Julia's Daughters

by Colleen Faulkner

  “I followed the directions,” I tell her. “You just pee on the stick and wait three minutes. I probably waited four or five, just to be sure.”

  She stares at the pee stick again for a second and then drops it into the trash can. “Who?” she demands. “Who have you been having sex with?”

  There’s a knock on the bathroom door. We both look at it.

  “Everything okay in there?” comes a voice. It’s a woman. She sounds like she’s scared of my mom too.

  “Everything’s fine,” Mom hollers back, making it clear the woman better butt out.

  I wonder what would happen if I told the lady on the other side of the door that I did need help. My mind races. I could tell her that a madwoman who claims to be my mother has kidnapped me and is holding me against my will.

  There is some truth to it.

  I bet someone would call the cops.

  If the cops come, what will happen? They’ll just talk to Mom and me and they’ll find out I’m a teenager going through a difficult time. Once it’s all cleared up, they’ll let us go. Mom will be mad, but it would sure diffuse what’s going on here right now.

  I open my mouth to holler for help.

  But then I think about Izzy, sitting in the car waiting, with that ratty cat. If the cops come, she’ll freak out. What if they take Mom into custody until they talk to Dad to confirm her identity?

  Then Mom will have to tell Dad about the pee stick. I don’t want him to know. He won’t understand. He’ll think I’m a ho-bag. He’s not a girl. He’ll never get it.

  Mom’s still got her hand on the door to keep anyone from coming in.

  The lady knocks again. “Ma’am?”

  My mom grabs the door and pulls it open. “Could you excuse me for a second while I speak to my daughter about a pregnancy test she just took in your bathroom?”

  I can’t see the lady’s face. The door is between us. But I can see Mom’s. She’s looking pretty pissy and pretty snooty.

  “Sorry,” the lady mumbles. “Just wanted to be sure everyone was okay.”

  “Thank you.” Mom lets go of the door.

  I hear footsteps as the employee beats feet.

  Mom crosses her arms over her chest. “Who are you having sex with? That man? The one at the house where I picked you up? Do you need to be tested for STDs? AIDS?”

  She’s still being loud. Her voice is echoing off the bathroom walls. I know the people in the store can hear her and I’m embarrassed. Almost more for her than for me.

  When I don’t answer, she goes on like a crazy woman. “Are there other men other than him? What about that guy, Miguel, who was hanging around the house before Caitlin died? And Todd? I know very well you’ve been seeing him. Who else did you have sex with? Who could potentially be the father of my grandchild?”

  I look down. The plastic bag is hanging off my wrist: more Band-Aids and a pack of elastics for our hair. This morning we realized we only had two to share between the three of us. Mom and Izzy got them today, but we agreed we’d buy some more.

  I want to rub my arm. Hard. Or at least bounce my ball. Riding in the car all day, I haven’t been getting the chance to bounce much. I miss it. I miss the feel of the ball in my hand, the smell the rubber leaves on my fingers.

  “I don’t know,” I say quietly. I stare at my Converses.

  “You don’t know or you won’t say?” she demands.

  Tears burn my eyes. “I always use a condom. It’s just that—” I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand.

  I don’t know why I’m crying. I was pretty sure I wasn’t pregnant. I really do make guys use a condom. I don’t want anybody’s cooties. But there were a couple of times when I was drunk or high or . . . I don’t know. I haven’t had a period in six or seven weeks. I just figured better safe than—

  “Who have you been having sex with, Haley?” Mom grabs me by both arms, just below my armpits. “Who could have gotten you pregnant?”

  I choke on my tears. I don’t want to cry. I don’t want to be weak. I sure don’t want her to see me crying. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” she hollers in my face. Then she pulls back. “Were you raped?” Her tone changes drastically. “Oh, God, Haley. Did someone rape you?”

  I consider saying yes. Just for a split second.

  I pull away from her and wipe my eyes with my sleeve, dragging my arm across my face so I can feel the cuts under the Band-Aids. It hurts. And it feels good. “I’m not pregnant, so why does it matter?” I tell her. But if I was—” I stop and start again. “If I was, I wouldn’t know who the father is. Without, you know, a paternity test. But I’m not pregnant.” I try to sound defiant, but I sound like a little girl. “It was negative, Mom. I’m not pregnant.” Tears run down my cheeks. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry. But you don’t have to worry. I’m not pregnant.”

  She just stands there for a minute looking at me. She’s breathing hard. Panting. She turns away suddenly, walks away. “I’m sorry, Haley.” Her voice is shaky. She starts to pace. She’s shaking her head. “I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way.”

  “It’s okay.” I sniff and wipe my nose on my sleeve. “If I were my kid, I might have lost my shit too. I’m a bad person.” I’m shaking my head now too. I look down. “I’ve done all of these bad things, and now I’m having sex with random guys and—”

  “It’s not that, sweetie.”

  Mom walks over to stand in front of me. She grabs my arms again, but not hard this time. Not out of anger. “I’m upset because I see me in you.”

  I look up at her. That’s crazy. Mom is perfect. She’s beautiful and she’s perfect. That’s why I hate her so much. She always does the right thing. She says the right thing. People like her. “What do you mean, you see me in you?” I ask. “We’re nothing alike.”

  “When I was seventeen . . .” She lets go of my arms and wraps one arm around herself. “When I was seventeen, Haley. That boy I told you about. Rudy.” She keeps starting and stopping and starting again. “We. He and I—” She looks up at me, tears in her eyes. “I got pregnant that summer before my senior year in high school.”

  I know my mouth drops open. I couldn’t have been any more surprised by that revelation than if she’d told me she and Dad were actually aliens, come to earth to build an alien colony. “You got pregnant?” I whisper, still pretty sure I misheard.

  She nods.

  “You had an abortion?”

  She shakes her head no. “My mother said I had to have the baby. My stepfather, he—”

  She looks down and I can tell by the look on her face that remembering this hurts her. A part of me wants to put my arms around her, but I can’t do it. I just can’t.

  “They insisted I had to have the baby, but then I had a miscarriage at ten weeks. No one knows I was ever pregnant when I was seventeen, except my mom and stepdad, Laney and your dad and now—” Her voice catches in her throat. “Now, you.”

  I just stand there staring at her for a minute. I can’t believe my perfect mother got knocked up by her eleventh grade prom date. I guess, technically, it wasn’t a prom-knock-up. But it’s sure close.

  Mom sighs and walks away. She goes to one of the stalls and pulls out a long ribbon of toilet paper. I watch her blow her nose. “Were you going to run away last night, Haley? The truth.”

  I try to weigh the importance of giving her what she wants—the truth—and the pain it will cause her. But who am I kidding? She knows about pain. And it hasn’t killed her yet. “I thought about it,” I admit, without an apology. “But then I didn’t.” Only a little lie. If Todd had showed up, I don’t know if I would have gotten in the car with him or not.

  Now she looks pale. She just stands there with the toilet paper in her hand and I think to myself that she needs to spruce herself up. She needs to get some jeans that fit. She needs to dye her hair and she needs some lipstick. She needs to start looking like she’s alive again.

 
“We should go to the car,” is what she finally says. “Izzy’s outside alone.”

  I put my hand on the heavy door. “Are you going to tell Dad? About the pregnancy test?”

  She wipes her nose with the paper and throws it in the trash can. “Your dad and I have never kept secrets from each other.”

  I think about that for a second. “Izzy?” I ask.

  She walks toward me. She looks tired and upset and scared and I feel bad because, once again, it’s all my fault.

  “I don’t really think this is something your ten-year-old sister needs to know, do you?”

  I open the door.

  “This conversation is not over,” she warns, walking to the doorway. “It’s just tabled. You understand me? And when we get home, you’re being tested. For everything. I don’t care where. Our family doctor. A clinic. But you’re being tested.” She holds her finger up to me. “And it’s going to stop. The risky sex. I won’t let you ruin your life, Haley. Damn it. I’m not going to do it.”

  Then she throws her arms around me and she hugs me so hard that it hurts.

  And for some reason, I feel a little better.

  Chapter 33

  Julia

  Illinois

  The next night I stand at the bathroom door in our hotel room outside of Chicago, my cell phone in my hand. “Stay in the room, girls,” I say, feeling so tired, I can barely put one foot in front of the other. “Or you’re dead meat.”

  Izzy laughs and looks back at the TV, stuffing a French fry in her mouth.

  She and Haley are sitting on the same bed, eating chicken sandwiches and fries. No vegetables; we’ve unanimously declared this expedition to be vegetable-free. At least until we get to Laney’s where we know we’ll be bombarded by big salads and plates of steamed organic vegetables.

  Haley and Izzy aren’t talking to each other, at least Izzy isn’t talking to Haley, but Izzy is sitting near her sister, of her own volition. Mostly because she couldn’t see the TV from our bed, but I’ll take what I can get.

  In the bathroom, I turn on the shower so the girls can’t overhear my conversation, and I call Laney.

  “Hey, sweetie,” she answers the phone. “I’ve been waiting to hear from you.” I hear her say, her voice muffled, “Boys, take it in the other room.”

  As we’ve driven east, we’ve crossed time zones. We’re only an hour behind Laney tonight and it makes me feel closer to her. Tonight, I feel like I’m actually going to make it to Maine. This time last night, I had my doubts.

  “Where are you?” Laney asks me.

  “Chicago.” I lean forward and look into the mirror over the sink. I look like hell. Another ten-hour day in the car. “Somewhere outside of Chicago. I’m not even sure what town. Haley made the reservation.”

  “So you’ve still got her? Excellent,” she teases.

  I don’t laugh, but I smile. I stayed up half the night last night, talking to Laney. Crying and talking, first in the hallway outside our hotel room, then inside the room when I started to scare other guests with my crying jags. Laney was the true friend she’s always been. She coddled me when I needed coddling and she told me to knock it the hell off when I started slipping into the depths of self-pity.

  “How’d the day go?” she asks me.

  “Good.” I think about it for a second and realize it really was . . . not bad. “Pretty good,” I clarify. “For some reason, telling Haley about my pregnancy has made her . . . I don’t know. Less hostile. Haley’s still rubbing her arm, but she hasn’t cut herself since we left. If she was going to do it, I think she would have last night after I screamed at her. Don’t you think?”

  I’m not really looking for an answer. I take my toothbrush out of my toiletries bag on the sink and squirt toothpaste from a travel-size tube. “No, the day wasn’t half bad. Haley offered to let Izzy ride up front this afternoon and she kept the cat on the backseat. We played the license plate game twice.” I groan. “It’s getting old, but it passes the time and it’s something we can all do together without anyone getting angry or crying.”

  Laney laughs. “And the conversations today?”

  “Meh.” I stick my brush in my mouth and brush. I rinse, using my hand to cup water, before I speak again. “Sorry, brushing my teeth before I get in the shower, which I desperately need. I stink. And Haley’s waiting for her turn. And I’m making Izzy take one tonight whether she wants to or not. I have no idea when the last time was that she bathed.” I shake my toothbrush. “No serious discussions today; I think Haley and I were both still overwhelmed from last night.” I shut off the water. “But Haley seems, I don’t know . . . okay. It makes no sense to me, but after I screamed at her like I was stark raving mad, she seemed more like herself. Like before Caitlin died. It’s not like she’s sprouted angel wings or anything, but today I saw several glimpses of my quirky, smart-assy . . . perceptive kid.”

  “She have any more contact with the boyfriend?”

  “Todd?” I drop my toothbrush into my toiletries bag. “I don’t think so. Apparently she’d been using the iPad to text him. I feel like an idiot. That never occurred to me. That you could iMes-sage with the iPad. But Izzy had the iPad all day today, except when Haley was looking for a hotel and making the online reservation. I think they’re done. I said something to her about him today and she made some comment about hoping certain body parts fell off.”

  “Good riddance,” Laney says.

  “Exactly.” I unbutton my baggy jeans and step out of them and add my panties to the pile. I’ll have to put my SpongeBobs back on, after my shower, but I have a clean pair of jeans to wear tomorrow. I wish I’d packed more clothes. I don’t know what I was thinking Sunday night when I packed. I guess I wasn’t thinking anything.

  “You talk to Ben?”

  “Not since last night.” I’d given him a quick recap of the bathroom scene at the drugstore and told him I needed him to fly to Maine. That with this new revelation, we need him. His response? He’d get back to me after he checked with the office, which honestly hadn’t fazed me all that much last night. I think I was just too shell-shocked. But as I began to unthaw today, I started getting really angry with him. He didn’t call me today and I’m pretty close to livid with him now. “I guess I should call him after my shower.” I exhale. “But I don’t think I can pull another all-nighter. I’m not going to get into it with him on the phone tonight. I need some sleep.”

  “He needs to man up. He needs to come here and be with his family,” Laney says firmly.

  “I agree.” I maneuver my way out of my shirt, taking the phone away from my ear, then bringing it back when I drop the T-shirt in the dirty clothes pile. “Would it be terrible of me to just not call him tonight? To wait and see if he calls me?”

  “You should at least let him know you’re okay. That you’re at the hotel.”

  I push my hair back and look at myself in the mirror again. I still don’t recognize this skinnier version of myself. “Maybe I’ll just text him. Leave the ball in his court.”

  “Jules—”

  “I know. I know what you’re going to say. I can’t keep running away from him. Away from the mess of my marriage, but really, Laney, I can only take so much grief. And I don’t know how much more I can take.”

  “You’re going to be okay,” she says, gently. “You’re doing the right things. You and the girls are going to be okay.”

  “And Ben and me?”

  She doesn’t answer right away and I feel a heaviness in my chest that scares me. I’ve never once considered life without Ben. Tears fill my eyes. I can’t go there tonight. I just can’t.

  “I should get into the shower,” I say, not wanting to force her to say what we’re both thinking, which is what if Ben won’t come to Maine? What if he doesn’t care enough about our girls, about me, to come and talk to me? Talk to our girls? Help me figure out what the hell we’re supposed to do next for Haley?

  “Get your shower,” Laney says. “You’ll feel be
tter. You’ll sure smell better.” She laughs.

  “You’re funny.” I look in the mirror and groan. “My roots are so bad, Laney.”

  “We’ll take care of that when you get here. A bottle of L’Oréal and half an hour in my kitchen and you’ll be the beautiful blonde I know and love.”

  “It’s a date. I’m shooting for Rochester, New York, tomorrow.”

  “Yay!” Laney exclaims. “You’ll be here Friday night! And we’ll have the whole weekend together. Do you want me to go open up the cottage? Or do you and the girls want to stay here with us?”

  “I don’t know.” Laney lives in a sweet little Victorian house in a town near Sebago Lake, less than an hour from Portland. I like the idea of being able to lie on her bed and talk to her after the kids have gone to bed. Maybe have a glass of wine with her. But she’s only got three bedrooms, so it’s going to be a little cozy. And it might be awkward for her boys, considering the circumstances of our visit.

  “Let’s plan for us to stay Friday night with you and we’ll go from there. If Ben comes, even if it’s just for the weekend, we could go to the cottage,” I say hopefully.

  “You’ll need some space, in which case you guys should definitely take the cottage.”

  I smile, so thankful I have her. “I’ll call you tomorrow night.”

  “Be safe,” she tells me.

  I disconnect and hold the phone in my hand, debating whether or not to hit Ben’s number. The bathroom is getting steamy now. I can’t see myself as well in the mirror. I hesitate and then go to texts.

  Made Chicago. Safe and Sound. Sebago Lake by Friday. You coming?

  I hit send, set the phone on the sink, and step into the shower. I take my time under the hot water, trying to relax and just not think about anything. For the first time in two months, I don’t even cry. When I get out of the shower, I hold my towel with one hand and check my phone with the other. Ben’s texted me back.

  Glad you made it. Talk tomorrow.

  Nothing about him coming.

  I dry off, put on my SpongeBobs, and join my girls.