Margarette (Violet)

by Johi Jenkins

  The thought is ridiculous. She doesn’t ever want to meet any other Gallager. But then she remembers she may very well be talking to the father of her child, and if so, her future would be tied to Tommy’s no matter what. Ugh. The words sound stupid in her head.

  “That… may work,” she concedes. “But why don’t you and I go alone somewhere first? I just think we should be by ourselves for a bit before we try a new round of introductions.”

  “Of course. It’s your graduation dinner. I’ll take you somewhere nice. How about Panucci’s?”

  Panucci’s is one of the two Italian restaurants in Coyote Falls. It was a place where many first dates took place over candlelight.

  “Panucci’s sounds great.”

  “Do you want to go now?”

  “Now? Uh….”

  She scrambles for a way to take her test before she commits to dinner. It irks her that she still has to take a test on the last official day of school.

  “I need to change. How about I call you when I’m ready? Should be around six or seven.”

  “How do I know you’ll call and not abandon me?”

  “You don’t, but that’s what makes it interesting.”

  “Margarette, you don’t have my number.”

  “Oh, I was going to look it up in the book. But you can just give it to me now and save me the trouble.”

  He looks at her dubiously. “I don’t have anywhere to write it.”

  “Just tell me; I have amazing memory.”

  He tells her, and she memorizes the numbers easily. But he still thinks that she’s going to ditch him. “I could wait while you change. I promise not to be in the way.”

  No! No, no, no no no….

  “What about Paulie?” Margarette asks in a burst of inspiration.

  “What? Do you want him to go with us?” he asks, confused. “I guess he can go.”

  “No… What? Not to dinner, but we can’t leave him here. If that hick comes back, he’s toast. Can you go get him? We have to take him home.”

  “Come with me, then. What if Bobby does come back? I don’t want him to harass you,” Tommy says.

  Margarette lifts the blade still clenched in her hand. Tommy can see the tip smeared with a drop of blood.

  “I’ll finish what I started,” she says.

  “You’re incredible.”

  “Sometimes.”

  The car dings as he gets out. He turns and leaves her with a final thought.

  “The longer I’m around you, the more you surprise me,” Tommy says.

  She smiles.

  Then she slams her head into the dash as soon as she’s sure no one was watching. The keys jingle in the ignition.

  Slowly, but with steadily increasing speed, she mutters, “Frick frick frick frick frickin frickfrickfrick.” She shuts her eyes. “Damn it! Please please… this is the only test I’ve ever wanted to fail. Please don’t let this happen. I swear I’ll be a better person. I swear it.”

  Tommy returns with Paulie and agrees to take him home, intending to drop him off on the way to Margarette’s house. But Margarette insists she has to go home first, and besides, her house is around the corner. Tommy uncomfortably taxies Paulie home after dropping her off. But he reasons that it’s not a bad exchange if it makes Margarette happy enough to agree to dinner.

  Chapter 11. Spoiled Dinner

  When Margarette gets inside the house is empty. Still, she locks herself in the bathroom. Her hands shake as she rips open the box and then the pink foil that covers the stick. She reads the instructions in a neatly-folded separate piece of paper and gets to work. It says to wait three minutes, but twenty plus seconds later she knows she is pregnant. She is also convinced that the whole town is spreading the news behind her back.

  She didn’t need to worry about the town, but pregnant girls worry all the time. The evil villain Julie had actually been more interested in Tommy fighting for Margarette even though they had not been seen together in two weeks; and she had not, in fact, read the box at all because it was upside down.

  But Margarette now thinks she has a deadline. She wonders how to tell Tommy, because she’s convinced he is going to find out soon enough from other sources, and he should hear it first from her. How will he react? She shouldn’t worry so much about what he will do when he finds out, but that’s all she can think about.

  Margarette strips down in her room and holds her belly. It doesn’t feel different, but she does. She rips through her closet and looks for something nice to wear to the restaurant. The cutoff jeans she’s wearing will not do. She rolls her eyes at Tommy. How would he offer to take her to a nice dinner wearing shorts? He doesn’t seem to think certain things through, and it bothers her a little. Why is she even going out to dinner with him? Can’t he just not know about the child? Oh, that’s right, he has to know, being the father and all. She grunts and keeps looking in her closet. Then she finds it—a black dress she wore to a funeral. It matches exactly the way she feels.

  She showers quickly and gets dressed. What usually takes an hour or more to finish when she’s in a hurry takes only ten minutes today, when she has all the time in the world. Her leggings have runs but she doesn’t care. The dress is tight and at least makes her look better than she feels. She sits on an old retro chair and her leg ticks nervously as she tries to remain still. She reaches down grasping her knees to hold them still and watches the clock slowly tick by. Her hands clench as her life unravels in her head. She can’t stop torturing herself with guilt and the dinner is hours away. She looks around for something to distract herself with.

  On the ground she finds the book that Paulie gave her. She opens the package and sees it for the first time. Comeunion. It is a black book with gold-edged pages like a Bible. A twisted cross with a curving blade for each arm covers the leather-like front. It has a silky red ribbon for a page mark. It kind of looks like her Bible, but it’s filled with unholy words like sex. It is the perfect distraction. For a second Margarette can pretend to be someone else in order to keep her hands from shaking as she flips to the first page. Someone who doesn’t have to deal with the things she is stuck with. She starts to read.

  The story is about a boy who was more broken than even she is. His life spun out of control. Torment drove him to madness; the insane words of this psychotic dreamer provide enough of a distraction to Margarette that she loses track of time. It makes her think about Paulie as she reads on. He isn’t that bad of a guy. He is sweet, but far from what she would ever compromise for in a man.

  She snaps back into reality when she hears a grinding noise out front that she recognizes well. Holding black shoes in one hand and a purse on the other, she dashes down the stairs almost losing her footing. She opens the back door and times it perfectly so her mother enters simultaneously with Margarette’s exit. Her mind is blank, as empty as her purse. She carries only her wits, the knife, a few coins, and an emergency twenty dollar bill she doesn’t intend on breaking. Her back tenses as a cold breeze penetrates her sheer dress. She considers going back for a jacket but immediately desists. There’s no doubt in her mind that she’d get in a fight with her mother. But in some ways her news is so new that she just wants to share it with someone. She walks the few blocks to the same store from before and uses a few quarters to call her house from the pay phone inside the building.

  Margarette’s voice is a soft hiss of breath. “Mom.” There is a pause as she cries without making a sound. “No, I left a little while ago.”

  It’s a one-sided phone call.

  She sits in the booth and continues as if talking to herself.

  “You know how you….” Pause. “No, I need to talk to you now.” Margarette is fighting tears. “No, just listen. Say I had to take a test. You know how you always want me to pass them….” That is her bad attempt at a joke. “No, I know school is over.” She sighs. “I know, Mom. No, I’m not being held back.” Eye roll. “You went to my graduation today. Just listen. I took a pregnancy test today.
Well, it’s positive.”

  There, she said it. There’s a long pause.

  “No, Mom. I can’t go home.” Her eyes shut. “No, no. I don’t know.”

  The phone crackles and her mother’s words trail off as Margarette turns the phone away from her face.

  A truck driver looks at her as he waits for the phone. She hangs up and drops another few quarters into the phone. She punches the numbers with shaking fingers. As the phone rings she closes her eyes.

  “Is Tommy home? Sure… I’ll wait.”

  She can hear May talking about her. Girls aren’t supposed to call boys, May says. Margarette rolls her eyes and continues to wait. That bitch, she thinks. She wonders what May would say when she finds out.

  What the hell do I care? She thinks. The world is ending and she is worried about second impressions. She moves on to her next thought. Tommy must already know, and her mother knows, and it’s hard to run away from home in heels.

  Tommy picks up. “Hello?”

  His voice sounds like he doesn’t know who it is on the phone. Of course, May wouldn’t have told him.

  “Hey, Tommy.”

  “Margarette!” He actually sounds a little excited to hear her. If he knows about her test, he is good at hiding it.

  After some misdirection Margarette convinces him how convenient it would be to pick her up at the convenience store. Her voice breaks and he almost hears her cry. Fortunately Tommy doesn’t pick up on things like context or tone. “Yeah, the place we were at earlier,” she finishes and hangs up.

  The truck driver hears what Tommy didn’t pick up on. He shakes his head as he makes his phone call.

  The only place to sit inside the store is a picnic table covered in grease and mustard stains. She feels strange and out of place as each patron passes by giving her odd looks, a lonely girl shivering in a black dress. She should be used to people staring at her by now, but this time she feels unusually indifferent about it. Because she is pregnant. Accepting her situation takes her to a very new low.

  Tommy is on his way. Seeing his eyes when she tells him will be horrible. Maybe. She doesn’t know him well enough to expect anything. But then again, why should she care about his feelings? It is her who will suffer. If he wants nothing to do with it he’ll just start seeing someone else or go back to Sharon and move on. Pregnant and crying, Margarette would have to watch. Maybe she should just leave and go back home. Her mother will put her in a convent. Nine months in a room with locked doors and no sunlight doesn’t sound so bad. She doesn’t know if she wants to cry or cry harder, but she holds back her tears afraid all it would do is smear her makeup. So she sits with a fierce look ready for anyone who would dare to catch her glimpse.

  Softly, she mutters, “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  She thinks about skipping the country and heading south. Hop buses until they start speaking Spanish. Live her life unknown drinking margaritas; that was an American dream. She sighs. Running away never made anything better, and they don’t drink margaritas there anyway. Americans made that up. She can’t run unless she has something to run to. All she has is a desert.

  “Hey, I’ve got a date with my girlfriend, but I’m open to cancelling if I could take you out instead.”

  She looks up to see Tommy smiling at her, blue eyes sparkling; his blond hair is combed up and sideways, and he changed into nice clothes for their date. All in all he looks terribly cute. She doesn’t know whether to smile back at him or to punch him for his silly comment. She settles for a little bit of both and gets up from the chair and pushes him, playfully. “I’m not your girlfriend.”

  “Oh, it’s you, Margarette! Sorry, damn, I didn’t recognize you in that dress.”

  “Let’s go, shall we?”

  “As the lady wishes.”

  Tommy’s car is up front. He even pops open the door for her. She’s impressed that he did it, which is a bad sign because it means her expectations of him are so low.

  “Thanks, Tommy.”

  The second she says it she feels like an idiot. She slips and sounds like every other girl hitting on him.

  “I didn’t think you were going to call,” Tommy says as he settles in beside her.

  “You have no faith in me.”

  “I have no faith in me. A girl like you wouldn’t go out with a guy like me.”

  She’s not sure if he’s giving her a compliment or if he just thinks poorly of himself.

  “I’m glad you did, though,” he adds.

  She still isn’t sure if he knows. She leans down so she can’t see his eyes. “I’m kind of glad, too. I have something to tell you.”

  “What is it?”

  “First I have a question for you.”

  “Ask.”

  “Are you seeing her?”

  “Who, Sharon?”

  She gives him a cold stare. “Anyone?”

  “Only you. Or trying to, anyway.”

  “What do you want me for?”

  “I like girls with black fingernail polish.” He looks at her appreciatively. “It matches the dress.”

  He smiles and all she can see is his bright white grin. Margarette shakes her head and looks up at the sky for answers, but it is a cloudy night through the moon roof.

  “Oh—shit,” he says suddenly.

  “What?” She looks left to see him patting his pockets.

  “My wallet. I left it at my house.”

  She thinks about her twenty dollar bill and relieves herself of the promise to not break it, if it means not going to his house. She quickly scans her mental database for places where twenty dollars can afford dinner for two, but he’s still talking.

  “I’ll be in and out. I swear. You don’t even have to leave the car.”

  She hides her face in her hands in exasperation. “Tommy, you promised not to take me there again.”

  “And I won’t. I’ll leave the car running outside the gates, even.”

  She considers leaving him right then and there, but she really does need to tell him about the situation. And she’d rather do it over a fancy dinner, not a submarine sandwich. And she’d rather him pay and not have to break her twenty, thank you very much.

  And… it’s her child’s family, too. She doesn’t want Tommy to think that she can’t get along with them. She’s willing to give them another chance. When she tells Tommy tonight, at least he won’t hold that against her, that she hates his family.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “You can even bring the car up. As long as we keep it short and we go to dinner afterwards.”

  He grins like she’s the most perfect woman in the world and they drive off.

  ***

  They reach Tommy’s house and he parks outside. Before he turns off the ignition he turns to her.

  “I have a question for you,” he says, almost embarrassed.

  “Ask,” she says, mimicking him.

  “Before I take you to dinner… I was wondering if you’d like to meet my father.”

  “What?” She just stares at him, unable to believe he’s asking her to meet another member of his dysfunctional family. The plan was for him to go in and out, grab his wallet and go.

  “I’m sorry it was so awkward last time with my mother and May, but really, they’re not so bad when he’s around. And I want you to meet him. Or rather, I want him to meet you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s not always around, and I’m skipping dinner with him to take you out, and I want to show him why. That I’m not just blowing him off being a punk; I’m really taking a beautiful girl out to dinner instead. Especially when you look so gorgeous.”

  “Tommy, I….” she mumbles. His words flatter her, and she pauses before instantly refusing his request. Again she considers that Tommy’s family is her unborn child’s family, and that the more open she is to them, the more likely it is that Tommy will stick around. “I’ll meet your father.”

  “Really?” His face brightens like she just gave him the best
news. And he looks so terribly cute she can’t help but smile at him. She commits the face to memory, afraid she won’t see it again after tonight.

  “Really.”

  He leans in and kisses her on the cheek before she can even react. He cuts off the ignition and exits without another word, goes around to her side and opens the door for her. His actions give her hope, but she crushes them immediately. She refuses to raise her expectations, afraid of his reaction when he finds out.

  Inside, Tommy introduces her to the new cook and some guy that cleans on weekends. She scoffs internally at having someone clean the house. No matter how well-dusted the air, it is still somehow stale to her like unvarnished antiques.

  Tommy calls for his father but the cook announces that he went out to pick up Mrs. Gallager and should be back in ten minutes. Tommy apologizes to Margarette for the wait, but at this point she’s already committed to meeting Mr. Gallager and only rolls her eyes when Tommy is not looking.

  In between offers for something to drink and a quick tour of the house she considers just telling him, but imagines how awful it would be when she meets his father. He could probably read Tommy like a book, and would know something is wrong. Internally she just feels so out of place, waiting to meet a man that she doesn’t want to meet. Why did she even agree to this, anyway? Her evil clone had taken over and decided to do something she was against. She excuses herself to use the bathroom on the first floor.

  Margarette looks at herself in the mirror. To tell or not to tell? Tommy is in a good mood. She doesn’t know how she is going to get through it. What if May heard already from one of her friends, and told her mother? What if Mrs. Gallager heard a new rumor floating around while at the salon? What other surprises could this situation throw at her? Tommy would have to wait… maybe even after dinner, she thinks. Tell him on the way home. Better yet, just not tell him and take care of it on her own without him.

  She hears the Chopsticks waltz playing on a piano, and leaves the safety of the bathroom. She walks to the sound of music. Tommy is sitting at a grand piano, an elegant black affair positioned in the grand foyer next to a row of front-facing windows, clearly meant to be showcased to anyone driving up to the house. He looks up smiling as she approaches. She smiles back without even thinking about it. She doesn’t smile much, but Tommy has an infectious grin. The tone of the piano is good and his pace is consistent, but his notes build only childish tunes.