Wolcott Avenue

Into the sand goes the incubator. About two feet down, she places the derby. It has a cut-out in the shape of a star, but she doesn’t trace it. Her exploratory nature has to be tamed somehow, and today is as good as any to begin controlling it. She stares out at the ocean and wonders what the surface would taste like if it were possible to only taste the surface. Last night, she ate seventeen olives straight from the jar and then belched until her entire apartment smelled of brine. She woke up at 1pm on her kitchen floor covered in a blanket made of paper towels. A mouse had likely chewed on the toes of her slipper. Her life was a student film made by a failing student. She suddenly understood the importance of an incubator.

Third beach is empty on a cold October day. The heat wave that had strangled the start of the month had subsided, and now she could have all the sand and tide she wanted. Second beach would still have its devotees even in the coldest of times, and first beach was on display at all times due to its convenient proximity, but third beach was only attractive when the other two were full. You had to love solitude to love third beach, and she made isolation a hobby. She knew the curves of it. The way a valley of repulsion could find you on your living room couch and force you to watch eleven hours of serial killer documentaries before realizing that your entire weekend was gone and that when the other girl who works the front desk at the hotel asks you what you did with your weekend, you’ll have to make up a story about a boyfriend and pickleball.

Once the incubator was covered, she waited two or three minutes. The crying began shortly after that, and then her hands plunged back into the sand and pulled out a baby. It was hard to tell whether it was a boy or a girl, because its bottom half was covered in a clump of sand that made it look as though the child were a carrot yanked from the ground. All babies are angry to some degree, but this baby was uniquely angry in the way it pummeled her breasts with its small fists when she tried to nurse it.

“Fine,” she said, “The bottle then. I’m not really your mother anyway.”

While packing up her small bag, she noticed a red spot on the light blue shorts she’d thrown on to wear to the beach. Now that the baby had been dug up, it made sense. She’d be back on her cycle. Remembering what day it was, she was irritated to realize that until another baby was born, she’d be getting her period in the middle of the month. Something about that would cause it to feel more constant. Everything in life was about timing. The baby left out a wad of spit as it screamed while she held it in the crook of her arm, and all the sand from its bottom shook loose.

It was a boy.

I should have guessed, she thought, only a man could be this pissed off for no reason.

Back at the house on Wolcott Avenue, her landlady was waiting for her in the driveway.

“Don’t tell me,” she said, “You’re bringing home another baby?”

She had already decided to name the baby Gus. It was a nice name, but she’d have no problem forgetting it. He was already growing too heavy for her to carry although he seemed to be refusing to talk. Slow development wasn’t uncommon for the babies dug up in the Fall. Last year a set of twins had been born right around Thanksgiving, and when she excavated them, they were both missing an ear and one of them had a leg that resembled some kind of claw. She hadn’t even bothered to bring them home. She left them on the beach and reported their location to a marine biologist. That was the night she tried mixing a few too many pills with one too many glasses of straight vodka. She woke up naked in the bathtub with a half-finished suicide note and a migraine that could have summoned a small whale from out at sea. After that, she brought home all the babies no matter what was wrong with them. And there was always something wrong with them. Most of the time, though, they were just angry. The little bugger in her arms was furious.

She put him down and it appeared that he had skipped walking and made his way directly to running. He ran into the house and shortly thereafter she heard a crash. It was either her television or the sculpture she bought at auction of Burt Reynolds. It was a camp gift. At one point, she was going to decorate the entire apartment with kitsch. Like everything else, that idea went by the wayside once she understood that it would require some kind of commitment. The landlady still had her arms crossed in the driveway, and she seemed unaffected by the sounds of destruction emanating from the in-law apartment she resented having to rent to a woman who had to go to the beach every few weeks to dig up babies from the sand.

“And the hats,” the landlady said, shaking her head as though she had just found drugs in the mailbox, “What do the hats have to do with anything? Can you tell me that?”

“I can’t tell you anything,” she replied, “It would ruin everything.”

“What is there to ruin? You smell like olives and mouse shit.”

“That’s not from the beach,” she said, “That’s from last night.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” the landlady said, “I know they don’t have mice on the beach. I’m not an idiot.”

That was all either of them had time for, because the landlady had a book club meeting to get to, and she had to go inside the house and ground the baby. The landlady said that she was raising the rent, and she responded by saying that whatever the raise was, she could cover it. Money wasn’t a problem for her, but everything money couldn’t cover was. There was another crash from inside the house, but this one sounded personal. He had, most likely, broken the vase where she kept her dead lilies. She had never spanked one of the children, but she wasn’t opposed to it. Sometimes they could be real jerks, and since she wasn’t going to be their mother anyway, there didn’t seem to be any reason to spare the rod. When she went inside, however, the baby was sitting on the kitchen floor petting a mouse. He was twelve now, and a beautiful young man. She almost felt proud at having reared him, but that wasn’t the case. She was an archeologist, at best. At worst, she was a haberdasher living in an apartment attached to a woman’s house by giant staples that were slowly popping out over time.

Her doorbell rang. She thought it might be the landlady, but then she looked at the boy sitting on her kitchen floor and she saw him count.

“A thousand-two, a thousand-three,”

She saw him hit fifteen, then eighteen, then twenty all while counting.

All while holding the line.

She went to the door. One day, she wouldn’t open it. One day she’d say that today wasn’t a good day for a visit. That they’d need to come back later in the week. She’d covered the stain on her shorts by wrapping her gray sweater around her waist and walking home in just a David Byrne t-shirt. Now, she undid the sweater and let it fall to the floor. She’d answer the door with her stain prominently featured. On the other side would be a parent. Never two parents, but that was usually because one of them was at home doing a puzzle or applying a face mask.

She took one last look back at the baby. He was twenty-seven by now. He had a thick beard and in his hands was the corpse of a mouse. He had forgotten his own strength. Cheeks red, he flung the mouse across the room. It landed in the kitchen sink. She imagined it falling down the drain. She imagined turning on the garbage disposal. She imagined death and gore. She imagined that it must be somewhat similar to birth. To the way birth was supposed to be.

Opening the door, she saw the woman’s hands first. They were holding a cowboy hat.

The next one would be a girl.

She didn’t know that for sure, but she could feel it.

It would be Thanksgiving any day now.