Toy Soldiers



Luke Pinciotti-Foreman is well-tended, red-headed, and fat-faced as he approaches his first birthday.  He likes plastic dinosaurs and animal crackers, and he spends an hour every day watching Sesame Street.

 

Eric Foreman scratches out "animal crackers" - Luke's more into apple juice now, he decides, replacing the words judiciously.  He brushes the heavy pages of the "Baby's Firsts" book he writes in every day.  "Luke's first word"; "Luke's favorite foods", all recorded for prudency, like a first clipping from his small nails and pink scalp.  Polaroid’s of the child dominated the spare walls of his parent's two-room-private-bath apartment, taped up and tacked on, covering foundation cracks and chipping paint. 

 

Their friends think it's all a little too much, but his parents need more film.  No: more film and more time.

 

It's Donna who doesn't have enough time, now that she's Minneapolis' #1 morning drive time deejay with Zoo 98.0 under the nom de plume "Foxxy  Donna".  Rising at four every morning, she's home by noon and asleep by six, usually with Luke in her arms.  Eric stays home all day with the baby, watching over him in the morning; squeezing hours of affection out while Donna's home - her salary paying all of the bills.  The thought still brought Eric occasional spurts of egocentric panic - he could get a job easily working in one of the understaffed metropolitan schools - but Donna wanted one of them to stay home with the baby.  It was easier for him to finish his dissertation at home, in the slim hours after she fell asleep and before he joined her in bed.  They had a plan - a plan, he still didn't believe it - when Eric had his masters, he could go to work and Donna could complete her degree in radio and broadcasting.  By then she'd have benefits and Luke would be in elementary school, enabling Donna to begin her career without worry.  It had taken Eric a year to get over that fact, but by now he had acclimated to the fact that he was a house husband - a damn good househusband.  A househusband who, thanks to his wife's job, was going to be treated to opening-night tickets to "Return of the Jedi".

 

He cracks open a beer and pulls the baby into his lap.  Oh yeah - life is sweet.

 

On the screen, Grover runs toward the viewer.  "Neear..." he informs the audience, running away.  "Farrr!" he concludes.

 

"Grover's playing the Aunt  Jackie game," Eric informs the hypnotized child - an acknowledging look, and nothing more.  Poor kid's too young to recognize a good burn - but then again, he has his mom's sense of humor.

 

Aunt Jackie has absolutely none at all, but deep down, Eric doesn't blame her.  An on-the-scene reporter for WMIX CBS in Cedar Rapids, Jackie had left Point Place with the hope that Fez would follow.  When he didn't, she ended up breaking up with him over the phone - curtly, unemotionally.  The three years since that night had been kinder to Fez - he now teaches English to immigrants at the Learning Annex and began dating a young librarian named Sarah.  But Jackie...Jackie had hooked back up with Hyde.  Her whole life was now a game of Near/Far.

 

Eric would never tell him, but it was time Hyde got with the program and did something about Jackie - if for no other reason than to spare Eric's ears, which rang from Jackie's high-pitched Sunday morning telephone whine fests.  As typical, his friend was satisfied coasting through life like an Eskimo on an ice floe - satisfied with his record store, his - admittedly ugly - Burt Reynolds mustache, and the diminished weekly circles - with Jackie and Kelso living out of town, and Eric and Donna hours away and tied down by their commitments, the time-honored tradition had been pared down to Hyde and Fez passing a joint back and forth and giggling at the ceiling. 

 

Eric supposed there was a time a man had to face his responsibilities and grow up, and his time had arrived a year ago when Donna's sixteen-hour travail ended in the birth of his firstborn.  It had grown him up in a hurry - to his father's rare pleasure - and now at twenty-five he found himself relating more strongly to Red than ever.  A shudder passed over him with the knowledge - another as he realized he was halfway to thirty.  Now he couldn't risk keeping a joint around the apartment because America, under the just-say-no eyes of the stern first lady Nancy Reagan, had begun a crackdown on drug possession that could put him behind bars for years.  The times were insane and deadly, and there seemed to be no room for the goofy optimism of his teenage years.

 

The darkness of his mind cleared quickly at the sound of something crashing to the floor in what sounded like the bedroom.  Instantly, he was on the alarm.  Eric picked the baby up, then quickly laid him flat in the play-pen - the baseball bat he and Donna had designated a self-defense weapon was located in the umbrella stand.

 

Stealthily, he crawled to the bedroom, holding the bat high over his head.  Constantly came the reminder: protect the baby protect the baby....Eric nearly ripped the door off of its hinges to get inside.

 

The soft cursing he heard was utterly familiar.

 

The bat hit the floor.  "Laurie?"

 

Her head flew up - she had been prowling through Donna's jewelry box.  "Doesn't stretch have anything pawnable?"

 

A chill spread through Eric's body.   The latch felt heavier than usual in Eric's hand as he held it.  "Why didn't you call?"

 

She rolled her eyes.  "The question should be 'why did you break into my apartment?'"  She put down the jewelry box and walked over to the tiny picture window she'd managed to pick open.  Had they left it unlatched last night?  It was unshattered.  Laurie closed and locked it.

 

"I was getting to that one, but I don't think I want to know the answer."

 

She stepped forward, into the brighter light coming from the hallway.  He blinked at the figure on his doorstep.  No, that couldn't be his sister.

 

"Look, you can have the silver," he said nervously, "but you can't take my Star Trek figures..."

 

The unkempt, sweaty woman in his bedroom rolled her eyes contemptuously beneath a layer of dingy blond hair.  "I don't want your dolls, Eric."

 

A wave of relief caused Eric's toes to tingle, but he didn't feel any safer.  "Sorry.  You look so...."

 

She smiled wanly.  "I'm using Sun-In.  Can you tell the difference?"

 

"You can afford a bottle of sun-in but not a call home to mom?"

 

She glowered at him.  "If you don't want to spend time with your big sister, I can just..."

 

Eric quickly shut the door behind her.  "I've got coffee on the stove."

 

"Shit, bigfoot's got you acting like Betty Crocker!"  Laurie cackled, her heavy tread echoing through the room as she shoved him aside and entered into the living area.  Luke made a sound of protest from the bassinette, and she stopped and pivoted to face him.  "My nephew?" she asked.

 

Eric nodded. 

 

Laurie managed a smile, her fondness for babies re-emerging.  "He looks like you," she said a damn faint praise as far as Eric was concerned.  There was some undefined ache in Lori's voice that Eric couldn't wrap his brain around.  In a second, she averted her eyes and walked nonchalantly over to the table. 

 

In the half-light of the kitchen, Eric could see how badly off his sister really was.  Her skin pock-marked with red spots, it was translucent, giving off a bluish glow in the half light.  "Are you sick?"

 

Laurie looked up suddenly.  "That's why I'm here."

 

"If you're sick, you can't be near the baby," Eric carried Jacen to his playpen and laid the baby down.  "Is it something I can catch?"

 

She shook her head.  "Do you have anything to eat?  I've been starving for days..."

 

"There's some cookies in a jar..."  Lorrie reached over eagerly behind her, knocking it off the counter.  The pig-shaped crockery burst into a thousand white-bellied shards as it hit the tiled floor.  To Eric's amazement, his sister picked up two of the cookies from the pile and shoved them eagerly into her mouth.

 

"Did you cut yourself?" he asked in a fatherly tone.

 

Lorrie gulped and shook her head.  "I need milk."

 

He hesitated.

 

"Milk or I'll tell Mom."

 

Automatically, Eric followed the order, what he'd done registering after Lori had finished her glass.

 

"So, how is Tijuana?"

 

Her eyes were unfocused, distant.  "I moved from Tijuana years ago," she said at last.

 

"The last address mom had was for the trailer in Plaza Nationale."

 

"I sent her the last one.  It must have gotten lost..."  The final word seemed to hang in the air between them like a pair of sneakers on a high tension wire.

 

"Are you okay?"  He knew she wasn't okay. 

 

"I'm fine, but..." she leaned in.  "Can you loan me a hundred bucks?  I need to see a doctor."

 

Eric eyed Lori.  "What's wrong?"

 

"I've got this cough," she - rather obviously - faked a loud cough at that point. 

 

"You haven't coughed once since you got here."

 

"Just give me the money." She said, brittle tone speaking volumes.

 

"I can't just give you money randomly."

 

"Bigfoot's holding the purse strings?"

 

He winced.  "What you think about Donna doesn't matter.  Even if I was working, we wouldn't have a lot of money to spare."

 

"Bigfoot's holding the purse strings," Lori frowned.  "When are you gonna start acting like a man and grow some balls, Eric?"

 

"Let's not talk about my balls.  If one of us is missing them, it's you - you never write.  Mom's worried sick."

 

"Mom doesn't need to know about my life.  Or my little visit."  She smiled - an empty, hollow expression.  Eric recalled his selfish, shrill, sex-crazed sister and wondered who this woman was.  "Do you have the hundred or what?"

 

"No."

 

Her eyes flared.

 

"If you tell mom I turned you down, I'll tell her you're sick."  He let the words make impact in her brain.  "You are sick, right Lori?"

 

They both knew their mother would rush down to check her - that she would see something she didn't need to see.  "Uh huh."

 

He reached into his back pocket, withdrawing three bills and handing them into her grasping hands.  She read the face of each president, her lips turning down.  "This is only fifty dollars."

 

"It's all I've got."

 

"I need a hundred."

 

"Then you can find your own money."

 

A small bitter smile crossed her face.  "Thanks."  She got up -too quickly, and made her way to the door of the apartment.  Before leaving, Lori looked once more at the slumbering Luke.  "Watch him," Lori said.  "Kids that age are totally clueless.  They don't know when they've gotten in over their heads."

 

Chilled to the soul, Eric allowed Lori to leave.  What could he do to stop her?  She was a grown woman, they had never been truly close....he tormented himself until Donna came home.

 

She was as she tended to be every Friday night - beautiful, exhausted, and hungry.  They divided a bucket of chicken after she nursed and burped Luke.

 

"What's wrong?"

 

"Huh?"

 

"You've been watching me for, like, fifteen minutes.  What happened?"

 

Quickly, Eric got up, wrapped his arms around his wife.  "I just wanted to hug you."

 

She never asked him what the occasion was - or what happened to the fifty dollars.  None of this haunted Eric.

 

The fact that he never saw Lori alive again did.




The End