This is how I told Darlene about the child. The unborn child who would become my daughter.
It was January. Dar and I had lunch together every day. Every day at 11:30 I would tell Merry I was going to lunch. Everyone else on the line had lunch at 12:00. I asked special and Merry said it was okay. Everyday at 11:30 I would leave the line where we assembled computers and go jump in my car and drive down the road three blocks to the building where Darlene and her line worked. Darlene's line made power supplies. The power supplies would go into the computers that were put together on my line. Darlene's line had lunch at 11:30 and it was easier for me to get off at 11:30 than for her to get off at twelve because I was the material handler for my line while she was the lead for her line. This meant that she had to be at the line when the rest of the crew was there to keep the line going, while I just had to make sure everyone had enough parts to build computers for the half hour I was gone.
So I would pick Darlene up in front of her building and we would park somewhere not too far away and eat our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and talk. Seems like we talked a lot then.
Seems like we had a lot to say and it was all interesting.
* * *
When you first meet someone, someone special I mean, seems like you talk a lot. Seems like you have to tell each other your stories, how you got to where you are, what you wanted to do, what you still want to do. When you first meet someone special, it seems like you want to hear everything they want to tell you. Because you haven't heard it before. Because they are special and what they have to say is special. I wonder what happens there, in your brain. Are you listening with a different part of your brain? Are you listening, and seeing, with your heart instead of your brain? Is there some kind of chemical, a pheromone or something, that makes everything about that other person so interesting? I learned about pheromones in science class. A pheromone is: Any chemical substance secreted by members of an animal species that alters the behavior of other members of the same species. Sex attractant pheromones are widespread, particularly among insects. Other pheromones act as signals for alarm and defense, territory and trail marking and social regulation and recognition.[1] Okay, so that last part, about social regulation and recognition. What if there's a kind of pheromone that people release when they're falling in love that makes them act differently. That makes them think the other's conversation is interesting? That makes them blind to the other person's faults? Is it this pheromone that makes your judgment so out of whack? What if that pheromone fades after a few months or a year? What if you get immune to the pheromone after a while?
In those first months, the pheromone was strong, I guess. We had a lot to talk about. But so far I hadn't been able to talk about the unborn child. Guess the instinct for self-preservation was stronger than the pheromones. I never told her about the unborn child at lunch. Lunch was not a good time to tell about something like that.
* * *
One day, sitting in the car at lunch time, eating our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Darlene slapped her leg and laughed. When Dar laughed like that, it was just a short high little squeaky explosion coming out of her mouth. Just a Ha! all high and squeaky.
We had just been sitting there, looking out the windshield at the cars going by on Scotts Valley Drive. Sitting in the front seats of the Brat, eating our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and not saying anything for a while when Darlene slapped her leg and laughed like that.
"What?" I said.
"My friend Peggy," Darlene said, "She works on the line next to me y'know. She's a older gal but she's pretty cool y'know and..."
Darlene stopped talking. Darlene's shoulders were bouncing up and down a little and she was smiling and out of her mouth came three little Ee Ee Ee sounds like a mouse would laugh, real quiet, so as not to wake the cat. And Darlene's eyes were darting around, looking all over through the windshield. But all that only took the time it took for the little mouse to laugh. Ee Ee Ee.
"She said that when her husband," Darlene said, "You know, wants to go down on her he asks her..."
Darlene made the little mouse laugh again. Ee Ee Ee.
"If she wants a mustache ride!" Darlene said. "'Cause y'see, he has a mustache, y'know? Isn't that just the funniest thing?"
I nodded and smiled and swallowed the piece of sandwich I was chewing.
"That's pretty good," I said.
"A mustache ride," Darlene said. Darlene shook her head.
"I mean," Darlene said, "She must be fifty years old and to talk like that."
I nodded.
"Fifty's not that old," I said.
"Well, no," Darlene said, "But definitely older."
Darlene took a bite of her sandwich and chewed, looking out the windshield. I took a bite of my sandwich and watched some cars go by on Scotts Valley Drive.
"You know," Darlene said. "You have a mustache."
I looked at Darlene. I could feel my collar around my neck. It felt kinda tight.
"Well, not much of one," I said.
"True," Darlene said, "But it qualifies."
Darlene was looking at me under her eyebrows. Darlene's face was down, but her eyes were up, looking at me over her sandwich, under her eyebrows.
"You wanna mustache ride?" I said.
"Boy, would I," Darlene said, "Too bad we have to go back to work."
"Yeah," I said, "Too bad."
Darlene and I looked at the cars going by on Scotts Valley Drive. Across the street was a brown cinderblock building with a log cabin built onto one end and a bunch of old cars out front with numbers soaped onto their windshields. Letters cut out of plywood and coated with expanding foam insulation and painted fluorescent orange were strung across the front. Scotts Valley Motors, the letters said.
“Too bad,” Darlene said.
[1]Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, 1983
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