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“Better. We made you.”
“What? Right here?” I squirmed. It seemed wrong to be lying on top of the spot.
“Right here. God, was that a surprise.” Bunny stared up through the willow branches, off into the sky. “What a day.”
“I’m not sure I want to hear about it.”
“Sure you do,” said Bunny, looking at me again. “It’s about your daddy. Every girl wants to know about her daddy.”
“You told me there wasn’t anything to know.”
“Well, there isn’t, but you’re old enough to decide for yourself.” Bunny rolled over to face me and leaned up on her elbow. “It was when we were living in that little house on Trundle Street—62½ Trundle. We were the only half-a-house in Katydid. That was nice.” I picked a few pieces of dried grass out of Bunny’s hair. “Anyway, I was staying home, taking care of Tom—he would have been about six months old—and your father was bagging at the A&P.”
“He was a bagger?”
“You knew that.”
“I knew he worked at the A&P, but I thought he was an assistant manager or something.”
“Well, he was young. He would have moved up. Your father had a lot of questionable qualities, but he did know how to work hard when he had to.”
“A bagger?”
“Put it out of your mind. Anyway, he was working hard and I was always up all night with Tom, who was a colicky baby. It seemed like we’d gone for years without doing anything fun. So one Sunday morning—it was a beautiful day, like today, only later in the year—I suggested that we go on a picnic. Jerry wasn’t too crazy about the idea. I think he just wanted to drink beer and lie around, which is what he did every Sunday, but I finally talked him into it. So we wrapped Tom up and put him in a little basket and came out here. We had a wonderful picnic. I was a much better cook in those days, and I’d made some fried chicken and potato salad, and we drank some beer. And the next thing I knew, I’d fallen sound asleep. Conked right out on the tablecloth—in fact, it was probably this one right here.” She lifted an edge of the red-checkered cloth. “And did I sleep! You know how it is when you’re real tired on a hot day? The air, the ground, the whole world feels like a huge pillow? That’s what it felt like to me. Well, when I woke up, there was Jerry, leaning right over me, with a big grin on his face. ‘Guess what?’ he says. ‘We’re gonna have another kid.’ ”
“Huh?”
“That’s right,” said Bunny. “We made you while I was asleep.”
“Is that possible?” I couldn’t believe how careless Bunny could be.
“It worked with you,” said Bunny. “And don’t look so disappointed. A lot of babies are surprises to both parents. You only surprised one.”
“I’m not disappointed,” I said, more snappishly than I’d intended. “I don’t care.” In fact, I wasn’t sure whether I should care. I mean, I’d never stopped to consider whether I’d been planned. It wasn’t a fact about myself that I’d been relying on. Still, given the choice, I suppose everyone would rather be a conscious decision. And it seemed strange that the person who’d intended me had disappeared, leaving Bunny with the consequences. Of course, Tom was unintended by both of them. He came six months after the wedding.
Bunny looked away. “Jerry didn’t last long after that,” she said. “He was gone by the time I started to show you.”
I remember how Tom and I used to study the few bits of evidence my father had left behind. There was a heavy wool suit. (“He’d run out during a false spring,” Bunny had explained.) It was mossy colored and hung limply in Bunny’s closet, all traces of creases having long since drooped out. There was a thin little box of mechanical pens and pencils that all looked too dangerous, or at least too complicated, to use. There was the old suitcase, of course, and for some reason there was a bottle of Aqua Velva that sat for years in the medicine cabinet. Sometimes, when Bunny wasn’t around, Tom and I would take the bottle down and sniff it. Today, I don’t know much about my father, but I do know what he smelled like. And there was also one snapshot—I haven’t seen it in years now. My father and Bunny are in overcoats, standing in a snowy street. They’re looking at the camera and smiling. My father could have been anyone. He had the most unrecognizable face I’d ever seen.
“Why did he leave?” I asked. Bunny smiled to herself and stretched languidly. In the dozens of times Tom and I had asked that question, her response had always been the same, almost down to the last word: He was weak and a drifter and he couldn’t face the responsibility of a family. This time, she repeated all that, but after thinking for a moment, she went on. “There was more, I suppose. He’d been hearing stories about me.”
“Were they true?”
“It didn’t really matter. After a certain number of stories, I think he’d just heard enough.” She yawned. “It would never have worked anyway. There’s no use looking back, ’cause it would never have worked.” She put her arms around my waist and
snuggled her head against my side. “But look what he gave me,” she said.
By the time Eddie returned, wading up the river and carrying his shoes in his hand, Bunny was asleep. Eddie pushed through the water to the overhang, grabbed a Hamms and pushed on a few more yards to a stretch where the bank was lower. He hauled himself up and sat in the sun, his feet dangling in the water.
After a few minutes, I walked over to him. He didn’t ask me to sit, so I stood awkwardly for a moment and finally plopped down beside him. He kept staring out across the Little Carp, toward the reeds on the other side. You could see bugs swarming over there in the hot afternoon sun. They’d come close enough together to form a dark cloud and then spread out again and disappear.
“I wonder why they move,” said Eddie. “They aren’t landing anywhere. They don’t seem to be eating. You’d think one clump of reeds is as good as any other. Why go through all the effort?”
“Maybe it’s instinct,” I offered.
“But what for? Instinct’s got to have some purpose. Like a fish swimming upstream, or a foal climbing up on its legs as soon as it’s born. But what’s the purpose if you’re a swamp bug of just movin’ over a few feet? You want a beer?”
I shook my head. “Bunny’s asleep,” I said.
