Chapter Nineteen

"Imagine!" I said. "I almost told Jodi I loved her. I didn't care if the baby was mine or not—I loved her."

Oz rocked back and laughed. "And you kept telling me not to mess with Christie. 'Don't get involved,' you said. 'Keep it simple.'"

Chapter Nineteen

The next morning, at the breakfast table, before Mom left for work at the station, I tried to dodge a lot of her questions. I didn't tell her all the ugly details about the fight between Jodi and me. I told her simply that Jodi had made it clear she thought the baby was mine, we'd had a little disagreement, and she'd gone home early. I didn't mention that Jodi admitted hooking up with Luke right after I'd left Ghost Bay.

Really, I didn't want to make Jodi look bad. I thought the best thing to do would be to remain friends with her, if she'd allow that, and to wait and see how the DNA testing played out. Just stay cool.

"Do you finally believe her?" Mom'd asked, while she sat across from me at the table, eating a bagel with cream cheese and drinking coffee. She also ate an orange that she'd peeled and divided into sections. "The baby's yours."

"We'll see. We're going to do DNA testing."

"If you have all these doubts, that's probably wise."

"I'll pay child-support and be done with it. I'll still play football at a big-time college and earn a MBA. I'll work hard. I'll be somebody."

Mom sipped her coffee and set the mug down. "Really, Michael, once you see the baby and hold it—your own son or daughter—don't you think you'll want to be more involved than that, simply making child-support payments?"

Pouring milk over my cornflakes and poking at the mix with a spoon, I said, "I don't know, Mom. I mean, I've never held a new baby, I've never thought about that. Never been in this situation before."

"A new life is so precious, so fragile, so demanding—I'm sure you'll love this child like no one else."

As I ate my cereal, Dad's words rumbled through my mind: I don't want you to make yourself into someone like me, a person who had no time for the people he should've loved the most.

Seems like the harder I tried to deal with the chaos I'd created, the deeper I sank into confusion. Like sinking into quicksand.

New Year's Eve night, Mom and a guy named Ted Feldman went to an all-night dance at the Starlight Ballroom at the fairgrouds. He was a widower who worked at the station in sports. Mom had known him for a long time. They connected at the Christmas party. "He's a very nice gentleman," Mom told me, "but he's not a date. Nothing like that. He's just picking me up, you know, because of all the ice and snow."

"Sounds like a date to me."

Looking sheepish, Mom twisted her wedding rings around on her finger.

I still couldn't imagine Mom with anyone else but Dad. Maybe she didn't consider the guy a date—she was still wearing her rings. But I remember Dad saying he'd told Mom not to mourn him. Not even for a day. Move on.

"I hope you have a good time," I said.

I think she intended to because she was smiling at the front door like a schoolgirl when they guy came to pick her up.

Mom was happy I decided to stay home New Year's Eve and that Oz was coming over. I wouldn't be out partying someplace drinking too much and then attempting to drive home.

Oz and I wasted ourselves at my house. The object was to forget the women we'd failed with so miserably. Neither one of us felt like going to a party where there'd be other women hanging out. Maybe some strays we could pick up. We'd had it with women.

After Oz and I polished off a few of Dad's beers, we experimented with hard stuff. We drank most of it over ice, sipping it while shooting pool, dipping in the Jacuzzi, and finally steaming in the sauna. Later, if we were still alive, we were going to watch a XXX-rated movie—The Male Extension—on DVD. Oz said he'd borrowed the movie from his cousin. But I had a suspicion the flick was his.

"This is the way to go, isn't it?" Oz said.

We slouched on the top deck in the sauna, elbows on our knees, heads bowed, steaming the beer out of ourselves in rolling drops of sweat. The heat had turned Oz's body pink. I licked the salty sweat beads off my top lip. A tumbler of Yukon Jack over ice sat next to each of us. The glasses dripped sweat like Oz and me. We drank in a hurry because the ice melted quickly in the sauna.

"I mean cocaine, speed, crack—all that stuff blows your mind in no time," Oz said. "But booze is okay. You can last a long while. I've got an uncle who's been an alcoholic for twenty years. He drinks everyday. Besides, booze is legal."

"Not for us, I said, and laughed. I don't know why I laughed. Everything Oz or I said sounded funny.

Oz picked up his glass and sloshed his drink around, rattling the ice. "Here's to Christie and Jodi," he said, and drank.

"Christie and Jodi," I repeated, taking a gulp of my drink, then laughing.

Until that evening, I hadn't told Oz about Jodi, but now, full of booze, I'd told him the whole story, beginning with how I'd met her in Wisconsin and how everything ended on December 20th when she told me she hooked up with her ex-boyfriend after I left Ghost Bay, but I was ninety-eight percent positive the baby she was carrying was mine. Luke and she used condoms; she and I didn't.

"Imagine!" I said. "I almost told Jodi I loved her. I didn't care if the baby was mine or not—I loved her."

Oz rocked back and laughed. "And you kept telling me not to mess with Christie. 'Don't get involved,' you said. 'Keep it simple.'"

"Trouble is I wasn't smart enough to follow my own advice," I said, and laughed with Oz. "I was even more stupid than you."

"You lost your focus, man. I knew you would."

"But I'll find it again," I said. "It's out there somewhere. Waiting for me."

"I'd rather go to jail than think I was falling in love again."

"I hear you," I said, and laughed louder.

On New Year's morning, I decided I wasn't cut out to be an alcoholic. Last night's drinking flattened me with a pounding headache and morning-long dry heaves.

While lying on the couch, my head thumping with pain, while staring bleary-eyed at the TV, trying to watch a parade for some bowl game, I made a New Year's resolution to never drink again.

When Oz woke about nine o'clock in the morning and staggered down the spiral stairs, puffy-eyed, his short blonde hair standing on end, I said, "Booze is not the answer to life's problems, Oz." My mouth was still dry, making speech difficult. "It can't be."

"It's the only answer."

"Uh-uh. It doesn't solve anything."

"Who wants to solve life's problems? I want to ignore them."

"You can't. They won't go away. They pop up again. You got to solve them." Then I tried to smile. "You ought to look at yourself in a mirror."

Oz scuffed over to the bar. "You got anything cold to drink? Ice water? Pop? What did we eat last night?"

"We didn't."

"That sucks. Did we watch that porno flick?"

"I don't think so. Make sure you take it with you. I don't want my mom finding it." I sat up on the couch. "There's Pepsi behind the bar, ice in the refrigerator, frozen pizzas in the freezer."

Oz popped open a can of Pepsi, dug cubes out of the refrigerator, clinking them into a tall glass, and poured his Pepsi over the ice with a jittery hand. He stirred the ice into the drink with his forefinger, then lifted his glass in a toast. "Cheers," he said with a broken smile. "Christie and Jodi. Forget 'em."

"Amen, bro," I said. "Forget 'em." But I knew I'd never be able to forget Jodi or escape the problem I'd created. I was hooked. For life.

Coming Wednesday—Chapter Twenty: After Mom and Christie jump his case, Michael vows again to keep his life simple.