leans back in an attempt to subtly check the time via the phone in his pocket. "I see what you're saying."

I sigh. Hair Gel and I are not going to be a match. "It's okay, Hank-"

"Henry."

"Henry!" I cringe. "I knew that. Look, Henry-I can tell you aren't feeling this and that's completely fine. I'm happy to just call it now."

Henry-not-Hank narrows his well-manicured eyebrows at me. "Call it?"

"Yeah, you know, like a doctor calling time of death." I mime feeling my own pulse and make a yikes face.

Henry nods like he understands but I can tell that he does not. In fact- Yeah. He thinks I'm the worst.

"Seriously, I'd love to finish these enchiladas in peace before I have to go back to my shift. No hard feelings at all if you want to skedaddle."

Nonplussed, Henry slides his phone and keys back into his pockets and begins to scoot ungracefully out of the booth. In his defense, there may not be a graceful way to do that. Then he halts mid-scoot. "You told me . . . You said you were a waitress. You scheduled our first date at the restaurant where you work . . . in the middle of your shift?"

"I-" I falter for words, mouth half-filled with enchilada.

Henry bumps his knee a little too hard on the underside of the table as he stands. He winces and I wince, too, out of secondhand phantom pain. "Here," he says, tossing two twenties onto the table.

"No, no." I push the money back toward him, swallowing my bite. "It's practically free with my employee discount."

Henry doesn't find that as altruistic as I mean it to be. He leaves the forty bucks where it lays and walks off in a huff, nearly slamming into two young boys barreling toward the bathroom from the birthday party table.

Excellent. Another successful date for Clementine Clark.

A voice calls out to the young, exuberant boys. "Hey, no running!"

I peer behind me and spot Mike. His dusty blond hair is sticking out at odd angles and there are purplish bags under his eyes. For someone who wanted this promotion, he's been totally overwhelmed. I don't know what he expected-the Happy Tortilla is the best fast-casual Tex-Mex spot in Cherry Grove. It's literally only empty when we're closed.

"All right, fun police." I dig back into my dinner. I probably have these chicken enchiladas twice a week and never tire of the comfort food. Normally, I'd need them extra badly after a failed date, but tonight is a magnificent Ladybird Playhouse night, so I'm not taking the rejection too hard.

"If they get hurt," Mike says, sliding into the red vinyl booth across from me with a grunt, "we could be held liable."

"Ooh, liable. Such manager-speak."

"Hey." He laughs. "I'm your boss now."

"You have rice in your hair, boss."

Mike swats at his head. "Date didn't go so well?"

"I'm not talking about it with you."

"Me?" Mike steals a chip from the plastic bowl between us. "I knew you when you thought barbecue meant there would be Barbies involved."

"We were four!"

"That's my point. What was wrong with Mr. Apple Watch?"

But Mike knows I'm not going to tell him anything about my date. It's one of our few no-go topics. And not just because he's my ex-even though we were in high school-or because we still sleep together on occasion.

It's because I know Mike is no better than my mom: they both hope one day I'll shed my cynic-cocoon and reveal myself as a lovestruck little butterfly, fluttering into the arms of some upper-middle-class suitor. Maybe I should have told Henry that: Hey, I'm really just here to assure my mom that I won't suffer her same miserable fate. Spring wedding?

"Come on, Clementine. Spill."

"He wasn't a dog person."

"Ah." Mike nods, satisfied. "The kiss of death."

The sound of high-pitched squealing rolls through the restaurant and I glance up just in time to see the two little boys take a nasty tumble onto the carpeted floor. Instant crying.

Mike sighs. His eyes hold very little will to live.

"I got it." I laugh. "Finish my enchiladas?"

"Gladly," he says with a look of profound appreciation.

I throw on my red apron, drop Henry's anger-twenties in the tip jar, and get back to work.


The pharmacy is nearly closed by the time I’m off shift. A killer eighties track is playing inside and I bop my head to the majestically synthy beat until I find Lou behind the counter. I have to bribe him with free dog walks for his Siberian husky to let me pick up my mom’s cyclobenzaprine, but I secure the goods and a new carton of ice cream to boot. By the time I’m home I can hear Scully and Mulder blaring before I even close the front door.

"Marathon's still going?" I call out. I drop my keys in our cow-shaped tray and toe off my boots by the hand-painted, garden-themed shoe rack. A smile pulls at my cheeks at the familiar peeling paint and tiny capped mushrooms.

My mom and I never had a specific vision for our home-we just know when something is Dianentine-a mash-up of our names we invented to describe anything we both loved. A bright yellow, banana-shaped ceramic vase that holds flowers in both ends? Dianentine. Tie-dye dinner napkins? Dianentine. A needlepoint-stitched pillow on the couch that reads FBI's Most Unwanted? Dianentine. That one especially-we've watched every season of The X-Files together at least three times.

"Hurry," my mom's voice drifts up from the basement. "It's the Frankenstein one! He's about to ask her to dance!"

"I'm coming," I call, pawing through the pint-packed freezer for my most recent half-eaten carton of Ben & Jerry's Phish Food and grabbing a soda from the fridge. "Does Willow have her bone?"

"No," she yells. "Can you grab it?"

I double back to grab our dog's favorite Y-shaped bone from her bed. With all my goodies in tow, I scramble down to the basement and find my mom on the couch with Willow curled up beside her. Citrus hangs heavy in the air from candles that must've been lit for hours.

"How was work?" she asks, eyes still on the TV.

My heart squeezes in my chest. I can tell just by her voice that my mom's fibro is acting up. Her usually bright eyes are a bit dulled, her shiny blond hair tied into a loose knot behind her. She's kneading her shoulder absently as if it's been bothering her all day.

"The usual." No need to tell her about my failed date. Frankly, that should be considered part of "the usual."

I hand her the meds and soda and watch her down them in one fell swoop like the pro she is. Then I give Willow her bone, making a mental note to cut her bangs soon-our sheepdog's name is a pretty good indication of how her hair falls over her eyes. I wonder if she can even see the rawhide she's currently shoving into her mouth. I kiss her on the head and instantly release a high-pitched sneeze. Willow doesn't flinch.

"For the love of God, you were just at the pharmacy and you didn't pick up any allergy meds?"

"Those are, like, thirty dollars," I say, moving her hand aside to knead at her shoulder. "My sneezes are a part of me-what if you go blind one day? How will you know where I am?"

My mom rolls her eyes. "If I go blind, too, you can just take me out back Old Yeller style."

I swat at her head. "Hey. Not funny."

"Beth tells me Mike got promoted. That's very impressive, isn't it?"

"Mm-hmm." I focus on her shoulder knot.

"Maybe the four of us should get dinner to celebrate?"

"Definitely."

I don't mind indulging her. I love hanging out with Mike and his mom. And my mom's only trying to help. The woman was abandoned by the love of her life at sixteen with nothing to remember him by except a child with his exact likeness. Only to then be haunted by the heartbreak, develop a debilitating, incurable disease, and find herself limping from one inadequate suitor to the next all while raising said child alone. That's bound to make anyone determined to see their daughter walk merrily down the aisle.

And Mike's a great candidate for aisle-walking. I've known him my whole life-his mom, Beth, has been like a surrogate mother to my own mom. They're the only two single parents in our town. So Mike understood my plight from the get-go. He watched me go through high school with a mom that was only sixteen years older than me, and significantly hotter. Even now, she's leggy with a perfect bum, while I'm five three and as flat as a board on all sides. She's got sleek cat-eyes like a runway model while I have huge doe peepers that made my middle school teachers call me Pixar.

And as far as dating prospects went at the time, Mike was a summer daisy among weeds. He was kind, helpful, and loved dogs and flea markets as much as I did. Senior-year me accepted that he and I were a foregone conclusion that I was the last to figure out. We dated for a year, until he began to bring up marriage, and I'd ended things. It was the most disappointed my mom had ever been in me.

"I heard back from the insurance company," my mom says.

"Bad news?"

She makes a weighing face, but I can tell. It's bad news.

I dig deeper into her tight shoulder. "Will they cover any of it?"

"Technically no, but-"

"So ridiculous. We have to get you a new provider. What is the point of clinical trials if they can't try it on anyone because it's so goddamn expensive?"

I can hear myself getting hysterical. Willow looks up from her bone, concerned.

My mom frowns at me, too. Even when she's frowning, she looks so pretty. And so tired. My poor mom. "Clementine, it's all right."

"It's not, though. I'll call them tomorrow."

"I'm really starting to feel a bit better," she says, scooping into the ice cream with effort.

"Let that thaw a bit more."

She says she's feeling better about once a week, and she's been sick for over a decade. At first they'd misdiagnosed her as anemic. Then they'd thought arthritis, lupus, cancer-that was a horrible couple of days-until they'd ruled out enough to assume it was fibromyalgia.

That's one of the worst parts of an invisible illness like this one. No way to confirm what it is, just what it's not. Rational problem solvers like myself are kept up at night by the fact that not only is there no definite diagnosis, there's also no cure. Which means the medicines to manage her symptoms-flares of chronic widespread pain being the worst of it but also terrible fatigue, insomnia, and stiff limbs-are constantly changing and seem to get prohibitively more expensive every year. My mom can't work much anymore, which means I'm lucky to be employed by an old friend who lets me skip out early when she needs to be taken to appointments.

On the TV, Scully says something about how every theory requires empirical evidence, and Mulder charmingly rebuffs her logic. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch my mom mouthing his line: Sometimes the only sane answer to an insane world is insanity. She reaches a hand up to mine, eyes still on the will-they-won't-they couple, and I answer her silent request by giving her a reassuring squeeze. She digs back into her ice cream, and then says wistfully around a mouthful, "David Duchovny was such a cutie. I can't believe he's a sex addict."

Two

After feeding and walking Willow, I come back down to the basement to find my mom fast asleep, empty carton of Phish Food on the floor, The X-Files marathon still playing. I tuck a patchwork quilt around her slender frame and turn off the TV. The basement, which was meant to be her pottery studio, has become her second bedroom. An unused pottery wheel still sits behind the couch next to some dust-laden drop cloths. A guy she went on two dates with bought her a kiln, which she keeps her shoes in. "Like Carrie Bradshaw," she'd said.

Our house is strangely constructed-it's rickety and angular. It has a basement and an attic-two things you rarely find in Texas homes. It belonged to my grandparents, and the creaking wood stairs and chipped pastel tiles will tell you as much. Because of the weird layout-four floors but very little space in any given room-it can be hard for my mom to make it up to her bedroom during flare-ups. I've offered to bring everything down here-Mike and his friends would help move her mattress and bed frame in a heartbeat-but she keeps saying she's feeling better, and to just give it a week.