“Ten weeks. Then I went and had a sonogram. He was sucking his thumb . . . he was . . . I couldn’t make any choice except to have him.”
“Oh, Hester. Jesus Christ.” My appetite is gone, but I eat a bite of whatever just to do something other than puke or say I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry over and over and over again.
“This tastes better with lemon.” She hands me a dish of lemons. Like what I’m really concerned about here is the right seasoning. “It wasn’t that bad. Really.”
“You can’t tell me it didn’t suck ass being a pregnant senior at Ellery.”
“Well, good news.” She raises her glass of ginger ale as if she’s toasting me. “It took a long time to be obvious. Of course, a ton of Scarlet Letter jokes after that, but . . . my real friends, they stuck by me. So did Grand, of course.”
“Yeah, and I’ve heard actually delivering a baby is a blast,” I mutter.
“I went for drugs.” Hester actually smiles. “Too bad you never got into epidurals recreationally. They’re the best.”
“I can’t believe you’re joking about this.”
“Well . . . here we are, Tim. Things could be a lot worse.”
How? Searching . . . searching . . .
The waiter comes back, practically on tiptoe. I decide to change the subject for a while.
“So, uh, how, uh, old is the kid?” The words sound twisted, bizarre, like I’m some stranger in a checkout line inquiring about a random baby, instead of the one plopped right in front of us, ours, fidgeting slightly in his sleep. “I mean, him, Calvin.”
“He was three weeks early, I think, so now he’s almost five and a half weeks. Beyond his birth weight by two whole pounds.”
“Oh. That’s nice. Uh . . .” I eat more whatever these round things are. They taste chewy and weird. The waiter advances with the wine list. Can’t he tell we’re frickin’ underage? I wave him away with a scowl. Hester toys with her fork.
“So,” she continues in nearly a whisper, “he was born and . . . I ended up finding your address in the yearbook.”
“Wait—did you go to my parents’ house first? With the kid, I mean?”
“No! I called, and I got this girl? She gave me your new address.” The waiter whisks away our appetizer plates, replacing them with yet another plateful of unidentifiable stuff.
I sniff at it suspiciously. This girl. Nan, obviously. She could have given me a heads-up. But then, even though my twin usually fears the worst, how could she guess that some random girl on the other end of the phone would chuck my life into a wood chipper like this?
“So,” Hester says, all businesslike suddenly. “We should talk about the details.” She swishes whatever the hell she’s eating around in whatever that gloppy white sauce is, takes a tiny nibble, sets it back down.
“Yeah, that . . . how exactly do we work this?” And how long do we have to? I gulp more water, draining the glass. At this point, the waiter is totally MIA, avoiding eye contact, standing with his arms folded, eyes cast to the ceiling. “I mean, I’m pretty booked—I have a job, and I’m getting my GED . . . and . . .”
Don’t have time for you, kid. Calvin gives this little flicker of a frown.
Hester looks down at her plate. “We can figure it out. We can get the adoption thing rolling right away,” she says quickly. “But before that’s taken care of, it’s not all on you. I mean, I’ll help, and Grand can too. He wants to meet you, by the way.”
Yeah, I’ll bet.
Wait, did she say she’d help? Am I supposed to be the primary parent here? Hell, no. The baby stirs again, kicking a foot, and then quiets down. Fuck. He’s so small. His hand is, like, the size of one of the cherry tomatoes in my salad.
“Don’t think I’m a bad person,” Hester warns. “But I can’t just drop my whole life till I fix things.”
“Obvious who the bad guy is here, Hester. Hey, I’ll work around my schedule. I mean, I’ll babysit, of course, because, because”—I swallow, set my jaw—“he’s my son, after all.”
She nods, blinking rapidly. “He is. Yours.”
Undeniable. I might not get the fatherly bond, but the facts are the facts: I was wasted. I didn’t use a condom right. There’s a baby. Health class 101.
Suddenly, her shoulders start quivering and there’s a complete tsunami of tears, ragged sobs that get louder and louder with each one. Her voice rises and she points a finger at me, jabbing in the air. “I know you don’t want this. But you can’t possibly know what it’s like for me . . . He’s tiny—he was born early and he’s eating all the time to catch up and . . . and . . . he never ever sleeps. He’s always pooping and crying and I have no idea why, what’s wrong. Why can’t he just be quiet? Isn’t it all enough without that? For days after he was born my breasts were swollen and leaking, and I had to have stitches because of vaginal tearing. I’m eighteen years old . . . It’s just wrong.”
Jesus God. Kill me fast. All these other people are staring at us.
“All you did was get your rocks off! You don’t even re-re-member it. And I’m fat now—aren’t I?”
This seems the slightest of her problems, but at least I know the answer to that one. “No! No. Of course not. Not at all. You look just the same.”
As the girl I can’t remember.
Sweat rolling down my forehead. “Better! You look better!”
She gulps, looks around for her napkin, which she must have dropped. I start to hand her mine, and then remember that I spat one of the scallops out into it.
“Better . . . really?”
“Totally.” The waiter is in the corner, examining the ceiling some more. The bunch of women drinking cosmos at the next table look like they want to shoot me in the nuts, chop me up with dull knives, and throw my body in a sinkhole. Go right ahead, ladies, please.
I shove my chair back, come around next to her, pat her on the shoulders. “Shh, Hes. It’s no problem. I got this. I don’t sleep all that well myself, so that’s probably my fault too. I’ll just . . . I’ll just deal. I mean, uh, do you want me to take him—uh—tonight?”
What am I saying? I can’t have a baby at the garage apartment. Overnight? Next to the Garretts? To Alice? This is like a car pileup that keeps rolling on and on, like some replay Satan shows on a panoramic screen when you get to hell.
“I’ll make sure he has everything he needs, don’t worry,” Hester assures me, her voice even lower and raspier than normal.
That kid is entire universes away from having everything he needs.
Somehow Calvin has managed to sleep through all of this. He stays conked out when we head to Hester’s car, me lugging the car seat, Hester paving the way, somehow having recovered from total breakdown. If these are hormones, they suck.
The entire backseat of Hester’s car, and her whole trunk, are jammed with baby stuff. How can he need so much? He’s the size of a tennis racket.
First she hands me that big-ass diaper bag. Then this straw-basket-looking thing that looks like a supersized version of something Goldilocks would use.
Am I supposed to . . . take the kid on a picnic or something?
“I just washed the sheepskin,” she adds.
“Uh?”
Hester rustles in the backseat, and comes out with an actual sheepskin, some blankets, and this sock monkey. The kind with the red butt. I’m still standing there with the picnic basket and the diaper bag, which is getting heavier by the second. My heart is cramping, squeezing tighter and tighter like my hand that’s fisted around the handle of the basket.
“So you put this in the bottom, and then make sure Calvin’s always on his back.” She slides the sheepskin into the basket, then sets the monkey on top. He seems to be glaring at me with these evil little eyes. Those things have always creeped me the hell out. “Only a few more things, and then the baby and you can get going on your day together.”
Yay.
Now she’s back with a blanket, this little mirror, and what looks like a parachut
e pack.
The basket is a bed, then, but apparently I’m taking Calvin skydiving.
“I should have had this better organized. It’s hard to get it together.”
Having trouble getting myself together, so I head out to my own car, flip the hatch, shove aside my sleeping bag, a container of tennis balls, a jumbo pack of Dr Pepper, and a pillowcase full of laundry and put it all in the back. I leave the hatch open, because there may be more to come. Like a pup tent and a croquet set.
Starting to think she’s giving me the kid permanently. She’s here now, with him in her arms, bonnet on.
“Want me to help you with the car seat?”
“Nah. I’m good,” I say. “No problem.”
It takes an insane amount of time to get it in. I can’t reach my fingers far enough under it to snag it, and when I do, the belt keeps snapping back out from the bottom, hitting my knuckles. Ow.
I pull back, sucking my knuckles; hit my head on the top of the open door.
“Here he is. You put that mirror right at his feet so you can see him while you’re driving.” Holding Calvin, she hands me the bucket part of the car seat. Awake now, he stares at me. I stare back. I have to watch him while I’m driving? How’s that going to work?
“Uh. Hi there, Calvin.” My voice starts out squeaky, then goes game-show-host-hearty. He gets that worried pucker between his eyes again, screws up his mouth a little, and his lower lip trembles.
Hester scoops him into my arms so quickly. No warning. Just boom, I’m holding this warm squirming thing. Wearing a bonnet. The back of his undershirt is damp. He’s sweating too.
I pat him on his midget shoulder. “We’re good,” I tell him. Serious eyes, anxious expression. It’s the Nan face, version 2.0.
Once he’s all buckled in, Hester hands me this thick bunch of papers covered with round, loopy writing, torn from a loose-leaf notebook, stapled together. Like the first draft of an English paper in 1986. “Just because I’m anal, I wrote everything down.” Then she keeps talking and talking and talking: Make sure you do this and never do that, and I know you’d probably figure all this out, but just in case . . .
Hell, no, I would not have figured it all out. How could I? Sure, I would have magically guessed which side of the diaper was the front and how to put him in that parachute thing, which turns out to be this weird little kangaroo pouch that you wear him in like a fanny pack for your chest, and that you need to hold his head at all times since it’ll, like, snap off otherwise, because all that jazz is just instinctive, right?
Simple.
Finally, ten fucking thousand years later, we’re on the road. I almost have an accident because when we hit the first stoplight, I worry that I braked too hard, reach back to check him, and this anger-management asshole with a beer gut and an attitude nearly hits us with a motorcycle, giving me the bird, and calling, “Go screw yourself, kid.”
Done, dude.
Calvin starts making little squeaky sounds as we head onto Route 7, and I realize I’ve left the window open and he’s probably getting a blast of exhaust in his face. The first exit leads to Brinkley Bay, a private beach area with those huge signs that make it sound like you’ll be shot by a firing squad if you go anywhere close to the water.
I pull into the parking lot anyway.
Open the back door and crouch next to the car, reach under his chin, tuck my fingers into this fold of skin, so soft, it’s not even like skin. Like . . . like silk. Only drooly. Untie the bonnet thing, and toss it to the car floor. His lips give a little twitch, not a full-on smile, but better than that worried trembly jazz.
“Yeah, you won’t be wearing ruffles. No son of mine, and all that shit—sorry, stuff—right? That goes.” The wrinkle’s back between his eyebrows. Automatically, I stick my fingertip there, smoothing it away the way Ma always used to do with me when she saw me do the same, back when I was a kid. You’ll give yourself wrinkles before you’re nine!
Ma. She’s gonna kill me.
But first she’ll cry.
Pop—
Shit.
Calvin can’t even focus, really; his eyes keep looking like they’re almost crossing. Is that normal? Is he normal? I hadn’t even thought of that. I’ve done a hell of a lot of everything bad. God knows what funky stuff there could have been in anything that came from me. Maybe I’ve already messed him up without even knowing I made him.
I reach out a finger, bump it against his small soft fist, clamped so tightly shut. Probably a bit young to get the whole fist bump thing, so I uncurl his damp fingers, slide my index finger into his sweaty starfish hand. So small it curls around the top joint of my finger with room to spare.
“It’ll be okay, Cal. You’re okay,” I say, patting his stomach under the straps, in what I hope is a reassuring way. Because that’s what parents do, right? Lie their asses off.
Chapter Twenty
ALICE
A corner of something peeks out of the mailbox, some bright flyer. Harry must have forgotten his mail-boy duties yesterday. I scoop out the envelopes, flip through: some letter with lipstick kisses on it for Joel—really? Justine magazine for Andy, a box from Mustard of the Month Club for Mom (Christmas gift from Mr. Methuan from down the street—Mom drives him to doctors’ appointments sometimes), electric bill, flyer about the SBH homecoming dance, letter from the bank. Shove the others under my armpit, flip that one open.
Read once.
Read twice.
My lungs lock shut, like a window slamming.
Who took all the oxygen out of the bright September air?
“I don’t like this place,” George says. “It makes my stomach hurt.”
“Just a few minutes, G. Then we’ll go to the bookstore. A book and a magazine.” Bribery: My new middle name.
Patsy’s silent, fingering the Pooh Bear Band-Aid from her polio vaccine. She fixes me with an unforgiving glare. I hold up my index finger, where she bit me during the shot, and glare back.
Yes, I am nineteen years old, but waiting on the hard bench at Stony Bay Building and Loan makes my stomach hurt too. It doesn’t help that I’m wearing a button-down shirt and my navy-blue interview skirt, control-top tights digging into my waist.
“How many more minutes?” George asks.
“Not sure, Georgie.” I try to distract him with I Spy, but there’s very little to see in the bank’s main room, which looks like the “after” photo of a Suck the Personality Out of a Room challenge. Beige carpet. Beige walls. One of those white-noise machines whirring. Hushed voices.
“How many more minutes now?”
“Not long.”
“Ice cream after?”
“It’s not even noon, G.”
Six more “How many more minutes?” before the door to the bank manager’s office opens at last.
There’s only one chair and George immediately claims it, sliding his butt back, his legs swinging high, kicking the metal chair legs. The man behind the desk doesn’t look up despite the loud clanging.
“Hey!” George says loudly.
The man glances up briefly, raises a warning finger, keeps writing something, then, finally, sets down his pen with a heavy sigh. I expect him to look me in the eye at this point, but his gaze is fastened just beyond my shoulder.
“There was an urgent matter?”
“Yes. This.” I set the letter from the bank on his desk. “We’ve been receiving money from a trust here. This says that won’t be continuing. That’s impossible, Mr.”—I check out the brown placard with his name—“Mason.”
Holy . . .
Tim’s dad?
Yes, it’s obvious somehow, although he looks like part of the Vacuum Out the Personality contest. Same thick hair with a slight wave as Tim’s—but ash-gray instead of flame—same high cheekbones, but less prominent without a smile—same long, thin body, but it comes off gaunt instead of lean.
He’s holding the paper up, reading through it. “Yes, I sent this, as instructed by the donor of t
he trust account. All further transactions are to cease.”
“Did you kill that deer?” George asks, staring in horrified fascination at a moth-eaten deer head mounted on the wall.
Mr. Mason is wearing a similar expression, looking back at George. “It was here when I inherited the office.”
“They can’t cease,” I say. “There was an agreement. As long as bills come in, they’re supposed to be paid.”
My voice is rising. George chews his lip. Patsy shoves her sturdy body closer to mine, hard enough to knock my breath out.
“I sent the letter as instructed by my client,” Mr. Mason says. “I don’t know the details, except that, as you say, the expenses sent to this address were to be covered as some sort of scholarship donation—political in nature, perhaps? Perhaps the monetary cap for such donations has been reached and so . . .”
He’s still not meeting my eyes. It’s weirdly disorienting, especially since his eyes are the same color as Tim’s. But Tim’s tilt up slightly at the corners, perpetual smile almost always lurking. Nothing like that going on here. Mr. Mason doesn’t look mad or sad. Just . . . gone.
“No cap. There was no limit. The bills were just supposed to be—”
My voice is full-on loud, and now there’s a flicker of expression, but indecipherable. Alarm, annoyance—I can’t tell. He glances at the screen of his cell phone, as though he might have an app to summon some armed guards to escort the crazy girl from the room.
“If you’ll just give me the legal document stating the terms of the agreement, I’m sure we can settle this. It’s notarized, of course.”
It’s nonexistent, of course. My parents would never have thought to get the arrangement with Grace Reed in writing. Half the agreements Dad does with suppliers at Garrett’s are handshake deals—and I’m sure Senator Grace would have flat-out refused to put this in writing anyway. What if it leaked to the press? No. There was no notarized anything. But we should’ve at least gotten a damn lawyer.
I put my head in my hands, look up. “It was a debt of honor. There isn’t any—”
Honor here.