Deadbeat

by Amy Sparling

  I toss the cups into the trashcan. Grab a paper towel and wipe away her tears. She lets me do it, but she doesn't stop crying and never says a word. Taking off my hoody, I slip it around her shoulders – it's not that she's cold, she just looks like she needs to be comforted with something warm. We leave the bathroom and I let Claire go home, telling her I can handle it from here.

  But I really can't handle it. I don't know what I'm doing.

  I stay calm for Elisa's sake. When we get in my truck, we drive. I can't take her home like this and I can't take her to my house when she looks like someone just died. So we drive. We drive through town, then out of town and into the next. Elisa sits in the middle seat, snuggled up against me, arm wrapped around mine. I feel like I could cry too, but I don't – I stay strong for the both of us. I exit when I see a sign for a national park.

  We stop at a campsite. There's a picnic table on the edge of a river and it's a beautiful day outside. Elisa takes my hand as we walk to the riverbank. "This place is great."

  We're an hour away from home now. Surrounded by the beauty of nature, it feels like we're both nowhere and everywhere at once. And although I know my life is completely ruined, I say, "Everything is going to be okay, babe."

  Chapter 6

  We sit on the park bench until we're hungry and have to pee – both of us not wanting to use the creepy outdoor park bathroom. We hadn't said much, just sat there absorbed in our own thoughts, her back against my chest and my arms pretending to be comforting around her. It had killed me to see her weep like that, and my only concern was to get her to stop crying. My mind knows it needs to fully register what's happening, but I keep pushing the thoughts away. I can't deal with it now.

  Back in my truck, we drive in the direction of home although I don't want to go there anytime soon. I take the first exit with a good selection of fast food signs visible from the road.

  "So, what are we going to do?" I ask, between bites of my double cheeseburger.

  Elisa swirls a fry in ketchup and ponders my question. "What are the chances that you'll lose control of the wheel and hit an eighteen-wheeler head on, killing us both on the drive home?" She wasn't smiling so I answer in a tone just as serious. "Slim to none."

  "Then I guess the next step is telling our parents."

  A shudder runs down my spine because that is the last thing I want to hear. But for the first time all day, Elisa is not crying, so I agree with her. Anything to keep her happy, I suppose.

  "How are we going to do this?" I ask. "Sit our parents down together and tell them?"

  "God-" she says, shaking her head as if to clear away the words I just said. "No. My mom would shit. She's never even met your parents."

  I try picturing a scene where her stumbling drunk of a father and my overbearing control-freak dad sit on a couch and listen to us tell them the news. Not a good idea. I guess they will have to meet each other eventually, but preferably not any time soon.

  "We'll tell them separately," I say, boldly slurping the rest of my soda and acting like I am not at all scared shitless about this.

  She nods. "Today."

  An hour and a half later, I drop her off at the end of her driveway. Before she opens her door, I lean over the front seat and kiss her on the cheek. "When are you telling them?"

  "Now," she says with a weak smile. "If I don't do it now, I'll never get the courage to do it."

  "Okay." I don't point out that even if she didn't tell them, they'd find out eventually. "I'll tell my parents now too, and then we can compare parental reactions later?"

  "Sure thing," she says, closing my truck door. She walks up the driveway for what may be the last time if her parents end up killing her.

  And I drive away for what may be my last drive if my parents kill me.

  I don't give much thought to how I was going to do this. When I get inside the house, Mom is on her knees scrubbing the kitchen floor. I don't even think of telling her first. This is strictly father-son talk. So I head into the living room where my old man is relaxing in his recliner watching the Mavericks play the Rockets. I check the score and see that the Rockets are winning, which is to my advantage cause he'll be in a better mood.

  "Dad, can you come to the garage for a minute?" I sound like a mouse. His eyebrows rise, but he doesn't stop watching the game. He takes a sip from his beer.

  "What is it, son?"

  I think seriously about saying never mind, but I know that's not an option. "I just need to talk to you, somewhere alone."

  He looks up now. Puts his beer down. Without even pausing the game, he gets up and walks with me to the garage. I'm taken aback by how fast he's complying. He hasn't asked why or what or anything, like I bring him to the garage for a talk all the time. And I absolutely don't do that.

  Once outside, he leans against his Harley and crosses his arms. "What happened?"

  I try not to stare at the floor, try not to have a shaky voice, try not to feel so infinitesimal. It's hard. I look him in the eye and say, "It's about Elisa."

  He nods with pursed lips. "How far along is she?"

  My legs lose all feeling. I'm going to collapse. How does he know?

  "How?" I stammer, totally caught off guard. "I don't know, like a month I guess."

  "Well, it's obvious, son. You're looking exactly like I did when I knocked up your mother," he says. He smiles even and adds, "Scared shitless."

  We stand for a few seconds – it feels much longer – and I am now so completely thrown off my train of thought. I had expected to be yelled at, punched in the face – anything but this.

  "So what's your game plan?" he asks as simple as if we truly were talking about a game.

  "Game plan?" I feel stupid repeating him, but can't think of anything else to say.

  "What are y'all going to do?"

  Remembering what we talked about in the park earlier today, I come up with a game plan for him. "Elisa is going to graduate early, so I guess we can both get jobs." I'm proud of throwing in that part about the job but Dad doesn't seem as impressed.

  "If she's only one month along, she can get an abortion," he says. The "A" word makes me flinch, but doesn't faze him. I don't know what to say – that was one option Elisa and I hadn't talked about. He continues, "I'll even pay for it."

  "I don't know, Dad."

  He stands up, walks back to the door. "Think it over," he says with his hand on the doorknob. "If she agrees, I'll drive her myself. And don't bother your mother with this – she doesn't need to know unless we can't fix it."

  I nod, wondering why he's making it seem like "fixing" our problem is so much easier than it really is.

  A few hours later, Elisa calls me. I answer the phone expecting her to be crying, but she isn't. "How'd it go?" she asks.

  "Weird," I say. I close my bedroom door so no one overhears me and collapse on my bed.

  "Well I guess I'll go first," she says after pausing long enough to realize that I didn't want to explain any further. "I told my mom and sister, and - well, my mom just said ‘I guess we have a wedding to plan' and stormed out of the room. And my sister and I sat on my futon for like an hour, I was too scared to leave and have to face Mom again."

  "Wow," I say, interrupting her. "A wedding? She's crazy, we're just in high school."

  "Um... yeah," she says quietly. I realize I may have hurt her feelings but seventeen-year-olds don't just get married. Her mom is psycho. She continues, "And then my dad got home and Mackenzie and I stayed in my room but we could hear everything. Mom said ‘Your daughter got herself pregnant' and he said-" she pauses and I hear a sniffle. Her tears are coming back. "-And he said, ‘I've always wanted another baby in the family' and then he came in my room and gave me this big hug."

  She was fully crying now, and I had to struggle to make out her words. "And I know my dad isn't that good of a person, but his hug meant a lot to me. That whole time I was telling Mom, I had wanted her to hug me and tell me it was going to be okay and that she still lov
ed me, but she didn't. She was real cold and just glared at me and then stormed off like that."

  She weeps into the phone and my heart aches because I want to hold her. I always knew that under that religious exterior, her mom was a bitch. I don't know what my mom will do when she finds out, but I bet it involves a hug.

  "So what did your parents say?" she asks, slowly recovering from her sobs.

  "Nothing really." I take a deep breath and prepare to say the "A" word. "I only told my dad. He said he would pay for you to, um, get an abortion if you want."

  "What?" she says, all high-pitched like a teakettle.

  "I don't know," I say, trying to back-peddle. "He was just offering a suggestion, and he said we won't tell my mom for now."

  "He's fucking insane!" Her voice is clear and strong now.

  "Hey, my dad isn't insane. He's just trying to help us."

  "Abortion is murder, Jeremy. I won't even think about considering that." I picture her on the other end of the phone, arms crossed with that stern look she gets when she's being stubborn.

  "Okay okay - fine. I'll tell him," I say, not wanting this to turn into an argument.

  After dinner, during which my dad acted totally normal and Mom was serenely oblivious to my problems, I approach Dad who is once again in the living room watching sports. He notices me but doesn't say anything as I sink into the couch next to his recliner. "She said no."

  He nods, sips his beer and looks over at me. "I tried." He shrugs. He tried? Ugh. I used to think my old man was the smartest man in the world, capable of solving even an Armageddon-sized problem. But now his help sucks. He looks at me for a long while then sips from his beer again. "You're on your own now, son."

  Chapter 7

  On Sunday morning, even before the sun is out, I'm rustled out of sleep by the plop of someone sitting at the foot of my bed. I smell the lavender from her favorite perfume and know it's my mom. I don't open my eyes.

  "I'm sleeping," I groan. Turning away from her, I shove my head under my pillow and hope she goes away. Instead, she grabs my hand and squeezes it, which is awkward because the only hand I enjoy holding belongs to Elisa.

  "Get up and get dressed," she says with a smile. No one should sound this cheerful in the morning, but my mom is more cheerful than anyone I've ever known. I open one eye and peak out from under my pillow to check my alarm clock.

  "Mom, it's five in the morning."

  "It's five oh five in the morning," she corrects me. "This means I'm already five minutes late, so get your butt up and put on some shoes. You can walk in your boxers for all I care."

  She walks over to my closet, digs out a pair of running shoes, and tosses them on the floor next to my bed. "Come on, you're going to throw off my morning routine if you make me wait any longer."

  Rolling over in bed, I whine, "Why? I never go walking with you." Even though my mom is totally MILF-status, she always thinks she has an extra five pounds to lose and therefore walks every morning before making us breakfast. She has never once asked me to go with her.

  "Honey, your father told me about Elisa, but he didn't tell me very much, so I thought we could walk together and talk."

  "Oh God," I mumble, face first into my pillow. I had been having such a great sleep. A comatose-like sleep where I dreamed and worried about nothing. And then Mom says that one thing and I'm jolted back to a reality where I'm doomed to spend every minute of the day fretting about my situation.

  Thanks, Mom.

  "It'll be fun," she says, and she sounds like a gushy, excited teenage girl instead of a mom who just found out her son knocked up his girlfriend. Scampering out of my room, she flips on the light before she leaves to guarantee that I don't fall back asleep.

  Walking with Mom is weird. She doesn't say anything I would expect a parent to say when faced with a teenager in my position. No lectures, no yelling, no telling me how disappointed she is or anything like that. Instead, she asks me questions. Lots of them.

  "How far along is she?"

  "A month or so, I guess."

  "Has she been to the doctor?"

  "No."

  "When is she going to the doctor?"

  "I don't know." My legs are starting to hurt from power walking. I'd much rather jog than walk this fast.

  "Are you keeping it?"

  I throw my hands in the air, surrendering. "We found out yesterday, Mom. We haven't discussed anything other than realizing that we had to tell our parents." Mom's face lights up. This is weird. So, so very weird. She should be mad at me, not happy.

  "I'll arrange a dinner party so we can meet Elisa's parents." Mom's lost in her own world now, thinking up elaborate ways to showcase her homemaking abilities.

  "Oh God."

  "It'll be great." She ignores my sigh of disdain. "Maybe her parents have a better idea of how we're going to handle this since you two refuse to abort."

  "Wait – what?"

  Mom doesn't know how to be rude; she only knows how to be sweet and charming. So she turns to me with a smile and says the most abhorrent thing she has ever said to me in the most pleasant voice in the world. "Jeremy, you are an athlete with a full college scholarship. We can't let this girl ruin your future."

  Chapter 8

  The promised dinner party never happens. Elisa had told her parents about my parents wanting an abortion shortly after we had hung up the phone. Her mom got so pissed she vowed never to speak to my family even if we did get married. So two whole weeks went by where life was somewhat normal. My parents didn't talk about it, and I guess it's easier for them to forget about it since I'm not the one who's pregnant. Oddly, Elisa's parents weren't talking about it either.

  "Mom made me a doctor's appointment, but besides that, she hasn't said a word," Elisa says one day. We're sitting in my truck after school, eating banana splits from the local diner. Elisa eats her banana first and I pick around mine. "How far along are you now?" I ask.

  "Eight weeks, I think." Her eyes roll to the top of her head while she thinks. "Yeah, something like that. My first appointment is Friday."

  "Eight weeks? I thought it was a month?"

  "Oh Jeremy," she rolls her eyes while licking ice cream from her spoon. "It's been eight weeks since my last period. It doesn't matter when the sex was. So from what I read online, I'm eight weeks. I'll just find out when I go to the doctor."

  We go back to eating our ice cream. I glance at her and she's glancing at me. Though it's silent, I'm pretty sure we're thinking the same thing. Should I go with her to the doctor? I'm about to break down and volunteer to go, and then I remember, "I have an away game on Friday."

  She stabs her banana with her fork. "I guess I won't be able to make it to your game."

  "I guess I won't be able to make it to your appointment."

  "Have you told anyone I'm pregnant?" she asks, her eyes pleading with me to say no.

  "Of course not," I answer. "I'm not really looking forward to anyone finding out." She nods. "Good, because I wanted to ask you if we could keep this sort of a secret? I just don't want the whole school making fun of me."

  I hadn't thought much about it, considering that pregnancy usually leads to big bellies, but perhaps we could keep it a secret. "I won't tell anyone if you don't tell anyone."

  She smiles and wraps her arms around my neck, almost spilling her ice cream in the process. When she pulls away, she holds out her pinky and, remembering the childhood code of honor, I link my pinky into hers. "Deal?"

  "Deal."

  Back at Elisa's house, her mom invites me in and asks me to stay for dinner. The only real thing that has changed in the last three weeks is her hospitality to me. She's dropped all of the rules and I can stay over as long as I want. She treats me like family now, and as long as Elisa's with me, she has no curfew.

  We make out on the futon. Her cat scratches and whines at the door. We watch a movie, she lies against my chest, and things are normal and good. For a very small moment, I actually forget about the si
tuation we are in. I almost feel normal. And then she ruins it.

  "So, do we want a boy or a girl?" she asks. The question slams into me, right into my soul. A boy or a girl? Holy shit. A boy. A girl. The reality that a child is on the way hits me. This entire time I had been thinking our problem was a pregnancy, but how could I have been so stupid? Our problem isn't pregnancy. Our problem extends way beyond a pee stick with a pink stripe on it. Our problem is a baby. A live human being.

  "Well?" she nudges me with her elbow. "I kind of want a girl, but I guess it doesn't matter what we have."

  "I want a boy," I say, and I don't think I'm saying it just to disagree with her, but maybe I am.

  "I want a girl so I can dress her up like a princess. But a boy would be fine too." She thinks about it for a moment, then her face lights up. "I could dress him up like a prince!"

  "Sorry babe, but I don't think the goal of raising a kid is to dress them up like royalty. There's a lot more to it."

  She pouts. "Well obviously I know that, Jeremy." Fed up with the stupid cat whining, she walks to the door and opens it. "I'm just trying to have fun with this."

  "Fun? In no way is our situation fun." Her cat jumps up on the futon and I shove him off for no reason other than to let my frustration out.

  She grabs my arm and squeezes it. "Oh come on, try to see the light at the end of the tunnel."

  "Light at the end of the tunnel? You mean, like, the light when you die? And I should be happy about that?"

  "Shut up, you know what I mean." The stupid cat jumps up again, and this time Elisa grabs it and pulls it to her chest. It purrs loud enough for me to hear as she pets it. "Aww," she coos. "My Bella loves me, even if Jeremy doesn't."

  "You know I love you."

  Her face turns to stone. "Do I know that, Jeremy?"