Dolores

Dolores wanted to name her Joy, but he wouldn’t have it. He said Joy wasn’t a name; it was an emotion. She said that was exactly the point. She wanted to mark her daughter the same way her mother had marked her, but not to wallow, disheartened and overwhelmed, but to bubble rapidly, burst forth.

She wanted her daughter to be stupid, or at least a little bit dim. Not in a way that would hinder her, but just enough to take the edge off. A person could benefit by not knowing things. Everyone thought intelligence was so important, that it was such an asset, but, as far as Dolores could see, all it ever got you was the ability to apprehend complications. The dim-witted seemed most marked by the ability to live comfortably with certainties and Dolores frankly envied them for it. She wished for a dimly lit, easily persuaded son too, but she especially wished it for her daughter. There was just no sense in being a smart woman; it only made you apprehend questions that wouldn’t be answered and discover desires that couldn’t be satisfied. It was in no way beneficial as far as she could see. Dolores wanted her daughter to shrug cutely, giggle helplessly, change the topic and twirl her hair around a finger, because she wanted her to be happy, goddammit, and she wanted it with all of her deep, dark heart.

She wanted to name her Joy. She wanted her to put sunbeams around the “o” in her signature. She wanted her to overuse exclamation points and to wear bright colours and to have a face that just natively, naturally, flashed dimples and veered into smiles. A face that lit up when you called her name, as if every time you called her, you weren’t just referring to her but deciding for her, determining her, repeatedly. Joy! Joy.

But Smitty wouldn’t let her.

They settled on Grace. A compromise that, as far as Dolores was concerned should’ve allowed her to get the name she actually wanted. If she could be called Grace, she could be called Joy. There were Joys. It wasn’t like she was asking to name her Cheerful or Bubbly. As far as she was concerned, she should be the one to pick the name. She was the one doing all the work. He didn’t have to do any of it. There he was rolling over onto his stomach in bed, sleeping deeper, while she was left arranging pillows under her head, between her knees, along the full length of her back. She’d jostle him awake whenever she wanted to turn over and had to initiate a massive reorganization of her pillow support system to get it done. He knew better than to complain. She’d catch him looking up at her face, gauging her mood and without looking at him, she tried to give him the answer he was looking for: Yes, in fact, I am about to fucking explode.

It was only her biological right to pick the name. He didn’t think it was fair? Well, none of it was fair, but that was hardly her decision. She should get to pick the name because she was the one who got to gain fifty pounds in support of this life-changing, life-engendering endeavour. She should get to pick the name because she’d thrown up every morning for three months and still couldn’t crack an egg because even the thought of that sound could make her vomit. She should get to pick the name because the only way this kid was going to get out of her was after intense pain and probably stitches. What had he done? Something he would’ve done anyway.

He’d try to rub her shoulders and laugh about it. “I did have some input in this. I’m going to have something to do with her upbringing. We have to pick it together. I want a say.”

That just tempted her to start over. To start at the top and catalogue all her grievances again but he was starting to glaze over whenever she went over it and he still responded the same way. “I want a say. Husbands usually get a say, right?”

This was Smitty’s big move: the Appeal to Normal. “We should go. Everyone’s going to be there.” “We should do that. Everyone says it’s great.” “That’s to be expected.” “It’s standard practice.” “That’s pretty normal, you know.” One time, in a middle of a fight, she yelled at him “Well, I’m NOT normal!” and he’d burst out laughing, grabbed her by the arms and tried to catch her eye, exclaiming, “I know! I know.” She didn’t know what there was to laugh about.

She had a bad temper and he didn’t. She got run down and worn out and he didn’t. She got sad and overwhelmed and he would ask her, “What is there to be sad about? We’re happy, right? Aren’t we happy? Look at this…”. and he would sweep his arm, a gesture meant to include their messy living room, stinking kitchen and three- bedroom house like this was all anyone could hope for in life, like it was enough to make him bust out in tears of pride and joy (which it was, by the way). And she hated every last bit of it, right down to her love for him that wouldn’t let her just give up and die on the spot and take their sad, little unborn baby with her.

She tried to appeal to him. “I want this baby to be like you. If it’s a boy, we’ll name him after you. We’ll call him Junior and he’ll be like you and he’ll be fine. And if it’s a girl, we can call her Joy because you’d never let me call her Happiness.”

He tried to broker a compromise. “Okay, how about you make a list of ten names that you like and I’ll pick from them.”

“But there aren’t ten good names, Smitty. There’s one.”

“Okay, five. Three! Three names.”

“Okay. Happiness, Contentment or Joy.”

“Three names. C’mon babe, we can do this. People do this, right?”

So she picked three names: Joy, Merry and Grace. He chose Grace.

So it was her fault really. She was the one who wrote it down and allowed for it. She should’ve known that he would’ve picked it, but they’d known a Grace at school and she was terrible, but he said he didn’t care. It wasn’t like it was in the name, look at Grace Kelly. She hadn’t remembered about Grace Kelly.

At first, she thought it would be okay. Grace sounded pretty, complimentary and she thought that maybe a baby that associated such a word with herself would be pleased with herself somehow. But then Grace didn’t seem so pleased with herself. Instead, she was a colicky baby and they spent the first three months of her life walking her around, driving her around, strolling her around, doing whatever they could think of just to get her to please, please calm down. Smitty worried and spent his time pestering nurses and doctors and anyone else who had ever had a baby asking them what they could do, what was wrong, and they all just patted him on the back, shook their heads. Nothing to do but wait it out. But Dolores didn’t need to ask anyone. She knew what it was. What other sensible reaction was there to being pushed by forces beyond your control out of your sloshy little love cave and into this glaring, noisy, abrasive new world. This baby wanted to go back and Dolores could hardly blame her, but she also knew what it meant. This baby was smart, already.

And she was. As she got older, she would pester them with questions, endless questions, each answer only opening up more, until she’d reach the end of what anybody could know and then she’d repeat: but why? But why? Even if only to herself. As if there should be more information, as if there should be more to it than that. Now, Dolores realized, the name Grace was all wrong. It never should’ve been on the list. It couldn’t have worked, and it wouldn’t ever have worked like the name Joy might have because it couldn’t determine her. Instead of an emotional state it was a standard, and as much as it might sound like praise in the right context it could also sound like a directive, like they were always telling her what she was supposed to be. Somehow, without meaning to, Dolores had managed to do exactly the opposite of what she’d intended, and she was caught telling her daughter constantly, not to be pleased, but to be pleasing. And Grace would follow her around the house asking her “Why? Why?” and Dolores didn’t have an answer.

Smitty, for all his noble attempts at pacification and negotiation, had trapped Dolores with his damned list. He always ended up trapping her and then it was her fault she felt stuck. He was the one that wanted the baby in the first place. He was the one who didn’t care if it was a boy or girl. He was the one who liked a million different names but for the one that she wanted. She was the one who got to stay home day in and day out. She was the one who had to quit work right when she was starting to get somewhere. She was the one who had to figure out what to cook three meals a day when she never had any idea. And she didn’t like cooking. She could eat cheese and crackers for the rest of her life and it would never matter to her, ever. She’d be fine with that. Cigarettes and cheese, that’s all she actually wanted or needed in life. Everything else was a dressed-up obligation.

It was Smitty’s fault; it was. He was a good person, a loving husband and a devoted father and she, despite herself, didn’t want to let him down. She did her best for him. She fought off all her dark thoughts and treachery as best she could, but he always just seemed to be backing her into it. She knew he didn’t mean it, but that just made it worse.

Sometimes she wanted to explain to him how hard she was trying because she could see that it didn’t necessarily show. Despite appearances, she was really trying, but she just couldn’t keep it up. She was haunted by this deepening shadow that swallowed her whole whenever she sat still, remembered or tired. How often was that? Often. More often all the time.

By the time she got pregnant the second time, Grace was four. She was quiet and thoughtful. Smitty thought she was perfect. She was very, very bright.

When she told him she was pregnant again, he literally cried tears of joy. It immediately seemed to give him a renewed sense of strength. He cleaned out the garage that very afternoon. He tidied up and made dinner and pushed Grace on the swing for a million years until it got too dark and Dolores called them in. She was mad when they came in.

“What are you doing out there, Smitty. It’s almost dark, for God’s sakes.”

“I just wanted to see if I could one time last as long as she wanted.”

“And you didn’t.”

“Well, it got dark.” He was grinning like this was reason to be incredibly proud, like Grace had just shown him what she was really made of and it was great somehow. Not that she was perhaps pathologically stubborn, or relentless. What would he call it? Committed? Passionate? This was why he loved Dolores. Because he’d put all her foibles and weaknesses into the shaker that was his brain and didn’t let them out until he could read them the way he wanted to, the way he liked.

After they got Grace down to bed, he came and sat down with her on the couch, resting one hand on her belly.

“Oh, babe, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.”

“Well. You should. It’s happening.”

“Boy or girl, what do you think?”

“It’s a girl. I know it’s a girl. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Why would you be sorry? Do you really think I’d be unhappy to have another girl? My God. I couldn’t be happier.”

“I wish it were a boy. I want to have a boy and name him Smith. Smith Smith. Smitty James Smith. Smitty Junior. We could call him S.J.”

“S.J?”

“Sure, why not? There’s P.J.s, …J.J.s”.

“And if it’s a girl?”

“Hope.”

“Hope?”

“Yeah. You don’t like it.”

“Actually, I do like it. I had a friend in grade school, Willy, who had a little sister named Hope. I kind of liked it, even as a kid.”

“Good. Then Hope it is, I guess.”

“Does that mean you’re filled with Hope?”

“No, Smitty. It doesn’t.” She pushed his hand away and pulled the throw pillow over onto her lap and hugged it.

“Oh, c’mon. You’ve got our baby inside of you, no matter what we call her. Aren’t you happy? This is what we wanted, right?”

“So you don’t want to call her Hope.”

“What? I just said I did.”

“Did you? You just said: ‘No matter what we call her’? So you’re still leaving it open?”

“No. I was just backing off my bad pun…I’m just, I’m just, happy about it. We can call her anything. We can call him anything.”

“Except for Joy.”

“Dolores.” This took him a second. “Do you still want the name Joy? Because as far as I know, I asked you what you wanted and you said Hope and I said, okay. What is the problem? That I agree with you this time? Would you prefer it if we went back to a name that you know we don’t agree on?”

“It’s just, how can you agree to Hope, if you wouldn’t agree to Joy? Isn’t hope an emotion?”

He leaned forward, raked both his hands through his hair and then across his face. “I don’t know, Dolores. Do you want me to agree with you or do you want me not to agree with you?”

Dolores didn’t answer because she didn’t know the answer. He looked at her like he’d just made a really good point and he was waiting for her to concede to his good sense, but she didn’t want to concede. She wanted to fight. This was a fight and he was trying to deny it but she didn’t want to deny it. She wanted to get to it and fight it out before it strangled her. So she got up, and said: “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you should just name her. You can name her after your mother and then the two of you can get that much closer to cutting me right out of all of it,” and then she stood there glaring at him, daring him to answer.

She was hoping he’d lose his temper. It was maybe a dig well south of standard, but it should do well enough to get a rise out of him, but it didn’t. Instead, his face went momentarily blank and then he looked up at her, got up and walked out the front door. It took her so much by surprise that she just watched him go and couldn’t think to react fast enough. After the door shut behind him, she thought she should’ve grabbed him and maybe then he would’ve lost it for real.

Smitty never wanted to lose his temper and he almost never did. He was always controlling himself, lowering his voice, biting his tongue, taking deep breaths. She wished he would fight her. Sometimes she wished he would just totally lose it and push her back, yell, dig in. But he wouldn’t. He would never. Always with their fights it was what she did, what she said. In the meantime, it was all that he refused to say, all that he refused to do that was making her totally crazy. Sometimes she wondered if his self-control was only possible because he wasn’t really feeling it. Not the way she did. It wasn’t a lack of self-control on her part; it was that she was totally outmatched. He was snuffing out a candle and feeling triumphant. She was spitting down the mouth of a volcano. And as she stood there on the trembling lip of it, fighting the smoke and ash, she recognized what he didn’t. When the volcano finally erupted in a furious, fiery, murderous blast, it wasn’t really going to be an issue of self-control. It was going to be an issue of self-preservation.

Because, the truth is, it didn’t matter if he didn’t say it, she could still hear it. He said, “I had a friend in grade school who had a sister named Hope.” But what he thought was: Okay, I guess I’ll allow it. I’ll allow it on the strength of it having been done before inside the strict confines of my direct acquaintance. That should at least put it in the far reaches of the expected range of normal so that it will fit: that I will, she will, and then so you will, at least for awhile.

So, it was really just self-defence to throw his mother in his face. That’s what he’d been thinking about: what he’d have to tell everyone else, how he’d explain it to his mother who was sure to raise her eyebrows and lean in, pat his hand, tell him she would do whatever she could to help out.

She watched through the front window as he strode purposely past. He walked by three times, walking around the block, doing some deep breathing. It might take him a couple of extra shakes this time to get any of this to make sense. His brain was like a Boggle cube. He just kept shaking it until he found an arrangement he liked, one that he thought he could work with. He’d shake his Boggle brain and then check out his options, deciding: B A D, no. Shake it again: O F F, no. Shake it again: N I L, no. Shake it again: Oh look! F L O W E R. Let’s play this one!

As she watched him from the window, each circuit of the block took him longer to complete. The first time he went by he was striding angrily. The second time he was walking purposefully. The third time he was strolling pensively. This time, he rounded the sidewalk and came in. He was visibly calmed. Three circuits of the block and he was calm. Three circuits of the block and Dolores watched and waited, watched and waited, watched and waited. By the time, he crossed the threshold, she was not calm. With every one of his steps, with every one of his deep breaths, he was calming himself down and ratcheting her up. By the time, he came into the living room, she was spewing poisonous gas and choking on a swelling tide of molten lava.

Smitty took one look at her face and went to turn around but she scurried by him and blocked him at the door. He paused with one hand on the door, looked down at his shoes for a second and then turned on his heel and headed for the side door. She ran around through the kitchen and blocked him again and when he turned around this time to head back, she grabbed him.

“No! You can’t run away from me.”

“I’m not running.”

“You are! You’re running because you’re too much of a coward to tell me what you really think about anything.”

“I just don’t want to fight with you, Dolores. Is that a possibility? I just want to be happy about our new baby and go to bed happy about it. Is that allowed?”

“No! It’s not allowed because you can’t be happy about her without dealing with me! What about me, Smitty? What are you going to do about me?”

“What can I do about you?”

“Something! For God’s sake! Something, Smitty! Something!” She was starting to cry so he grabbed her by the arms and tried to pull her into a hug, but she didn’t want to hug him, she wanted to throttle him and she could barely keep herself from punching him in the face. “Oh God! What did you think you were going to do? Just give into me on every little thing until all our problems just magically disappeared?”

“Yes!” He backed away from her a step and then suddenly he was preternaturally calm. He looked tired and said more evenly. “Yes. That is what I thought. It’s what I think. I think…if I could just smooth things out for you then maybe you’ll feel better.”

“You can’t do that forever, Smitty. It’s not possible, don’t you see that?”

“Yes, I can. I can take it. I don’t care about all these things and you do. So, if it makes you feel better to name her Hope, then we’ll name her Hope. That’s okay with me.”

“But I don’t feel better.”

“I know and I don’t know why. I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

“I don’t know! I don’t know what it is! I don’t know what to do! I just don’t feel better, don’t you see?”

“No, I don’t see. Explain it to me, what’s wrong? Look at all we have. Grace loves you. I love you. Doesn’t that…” but he stopped himself and quickly shook his head.

“Doesn’t that what?” she insisted.

“Doesn’t that make it better!”

“No, Smitty. No, it doesn’t. And you want to know why? Because your love is not good enough. It’s not nearly enough. It’s weak and little and it can’t even come close to making me feel anything but a kind of hopeless frustration. If you’re all I’ve got then what chance do I have? What chance do I have on the strength of your weak, second-hand feeling of generalized good-will to…”

“My love is weak?! My love? Are you kidding me? My love has me meeting you way more than half-way. My love has me meeting you at the gate. What about your love? I’m stretched all the way across. I’m stretched all the way and pounding on your door, while you, you, won’t even get out of bed.”

“I can’t get out of bed. I can’t get out of bed because your brainless optimism is about to kill me.”

“Kill you! Kill you! My brainless optimism is the only thing keeping any of us upright.”

“Then let it go! Let me sink already. Let me sink!” Suddenly she felt like she would sink. He was mad finally but now she couldn’t stand it. It still didn’t do any good and she felt like her head and shoulders were suddenly too heavy to hold, too heavy to stand up under, and she wobbled dangerously.

But he caught her. “You can’t sink. You can’t sink.” He kept repeating, holding her against him. She let her head crash onto his shoulder, and he whispered into her neck. “You can’t just sink, babe. You’ll take all of us with you.”

So they named her Hope, and, this time, it was the right decision. Hope was an easy, happy baby, and Dolores watched Smitty cooing over her and carrying her around in a bundle all over the house and she knew she got it right because she hadn’t been straining after anything this time. She just described it. Named it. It was what it was.

Grace and Hope. It made them sound like Puritans. Ridiculous. But Smitty just laughed whenever anyone widened their eyes at them. He told people he was thinking of changing his name to Repentance or Merit. Grace, Hope and Merit. Where did that leave her? What did she have to offer them other than a bad example?

Dinner, she supposed. That’s what nurturing mothers did, right? That’s what wives were for. Making a home, feeding, wiping. Good mothers, grateful wives made a habit of getting up from the kitchen table and peeling, chopping, flipping things in fry pans. Meat, potatoes, one vegetable, maybe two. These were the choices. Maybe spaghetti. Maybe, just maybe, if she were feeling especially ambitious, she could make a cheese sauce. One time she made a cheese sauce for the broccoli and Smitty acted like she’d broken the sound barrier. She told him it wasn’t hard: milk, butter, flour, cheese. And it wasn’t, but it was boring. It required attending. You couldn’t leave it alone or ask it to do anything for itself. That’s why mothers liked casseroles. Casseroles cooked on their own. You assembled them like puzzles and then left them in the oven to do what needed to be done. A casserole would leave Dolores time to sit at the kitchen table and smoke a cigarette before she called Smitty and the girls in from the backyard. She decided to make macaroni and cheese. Milk, butter, flour, cheese: macaroni. Cheese sauce, but casserole style. They’d been having it a lot lately, but Smitty and Grace both loved it, so they didn’t complain. At least not to her.

But sometimes sitting could be dangerous. It seemed like all she really wanted to do in a day was sit down or lie down and she never seemed to get the chance but then whenever she did, whenever she did finally sit or sleep she felt even less inclined to get up and do, not more. Sometimes she wasn’t sure if the problem was that she had too little to do or too much. Sometimes she let Smitty think that being a housewife was too boring for her and that was the problem but then he’d suggest that she think about going back to work and she wanted to do that even less.

Sometimes she felt like she was under water. Everyone else was on the ground, in the air, but, somehow, for her. She was in deep water and so, for her, every movement was harder. She had to fight greater resistance to walk across a room, to raise her arms or lower them and she couldn’t breathe, while everyone else was sauntering around, inhaling, exhaling, like it was easy, like it was nothing. Or sometimes she thought it felt like being in the dark. It was dark, too dark, and it scared her even though she knew that if the light were on all she’d see was the kitchen: cupboards, corners. In the dark, other things seemed possible, even when she knew they really weren’t. In the dark, she heard creeping. She sensed lurking. She thought she detected movement, something (what?) moved over there. Or sometimes she thought that it was kind of like stepping in quicksand. She had stepped in quicksand and every movement was making her sink. Everyone wanted her to move, to bustle about like they did, but they didn’t know what she knew. They were on firm ground. They wanted her to try harder but with every exertion, she could feel the silty sand giving way beneath her, sucking at her feet, taking firmer hold of her legs, rising above her knees. But, of course, these were all just feeble metaphors and while they strained to explain some small part of what was otherwise inexplicable, they failed, utterly, in the end.

They failed because they all suggested that something was happening, but it wasn’t. Smitty was out in the backyard in the fading afternoon light holding the baby while he pushed Grace on the swing. Dolores was in the kitchen, sitting at the table. If the kitchen filled with water or quicksand or if the power went out, she would be able to call out to Smitty and Smitty would be able to spring into action. Smitty! It’s a freak kitchen tidal wave! I’m drowning! Smitty, there’s quicksand under this table! I’m stuck! Smitty! Where are you? I can’t see! And he would pull her to shore, lie flat and pass her a rope, light a candle, grab a flashlight, make her laugh. But as it was, she couldn’t call out to him. The clock was steadily ticking past time to take out the dinner, time now to stand up, call them in, set the table and serve. But nothing was happening, not something. Nothing.

Depending upon when he finally came in, the dinner was going to be somewhere between just burnt and totally ruined and he was going to come in and have to find somewhere to put Hope and he was going to have to tell Grace not to worry, to get her into the other room and turn on the TV. He was going to come in and Dolores wasn’t going to have anything to say for herself. She wouldn’t have any answer for his looks while he scurried around opening windows and fanning dishtowels. She wouldn’t have a way to say: “Yes, I’m sitting at the kitchen table. Yes, I was still sitting here while our dinner burned, as it got dark, after I heard the creaking of the swing come to a stop and your voices at the door. And yes, obviously, I’m not drowning or scared or stuck because there is no water, or darkness or sand. It’s just me in the kitchen. It’s just me. I’m sitting at the kitchen table. And I can’t get up.”