Murphy’s was dark and crowded, already full of smoke. Skull, the owner, kept a glass vase in the shape of a boot on the bar and told every person who lit up to throw a couple of bucks in the jar. Whenever he got cited for allowing smoking, the boot paid the fine. Skull knew Nolan’s order, Bud draft, and had it poured by the time he’d wedged himself between Shante and Mario.
“We all did shots, brother. Next round’s on you, right?” Shante already smelled like tequila as he slung an arm around Nolan’s shoulder.
“Okay.” Nolan was easy. He wouldn’t actually do the shot, but he’d buy. The job paid better than he would have guessed it would, and the money just sat in his account. He didn’t have anything to spend it on. Booze for the guys was a fine way to blow some.
“Lefty got here first.” Shante gestured with his head to Lefty Venca, who was trying to balance a beer bottle on his pointy nose, and it looked like there was cash on the bar to go along with it.
“He’s ahead of us, looks like,” said Nolan. Shante laughed and clinked glasses in agreement.
After an hour of dirty jokes too disgusting to tell at work, Rafe stood on a wooden chair and clinked his Zippo against his beer bottle.
“To Louie!” A roar arose. Rafe slipped his lighter back into his pocket and used his free hand to gesture that everyone should quiet down. “A true man. A fine man. A man we lost too early. Being a road worker is more dangerous than being a cop, and normal people don’t care, man. Drag racing the Dublin grade, texting constantly. What is that important? That’s what I want to know,” said Rafe. His words were on the very verge of slurring, but he was keeping it together better than most could. Louie and Rafe had been tight. They’d been partners—that’s why Nolan had ended up in Rafe’s truck at work. Once Louie had saved Rafe by shoving him out of the way of an AC Transit bus. Rafe believed he wouldn’t be around anymore without Louie, and now Louie wasn’t here.
“He was four months and two days away from retirement. He’d already bought his boat. He had maps of the ocean from here to Fiji. He wasn’t gonna be on the roads anymore. He was gonna be on the water.”
In the bar, no one breathed. It was quieter than Nolan’s apartment at midnight. Even Skull behind the bar stopped moving, the water dripping from his rag to the floor the only sound.
Rafe took a deep breath and held his bottle higher. “To Louie Pacheco. Our brother. May all his ocean dreams be coming true. And may the motherfucker that hit him rot in hell after he’s spent a lifetime getting fucked in the ass in the state pen.”
As the men cheered, Nolan raised his glass and clinked left, right, and behind him. He doubted if the guy who hit Louie even got three months. It was better not to know, actually.
Next to him, Mario downed another shot of tequila, no salt, just chewed the lime afterward. His breath was strong as he turned to Nolan.
“So you know something about that, huh?”
Nolan felt suddenly cold. “What?”
“The state pen. You know something about getting fucked in the ass?”
Shit, shit, shit. He knew. No one had known, not up till now. HR was supposed to keep his file confidential, but he’d known it was a matter of time. Unadulterated fear froze the back of his neck. How long had Mario known? It couldn’t have been long—someone like Mario wouldn’t have been able to keep it to himself.
He kept his eyes steadily on the mirror behind Skull’s back, and kept his face loose. Slack. Completely blank, like he was back behind the wall. Blank face, blank thoughts, chest thrust out—no victim on display for anyone to thump, maim, kill—make it through another day.
“No clue, huh? How long were you in prison, buddy? Four years?”
The riotous talk all around them died off again, and this time the quiet had an edge.
Nolan pounded the last of his beer. If he needed to make a quick getaway, he would.
“You didn’t answer me,” said Mario. “Whatchoo do for being in there? A lawyer like you? Some white-collar shit? Embezzled, I bet.”
Nolan felt sweat break across his chest and back. Mario didn’t know. “Something like that.”
Mario’s voice rose and the others glanced their way. “I always knew you were no good.”
“Shut up, Mario!” yelled Nate, the biggest guy on their crew. “Before I have to make you!” He’d never dare speak to Mario like that on the road, but in here, off the clock, there were no rules. And by the way Nate was swaying, it was clear that he would like nothing better than to shut Mario’s mouth by way of a haymaker.
It was nice, to be backed up like that. All the guys were sending cold glares at Mario. It felt good. And it felt wrong. If they knew why he’d gone away, they wouldn’t be acting the same way, he knew that. Killing a kid, no matter how innocently, made a person almost as hated as a dirty cop. “It’s all right, brother,” said Nolan. “I can handle it. Ain’t a big deal.” He’d never said ain’t at the firm.
“Good thing you didn’t go into retail,” muttered Mario. “Good thing you don’t get to touch the books.”
“Only books I’m touching are your mama’s romance novels I borrow after she climbs off.” Nolan felt particularly pleased with his quick response.
“Oh-hoh!” the guys roared, and the moment was over. Nolan laughed and clapped his friends on the back as he went to take a leak. Then, without saying good-bye, which would have raised another ruckus, he slipped out the side door. The wind slammed it behind him, a hollow, metallic sound that echoed across the parking lot and against the wall of the mechanic shop next door.
They’d find out soon enough. He wouldn’t lose his job, he knew that. The head honchos knew he’d been in prison, convicted of a felony, and he’d gotten the job anyway. But when the guys found out . . . When Rafe found out, there was no way his God would stay out of the conversation. And that wouldn’t be a fair fight. Nolan never won against God.
Chapter Ten
Pregnancy
November 1991
With her first pregnancy, Kate had no symptoms. Her breasts weren’t tender or swollen, and she didn’t have morning sickness. At fifteen, she felt, if anything, stronger than she’d ever been. At first, she thought the new multivitamin Sonia was making her take was just kick-ass. Her fingernails grew faster. Her hair got so thick she had to tie rubber bands together to pull it all back. It was growing colder then, the winter setting in, but she didn’t need to wear a jacket to walk between classes—a tank and skirt were all she needed. She ignored Sonia’s lectures on catching cold and wore just flip-flops on her feet, so she could feel the blacktop below her, even as she floated above it.
She didn’t understand the feeling (not at first) and attributed it to being in love. Her friends went through boyfriends like Doritos, and they laughed at her when she talked about Nolan, but Kate knew better. He loves me. I love him. He loves me. In a year and a half—an eternity!—they’d be out of high school, off to college together. They’d planned all of it, lying on a beach blanket just past the high rows of driftwood. While watching the moon soar above them, they mapped out their living plans (a small apartment with a north-facing room for her painting and a desk for Nolan at a window that faced the sidewalk), their educational goals (a law degree for Nolan, an MFA in art for Kate, both from UC Berkeley, naturally), and their familial hopes (when they were twenty-eight, they’d have two children, a girl and a boy, each perfectly possessed of each other’s best traits—wonderful, smart, obedient children who would make them laugh until they cried).
Kate was almost sixteen. She never thought the word “pregnant,” because she couldn’t be. They were always careful. Doubly careful, both pill and condoms. They’d never been careless, not once. Besides, fifteen-year-olds didn’t get pregnant, not unless they were the potheads teetering on the edge of meth addiction who barely went to class, girls who ripped out their eyebrows and penciled them viciously back in, girls who got tattoos of boy’s nicknames (Digger, Sully, Wrecker) without their parents’ knowledge. Those fifte
en-year-olds got pregnant. Not girls like Kate, girls who studied diligently for AP American History tests and ate spinach when their mothers cooked it and didn’t stay up late on school nights. The only argument Kate and her mother had had in months was whether she was taking too many extracurriculars. Kate insisted she knew what she was doing and that all those extras were what colleges wanted. Sonia had given in, knitting wordlessly on the couch, the angry clicks of her needles the only evidence she was upset with her daughter.
But after missing two periods, still positive she couldn’t be pregnant but filled with a heavy dread she’d never felt before, Kate went to the drugstore. Which of the dozens of boxes would be the correct one? The pink one, with the daisy on the side? The soft blue one, with the glittery embossed ribbon? (Where, she wondered, was the box for the girl who didn’t want a baby? Where was the black box with red lettering, the one that came with a complimentary educational tract detailing how to tell your single-parent mother who still wasn’t—and never would be—over the loss of her husband that she was going to be a grandmother?)
She chose a simple white and yellow box. Two of them, to be sure. And one more, just in case the first two didn’t work. She used babysitting money because it didn’t seem right to use the allowance money that Sonia handed her silently every week. The checkout girl met her eyes with a look that was probably meant to be understanding. She’d seen this purchase before. But the checker didn’t understand anything.
At home, on the toilet, sudden terror gripped Kate. Even though she’d had a full Nalgene bottle of water in preparation, the urine wouldn’t come. What if she wasn’t pregnant? What if this thick dread she felt was actually a kind of silent, insane, unfounded joy? Everything rode on this moment. Her entire future, love, and life depended on a horizontal bar forming against a vertical one. From the kitchen, she heard Sonia start the washer. Her mother was washing a load of her jeans, completely clueless that her daughter had ever had sex, let alone was peeing on a stick under her roof. If it was true, if Kate turned out to be . . . she could never tell Sonia. She would have to move to Alaska. Or Antarctica or Australia. Anywhere far, far away that started with A would do, as long as Nolan came with her, too. A is for away . . .
The box said to wait five minutes. Kate steeled herself to wait. The longest five minutes of her life, she predicted. But it wasn’t—it took barely thirty seconds for the crossbar to start showing. Ghost pink at first, then stronger, bolder. So pink it was almost bloody when the X was formed—she was struck by its heady gorgeousness. She wanted to paint with nothing but this shade for the rest of her life and lamented that nothing in her acrylics tubes could come close. She peed on the other two sticks just to watch that particular, unique color form again, and then again.
X marks the spot, she thought. She slid her fingers over her belly, wondering what the swell might feel like. What would she look like with a belly stuck out, reaching rooms before the rest of her body did? What would Nolan think when he saw her naked?
The sticks changed everything, completely and utterly. In a sudden fit of something she couldn’t understand, Kate couldn’t wait until she was so big that strangers told her she looked like she was about to pop.
“Baby, you’re mine,” she whispered. “You’re real, and you’re mine.”
M is for mine, N is for now, and for Nolan, always for Nolan.
• • •
He broke two dates with her, both times with good, believable reasons. His parents were forcing him to go to a diabetes benefit dinner, he said, and they had a ticket only for him, no extras. Kate believed this—his parents showed no interest in their son’s relationship. The next night, he’d told her he couldn’t go to the movies because he’d eaten something bad at the benefit the evening before. That was weirder—Nolan bragged he had a cast-iron stomach—but whatever. She’d see him on Sunday, right?
He said he’d call her.
Kate felt the first tiny knot of worry then.
When he hadn’t called her by seven on Sunday night, she called him. “I thought we were going to hang out.” She tried not to sound as hurt as she was—after all, he had no idea she had something huge to tell him. The biggest thing ever.
He said something about chores, and how his mother had been upset about the way the gardener had trimmed the hedge, and how she’d made him redo it even though he had precalculus to study for . . .
Kate let him chatter for a minute or two and then she cleared her throat.
“But how are you?” he said, taking his cue.
“I’m fine. I have a little bit of a surprise for you.” She felt like giggling, and couldn’t tell if it was happiness or terror that made her feel like tiny painful bubbles were racing through her blood.
Nolan said, “Hang on.” Then in a rushed aside, she heard him hiss, “Not now, Mom. I haven’t told her. Give me a second. God.”
Kate laughed lightly. “What haven’t you told me?”
Silence stretched like elastic, prickling and taut.
Finally he said, “Shit, Kate. We’re moving.”
She sucked in a breath and sank farther into the pillows on her bed. “What?”
“Hawaii.”
“What?” He couldn’t just go. Not now. “When?”
“Two weeks.”
Kate felt the baby move inside her, a startled flutter. She knew it was supposedly impossible—the book she’d gotten from the library said she wouldn’t feel it until she was five months along (she loved what it was called, the quickening), but she knew what she’d just felt and she knew it was real.
“So . . . we . . .” she started.
“I don’t want us to break up,” he said desperately, his voice cracking. “But I think it’s best. I can’t handle thinking of you here without me. I’d rather not . . .”
“Think of me at all?”
Another tight silence was her answer.
Kate slid her legs off the bed until she could dig her toes into the carpet. “But you love me.”
“You know I do.”
“So we’ll make it work.”
“No.”
“Why?” She hated the pleading sound in her voice. This was awful. This couldn’t happen. Not now.
“It’ll be better. You can date someone else. Go to prom. Do the things you’re supposed to do.”
“Oh. I get it. You’ll get to date, too. Some little island girl who goes to school in a sarong, right? Is that what this is about?”
His voice changed then, into his school hallway voice, the one she hated. “Why not? Would that be so awful if I wanted to do that?” It was the tone he used in the hallways when he was yelling at his guy friends, the sound he got when he was being an idiot in class with his homies. Whenever he was sent to the office to pick up a detention slip, he had the same tone as he tossed back, “Haven’t been in detention all month! Can’t wait!”
Nolan said, “It’s not like we were going anywhere. Not together, anyway.”
Kate gasped. Fifteen and pregnant. She should tell him. She had to tell him . . .
“My dad said everyone goes through this. What do we know about love? We’re kids. Stupid kids. That’s all. I can’t change the facts—I’m leaving. You’re staying. We’re too young.”
Usually, when she was on the phone with Nolan, he whispered so no one else could hear. When she was with Nolan in person, he said secret, sweet things about her pinky finger, said things about her kneecaps that made goose bumps rise on her arms. He was unrecognizable, really, as the same loud boy she saw in the halls at school.
Stupid boy. Boy. Not a man. What had she been thinking, to hope that this would work? That this could be something actually good, and not the tragedy school counselors always made teenage pregnancy sound like? It was a tragedy. A huge, fucking waste.
She remained quiet, devastated into silence.
“I’m sorry,” he said in the voice she knew was his real one, the softer one. “Can we get together and talk? I need to see your face
. God, I’m so sorry, Kate. I’ve tried and tried to get them to change their minds, but Dad has some big business deal there and they won’t listen to me. It’s like I’m not here, like I don’t count. I need to see you—can you come over?”
“So you can watch yourself breaking my heart?” She would not sob, not until she hung up on him.
“Kate—it’s just for the best. We’re so young—”
“You keep saying that. Your dad tell you to say that?”
“No, but if I don’t do this . . . he’s right—”
“You’re weak,” she said. It was what Nolan was most scared of, that he would actually turn out to be the runt that his parents would return for a better, stronger son.
“Stop.”
“You are. Weak and cowardly. You can’t see what we have. You’re willing to throw it all away—and you have no idea how much you’re throwing away, none—and for that, Nolan, I will never forgive you.” She hit the release button on the cordless and threw it across the room. When it rang again, she unplugged the phone.
Kate knew an hour later she should have told him that he was going to be a father. She should have said that while he was surfing, she’d be pregnant in homeroom. Just another promising girl gone bad.
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