Persuasion

 I know I will love her forever. What else is there to do in a life? She is gentle and slender, fragile yet powerful, like a quaking aspen. If I could compare the beauty of the world to anything, I would compare it to her.

“What are you smiling at?” she asks me.

“You.”

“You’re smiling at me?”

“And the thought of you,” I tell her.

We are at home, doing nothing in particular. A simple evening, the weather outside wet and humid. It is transitioning from winter to spring with the smell of fresh rain and the sounds of new birds.

I sit next to her, place my hand on her thigh. She has her computer in her lap, typing furiously, delicately, beautifully. She is writing a novel. A love novel. About me? Possibly. Am I the hero in her story, the man that the heroin falls madly in love with? I can only hope so.

“How’s it going?”

“I’m stuck in the middle. Not sure where to take it from here.”

“You can go anywhere you like.”

She takes her glasses off, her dark eyes staring at me. She has a smirk on her face. We’ve been trying to have a baby. It hasn’t worked for over a year now, but soon it will happen. There will be a day when we are both in a hospital room, her on the bed, doctors and nurses telling her to breathe and push, breathe and push, and out will come my beautiful son or daughter, though I’m partial to having a son, and he will breathe life for the first time. I will cry, he will cry, I will embrace him, kiss Elizabeth on the forehead for all of her hard work. I will thank the doctors and the nurses. I will cry some more.

She rolls back over, grabs her laptop, and begins typing once again. Did I give her some inspiration?

I get up, still naked, and walk to the bathroom. I call out to her, “Clyde needs some money again.”

If I could see the look in her eye I know what it would look like. It would be sharp, her eye sockets chiseled like stone, her eyes a deep blue, and her brow taut as a fisherman’s line.

“For what?” she calls to me.

“Bail.”

“Aaron,” she says, “when are you going to learn?”

I walk back in, grab my pants and slide them on. “What is there to learn?” I haven’t looked at her yet.

“He takes all of your money, he doesn’t do anything with his life, he’s a drunk, and he’s always getting himself in trouble. I don’t want somebody like him around our baby.”

I look at her, and her eyes aren’t so much hard and chiseled, but soft and scared. “I know,” I tell her. “But he’s my best friend. We grew up together. Besides, he has nobody else. He has no family.”

“He has family.”

“But they don’t get along.”

“Because he’s not a good person, Aaron.” She closes her computer, puts it on the coffee table and moves closer to me. “I know how close you are, but he really can’t be around if this is how he’s going to be.”

“He’ll be all right,” I tell her.

“Aaron, I’m serious.” Her voice, sallow and stern.

“Yeah,” I nod, “I know.”

I get to the courthouse an hour later, pay his one-hundred-dollar bond. The clerk told me it would probably be another hour or two before they could get him out. I told her that was fine. I got in my car and drove to the jail, not too far away.

It was a blank building and the outside had tall fences with barbed wire all around it. The parking lot was empty, aside from a few cars and trash. Police cars went in and out of a sliding gate over to the side of the building. I rolled all of the windows down, let the breeze glide through the car. It’s humid out, and the sun is getting higher. I can hear the ruffle of the trees, the small crunch of gravel and concrete under the tires of passing cars, and the faint sound of the gate sliding closed across the way.

Thinking about what Elizabeth said, I consider, for the first time, what it would be like without Clyde around. Maybe better in some ways, worse in others. But worse for who? I struggle to find any way in which not having him around would be worse for Elizabeth or the baby. Worse for Clyde? Sure. He might drink himself to death if I weren’t around.

An hour later he comes out of the building, no bag or anything, only himself and the clothes on his back. He walks with the gait of an idiot. He’s always had that goofy walk about him. It’s fitting to his goofy smile and his wild hair. He gets in the car and slaps me on the chest a few times, a big smile on his face.

“What happened this time, Clyde?” My tone not all serious, but not entirely soft either.

“Listen, it wasn’t even my fault. Some fucker was going fifty-miles-an-hour down the highway. Fifty, Aaron! Can you believe that? So I decide to pass him, and the next thing I know I have lights behind me. Can you believe that shit? Those goddamn state troopers don’t have anything better to do than setup a speed trap in a passing lane.”

“The speed limit is only fifty-five, Clyde. How fast were you going? You know you don’t have a license. What were you doing driving anyway?”

“Well he said he detected a ‘slight odor of an alcoholic beverage on my breath.’” He said this with a air of imitation of the officer, ignoring my entire question. “But I hadn’t even been drinking, Aaron!”

“You’re always drinking.”

“Well I had a beer or two, but nothing serious. But don’t tell them that. Anyway, he got me out, I did his tests, and he arrested me for no reason at all. I did a fine job on those tests, Aaron, probably the best I’ve ever done them. And he still arrested me!”

I let out a big, exasperated sigh. A sigh heavier than the wind outside. “I’ll take you home. Wash up and get your act together. You better show up for your hearing so I get my money back.”

“Yeah, I will. You know I will. I always do, don’t I? I’ve never had a failure to appear, Aaron, you know that. I’m good for it.”

We pulled out and I took him home. I stopped by the grocery store to pick up a few things for Elizabeth and me, and also got him a few frozen pizzas, some milk and eggs, just some things to hold him over for the week.

I pulled up to his apartment and he got out, grabbed his bags from the back. “Listen, I got a job coming up next week. A big one. I’ll probably get at least a couple thousand for it. It’s some framing work and painting. I’ll pay you back for this then.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“I will. You know I will. I’m good for it, Aaron, you know I am.”

“Yeah, I know,” I say.

The truth is, I’ve never got a penny back from Clyde. He always has a job lined up. I'm never sure if he actually does or not, but even if he does he never goes to them.

Back home, Elizabeth is in the kitchen making dinner. The sun is getting low in the sky, the clouds growing dark, flat, and long, encapsulating the entire sky. Seemingly swallowing it whole.

“Another DUI?”

“Uh-huh,” I grunt.

“He’s going to kill somebody, Aaron. And then what? You can’t bail him out then.”

“I know.”

She’s rolling meatballs, the water boiling for pasta. She rinses her hands, walks over to me, and kisses me on the head. “I know you love him.”

“It’s hard sometimes.”

Two months later, Clyde failed to show for his hearing. I hadn’t heard from him since I dropped him off. That wasn’t abnormal behavior for him. I’d often go two or three moths, but never more than three, without hearing from him. Mostly because he could never go more than three months without needing anything. It’s always either money for bills, groceries, bailing him out, a ride to somewhere or back home.

I stepped out of the courthouse, called his phone but didn’t get an answer. I texted him, but didn’t get a response. I drove over to his place, knocked, but didn’t get an answer.

“Clyde?” I called. Knocked again, called again. “Clyde, you in there?”

An older Hispanic woman opened the door next to his. She was short, with graying hair and soft skin. “I haven’t heard a peep from over there in a few days.”

“Thank you,” I said. “What was the last thing you heard?”

“I think he was leaving. He always leaves in a hurry.”

“Thank you very much. Sorry to bother you.”

She waved, went back inside. I called Elizabeth, let her know that he wasn’t here. That he hadn’t been here in a few days.

“Well, that’s not out of the norm for him. He’ll turn up.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m going to drive around a bit, see if I can see him anywhere. He never goes too far.”

I drove around for a little bit, but I never saw him. His car wasn’t even in the parking lot of the apartment complex and it wasn’t on any of the nearby streets. He wasn’t at the liquor store or any of the gas stations. I checked around at a few bars I knew he liked, but he wasn’t there either. When you live with somebody like Clyde, there’s always a small feeling in the pit of your stomach. But for the first time, that feeling began to engulf my stomach, my intestines, and my heart.

It’s ten by the time I pull into my driveway. I drove around everywhere I could think of, checked every bar that came up. Went to different cities. But nothing turned up. Elizabeth is sitting on the couch when I walk in. She doesn’t have her computer, and the television is off. She has a giddiness air to her.

“Come here,” she says to me.

I walk over, she pulls me by the arm. “Yeah?”

“I’m pregnant.” She says it almost as a whisper, like she almost wants to keep it a secret from me.

My eyebrows raise. My posture raises. Like every part of me is held by a string and I am being lifted upwards. “You’re serious?” She nods. I feel every hair on my body stand on end. I look at her stomach, then at her face, then to her stomach, and then I run to the toilet and throw up.

I brush my teeth. Run back in. “Sorry,” I say. “You’re sure?”

She pulls out the stick, shows me. “Positive.”

“Did you take more?” She pulls out four more sticks. All positive.

I leap in the air. Both feet entirely off the ground. I land, bury my face in my hands and begin to cry. “You’re pregnant!” She nods, cries. “We,” I emphasize, “We! are pregnant!”

She gets up and we hug and kiss in the middle of the living room and we spin each other around. I pick her up and into my arms and we kiss some more. I scream, she screams, I begin to cry again, and all of a sudden I feel like I could lift the entire weight of the world.

“We’ll go to the hospital tomorrow,” I tell her.

“Mhm,” she smiles at me. I have never seen her face so bright and full of life. Her eyes, dark and blue as a midnight sky, yet full of so much happiness. She is the only person that could make a night sky as bright and joyous as any sunny day.

I love her and I love her body and the miracles that her body can perform and the baby that is in her stomach. I will do anything for them. I will kill for them in that moment. I would dig a hole from one side of the world to the other.

My phone rings. She looks at me, and I look at her. The fire slowly dying in her eyes.

“Hello. Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be down.”

She shakes her head. “You can’t.”

“I know,” I tell her.

“Aaron.”

“I know,” I tell her again. I grab my jacket and my keys. With a smile still on my face, I tell her that I’ll be right back. That we have to celebrate tomorrow and start preparing. She kisses me goodbye.

I get to the jail and he’s already standing outside in his jacket. My headlights glare on him, illuminating his face, still smiling and goofy. He waves at me. He gets in.

“You didn’t show,” I tell him.

“You would not believe what happened, man!”

“You didn’t show, Clyde.” My voice much more serious. I feel my energy and the feeling that I would do anything for Elizabeth and our baby. There is nothing that I wouldn’t do for them.

His eyes slowly fall to the area between us. His smile fades. “It wasn’t my fault, Aaron, I swear. You know it wasn’t. You know me.”

“I do.” He starts to talk, but I put my hand on his shoulder. I look at him. I look at him harder than I ever have before. “Elizabeth’s pregnant, Clyde.”

His face lit up, he smiled with his entire face. “No way! Congratulations, brother! Is it a boy? A girl?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Wow. You’re going to be a dad, yeah?” I nodded. He sat back in the seat. Smiled, but only lightly. “You’re going to be a great father, Aaron.”

He knew what was coming. He knew what I was going to say. “You have to get out of the car now, Clyde.”

He smiled, nodded his head. And for the first time I saw a tear form on the edge of his nose, drop down onto his lap and make a small stain on his pants. “I know.”