Pigeon Crumbs

Pigeon Crumbs                                                    Eric Maynard

(Contains adult language and adult themes)    

I sat up in bed one night while Heather slept and concluded that I didn’t know her anymore. I studied her stomach, her abdomen, her breathing rhythms and the in and out of air and her slight wheeze. I didn’t recognize her anymore. In the glow of her blue Himalayan salt lamp on her nightstand, she was younger than her 41 years. She called it her “calming lamp,” but I called it a fake. A cheat. Her body, it was changing. Second by second. In that moment, it came to me. She was different, and she didn’t need me anymore.

         It happened one evening over six months before. Heather got done waiting tables at the Athenian Diner on Pleasant Street and went direct to one of those Indian casinos. She liked the casino bars best. Heather told me later she had polished off five black and tans and, in the ladies’ bathroom with her girlfriends Deedee and Desi, consumed the remaining coke from the green plastic spindle she kept in her purse. The gals hung out, played the slots. Fucked around. They ran out of money and left. Heather got in her hatchback to head back to our apartment and hit a random road sobriety checkpoint. She laughed when she told me.

“Of course,” she said, “I’m the one to get pulled over and tested.” And more laughter poured out as she told the story. And I laughed, too. No harm was meant by her driving after drinking and getting high – Heather doesn’t have a harming bone in her body. It was fun. It was all in good fun. And yet, there she was, treated like a criminal, blowing 0.08 on their breathalyzer.

“Damn,” she said when I picked her up from the holding cell. “Those jerkoffs pinched me on a technicality.”

         Heather didn’t explain what the technicality was. But she insisted she wasn’t drunk, and the test was biased. They took her license. After I picked her up from jail that night we sat in the kitchen, listening to Motley Crue and Poison and polishing off my last three beers and smoking a joint and laughing. It was hilarious. It was so funny when she told the story, she did all the voices, the deep dim-witted voice of the cop when he hauled her out of her car and had her huff into the breathalyzer and asked her, “Have you been drinking tonight, miss?”

“Oh, just a bit.”

The officer read the breathalyzer results and said, dumb and low, “This is more than a bit, miss. This is a whole lot more than a bit.” And he arrested her.

And Heather laughed, sucking in another hit of weed at the kitchen table. In telling the story, she called the cop all kinds of names, saying he had no dick and he pinched her only because his wife was mad at him for having such a meager shaft and that his wife made him angry and he misdirected his rage at Heather.

I told her, “You are so full of shit,” and she laughed at that, too.

We both cracked up at all of it until she said, “The cops took my license. How am I going to get to work tomorrow?”

We got serious. That was a serious thing to consider. And I held her, folded my arms around her head and held her to my chest. And I said I would drive her. I would help her out. She told me she loved me and we kissed and finished the joint and made love before passing out.

         The next few months were tough. Heather’s license was returned, with the caveat the DMV would soon suspend it. Her court date came up, and she met with a lawyer her father paid for. Her father has deep pockets. The lawyer managed to get her off as a “first-time offender” and, in turn, Heather had to attend drug and alcohol education classes. I took her to her classes, every Saturday morning from 10 am until noon, to a grey moldy two-room building with crumbling sheetrock walls and tan shag carpets. We laughed about how broke-down the place was, how no one cared enough to fix anything at the South Hill Alcohol and Drug Dependence Council offices. The initials spelled out SHADD, and it’s what the sign on the door said. “Yes…yes…so SHADD…so SHADD,” and I pretended to cry. We snickered. We were loud about it. The woman at the center of a circle of chairs in the classroom stared at us, watched us laughing, lost her place in her three-ring white spiral binder and stared at us.

         Heather told me later the woman was her teacher, and her name was Jill, and that Jill didn’t think we were funny.

We stopped laughing when, the following Monday, Heather received official word: her license was suspended. She would not be able to drive for a while. I resumed driving her to work every morning and picking her up every late afternoon. Most times, we’d stop at the Luau Lounge for happy hour drink specials on our way to the apartment and come back wasted and snort a few rails and smoke a few joints and she’d go on and on about how unfair it was that she couldn’t drive and we were hard-working citizens handed a raw deal. I reminded her I was unemployed, was laid off and hadn’t worked in over a year. We laughed at that, but, I said, she had a point. We were good people. She didn’t deserve this. And she’d cry for a while. Heather was frustrated. They stole her freedom, she said, and those drug and alcohol classes were bullshit and she was taking them just to get it done. Just to stay out of jail. She didn’t care about what Jill the teacher was saying. Jill was too young to understand, and Heather was having too much fun to give up drinking.

         Somewhere in the ten weeks she took those classes, something changed with Heather. When I picked her up one Saturday afternoon, she wasn’t laughing. She wasn’t even smiling. I asked her what was wrong. She got in the passenger seat and said she’d been thinking. “Uh oh,” I said. “About what?”

         “I’ve been thinking about how I got in this mess,” she said. “I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s crazy.”

         “What?” I asked her. “What’s crazy?”

         “Maybe it’s all crazy. How we’re living our lives. It’s all crazy.”

         Her statement confused me.

         “What are you talking about?” I asked her. “We’re having a good time. We’re doing what everyone else does. Everyone else drinks and smokes and snorts. Just like us.”

         She got quiet. I turned the ignition and pulled out of the SHADD parking lot. Raindrops splattered on my windshield, and I turned on the wipers. They squeaked as they swiped the water away.

         SQ-eeek. SQ-eeek.

         “God, “she said. “Can’t you stop that terrible noise?”

         “No,” I said. “I need new wipers, is all.”

         “So, get new ones,” she said.

         “I don’t have the bread,” I said.

         She blew out air.

         “You should be able to afford new wipers,” she said. “They’re not that expensive.”

         “What can I tell you?” I said.

         “Jesus,” she said. “With all the money we spend on booze and blow and weed, you should be able to pay for new wipers.”

         I kept tight, watching the road.

         “This is what I mean.” Heather stared out the window, arms crossed. “We should get new wiper blades whenever we need them. You get an unemployment check. You have your own money, and this is your car. You can do it. You need to do it.”

         “What’s all this talk?” I asked her. “Why are you jumping down my throat? You’re the one who lost her license. You’re the one with the DUI. I’m not the problem here.”

         Heather stiffened. She let out a whimper, swiping away a tear with her shirtsleeve. “Yes. Yes, I did. I made a terrible mistake. I know it. And I don’t like how it feels.”

         I waited a few minutes and asked her, “Was there something that came up in class today? Something that got you thinking about this?”

         She didn’t answer.

         “Because if there was, I’m going to give you a reality check here. You told me yourself that these classes are bulllshit. We laughed at it, remember?”

         “I don’t know if I can laugh at it anymore.” Heather sighed.

         “But…but it’s funny. These jokers, the cops, the teachers, they’re laughable.”

         “You know. The teacher. Jill. Jill said today that anytime we get behind the wheel while we’re intoxicated, we are not only taking our own lives into our hands but the lives of everyone else on the road.”

         “What’s that got to do with anything?”

         “There are families. Kids. Couples growing old together. I couldn’t do that to any of them.”

         “You’re not doing anything to anybody. You never hurt anyone.”

         “Yet.” Heather’s word hung heavy in the air. “Jill says there are all these ‘yets.’ Like, ‘I haven’t been in a terrible car accident while high or drunk, yet.’ ‘I haven’t killed myself or someone else while I’m drinking and driving, yet.’ ‘I haven’t had to learn to live with myself because of my poor decisions while drinking and driving, yet.’”

         I wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t like how what she said made me feel.

         I loosened my face up after a while, unclenching my jaw. Hoping she forgot her serious mood, I said, “Wanna stop at the Luau?”

         Her arm folded into her tighter. “You can’t afford new wipers and you wanna stop at the Luau? See what I’m talkin’ about…this is crazy….”

         “No. No. Heather. Just one beer. One beer, Heather. Just one.”

         She unfolded her arms, rubbing her face. “I guess. Sure.”

         “Just one beer,” I said.

         “Okay.”

         I smiled. I’m not sure if she smiled back. I didn’t dare take my eyes off the road.

         I bought us each the cheapest beer on tap, so she wouldn’t get after me about the wipers again. She stared at the overhead television, a repeat loop of a United States weather forecast map, a band of green-colored rain formations shifting right toward the east coast and back to the Midwest and right again. The green rain squiggles were shaped like a bowl tipped on its side. Trying to keep things light, I talked up the bartender and got her name and asked her how long she’d been bartending and pretended that every answer she gave was interesting and, “Gee, Heather, did you hear what she said about her kids at home?” Heather nodded, her eyes fixed on the television. She wasn’t much fun, so I paid for our beers and grabbed her arm and hauled out the door.

         Driving home there was a light drizzle, and I turned my noisy wipers on. Heather was quiet. She brought up the forecast, the torrential downpours expected in the next 36 hours. Coastal flooding, she said.

         “I want to have kids,” she said.

         I didn’t have an opinion, so I kept quiet. The thought of kids made me scared.

         She nudged me. “Did you hear me? I said I want to have kids.”

         “Yeah,” I said, “I heard you.”

         “So, what do you think? Do you want kids?”

         My squeaking wipers taunted me.

         “We can’t afford them.”

         “We can figure it out. C’mon. Don’t you ever think about it? Having kids?”

         I ground my teeth, my jaw clamping. “No. Not really.”

         I didn’t ever think of kids. I didn’t like being one, didn’t like how my dad treated me and my younger brother growing up. A mean drunk, the old man. Treated us and my mother like his personal punching bags. No. No. I never thought of having kids.

         “Well, I have. I have been thinking. Ever since the incident,” as she referred to her DUI, “I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”

         “Okay,” I said. “But I haven’t. Not once. Not until you brought it up just now.”

         “If you get a job,” she said, “we could afford it. If you got off unemployment and got a job, and I got a better one, we could afford it. Don’t you think? Don’t you think we could afford it?”

         “I can’t even afford windshield wipers.”

         “If you get a job…that’s what I’m talking about. We could afford kids and wipers.”

         Kids and wipers. These were the things that were going to tip the apple cart and spoil our good time.

         “I can’t get a job,” I said. “Who’s going to drive you to work and back and classes on Saturdays?”

         “That will all be over soon. Five more weeks of classes. And I’ll get my license back. Eventually. And I can always take a cab, take an Uber. But if you’re working, we can do it. We’ll have money….”

         I was steaming, furious she would even bring this up. I think I hid it, but I’m not sure. I asked her, “Why do you want kids all of a sudden? What’s gotten into you?”

         She shook her head. “Nothing. Really.”

         “It’s those classes, isn’t it? It’s those classes, and those stupid ideas that woman Jill is filling you up with. She’s not one of us. She doesn’t get it. Don’t listen to her.”        

         Heather recrossed her arms. “Jill’s a smart woman. Her ideas aren’t stupid. She makes sense. You’re the one talking crazy.”

         I pulled over, my hands trembling. When I spoke it sounded like shouting. “This has got to stop, Heather. For God sakes, stop with this stupid shit. I can’t take it. I just can’t.”

         She wrapped her arms around her like a boa constrictor. “I’m going to have children, whether you’re there or not. I want you to be there, but I’m not going to wait. I’ve made up my mind.”

         I wanted to kick the door open and push her out. She was making me so mad. But I cooled down. Her serious face, her piercing thinking eyes, those greying streaks of blond hair, were all right in front of me. I didn’t want to lose her.

         “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

         “Are you sure?” she asked. That’s when she said something I wouldn’t have guessed she would say in a million years. “Because I’m going to stop doing drugs and drinking while I’m pregnant.”

         My mouth dropped, my tongue resting on my bottom lip. I couldn’t breathe.

         “I might even stop for good.”

         “Heather,” I said, “don’t make any promises you can’t keep. Don’t say you will. Because we’re two peas in a pod, and I know I won’t stop. Not ever.”

         “Well, I want to.”

         Why? I asked in my mind. Why would you ever want to do that?

         The thought of it frightened me more than having children.

         “What will you do? What will you do? What will you do to have a good time after you get home from work? And the kids…they’ll stress you out…you know it. What will you do when you’re getting stressed out?”

         “I can learn other things. I’ve heard about alternative healings. Ceremonies. There’s yoga. There’s meditation.”

         “Uh. It’s these classes again. It’s all New Age bullshit, Heather. Jill’s filling you up again with stupid stuff….”

“It’s not stupid. Stop saying that.”

“Well…none of it works.”

         “Yeah. Well. How do you know?”

         I sat for a long while. I didn’t know.

         Heather put her hand on mine. It stopped raining. We stared out the windshield for several minutes, watching pigeons swarm around a streetside garbage can. They scraped at crumbs scattered around the receptacle, their heads bobbing dumbly, their selfish pursuits impeding each other’s path.

         “I’m going to stop taking the pill tomorrow,” Heather said. “I want a child. And I’m done drinking and getting high.”

         “It won’t last.”

         “We’ll see,” Heather said.

         I turned the key. The car started, sending the pigeons fluttering away.

         Heather got home pregnancy tests. She stopped drinking and smoking and snorting, as she said she would. There were times, especially when I picked her up from work, when she was cranky and didn’t want to talk about work and what was bothering her. I stopped asking after a while. I also stopped asking if she wanted to stop at the Luau on the way home, or if she wanted a hit of weed or a bump of coke. I stopped asking her about everything.

         Two months and three days after getting off the pill, she had a positive result on her pregnancy test. She ran from the bathroom and into the bedroom, where I was talking a nap after finishing off the last few beers in the refrigerator.

“Look!” she said to me. “Look at the test! There are two pink lines! We did it! There are two pink lines!”

I thought of things to say she didn’t want to hear. I chose to keep them to myself.

That night, as I sat up in bed. I couldn’t stop focusing on her stomach. I focused on it as it rose and fell with every sleeping breath, as it pulsed up and down under our bedsheets. Was it already getting bigger? I asked myself. Is she already changing?

I became frightened of the belly, of the growth. I didn’t know Heather anymore.