by Mike Ramon
IN A FAMILY WAY
Sarah tossed the unfinished cigarette to the grass and ground it out with the toe of her sneaker. It was a warm night--warm for October, anyway--and the sky spread out above her like an inky sea, the stars like little chips of ice. She tugged at the right sleeve of her shirt, which was two inches shorter than the left one--the price of shopping at a discount. Somewhere dogs were barking, whether at a passing car or at the moon, she did not know. Sarah checked her watch. A Disneyesque princess’s face adorned the clock face, and the band was a bright shade of pink; Chloe and Laurie always teased her about it, calling it a little girl’s watch. She blew a stray strand of hair out of her face as she saw that Vic was twenty minutes late. It was par for the course with him.
A brief gust of wind blew cool air in her face as it sent a Burger King wrapper and a Styrofoam cup rattling along the street, before receding and allowing the trash to settle against the curb. Sarah sniffed her nose, feeling the first warning signs of what would probably develop into a cold--or maybe pneumonia, with her luck. She dug the tip of her shoe into the yellow, dying (or dead) grass, thinking about what it would be like to be somewhere else right now, someone else. In this other life, would things be better, or would it be just a different shade of the same shit?
A pair of headlights came flashing up the street, and she looked up, trying to squint against the lights. The vehicle sped up to the curb and screeched to a stop. The passenger door swung open and Sarah was greeted by Vic’s smiling face. He smiled a lot, Vic did--she couldn’t quite explain it, but it wasn’t the kind of smile you have when you’re happy, it was some other kind of smile that she had liked once, but now turned her stomach just a little.
“Hey, babe. Get in.”
So she got in, and as soon as her door was closed the car was moving again. Vic cut to the left and rocketed down Fairway. For a few minutes Sarah squirmed in her seat. After spending the last twenty-four hours trying to find the right things to say, she suddenly had no idea how to start. Finally, she tried to get it out.
“Vic, I---”
“Shh, wait till we get to my place. Right now I wanna listen to some music.”
He turned up the stereo. She knew the song she was listening to was part of Vic’s own personal mix--he said that radio stations these days were for shit. The song currently playing was one of his favorites: Frijid Pink’s rendition of “House of the Rising Sun”, a song originally about a woman living a sad, wasted life in a whorehouse. When the song was over, another one started, “Rockin’ in the Free World” by Neil Young. Right around the time Neil was talking about having fuel to burn and roads to drive Vic pulled up in front of the little house he shared with his parents. That was the term he preferred--“shared”--ever since they made him start paying rent when he turned eighteen.
“Come on,” he said as he killed the engine and hopped out of the car.
Sarah got out and slammed her door closed, then followed him into the house. The house was dark for a moment until Vic turned a light on.
“Where are your parents?” she asked.
“They’re visiting my Aunt Patty in Libertyville. We have the house to ourselves.”
He gave her a knowing smile, flashing his teeth; she could tell that they hadn’t been brushed recently. His poor oral hygiene was just one more thing about him that she hadn’t really noticed until very recently. It was like love--or something like love--put blinders on you, allowing you only to see the best in people. It was only later that you started noticing things like the fact that their teeth hadn’t been brushed recently.
Without another word Vic started upstairs, and Sarah followed after him. He had the room at the end of the hall, which was also the smallest of the house’s three bedrooms; the master bedroom belonged to his parents, and the medium bedroom was his brother’s, who was fighting with the Army off in Iraq or Afghanistan (Sarah wasn’t sure which). Vic had tried to talk his parents into letting him swap rooms with his brother, since he was paying rent and all, but they insisted on keeping the room just like it was for Brandon to come back to.
Sarah closed the bedroom door out of habit, even though they were alone in the house. Vic got down on one knee and reached under the bed, bringing out a tattered cigar box. He sat on the edge of the bed and slid off the rubber band that secured the lid of the box. As he started rolling a joint Sarah moved aimlessly around the room, touching things, picking things up and setting them down. She paged through one of the comic books Vic kept piled up on his dresser, fantastic tales of supersonic men. She tossed the comic back onto the pile as the pungent smell of the weed filled the room.
“Want some of this?” Vic asked.
“No; I’d better not.”
“Whatever.”
Sarah moved over to the bed and sat down beside him. He lay back on the bed with his legs hanging over the side. She had to will herself not to flinch away when he started rubbing her back. She looked over her shoulder at him; his eyes were closed, and he was moving his lips like he was singing some secret song under his breath.
“Vic,” she said.
“Huh?”
“We have to talk.”
“Okay,” he said with his eyes still closed.
“I’m serious,” she said, and now she did move away from his hand.
Vic sighed and sat up. For the first time she noticed a few wispy hairs on his upper lip that were struggling to become a mustache. She almost teased him about it, but thought better of it; now wasn’t the time for that.
“Well?” Vic asked, looking at her.
Suddenly she couldn’t stand meeting his eyes, and she lowered her gaze, studying the tops of her shoes. They were old and a little dirty, but her mom wouldn’t buy her new ones; whenever Sarah asked she got the old “do you think money grows on trees?” routine.
“I think I’m pregnant,” Sarah blurted out, surprising herself with the suddenness of it almost as much as she surprised Vic.
There was a quiet moment in which a bubble of silence seemed to grow and settle around them. Sarah noticed a splotch of blue paint near the tip of her left sneaker, and she wondered how it had gotten there.
“Well, like…so you’re not sure?” Vic asked, breaking the bubble.
“No. I’m sure.”
“Then why did you say that you think you’re pregnant, not that you know you’re pregnant?”
“I don’t know. But I’m sure. I was late, so I bought one of those tests from the store, the kind you pee on. It was positive.”
She finally looked up at him. He wasn’t looking at her, though; he was staring up at the ceiling as if there were some invisible writing up there that only he could see. The joint smoldered between his fingers, forgotten now.
“How far along are you?” he asked, his eyes still on the ceiling. “You know, like, how many weeks?”
“I don’t know. I think a doctor has to tell you that.”
“A doctor?”
“Yeah,” she said. “An obstetrician or something like that.”
Vic took is eyes off the ceiling, but he still would not look at her.
“I don’t think you’re gonna need an obstetrician,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Well, you’re just gonna have to…you know, take care of it. I have about forty bucks left from my last check; I can borrow the rest from Scotty if you need more.”
For a moment Sarah forgot to breathe as she stared at this boy she had once thought she loved, as the words he was saying seeped into and around her mind. Then she sucked in a lungful of air and let it out.
“I can’t do that,” she said. “I don’t believe in it. Shit, Vic, you know how my parents are. They would never forgive me if I did that.”
“That’s the thing--they’re not gonna know. We won’t tell anybody. You didn’t already tell them, did you?”
He looked at her then, fear in his eyes at the thought that here parents--the same people who had first expressed misgiving about her dating an older boy (
him in particular), and then had outright forbade her to date him--already knew that he had knocked her up.
“No, I haven’t told anybody,” she said.
Vic breathed a sigh of relief.
“Then it’s no big deal,” he said. “We’ll get rid of it, and no one will ever know.”
Get rid of it. The words were caustic, burning her like little drops of acid.
“I told you, I can’t do that,” she said.
“Jesus, Sarah, don’t lay your parents’ religious crap on me,” Vic said as he stood up and moved away from the bed.
“It’s not even that,” Sarah said. “I just can’t.”
Vic ran a hand through his unwashed hair. He looked down at his other hand and remembered the joint. He licked his thumb and forefinger and stubbed it out before slipping it into his shirt pocket.
“What do you think is gonna happen, Sarah? Do you think we’re gonna start a family or something?”
“I don’t know,” she said, embarrassed at the silliness of the thought.
“You think I’m gonna marry you? And what, you’re gonna move into my room with me?
“I don’t know,” she repeated; it was the only thing she could think to say.
“Shit,” Vic said, and that one word seemed to sum up the whole of their lives.
He came back to the bed and sat down. He clasped his hands together tightly and stared down at them, neither one of them saying anything for a moment.
“You know that’s not gonna happen,” Vic said quietly. “Shit, it’s probably not even mine.”
That last part wounded Sarah more than she could say. Vic had been her first and only, a fact he had never doubted until this moment, when it became convenient for him to doubt it. Her eyes started to water up then, but she wouldn’t allow herself to cry. Not here, not for him.
“It’s yours,” was all she said.
“I guess you’re gonna have to prove it, and get the kid tested once it pops out. Until then, this is your problem.”
“Why are you being like this?” she asked.
“I can’t…” he started, but didn’t finish.
Sarah stood up.
“Take me home,” she said.
Vic looked up at her for a moment, then shook his head slightly and lay back on the bed again.
“I want to go home,” Sarah said.
“Then walk your ass home.”
Sarah moved to the door and opened it, pausing in the doorway.
“Brush you damn teeth,” she said, and then she was gone.
The walk home was a long and lonely one. The warmth that she had noticed earlier was already leeching away from the night; soon the night would turn cold. As she walked her tears got the best of her, and she spilled her fair share of them. She had a lot of time to think about what she was going to do next. She didn’t know how she was going to break the news to her parents; just the thought of it was awful. She thought that she may even “take care of it”, like Vic wanted, but not because he wanted it. She would get the money somehow, but not from him--she didn’t want his money, or any part of him. Not anymore.
Every now and then she would stare up at that big, black sky hanging over her, and those chips of ice that were stars. She had heard somewhere that people are really made up of stardust. She didn’t know if it was true, but she liked to think that it was. For just awhile, as she walked home, it was nice to think that we are all made of stars.