Too Soon for Jeff

by Marilyn Reynolds

  Mom walks into the kitchen carrying a giant pizza box with a new crossword puzzle book on top. Before she went back to school she used to always be doing crossword puzzles. Now, because she has to study so much, she limits herself to one a week.

  “Dinner!” she yells.

  “It’s about time. I’m starving!”

  I open the box to be sure it’s the good kind, but I can already smell the pepperoni so I know I’ll like it. I get out cold sodas while Mom makes a salad. I’m on my second piece of pizza when there’s a knock at the back door.

  “Anybody home?”

  It’s Stacy. She can pick up the scent of pizza from inside her house, across the street from us, even if the doors and windows are shut tight and the air conditioner is on full blast.

  “Help yourself, Stacy,” Mom says, laughing.

  Stacy gets a plate and a soda and sits down next to me. She eyes the pizza, then takes the biggest piece.

  “Jeez, Stacy! Butt in on our pizza parade and then take the piece that clearly had my name on it!” I punch her, lightly, on the arm.

  “I’m saving you from a life of obesity,” she says, taking a giant bite of the thin-crusted, double cheese and pep­peroni delicacy. Stacy is almost as tall as I am, and really, really skinny, but she eats more than anyone I know.

  “Hey, did you read the history assignment for tomor­row?” she asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “What was it about?”

  “The Civil War,” I say.

  “I know that much. Be specific.”

  “Go read your own chapter, you bum,” I say, reaching past her for another piece of pizza.

  “I don’t know how you can stand him, Mommy Karen,” Stacy says, using her long-time pet name for my mom.

  “He grows on you. Give him time.”

  Stacy and I have been pretending not to like each other since she moved in across the street when we were both in the second grade. In some ways, though, we’re like best friends, or maybe like brother and sister. Neither of us would know about that brother/sister stuff because nei­ther of us has one. Well, my dad has another son, I think he’s about eight or so, and biologically speaking, I guess he’s my half-brother. But I’ve only seen him about four times in my whole life, so I don’t think he counts. What­ever. Stacy and I spent a lot of time at each other’s houses when we were growing up. She liked my mom better than her own, and I liked to watch her dad work around their house, just to get an idea of what dads could do.

  We played army and cop stuff, and we climbed trees and built forts. Stacy was a tomboy, so it worked out fine. When we got a little older we played gin rummy about six hours a day. That was back before either of us had a job.

  Stacy works for a veterinarian down by school. That’s what she says she wants to be, but her grades are from hell.

  “Okay. I got the dinner, you guys clean up,” Mom says, taking her crossword puzzle book and heading for her favorite chair in the den.

  Stacy rinses while I load the dishwasher. I put the leftover pizza in the fridge, she wipes the table. Just as we finish cleaning up, the phone rings.

  “Hello?” I say.

  It is Christy. “No abortions,” she says, then hangs up.

  I put the phone back on the receiver and give the table another swipe with the dishcloth.

  “Who was that?” Mom yells from the den.

  “Wrong number,” I say.

  “Wanna shoot a few baskets?” Stacy asks.

  “Sure.” That’s one thing Stacy got by having a dad—a basketball hoop with lights bright enough we can play all night unless the neighbors complain.

  “Hey, Mom, I’m goin’ to Stacy’s for a little while,” I say.

  “Wait! Four letters. Roman poet. Blank, ‘v,’ blank, blank,” Mom yells from the den.

  “Ovid,” I yell back.

  “Thanks! See ya later.”

  Stacy gives me a disgusted look. “How do you know that stuff, anyway?”

  “I go to my classes. I don’t sit doing kissy-kissy things in my car in the school parking lot like you and Frankie-boy do.”

  Stacy punches me in the arm, hard. “Nosy.”

  I punch her back. “Indiscreet.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Look it up,” I say, laughing.

  She stands, eyebrows raised, her kinky blond hair sticking out all over her head. I think she’s going to punch me again, but instead she says, “It sounds like you and Christy have been doing a lot more than kissy-kissy.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know. Word gets around,” she says.

  “Word? What word?”

  “Oh, aren’t you Mr. Innocent,” she says, then she starts singing, “Lullaby and goodnight, da da da da and sleep tight . . .”

  I grab her by the arm. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She laughs.

  “Get serious!”

  Her smile fades and she gives me this long look.

  “Okay. I heard something at school today that surprised me.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It was in gym. My locker’s right next to Kim’s and she and Christy were standing there having a very serious conversation. I don’t think they even noticed me. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop but, you know . . .”

  “So?”

  “So Kim was saying she was sure you’d come around. Her cousin or somebody was really upset when his girl­friend told him she was pregnant, and then pretty soon he was always wanting to feel the baby kick, and making her eat vegetables and drink milk,” Stacy says. “And then Kim goes ‘it was so purty,’ in that little-girl voice that makes me want to barf.”

  I groan.

  “So how about it, Jeffie—gonna be a dad?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to. Don’t say anything about this to anyone, okay, Stace?”

  “Hey, my lips are sealed. But face it, if Kim knows, the whole school will probably know by Friday.”

  I sit down on the curb and stare into the gutter.

  “So it’s true?”

  Stacy sits beside me, and I tell her the whole story. In a way it helps to talk about it, but in another way it makes the whole thing seem more real.

  “What can I do, Stace?” I ask. “I’m set to start college in September. I can’t have a kid now.”

  “Do you think Christy might change her mind about an abortion?”

  “I doubt it,” I sigh.

  “Sounds like you’re going to be a dad, whether you like it or not.”

  “But it’s not fair!”

  “Well, I hate to say it, old pal, but you play, you pay—your mom’s gonna be super upset.”

  “I hope she never finds out. I keep hoping something will happen, that it’s all a bad dream, or Christy will start her period, or something!”

  It’s after ten when I hear a car pull into our driveway.

  Mom pulls back the curtain in the dining room and looks out.

  “Who is it?” I ask.

  “Well, it’s Christy and her father. I wonder what they could want at this time of night. I hope they’re not fighting again.”

  I want to run out the back door, down the street, just keep running until I find a place where no one knows me. Run to Canada, or Alaska. My legs are tense with wanting to run. But instead, I stand, paralyzed, rooted in place, with sweating palms and quickened breath.

  Mom goes to the door and opens it, smiling.

  “Come in, Christina, Mr. Calderon. What brings you out tonight?”

  Mr. Calderon pushes Christy in ahead of him. I can see that she has been crying. She doesn’t look at me.

  “Look at this, Mrs. Browning. Look at what your son has done!”

  Christy’s dad is waving a paper in my mom’s face. My chest tightens around my pounding heart. It’s the note I gave Christy this morning, the one listing all the reasons she should have an abortion.

  “Perhaps we could sit down and talk, Mr. Calderon,�
� Mom says, backing away from him and sitting on the hard pine bench next to the fireplace, leaving the comfortable overstuffed sofa for Christy and her dad.

  “Look at this! You look at this! Then say sit down or not!”

  My mom takes the note from him, and I lean my head against the cool wall, trying to slow the swirling in my brain.

  “Jeffrey!” Mom says. “What does this mean?”

  I can’t look at her. I keep my head against the wall.

  “Jeffrey!”

  I turn. The color is drained from her face. Christy’s face is swollen with crying. Mr. Calderon’s face is dark with rage.

  “Explain this, Jeff,” my mom says, her eyes wide, wait­ing.

  “He’s made my daughter pregnant, and now he wants to kill.”

  “Jeff?” my mom says, not taking her eyes from me.

  “I don’t know, Mom. Christy says she’s pregnant.”

  “He forced her! Christina is a good girl!” Christy’s dad is yelling, stomping. It’s worse than an earthquake. Mom looks away from me to him.

  “SHUT UP!”

  Her scream is so loud, so piercing, that everything stops. Then, in a quiet voice, almost a whisper, she says, “Come sit down, Jeff.” She pats the bench beside her, as if she were inviting a nine-year-old me to hear a bedtime story. I take my place beside her.

  “Tell me, is Christy pregnant?”

  Mr. Calderon pulls another piece of paper from his shirt pocket and shoves it in my mother’s hand.

  “My wife found this. She is home now, crying her eyes out over our little girl.”

  He paces back and forth in front of the windows, watch­ing as Mom reads the clinic results. Christy has her head down, hands over her face.

  “Well. I guess she is pregnant,” Mom says, holding the paper toward me. I don’t reach for it.

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “I suppose so,” she says softly, crumpling it in her hand. “Mr. Calderon, please sit down and stop pacing,” Mom says. ‘You’re making me very nervous.”

  “Nervous! Nervous is nothing, Mrs. Browning. Having your daughter pregnant from a bad boy, that is something! Nervous is nothing!”

  “Daddy, please,” Christy says.

  “He will marry her! There will be a wedding!”

  “Mr. Calderon, Christy, I need to talk to Jeff alone. Please leave us alone.”

  “I don’t leave until I have his word on marriage,” he says, standing over Mom, looking down on her like one of those gargoyles they have on old buildings.

  “You leave or I call the cops!” she says, getting up and standing to face him. “Leave now!”

  He looks at my mother, stunned. He’s not used to having a woman stand up to him. He takes two long strides to where Christy is sitting, grabs her by the wrist and pulls her to the door. She doesn’t look back. Mom closes the door behind them, then sinks onto the sofa.

  “God, Jeff, how could you have let this happen? I thought I’d raised you to be so responsible. You’ve always seemed to have such a good head on your shoulders.”

  She sits, tears streaming down her face, looking at me as if I’m a stranger. “It’s not that you didn’t know better. God,” she sighs, never taking her eyes from my face. She reads the pregnancy test results again, shaking her head.

  I don’t know what to say. When I was thirteen my mom enrolled me in a human sexuality course at Planned Parenthood. She told me she wished it was like the old days, when people took sex seriously and waited until they were married to do it, but she knew things had changed, and she wanted me to be fully informed, so I wouldn’t get myself in any messes—like, with disease, or pregnancy. She talked to me about sex, and respecting myself and others, being careful. So did Uncle Steve. What she says is true. I knew better.

  I try to explain my side of things. “It wasn’t all my fault, Mom. She was on the pill. She even showed me.”

  “Oh, Jesus! What were you thinking with? Your penis?”

  I pick up the letter I had given Christy earlier in the day.

  “But see, Mom, don’t you think it makes sense for her to get an abortion?”

  “Yes. It makes sense to me. It makes sense to you. Maybe it would make sense to most people. But if it doesn’t make sense to Christy, forget it. It’s her decision. And I don’t think Christy is going to run to the nearest abortion clinic.”

  “What do you think, Mom? What should I do?”

  She looks at me, hard. “It doesn’t seem to matter what I think. It didn’t matter that I told you never to have sex without a condom, no matter what, and nothing I think or say matters now. You’ve made one huge, foolish, life-changing mistake. I am disappointed in you beyond words.” She pauses, wiping her teary eyes. “All of those years of your grandma and I cutting corners, trying to save money so you could go to college—did you think that was easy? She and I may as well cash in the savings and go to England because you sure as hell aren’t going away to college now.”

  Her words cut into me. I can’t look at her. “I’m sorry, Mom,” I say.

  “It’s not like spilling your milk, Jeff. Sorry doesn’t help.”

  She gets up from the sofa and walks slowly down the hall to her bedroom, closing the door behind her. I go out to the den, turn on the TV and channel-surf about ten times around all of the stations. Nothing. Nothing will take me away from me. I step outside. It is cool, dark. I walk. Past the market, past the park, past my old elementary school. When I get to Steve’s apartment building I stop and look up at his windows. Not a light on. What could he do for me anyway? What can anyone do, except Christy, and she won’t do it. I walk on, fantasizing about some minor accident that would jar the fetus loose—nothing awful, just a natural abortion.

  The noise of cars whizzing along on the freeway startles me. I must have been walking in some kind of daze. I’ve come a long way. I walk to the middle of the overpass and look down. It must be midnight by now. This freeway is never quiet. The L.A. Basin, home to the homeless. Home to smog, and earthquakes, and riots, and constant move­ment on jampacked freeways. For what? For what? I grip the chain link fence that is attached to the overpass and push forward as far as it will give.

  “For what?” I scream down at the speeding cars.

  I look up at the curved top of the fence. They fenced all the overpasses along about a ten mile segment of this freeway last year, after some tenth grader at Emerson High jumped off—bit the big one. It would be easy to get over the curve, though, if a person wanted to badly enough. I jump up, grasp the fence where it curves inward, and hang there for a moment. It would be easy to swing my feet to the lower part of the fence and grapple my way higher, to the top, and then shift my balance to the outside of the fence. Easy. Easy as pie.

  I let go and drop to the sidewalk, watch the cars for a while longer, then turn back in the direction of home. When I get there I see the kitchen light is on and my mom is sitting at the table, drinking tea. I walk past her but she calls me back. She stands up and puts her arms around me.

  “I’m sorry, Jeffie,” she says. “I said some mean things.”

  “I guess I deserve it.”

  “No, Sweetheart. We all make mistakes. I’ve made lots of mistakes. We live with them, we learn from them, and we go on. This is a tough one, but it’s not like cancer, or being homeless, or not having a family that cares. And it’s not like you’re a mass murderer. I love you, mistakes and all.”

  She hugs me tighter and that does it. All of the worry and frustration I’ve been feeling breaks loose, and I start crying. And that gets my mom going, too. We stand with our arms around each other, both of us sobbing. I feel her warm tears against my shirt and look down on the top of her head. For the first time ever I get this feeling that she’s sort of, I don’t know how to explain it, breakable, maybe.

  I’m sorry I’ve disappointed my mom. I’m sorry I got Christy pregnant, even if it was a lot her own fault. I’m sorry my life isn’t going the way I thought it would. I’m even sorry f
or Mr. and Mrs. Calderon. But what my mom said earlier is true—sorry doesn’t help. I wish it did.

  Chapter

  6

  When the alarm rings at six-thirty I turn over and go back to sleep. At least I try to go back to sleep. Then everything from the night before washes over me and I get that closed-in feeling again. There’s a story about a fox who was caught in a steel trap and it gnawed its own foot off in order to get free. All that was left in the trap when the hunter checked was a severed, bloody paw. If only I could gnaw my way out of this trap I’m in right now, I think I’d do it.

  “Aren’t you going to school?” my mom says, peeking around my bedroom door.

  “No. I feel awful,” I say, which is the truth.

  She comes in, sits on the edge of my bed, and feels my forehead. “No fever.”

  “I’m beat, Mom.”

  She nods as if she understands. I never miss school unless I’m on the critical list, but today I will. So what?

  “What are your plans?” Mom asks.

  “Just hang around here—probably go to work this afternoon.”

  “I don’t mean today, Jeff. I mean plans like Christy/baby plans.”

  “I have no plans,” I say.

  “Do you think her dad is serious about expecting you to marry her?” She gives me a long, intense look.

  “Probably, knowing him.”

  “What do you think about the marriage idea?” she says.

  “I think it sucks.”

  We discuss what my mother refers to as my “predica­ment”. She says she’ll stand by my decision not to marry Christy, no matter what Mr. Calderon says. Why be twice as idiotic as I’ve already been is how she puts it.

  “But Jeff, you’ve got a responsibility to this life you’ve started.”

  “But I didn’t want to start a new life.”

  She looks at me, like that’s too stupid to even consider. I know what that look means—if I didn’t want to start a new life, why didn’t I take my own precautions?

  “I want you to know I’ve done my childrearing stint, Jeff. If I had it to do over again, I’d do it the same way—marry the same jerk, just so I could get the same kid. But I’m on the verge of a new career, something I’ve wanted to do for years, and I’m not going to be one of those grandmothers who raises their kid’s kid . . . Don’t even think about it.”