No More Sad Goodbyes

by Marilyn Reynolds

  “Here. Call me if you need anything. Or just to say hi.”

  I take the card from her and put it in my jeans pocket.

  In the evening, we’re sitting in the den, watching the UCLA Stanford women’s basketball game, on mute. I’m in the big recliner, with my legs and feet slightly elevated, a position Penny says is good to use during pregnancy. Elvis is stretched out on my lap.

  “Let’s talk about what you’ll be doing for school,” Nikki says. “We’re thinking you can take the next few days to settle in here, then get started somewhere Monday morning.”

  “Where?”

  “That’s what we were wondering. Any thoughts?”

  “Well . . . maybe . . .”

  Both Nikki and Penny sit waiting for me to answer the “any thoughts about school” question, but apparently I don’t have any thoughts.

  “Penny and I have been talking about what might work for you. There are plenty of possibilities. Hamilton High, of course. We could get a district waiver and you could ride with me every day. Or you could go to the teen pregnancy program in the Hamilton Heights district.”

  “Or,” Penny says, “You could go to the teen pregnancy program here in San Remo.”

  “Or San Remo High School,” Nikki adds.

  “I sort of want to go to Hamilton High. I mean, it is my school . . .”

  “Oh, no!” Nikki yells. “Did you see that?”

  She turns the TV sound on.

  “Schmidt totally fouled Jeffers and the ref. . . listen . . .”

  The announcer repeats the referee’s decision. Nikki mutters something.

  “Uh, Nikki?” Penny says. “We were talking about possible schools for Autumn?”

  “Oh. Sorry,” Nikki says, turning the sound off again.

  “So, you were saying Hamilton High?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. It would be weird, but at least I could get the classes I need, and maybe keep my scholarship . . .”

  “What scholarship?” Penny asks.

  “Autumn was in line for a volleyball scholarship to Cal Poly before all this happened.”

  “But now?”

  Nikki shrugs. “I guess there may still be a chance,” she says, giving me a long look. “I don’t know, though. You sort of fell off the radar before the season was over.”

  I run my hand across Elvis’ back, from head to toe, watching the hair rise slightly from static electricity.

  “What are you thinking about for September?” Penny asks.

  “I want to go to Cal Poly—like I planned.”

  Penny nods. “Could you go even if you don’t get the scholar­ship?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Nikki turns off the TV and pulls a footstool over so she’s sitting directly in front of me.

  “I know you’re going to have to get into the long-term plan­ning for college thing eventually. But for now, let’s just think about where you’ll show up for school on Monday morning.”

  We talk about the pros and cons of a regular high school versus a teen pregnancy school, of Hamilton High versus San Remo High, of the Hamilton Heights teen pregnancy program versus the San Remo teen pregnancy program, until my head is spinning with pros and cons. Maybe Nikki’s head is spinning, too, because she calls a time out.

  “5:00 rolls around pretty early,” she says. “It’s past my bed­time.”

  She stands, does a few stretches, and sits down on the footstool again.

  “That’s another thing to think about for Hamilton High. You’d be riding with me. I leave at six on the dot and usually don’t get home until at least five o’clock—that’s a pretty long day for a growing girl, specially one who’s growing a baby.”

  “Let’s call it a night,” Penny says, looking at her watch and yawning. “Do you want a glass of milk, or anything, Autumn?”

  “No, thanks,” I say.

  “Well, help yourself if you change your mind. I’m off to bed now, too.”

  Nikki sits watching me, thoughtful.

  “I’m glad you’re here with us,” she says.

  “Me, too! It’s . . . the home was . . . hard.”

  “Listen, it really is past my bedtime. But you can sleep late to­morrow morning, if you’d like, so feel free to stay up later if you want. Watch TV, use the computer, whatever . . . just make yourself at home.”

  “Thank you,” I say, wishing I could come up with better words to tell Nikki how much it means to me to be here, in a real home, with real people.

  “Just one thing, for now. When you contact your Hamilton High friends it might be better . . . it’s . . . well . . . that low profile thing,” Nikki says.

  I have no idea what Nikki’s talking about now, except she seems embarrassed.

  “You know . . . we try to avoid gossip so . . . just for a little while . . . it might be better if your old friends don’t know you’re staying with us.”

  “Okay.”

  “I hate to ask that. It has nothing to do with you, or wanting to keep you hidden away.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “None of my friends have known where I am for months, anyway.”

  Nikki’s quiet for a while, then stands up. She looks down at the cat who’s still sleeping on my lap.

  “Bedtime, Elvis. Coming?”

  He gives a barely noticeable twitch of his tail, opens one eye a tiny slit, then closes it again. Nikki laughs.

  “Okay, traitor, but remember who feeds you.”

  There’s a short email from Jason: November 28

  Glad to finally hear from you. Keep in touch. Jason.

  And another from Danni: November 23

  Wow! GR8 2 hear from u! Where are u? Why can’t u call? There’s so much to tell u! Finally I’m in love, I mean RE­ALLY in love, not that puppy love stuff I felt for Jason. Can u believe how stupid I was? (Don’t answer that.) A whole year of unrequited love? But I can only tell u this F2F. WHERE ARE U????

  I write back to her that I’m staying in a different place now, and I want to hear all about her new love, and I’ve got a lot of news for her, too. I say maybe there would be a way to get together sometime Saturday, and then as soon as I press send, I get scared about seeing Danni in person. I don’t think Carole told Danni I was pregnant or she’d have been asking about it in her emails. How will she react? And I know she’ll want to know who the father is. I don’t want to go there.

  Whenever I think about school possibilities, I think Hamilton High. It is my school. But then when I picture myself pregnant—pregnant!—squeezing into a school desk, feeling curious eyes watching, knowing I’ll be the subject of a lot of talk, some of it not so nice . . . I get scared.

  Chapter

  18

  Nikki and Penny are both gone by the time I wake up. There’s a note on the kitchen table for me from Penny: Give me a call on my lunch break, between 11:00 and 11:35. My cell number is 286-3714.

  I put my clothes in the washer, get a bowl of cereal, take it into the den, and turn on the TV. I flip past the Home Shopping Net­work, news, some house make-over thing, a kiddie cartoon, and end up watching a Jerry Springer show where DNA testing results are about to be revealed. I have enough drama in my life without this.

  I go out to the laundry room and put my washed clothes into the dryer. When I return, Elvis is licking the last of the milk from my bowl and Jerry Springer is lecturing the mother and the guy who was most certain he wasn’t the dad about the responsibilities of parenthood. Here’s what I don’t ever, ever want to do—be on Jerry Springer’s show.

  By the time my clothes are dry and put away in the pink room it’s time to call Penny.

  She asks if I slept well, and how I’m feeling, and if I’ve eaten, and if the baby’s moving around, and what I need from the market. I ask for orange juice, the kind with light pulp.

  “You got it. I’ll see you around 3:00,” she says. “If you think of anything more you need, just call and leave a message. I’ll check my phone before I come home.”

&n
bsp; I start a to-do list, but so far all I can come up with is: get a new bra, get a charger and buy minutes for my cell phone. Like I need a list for that?

  It’s weird. It’s been so long since I’ve had any control over my own life, I can’t figure out what needs to be done. In the county home, every decision was already made for me—when to get up and when to go to bed, when to take a shower and when to brush my teeth, and on and on. Practically the only decision I ever made there was whether or not to let Madison have my dessert. I hope I haven’t forgotten how to make decisions for myself.

  Although the walk to the shopping center is only a few blocks, I’m short of breath by the time I get there. I’m so out of shape! I buy a charger for my cell phone and sixty minutes calling time and mark those two things off my list. There’s no place in this center where I can buy a bra, though, so that will have to wait.

  Back at Nikki and Penny’s I plug in my phone and check email. There’s a message from Danni saying she really, really, really, wants to see me, but she’s in a pageant at her church and she’s rehearsing all day. Their dress rehearsal is Saturday night.

  I email her back, telling her my cell phone is working again and if I don’t hear from her before, I’ll call her Tuesday night.

  Penny comes in loaded down with groceries and a heavy-look­ing tote bag.

  “Why I ever chose to teach English . . .” she says, stacking a batch of papers on the table. “I should have had my head exam­ined!”

  She takes a large container of orange juice from one of the bags.

  “This what you want?”

  “Perfect,” I say.

  “How was your first day of residence at 6047 E. Ancourt, San Remo, California?” she says, opening a bag of chips and putting them in a bowl on the table.

  “Quiet. Nice. I walked to the phone store and bought minutes and a charger.”

  “So you’re connected again?”

  “Yeah. As soon as my battery’s charged up.”

  “Who’s the first person you’ll call?”

  “Well . . . I’d like to call my friend, Danni, but she’s hard to reach sometimes. Maybe Krystal.”

  “From volleyball?”

  “Yeah. Most of my friends are from volleyball.”

  Penny empties the last grocery bag, putting lettuce and milk in the refrigerator, and cans of soup and tomatoes in the pantry.

  “How about your boyfriend?” Penny asks.

  “I don’t really have a boyfriend,” I say.

  She looks at me as if she’s not sure whether or not to believe me.

  “I don’t. Really.”

  Penny sits at the table and picks the top paper off her stack.

  “Do you want to help a poor, overworked English teacher?” she asks.

  “Sure.”

  She shows me how to enter the grades in her roll book and I sit across from her, reading Ordinary People and entering a grade each time she finishes a paper. At the fourth paper, Penny erupts in laughter.

  “What?” I ask.

  She shakes her head, still laughing.

  I glance over at the paper, but don’t see anything funny.

  “Well . . . I tell my students that it’s worth ten bonus points if they can make me laugh when I’m grading papers, and a student in my first period class, Nathan Taylor, is always amusing me with Tom Swifties.”

  “Tom Swifties?”

  “An adverb that is also a pun, like . . . ‘I can’t hear anything!’ Tom said deftly.”

  “Oh, yeah! My grams used to like those things. Like . . . ‘I need a pencil sharpener,’ Tom said bluntly?”

  “Right! Not exactly sophisticated humor, but Nathan works them into his papers very cleverly. This is a personal essay about the negative influence of online poker, and he managed to slip it in.”

  She runs her finger under a sentence that says, “I only have dia­monds, clubs and spades,” Tom said heartlessly.

  We both laugh, and I’m about to enter ten bonus points beside Nathan’s name when Elvis jumps up on the table and stretches out across the open book.

  “Scoot, you big blob,” Penny says, lifting him off the table.

  He jumps up again, making us both laugh.

  “He’s got food in the laundry room. Do you want to open a can and put half of it in his dish?”

  I get up from the table and go get the food. Elvis rubs against my legs, back to front, making it nearly impossible to walk without tripping over him.

  “Can opener’s in the top drawer next to the washing machine,” Penny says. “And lids for the cans should be right next to it.”

  After I feed Elvis and put his leftover food in the refrigerator, I get back to the task of entering grades. Nikki calls to say she’s on her way home and Penny clears the papers and books off the table.

  “This can wait until after dinner,” she says, wiping the table off and putting three placemats on it.

  “Do you want to help?” she asks.

  “Sure.”

  She hands me a big wooden salad bowl with tongs and gets let­tuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots from the refrigerator.

  “How about doing the salad?”

  I wash my hands, then the vegetables, and start cutting things up. Penny cuts up two chicken breasts, an onion, some peppers and garlic and heats olive oil in a skillet.

  “I do the cooking and shopping and Nikki does the dishes and laundry,” Penny says. “Except on Sundays, when Nikki makes breakfast.”

  Penny puts a pot of water on to boil and gets a package of pasta noodles from the pantry.

  “Do you like to cook?” she asks.

  “I used to help Grams in the kitchen sometimes, but I don’t re­ally know how to cook. I’m pretty good at hot dogs and microwaved macaroni and cheese.”

  Penny laughs. “It sounds like you and Nikki are about on the same level when it comes to cooking.”

  When Penny hears Nikki’s car in the driveway, she puts the pas­ta into the boiling water and walks to the back door to greet her.

  “Hi, Sweetheart,” she says, giving Nikki a quick peck on the cheek.

  “Hey, Babe, smells good in here! Hi, Autumn, how’re you do­ing?”

  “Fine,” I say, mixing the salad with the tongs.

  It all feels so . . . homey. At dinner we talk about the details of our days, though I don’t have a lot of details to talk about except my walk to the phone store. I guess I could say I wrote a three-item list, but I don’t.

  Late at night, in the privacy of the pink room, I listen to the one saved message still on my cell phone.

  “Hey, Kid. I’m bringing home pizza. What kind do you want? Call me. Otherwise, I’ll assume you want pineapple.” There’s his wild laugh, then, “Only kidding.”

  I take the stone heart from my notebook and put it under my pillow.

  “I still miss you so much,” I say, letting the tears come.

  There’s this part in Ordinary People that says grief is ugly and isolating, not something to share with others. I guess maybe that’s true for me.

  Friday night is pizza and movie night at Nikki and Penny’s. It’s Penny’s turn to choose, so we watch “Freedom Writers,” about some high school kids down in Long Beach who were total gang-bangers until this English teacher helped them figure out that their lives mattered.

  The only one not crying by the end is Elvis, who is sleeping on my lap, which is his new favorite place to be. Penny says cats have super sensitive hearing and she thinks maybe he likes listening to the baby’s heartbeat.

  Nikki wipes her eyes and blows her nose.

  “Next week we’re watching a comedy!”

  “You’ve got to admit it’s a pretty impressive story, though,” Penny says.

  Talking about “Freedom Writers” gets us talking about high school in general, which gets us talking about where I’ll be enroll­ing Monday morning.

  “I sort of want to go to Hamilton, but . . .”

  Just then the baby gives such a strong ki
ck that Elvis is pushed off onto the floor. He looks up at my belly with such a puzzled, ir­ritated expression that Nikki and Penny and I totally crack up. I’m laughing so hard I can barely get to the bathroom in time. When I come back out, Nikki has Elvis on her lap.

  “See, now you know who to trust,” she says.

  I sit back down, half expecting Elvis to come over to me and take his usual position, but he stays on Nikki’s lap, sending bad looks in my direction.

  “You were saying about Hamilton . . .” Penny prompts.

  “Yeah, that’s where I want to go, but I don’t really want to go like . . . this,” I say, putting my hand over my belly.

  “Penny and I have been talking about it, and we’d like to make a proposal,” Nikki says, looking very serious.

  I hope the proposal doesn’t have anything to do with going back to the county home.

  “We want you to know we’ll go along with whatever you de­cide, but we think the best thing for everyone right now is for you to go to the San Remo teen pregnancy/parenting program.”

  “You do?” I say, surprised that Nikki thinks that’s better for me than Hamilton High.

  “For one thing, it’s a shorter day,” Nikki says. “I’m afraid you’d be exhausted having to leave so early in the morning and be gone for ten or twelve hours. And the closer your time comes, the more easily you’ll tire.”

  “And you’ll be learning more about what to expect for the rest of your pregnancy, and the birthing process, and how to take good care of yourself,” Penny says. “You wouldn’t get any of that in classes at Hamilton.”

  “The other thing is . . .” Penny pauses and looks toward Nikki, as if for support.

  “The other thing is, it’s just best for people not to know you’re living with us right now. And it would be hard to keep that from getting out if you’re coming to school with me every morning and leaving with me every evening,” Nikki says.

  “But I’m here legally and everything. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing,” Nikki says. “It’s just, like I said before, certain peo­ple would like to see me fired. They’ve backed off for now, because their demands are ridiculous and everybody, almost everybody, knows that. And it’s not that I’d be fired for having you stay here, it’s just that it’s one more thing for them to get all fired up about, and that wouldn’t be fun.”