NOW, WEEKS LATER, she was disgusted with herself all over again, particularly since she could tell, if not before the sex, then definitely afterward, that their short encounter was the culmination of some dream of Jeptha’s, some hope he had nursed for years. She knew it would never work between them, a feeling only reinforced by the heart-breaking pity she’d felt for him as his voice broke when he asked her on a date. She’d understood then that she had not only done something mind-blowingly stupid, she had done it with a guy who—despite all evidence to the contrary—turned out to think it might actually mean something.
Tears sprung up in Lucy’s eyes as she stared at the tests. She shook her head so violently that they blurred into nothing. It turned out the act had meant something to Lucy too. It meant her plan—of getting out, of leaving this town, of doing something more with her life, even if it was moving an hour away to slowly but surely work her way toward a degree, one class at a time—was now, if not impossible, much, much harder. Since she’d lost her parents, she’d been plugging away at their dream for her, anticipating nothing but checking off the boxes they’d set up as defenses against their only daughter living the life they’d hoped to escape themselves: graduate high school, move out of this small town, go to college. Some days, she wanted those things too. And certainly the whole town wanted them for her. When her mom and dad died, she’d become a ward of the town, in a sense. She had been chosen as the one who would leave, a vessel for whatever dreams of escape that flitted through their own minds from time to time, and then were dismissed as hopeless without ever really being considered. But not so for Lucy. They watched out for her, made sure she had what she needed to succeed in school, raised money for her when she needed it. Even in those moments when Lucy thought of giving up and accepting that she’d live here all her life, someone was there, pushing her on. But none of those Good Samaritans considered how devastatingly hard it would be to accomplish even the most basic of those dreams once Lucy lost her parents. She was already two years behind their schedule in trying to move to Knoxville.
Late at night, when Lucy was alone and brave enough to admit it, what she imagined finding in Knoxville was not herself, or an education, or what she wanted to do with her life. It was finding a family. She had a vision of going to class and meeting a nice guy, whom she’d date until they eventually decided they were good enough for each other to get married and have kids. The education part of it was an afterthought—merely the means to a happy end. Going to Knoxville meant finding a family and becoming whole again.
Trying to live that dream had kept her centered. She kept moving forward, working hard, and caring about something so that she wouldn’t become another careless slut boozing it up because she had nothing better. The dream of Knoxville, of the family she’d find there, was the thing that kept her going, the reason why the church ladies could say, without resorting to their Christian duty, that she had done “real well, considering.” She stayed on the path her parents and the town had made for her, like a tractor running the same grooves year after year.
But now, looking down at the pink lines in front of her, she felt a deep pit in her stomach as she imagined the looks on the faces of those who had helped her. The utter disappointment and devastation when she told them she’d gotten drunk and destroyed their dreams. Even worse, though, was the dissolution of her own dream. A crushing sense of dismay overtook her as she watched her dream of a family—solid, stable, settled—disappear. She thought of the boxes packed in a corner of the living room, the ones neatly labeled with their contents and marked Knoxville on the top. Boxes that would need to be unpacked and probably never packed again. Her future would be here now—in this small town, her name forever etched beside Jeptha’s, even if they never spoke again.
The thing that scared her most about that looming fact was not the loss of the future she’d planned, her disappointment or her anger at herself for being so stupid. Those were feelings she knew and could understand. What scared her most was that slippery, joyful fear. Pregnant by Jeptha Taylor was bad. Undeniably bad. But there, muddled in with the fear and horror of carrying the town drunk’s kid, was a flicker of delight. It welled up, like oil suddenly seeping out of a long-abandoned well. This baby would be her family. Nothing pieced together, nothing cobbled. Her blood, her genes, her body would make this baby. And no matter what happened, it would be her family. It wasn’t what her parents, the town, or she had ever dreamed of, but Lucy suddenly knew it didn’t matter, none of that did. Some part of her wanted this.
“Hey-lo!” a voice called out from the hall, and then again from outside the bathroom door. Lucy moved to hide the tests, but before she could, the door swung open, catching the edge of one of the sticks and sending them all tumbling to the black and white tile, where the pink lines seemed to glow.
LouEllen Moss filled the doorway, her red cotton shorts and matching red shirt accented by a pair of bright purple Keds, one toe of which was nudging one of the pregnancy tests. The outfit made her look like a large, bright red apple, as if the Fruit of the Loom guys had recruited a woman to their ranks. Most women would have avoided the look once they got past a size 14, but LouEllen was not most women.
Lucy had a fleeting moment of hope that LouEllen wouldn’t notice the tests. But when she moved her foot forward an inch, the plastic capsule she stepped on cracked. LouEllen looked down and inhaled sharply.
“Oh, Lucy. No.”
She had been living with LouEllen, her mom’s best friend, since her parents had died, and she’d never managed to keep something from her. There was no such thing as a secret from LouEllen. It was inevitable that she’d learn the truth.
“Oh, Lucy. Please tell me those belong to a friend of yours. Please tell me you are holding them for her for some reason that doesn’t even have to make sense. Please say you aren’t pregnant.”
“I’d like to,” she said, unable to meet LouEllen’s eyes. “Not sure those lines are gonna let me.”
“Well, shit,” LouEllen said, her accent slipping into that of the holler she’d been raised in—one that Lucy knew she had spent a lot of time getting away from. She lowered herself onto the rim of the tub beside Lucy. They stared down at the tests together.
“Whose is it?” LouEllen finally asked.
“An idiot’s,” Lucy said, shaking her head.
“Well, that narrows it down in a town absolutely peopled with ’em.”
“I don’t want to say.”
“Is he really that bad? I mean, it ain’t like it was a Taylor.”
Lucy wanted to hold onto this moment, where no one but her knew it was Jeptha’s kid she was carrying. But it didn’t matter. LouEllen would find out eventually. Everyone would.
“Jeptha’s not so bad,” she finally whispered.
“Oh, Lucy. You didn’t.”
Lucy risked a look at LouEllen’s face. Her nostrils flared into perfect round circles, and her lipsticked lips were pursed into tiny railroad tracks of anger. Lucy had slowly been losing the memory of her mother’s face, but seeing LouEllen’s expression, she suddenly remembered. Her mom would have hated this with a fury so hot it would have kept her warm on the coldest day.
“Why now? You had one foot out the door. You were about to leave. About to do the thing you always wanted.”
“The thing they always wanted,” Lucy said, between sobs.
“You wanted it too,” LouEllen said. “Otherwise, what the hell was the point of all of this?”
“All what?”
“The trying, the working, the encouraging you to get up and get out, to be something.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what the point of any of this was,” Lucy said.
LouEllen rubbed her hand over her eyebrows three times until they stood up wild and then pinched her nose between her thumb and middle finger. It was what LouEllen always did when she was angry, frustrated, and didn’t know what to do.
“Jesus, Lucy. Jeptha Taylor? He’s the one you had to do t
his with?”
Lucy stared at the floor, silent. She had been asking herself the same question for three weeks.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. You had your reasons,” LouEllen said, her hand slowly coming to rest on Lucy’s back.
“I was drunk.”
“Well, it ain’t the best reason in the world, but I guess it’ll have to do.”
Lucy laughed softly and looked up at LouEllen. “What am I gonna do?”
“I imagine cry for a while.”
“After that?”
“Are you …” LouEllen stopped.
“What?” Lucy couldn’t read the look on her face. “Am I what?”
“Going to Knoxville?” LouEllen said, her eyebrow raised.
Lucy scoffed. “How can I move there with a new baby?”
“Not to move there, Lucy. To …” LouEllen said, nodding at Lucy’s belly.
“Oh!” Lucy finally understood. She shook her head no. She couldn’t imagine getting rid of the baby. Even if she hadn’t accepted that some part of her wanted this baby, it went against everything she had been raised with, everything she’d been taught. She knew a girl in high school who had done that, or was said to have done it, and no one ever let her forget it. Even the guy who had gotten her pregnant had stood in the hallway during lunch the week after she returned, loudly calling her a whore and a baby killer, though Lucy saw a glimmer of relief in his eyes to have avoided a kid at sixteen. The poor girl left school in tears every day for a week and then finally never came back. The general consensus was that it was better to be a slut and pay the price than be a slut and get off Scot-free, even if it might ruin your life. Lucy hated the way everyone had treated that girl and didn’t think it was right. Even so, it just wasn’t a choice Lucy could make. Besides, Lucy couldn’t imagine taking that step, having to live with the knowledge that she had destroyed her only possible family. She hadn’t wanted a baby, but now that it was here, she couldn’t stomach the thought of getting rid of it.
“No. It’s all the family I’ve got. I can’t.”
“Well, I had to ask. I don’t really believe you’d go to hell for it, but God, I’d hate to have to die to find out.”
Lucy stared at the pink lines pulsing on the floor, her mind blank except for the words “damn” and “baby.”
“What am I going to do?” Lucy asked again. She desperately wanted some answer that didn’t involve giving up everything her parents had dreamed for her, everything she’d worked toward the last seven years. She tried to imagine life in Knoxville with a baby. She’d be in a brand-new place, all on her own. She’d have to find a restaurant job that was only during the day. A daycare for the baby. Everyone bitched about how expensive having a baby was. It had to be even more so in Knoxville. And what about school? That was the whole reason for being in Knoxville, to take classes at UT. But, how could she work all day and go to class at night if she had another person to take care of?
She’d finally have some family but be all alone.
“You need to call the doctor,” LouEllen said. “We’ll get you some vitamins and deal with the rest.” She patted Lucy’s leg briskly and stood up. “We got that back room sitting empty. Be perfect for a baby.”
“Wait, what?” Lucy asked.
“We can do this together,” LouEllen said.
The pink lines glared at her as Lucy held her head in her hands, trying to think about what to do. She remembered her dad reading her the story of the Three Little Pigs and how even at five, she’d been horrified by the stupidity of the first two pigs. But here she was at age twenty, a vision for her life all constructed, and it turned out she was one of the stupid pigs, the one who built her home of sticks or straw. It was now crumbling down around her. Part of her wanted to piece it back together, try to shore it up. But then, she looked up at the walls around her, at LouEllen’s comforting bulk smiling down at her—offering Lucy her home again, even with a baby in tow. Maybe this was the house built of bricks, the one that could withstand. It had been in the past. Lucy opened her mouth to speak.
“You know me, I’ve always wanted a baby,” LouEllen said.
Lucy shut her mouth. Some long-dormant maternal hackles rose up at the notion of this baby belonging to anyone but her. Lucy would always be grateful to LouEllen, for taking her in, raising her, loving her even—but Lucy was always painfully aware, even if LouEllen never quite seemed to be, that she was not her mother. They had settled into a relationship that worked for them, even as Lucy bristled at LouEllen’s occasional smothering attempts to be her mother. And now her not-mother seemed to think this might be her not-baby. But Lucy would need someone’s help. And who else would offer it but LouEllen?
“You okay?” LouEllen asked.
“I guess,” Lucy said. “As okay as I can be.”
“All right then. Aren’t you supposed to be at work around now?” LouEllen asked, holding out her hands and hauling Lucy up off the tub.
“Yeah. I’m thinking about calling in sick,” Lucy said. She wasn’t sure she could face the scene of the crime so soon after learning the penalty.
LouEllen shook her head at Lucy and then pulled her in for a hug. Tears welled up again.
“It’s gonna be all right,” LouEllen said. “We’ll make it. But there’s gonna be plenty of days that you’ll need some time off down the road, so you better not get off on the wrong foot just yet.”
With that, she pushed Lucy toward the door.
LUCY HAD WALKED into Judy’s bar dozens upon dozens of times since she started working there six months before, but she had never felt so conflicted upon seeing the place. It was both the scene of her worst mistake and the source of this flickering sense of joy; she didn’t trust either emotion. And even the joy didn’t cover up the fact that she had slept with Jeptha Taylor and gotten pregnant for her trouble. She had loved working at Judy’s from the start—and loved it even more once they finally had more than ten customers following the fire at Avery’s. But today, as she pulled into the lot, all she could see were the weeds sprouting up from the hundreds of cracks in the asphalt, the beer bottles tumbled down from the dumpster out back, and the dirty concrete wall, lined with wiring and more weeds, where she and Jeptha had first kissed. Damn whiskey, she thought to herself.
Lucy knew Judy had meant well when she started handing out whiskey like so much water. Judy wasn’t from here, though, and she didn’t know any better when it came to encouraging someone to see more in a Taylor. Hell, Lucy thought, saying Jeptha was “a Taylor” didn’t mean anything to Judy. And even if it had, Jeptha seemed to have uncovered a soft spot in Judy that Lucy still only saw glimpses of and doubted for weeks after. Maybe it said something for Jeptha that Judy liked him.
Judy nodded at her as Lucy walked through the door. “How’s the packing going?” she asked.
“What packing?”
“For your move? Aren’t you moving in two weeks?”
Lucy thought of the boxes packed in the living room and of the ads she’d printed out at the library from the apartment listings online. Her favorite was dog-eared and circled: “1 BR Avail 7/1, no students. HW, EIK, $WD.” It had taken her days to discern the lingo of the ads and a week more to get up the courage to call. She was supposed to send her deposit to the landlord in tomorrow’s mail. She had enough money saved up to live without working for a couple months, but her plan was to hit the ground as soon as she moved in—she wanted to get there before the college students arrived and took all the good jobs. If she got there a couple months before classes started, she figured she would have enough saved to sign up for one class this semester. Turns out, she should have been buying diapers instead.
“It may not be happening now,” Lucy said.
“What do you mean—may not be?” Judy asked.
“Just not sure I can do it.”
“Really?”
“Don’t get so excited.” Lucy’s stomach dropped as she took in Judy’s near-smile, her eyes twinkling. Sh
e held onto the bar stool to keep herself from collapsing into a teary heap.
“You don’t want to go anymore?”
Lucy scoffed. “I don’t know what I want. And I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter anymore either.”
“So, I don’t need to hire a replacement?”
“Not yet, anyway.”
“I could hug you,” Judy said. “I won’t, but I could. I hate hiring. Thirty-four drunks, fifteen heroin addicts, and three meth heads show up seeking easy access to a cash register and wondering why you won’t give them a job.”
“Well, lucky you,” Lucy said, gripping the back of the chair to keep from yelling at Judy. “What do you want me to do for tonight?”
Judy recoiled from Lucy’s sharp tone and peered at her. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Do I look like I want to talk about it?” Lucy asked, her voice softening.
“Good. I was worried you might say yes,” Judy said, sweeping the bar towel over the bar and up on her shoulder. “In that case, do the usual. But bring up some extra cases of Bud. It’s Friday.”
“Dammit,” Lucy said. She stared up at the ceiling as tears threatened to fall again. “It’s Friday.”
“That a problem? It’s usually your best night for tips.”
Lucy shook her head and headed for the back stairs. Friday meant Jeptha’s weekly gig. As she broke down the boxes in the basement, dragged two cases of Bud upstairs, and swept under the tables, she thought about what she would say to Jeptha. The week after they’d had sex, she’d been off on Friday and had never been so happy to miss out on a tip-heavy night. She had kept him at arm’s length the week after that, even though she could see the wounded look on his face as she sidestepped him when he asked to see her again. He must not have had her phone number, or she figured he’d be calling. But she couldn’t avoid him tonight. She’d barely had enough time to get her own head around what the pink lines tossed in the bathroom trash meant for her, much less for him. She couldn’t imagine sharing the news with him tonight. Or maybe ever. Maybe, she thought, she could pretend this was someone else’s baby, some mysterious person whom she planned to never name. Or she could claim immaculate conception. It had worked at least once. Maybe it was time for another try.
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