Belly Up Page 18

  It wasn’t a contest of tragedies, and I realized that, but the thing I’d built up in my head as earth shattering and catastrophic...was still huge, but I definitely had it easier than some, too. The perspective was good, I supposed, but also uncomfortable.

  People were quiet around me, either expecting me to talk more or for Amanda or Marie to speak. It probably wasn’t a very long silence, but it felt like forever as I fussed with the strings on my hoodie and stared at the floor. The circle had lots to say with the previous three girls, but not so much for me. It was Wei, the Chinese girl with the long-sleeved pink T-shirt and almost polite micro–baby belly, who saved me from melting in mortification.

  “My boyfriend and I thought you couldn’t get pregnant if you pulled out,” she admitted, shyly. “So, if you’re dumb, so am I. I’m going to be living at home, too.”

  “Kinda the same,” said the other Hannah. “I thought me and my boyfriend were cool because my period was really regular so I could work around ovulation, but I screwed up the math by a day or two.”

  That led to a third girl, Janeen, a pretty, petite black girl with elbow-length box braids and a red pullover hoodie nodding in agreement. “I didn’t want to ask my mother for condoms ’cause she would have flipped on me. I should have gone to the free clinic but I was lazy. So if you’re dumb, I’m real dumb.”

  “I hate that word, dumb. For lots of reasons,” Marie said, smiling at all of us. “But people make mistakes. It’s part of growing. Maybe you made a choice you’d do differently if you could turn back time, but that’s not how life works. You’re young people conquering something a lot of people don’t have to worry about until later, when they’re more financially independent and have a little more experience under their belts. But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you can’t do it.”

  Amanda smiled at all of us. “Because you can. Marie and I teach this class because we had babies young, too. Life isn’t over. It’s just out of order from most everyone else, and you might need a little more help than other moms, and that’s okay.”

  That minute, right there, with tears popping up in my eyes I really hadn’t asked for, was when I knew I’d stay in the stupid flour-diaper-baby class after all.

  * * *

  “When you say you stabbed the flour baby a lot, do you mean on purpose because it made you angry?”

  Mom grinned below the pink-framed sunglasses that ate up half of her face. We were on the highway, heading home from group, the windows cracked in the car because New England was weird. Two days before it had been thirty-six degrees. It was almost seventy and I was sweating to death. I peeled off my sweatshirt, not caring that my Legend of Zelda T-shirt was stretched so taut over my belly that Link looked like Jabba the Hutt.

  “Very funny, smart-ass,” I said.

  “Hey! Be nice to your mother. It took thirty-seven and a half hours to push you out. I sincerely hope Cass is kinder on your hooha, pumpkinhead.”

  “You’re rude.” I fished around in my hoodie for my cell before throwing the sweatshirt in the back seat. Phones were forbidden during teen preggo class for obvious reasons, which is how I missed the party that had started in my messages at twelve past one in the afternoon.

  The party being Devi’s near frantic texts.

  girl

  srsly grl

  where are you

  call me now

  Sara

  Serendipity.

  Dude.

  I FOUND JACK. BABY DADDY WORKING @ GAS STATION ON CORNER OF ELM AND NORTH IN CHESHIREVILLE. IANELLI’S GARAGE.

  Cheshireville was the town next to Stonington, not ten minutes from Mormor’s house.

  He’d said he wanted to work on cars with his dad. Of course they owned a garage.

  I couldn’t make my fingers work on my smartphone. I couldn’t really speak, and the squeak I did manage was swallowed by the rushing whir of the car’s open windows. I stared at Devi’s texts, then glanced at Mom’s profile, my heart pounding, my head spinning. I tried to say something, failed and instead shook my head, pulling up my GPS on my phone and typing in Ianelli’s Garage. It took four tries thanks to misspellings, but I found it in the list and set our course.

  “Exit fourteen,” I managed to say, sounding choked.

  “What about it?”

  “Get off there? Devi found Jack.”

  Mom’s brow crinkled. “Jack who?”

  “...truck guy. Cass’s dad.”

  Mom’s mouth fell open. She looked as shell-shocked as I felt, but she quickly nodded and moved the car from the center lane to the right so we could get off the highway. We were wordless as we made our way to Cheshireville. A few times Mom looked like she’d talk, but she shook her head and licked her lips instead.

  GPS said we were four minutes away from the garage by the time I replied to Devi. Omw w/mom.

  Devi’s response was to call me. I picked up and cleared my throat, hoping the frog would vacate so I could actually say something. I needed the practice; it wouldn’t do me a whole heck of a lot of good to go see the sperm donor and not have the capacity for speech. I mean, the belly was conversation enough if he knew how to do math, but it’d be nice if I could manage anything beyond the obvious, too.

  “I almost crapped myself,” she said in greeting. “We stopped for gas after picking up Dad’s dry cleaning and Jack waited on us. He didn’t recognize me, though, and I didn’t know if I should say anything? So I kept my mouth shut. I hope that was the right thing to do.”

  “I—mmm. It’s fine,” I said, because really, it wasn’t her job to do that work for me.

  “You okay?”

  How was I supposed to answer that? On one hand, it was nice to know Jack’s last name. He was as responsible as I was for my Jabba-the-Link condition. Without his efforts, there’d be no diaper pins or diminishing line of sight on my feet. On the other hand, ignorance had been bliss, too. What if he wanted custody? What if he got mad at me that I hadn’t aborted? What if he—

  “Hi, Devi,” Mom said, effectively stomping out my panic before it set in.

  “Hi, Mom,” Devi said back, forcing me to repeat it.

  I sucked in a breath and sighed.

  “I’ll be okay, I think? I dunno. Depends on how this goes, I suppose.” Mom put her blinker on and the GPS voice told us to go a mile and Ianelli’s would be on the left. “I hope he’s still working.”

  “He was when I texted you. At least you know how to get in touch with him, either way. Call me after, okay? If you need company or whatever, I’m yours.”

  “Yeah, sure. Leaf’s meeting Mom and Mormor later, though, so I should be okay until then? But I’ll let you know.”

  “Cool. I’m here. Love you.”

  “Love you, too, wifey.”

  We hung up right as we pulled the car not into one of the lanes to get gas, but the small parking lot beside the garage. It was a white building with three pits for cars, the big aluminum doors lifted to reveal a pair of SUVs on mechanic lifts. Red-and-green lettering announced that I’d arrived at Ianelli & Sons Garage, the sign spinning in slow circles. I couldn’t see any people milling around at first, and I sat there in the idling car with Mom, steeling myself for whatever was to come next.

  A blue Corolla pulled up for gas.

  The door of the office opened and out walked a tall, thin guy with black hair and a crooked nose wearing a navy blue jumpsuit with his name stitched in white on the left breast. I couldn’t read the letters from where I sat with Mom, but I knew what it said despite the distance.

  Jack.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Do you want me to go with you?” Mom asked.

  Mom’s presence was support, but at the same time, she had that hole in her face that insisted on making words and noise and that could go so wrong so fast.

  “I got it.”
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  “You sure?”

  “Yep.”

  Mom frowned.

  “Good luck, peaches. Signal if you need help. If you light him on fire, I’m assuming he was a butthead.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  I fussed with the seat belt, grunting at the stretch of right arm looping over round belly to unlatch myself on the left side. I walked from the car, my hand going over my bump with the distorted cartoon T-shirt face. Jack was either going to assume I’d gotten fatter, or he was going to figure it out pretty darn quick. It was a highly localized protuberance, shall we say.

  Thank you, Mrs. Weller, for that fifty-cent vocabulary word.

  Jack finished with the Corolla and spun around to greet me, hearing my feet shuffling over the loose gravel of the parking lot. At first, he didn’t recognize me. People got that glassy eyed, vacant look with strangers, kinda like dogs trying to do physics, but then something clicked in his head. He blinked. His head tilted just slightly, and his mouth tipped up taller at the ends.

  Of course he was smiling. The last time he’d seen me, I was bouncing on his weenie like it was my own personal trampoline.

  “Sara, right? From the party?”

  “Yeah, hey, Jack. My best friend came to get gas earlier and said you were around. Devi? She was at the party, too.” I managed my own smile but I felt like I was going to barf on his work boots. “I. Uhh. I was looking for you for a couple months after we hooked up, but no one could find your number or knew your name.” I pointed up at the family garage sign. “Know it now, though.”

  He nodded. “Same, yeah. Didn’t help that I couldn’t remember your bigger name? I knew it was Sara-something but not the rest of it. And there are a lot of regular Saras around, come to find out. I’m dating another one now, actually.”

  His smile was sheepish. His hand went to the back of his neck.

  He was so cute.

  ...look, just ’cause I’m on a diet doesn’t mean I can’t look at the menu. Jack was a good-looking guy. That in no way impacted my fondness for Leaf. If anything, it made me happy that maybe our kid wouldn’t be uglier than a bucket of rocks.

  “Cool! I’ve got a boyfriend, too. His name’s Leaf,” I replied. “And I’m Serendipity. It’s not an easy one to remember.”

  “Nice! And yeah, that—sorry. I tried. On the name.”

  Awkward silence.

  More smiling.

  I kept waiting for him to notice my belly. Heck, I kept patting it in circles to draw his gaze downward, but he kept right on looking at my face. The one time in my life I wanted a guy to give me that lazy perusal and he wouldn’t comply.

  Going to have to do this the hard way, I guess.

  “So I’m pregnant,” I blurted. “About six months.”

  “Whoa. You are?” That got him to look down, and when he got there, staring at my distorted Link-faced midsection, he wavered on his feet. “That’s...so. Is it...”

  “Yep!”

  I probably sounded too cheerful, like Barbie on steroids, but in reality, I was panicking, my body hot, my toes curling inside my sneakers. The tummy flutters that indicated the child was awake increased. When Mommy was twitterpated, so was Little Star, apparently. We were going down the anxiety trail together—our first Mommy-and-Me adventure.

  Jack couldn’t stop staring at my belly.

  “I’m sure. Really sure. We can do testing if you want, but I hadn’t been with anyone else and haven’t been since. Not even with Leaf yet, but...that’s TMI. Sorry. I’m babbling. It’s just—I’m thinking of naming her Cass? But we can talk about it if you want to be involved. Dr. Cardiff said the baby will be born with a vagina so I’m assuming she’s a girl. But I’ll be down if she determines she’s not later. That’s...yeah. I’m babbling,” I finished weakly.

  “Oh, shit. Oh, shit. My old man is going to kill me.” Jack glanced over at the garage, his hand covering his mouth. I followed his gaze. A tall, thin man with graying temples and a mustache worked on one of the SUVs, his hands twisting inside the guts of the machine. Jack was built like him and dressed like him thanks to the uniform. It was like looking at a second Jack, before and after a time machine.

  “I didn’t want to tell my mother, either. It’s hard, I know.” I felt like crying again, but to be fair, I’d gotten weepy at a tampon commercial the week before thanks to hormones, so it wasn’t out of character.

  Watching Jack process—the flicker of emotions from shock to sadness to anger and frustration—felt weirdly invasive, like I was peeking at his diary. I hadn’t been able to process the anvil dropping on my head in private, either, and I didn’t want to do that to Jack if I could help it. I grabbed my phone and pulled up my contacts list, keeping my eyes averted from him so he didn’t think I was gawking at his expense.

  “You’ve got to think about it, and talk to your parents and stuff. So why don’t we exchange numbers and you can get back to me? If you want anything to do with the baby or—well. Talk to your parents, I guess, and then text me? We can maybe get together?”

  It took Jack a minute, but he nodded and pulled out his phone, too. He was sheet-white as he typed in my number. His voice warbled as he gave me his. I felt sorry for him, to the point I leaned in to give him a fierce hug. I hoped he didn’t think it was weird, but I’m pretty sure when you’ve exchanged bodily fluids and made a baby together, a hug was a fairly innocuous thing to do.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for, but it felt like the right thing to say.

  His arms closed around me and he squeezed tight. “I’m sorry, too. I’ll get back to you quick. Promise.”

  I pulled away and nodded, walking my way back to Mom and the car, aware that he was watching every step I took.

  * * *

  “But you’re okay?” Mom asked for the fourteenth time since leaving Ianelli’s.

  “I think so.”

  “I want to support you,” she said.

  “You can support me by getting me home so I can clean my room before Leaf comes over,” I replied.

  Mom nodded. She accelerated five whole miles more per hour.

  “I’m just worried he won’t call back. What if it’s a fake number?”

  Mom was fretting.

  “...we were at his dad’s garage. With the family name on it. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t do that, anyway, but if he would—he’s real dumb and I’m sorry to my kid for saddling her with his inferior gene pool.”

  Mom cringed.

  “Point! I’m nervous. Sorry.”

  “So am I.”

  After I’d given up on finding Jack, I’d abandoned the idea that my child would have a father. Truthfully, I’d been okay with that. It was what I knew. All the major milestones: Mom and Mormor. School plays, graduation from middle school, my spelling bee competitions—my mother and grandmother had been there. My father was a ghost in my life, a concept that people told me existed but I never actually saw. Sometimes, Mom got child support when my father worked somewhere that his wages could be garnished, but that was rare. Mom said he did odd job construction under the table, probably to avoid paying for me.

  He never called or asked for pictures. There were no birthday or Christmas cards. He was nothing to me. I wasn’t even mad about it because how can you be mad at nothing?

  The notion of dealing with things like support and custody and weekend visitation because a dad wanted to be around was foreign territory. And it was scary. What if Jack talked to his parents and they wanted to take my baby away from me half the time? They probably wouldn’t but...what if?

  I’d said I was okay but it was a lie. Mom knew it, too, if her glances were any indication. We pulled into the driveway without another word. I shuffled into the house, feeling tired and achy and vaguely like I had to pee. Dr. Cardiff said that’d get worse throughout the third trimester a
s the kid’s weight pressed on the bladder. While I was still compact-ish, the pressure was mounting. I could only imagine what month nine was going to look like. I’d be spewing urine like a lawn sprinkler.

  I mumbled a hello at my grandmother. The house smelled like food—she’d started cooking early in preparation for Leaf’s big entrance. Pots, pans and the slow cooker bubbled like witch cauldrons, their contents more sweet than savory and all delicious.

  “Hello,” Mormor said, standing by the sink, washing her hands, paintbrushes and a paint tray drying on a towel beside her. Cooking hadn’t been the only thing on her day’s agenda, apparently. She’d changed into her overalls—an ancient denim pair she used for all of her various household projects. The last time I’d seen her in them, she’d been stenciling the foyer with cardinals and twisty branches.

  “It didn’t go well then?” she said to my retreating back.

  I ducked into the bathroom with a shrug.

  The front door slammed. Mom stomped into the house.

  “Is she okay?” Mormor asked.

  “I guess? Group was good, but she found Jack.”

  “Who’s Jack?”

  “The kid,” Mom said.

  “What kid?”

  “The baby’s father. He works at his dad’s garage in Cheshireville. Devi stumbled across him getting gas earlier. Sara and I stopped by after class. They exchanged numbers. I don’t know what’s next, but she’s—we’re—weirded out by it.”

  “Why?”

  “Dunno. I guess I didn’t plan on having him around. It’s change. Change is bad and scary. Boo change.”

  Hearing Mom say that was comforting in a way. I supposed if anyone would get it, it’d be her, though; she knew the familiarity of an all-woman family. Her father had died when she was twelve, years before I came along. It’d been her and Mormor, and then her and Mormor and me until Mom married my father and moved away.

  Knowing they were talking about me, I didn’t want to go back to the kitchen, but I had to. I couldn’t get to my room otherwise. Two sets of Larssen blue eyes followed me from bathroom to living room. They were so present. So expectant. I hovered on the threshold, my eyes rolling toward the ceiling.