Look at You Now

by Liz Pryor

  “Fine,” I said.

  He furrowed his brow. “I thought the place was supposed to be a Catholic home for unwed mothers.”

  “So did I.”

  “It’s not, is it?”

  “No.”

  “That is what your mother said it was.”

  “Well, I guess it used to be run by nuns.”

  Lee laughed a familiar, frustrated laugh. “That is sooooo Dorothy. Used to be.”

  I didn’t say anything. Kate and Lee exchanged a glance.

  “Has your mother been here yet?” he asked.

  “She came a few weeks ago.”

  “So she’s come once.” He looked frustrated. And said in a loud whisper, “Unnnnnbelievable. The whole goddamn reason you’re here in this specific place was so she could come see you all the time. Yet, she doesn’t come. So typical.”

  “Lee, that doesn’t help her,” Kate said.

  “Jesus Christ, help who?”

  “It doesn’t help Liz to talk about Dorothy. Let’s focus on Liz and see how she’s doing.” Kate softly put her hand on my dad’s.

  My dad took a big breath, looked at me, and asked, “Okay, well how is it? Tell me what it’s like. Are you okay here?”

  He didn’t know? He really didn’t know, before this second, that it wasn’t a Catholic home for unwed mothers? And all this time I thought he did. I wanted to tell him everything, all of it. I was sure if he knew the truth of what the facility was like, he would say it was unacceptable. I could already hear it in my head, Lee’s voice declaring I couldn’t stay there. But I also didn’t want to tell him. If he took me out, where would I go? My mom’s face appeared in my mind. The same face she had in Lee’s apartment that day when he told her I was pregnant, when he said she was a terrible mother. I tried to blur the image, but it wouldn’t move. Would Lee call her and tell her that she’d messed up once again? I couldn’t imagine living with that. And I was closer now, closer to the end. The baby was going to come in just a couple of months. And what about the girls, who thought every time I left I was never coming back? My view of everything had already been permanently altered, and I knew it. No matter where I lived out the last weeks of the pregnancy, no matter who was with me and how it went down, nothing was ever going to change what I knew and where I’d been. It was too late for that.

  “Yes, I’m okay here,” I said to my dad.

  “You sure? It’s a pretty shady-looking place.”

  “Well, the hospital is right next door,” I pointed out. Lee loves practicality.

  “Yes, I saw that.”

  “So, when it’s time I just go over there,” I said. He looked pensive. Kate reached over and put her hand on my back. I don’t know how she knew, but just as I felt her hand, the floodgates opened and the tears came rolling out.

  “What is it?” my dad asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re emotional. That’s what happens with pregnancy,” he said, like he knew.

  “It really didn’t look like a warm and fuzzy place, Lee,” Kate said. “Liz, the girls, are they … well, are they all right?”

  I wiped my face on my sleeve. “Yeah, most of them.”

  “Can you go in and out of there when you want?” Kate asked.

  “Yeah, I have a pass. I take walks and stuff, but there’s nowhere to go.”

  “Well, you’re in the middle of nowhere here,” Lee said. He made a couple of low, frustrated sounds. “I’m sorry, Liz, this is an incredibly difficult situation, really tough stuff. I wish I could do more to help. Your mother seems to have made another questionable choice here.”

  I wanted to ask him a lot of things, but I didn’t. Like why didn’t he come up and see it before? And if Dorothy’s so bad at everything, why did he let her make this decision? We sat quietly, all of us somewhere else. Kate smiled uncomfortably. Lee finally said, “You’re going to be okay, Liz. Just got to get through this and put it behind you. This kind of thing will make you stronger, that’s for sure.”

  We went on to talk about summer work, and my college opportunities. Lee had written the letters to have my applications sent and was taking care of everything to ensure I would be heading off to school in the fall. My dad did have an amazing ability to make you feel like things were going to be okay. However, my brain could hold only so much when it came to my parents and their dynamic. I decided to make sure Dorothy’s name didn’t come up again that day. Lee finally said, “We should try to make the best of the day, right? I mean we’re here, and happy to see you. Think we can go peruse the area?”

  I wanted to try to have a nice time. I wiped the tears from my face. “Okay, Dad, peruse the area?”

  “You know, check it out after lunch, there’s always something interesting.”

  We ate the fish and salad and French fries. Lee and Kate didn’t ask anything else about the facility and I didn’t offer. I looked at Kate and thought how lucky my dad was to be with such a nice person. I remembered one of the first times I ever met her, about four and a half years earlier. It was on the boat, in the summer, at the Chicago Yacht Club. My sisters and some friends and I showed up to go sailing. It was a really hot day, and all we wanted to do was get out on the lake and anchor the boat so we could jump off and swim. I noticed, when I got on the boat that day, there was a huge thick rope I’d never seen before, tied off on a cleat and hanging off the stern. We sailed out, anchored, and all of us kids jumped in. I looked over and screamed for Kate to watch, but I couldn’t see her. When I climbed back up the ladder, I saw she had on a life jacket and was hanging on to the big rope off the back of the boat. That’s when I realized she didn’t know how to swim. When I asked her why, she said she had never learned, no one had ever taught her, and I remember thinking that was sad.

  Lee took the last bite of his fish and moved his knife and fork to the proper position at twenty past four. He then looked over at my plate, where fork and knife were already in the proper position. He got up to see if he could find out where to go and what to do in the area. Kate and I sat quietly, just the two of us. She smiled her thousand-watt smile.

  “It’s good to see you, Liz,” she said. “I think about you a lot, hoping you’re okay. You are okay, right?”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Kate.”

  “Do they know when your baby will come?”

  “They’re guessing the last week in May.”

  “You know, I had my daughter when I was very young, and the good news is that it will go quickly, because you’re young and strong. Don’t worry about that part.”

  “I am worried about that part… . I’ll try not to.”

  “Is your mom going to come when you go into labor?”

  “I think so, I hope so.”

  “That’s a good idea. And they’re talking to you about the adoption?”

  “I talk to this one woman, Ms. Graham. She’s the one who tells me all the stuff. She’s a social worker.”

  “Oh, well, that’s really good.”

  “Yeah, she’s a nice lady.”

  Lee came back to the table, rubbing his hands together the way he always did. “Let’s take a drive, there are a few interesting historical points.” He was the same Lee, no matter how in the middle of nowhere we were.

  • • • •

  We had a good day. Kate fell asleep on the car ride back. I watched the sun lowering in the sky as the pit in my stomach dug deeper. I hated this part, leaving my old world and saying goodbye. It never got easier, the leaving. Lee pulled up to the front of the facility and turned to me.

  “I should just head out, Diz. She’s asleep. I don’t know when I’ll be able to make it back. I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay, thanks for everything, Dad, especially the history lesson.”

  “Smart aleck,” he said, smiling. “You’re going to be okay, you know that, right? Let’s just get this over with.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t forget the bags there. Kate said you asked for some pictures of
yourself, and she also got the art supplies.”

  I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek and petted Kate’s sleeping shoulder.

  He watched me walk to the door and waited till it buzzed me in. I waved and watched the car take off toward home, miles and miles away.

  chapter 11

  The trek up to school felt easier without the snow, although Nellie, who was growing bigger by the second, didn’t seem to feel the difference in mid-March. A couple of weeks after I saw my dad, we walked in the schoolhouse door and saw the books from the library sitting on a steel shelf in the front of the schoolroom.

  “Well, shit,” Deanna said. “They finally thought it would be a good idea to put some books in this fucking school.” She walked over and grabbed one. Amy followed, then Wren and Jill. Nellie was standing in front of the shelves, taking it all in.

  “Nell, you should read this,” I said. I took Little House in the Big Woods off the shelf and held it out to her. “I love these books, they’re all about this family living out in the wilderness.”

  “They’re for little kids.”

  “No, they’re not, everyone likes them. Your kids might like them one day, Nell. Why don’t you just try, and the words you can’t understand, mark them with a pencil and I’ll help you with them.”

  She took the book out of my hand and looked at it. “I fucking guess I should. Where’s a pencil?”

  Maryann—the teacher who never said anything—stood up from her chair at the other end of the room. She cleared her throat and addressed us.

  “Girls, as you can see, we got some books. I want to let you know that they are on loan from the public library. So if you want to take them with you, out of this room, you have to sign them out with me. I need to know so we can bring them back or renew them, or they’ll charge us.” She waited for what I guess she thought would be an argument, but no one said anything. She continued, “Okay. Also, tomorrow, there will be two long tables brought up from the basement so you have a surface to write on. You can just pull the chairs up to the tables.” Again, she looked ready for heckling.

  “Well, it’s about time you did fucking something,” Deanna said.

  I raised my hand. Maryann looked at it, like she’d never seen a raised hand before. “Ahhhhh, yes … Liz?”

  “I just wanted to say thanks for getting the books.”

  Tilly laughed and raised her hand. Maryann said, “Yes, Tilly?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” added Tilly. Nellie smiled and raised her hand too.

  Maryann said, “Yes … Nellie?”

  “What, are we in a classroom now?” Nellie said.

  • • • •

  Most of the girls wanted to take the books back to their rooms when school was over for the day. They lined up and signed them out, and we all headed back down the hill. The bitter chill in the air was gone. The trees were beginning to look like trees instead of dark, tangled spears. Nellie was holding on to Tilly and me, complaining about her swollen ankles. Tilly was also huge and was having trouble holding her huge belly up with her tiny toothpick legs, but she never ever complained.

  “This is what it’s gonna be like when we’re fucking old, you know that?” Nellie groaned. “I feel like my great-grandmother.”

  “Is she really fat?” Tilly asked.

  “No, fuck off. I meant she has a hard time movin’ around.”

  Inside, I tapped on Ms. Graham’s door, stepped in, pulled two pictures out of my pocket, and put them on her desk. In the pictures I was standing with my head kind of bent to the side, smiling big at the camera. I was in front of the Christmas tree at my dad’s apartment. Ms. Graham picked them up and smiled. “When was this?” she asked.

  “This past Christmas,” I said. I realized I didn’t know in that picture, just a few months earlier, that I was pregnant. I didn’t know any of what I knew now. I wondered if I’d ever look quite like that girl again.

  “They’re perfect, Liz, thank you.”

  When I came out of the office, Nellie and Tilly were waiting for me. They bickered, which they did a lot, the whole walk back. They reminded me of my sisters sometimes. They stayed in the lounge, and I headed for my room. Jill was already there, on her bed, with my guitar in her lap. She could play one song now, “Skip to My Lou.” She played it incessantly.

  “I got to teach you a different song,” I said. She placed the guitar against the wall, leaned over, and dug for something in her trash bag. “You know you can put that stuff in the drawers, Jill,” I said. She kept everything in the big trash bag, even her toothbrush.

  “No, I’m used to it.”

  I decided to finally ask her, “So … what did you do to be in juvie with Deanna?”

  “What crime did I commit?”

  “I guess.”

  “I’m a runaway. I ran away one too many times, couldn’t stand listening to my mom fight with her boyfriend. He’s an asshole.”

  “That’s not really a crime.”

  “It is if you’re a minor.” She smiled. “It is what it is, you just gotta roll with it.” Jill was different from any of the other girls at the facility. She obviously had had a hard life, like the rest of them, but it seemed to sit differently inside her. She was at ease with herself. She was lying back on her bed, rubbing her growing stomach.

  “What are you going to do after you have your baby?” I asked.

  “My mom doesn’t know about this kid. I don’t want to bring it back there. And the father, well, he wouldn’t be a good dad. But I got a friend. She used to be my neighbor. She’s twenty-two, she has a kid and a place, so I’m gonna go there, and get a job I guess.”

  I grabbed two apples off my dresser and threw her one. She caught it.

  “Well thanks, Liz P. Girl in hiding, guitar player, not keeping her baby, rich family, with a mom and a dad … that’s what I’ve learned about you without asking a thing.” She chomped on the apple.

  “You can ask me anything you want.”

  “Really? Okay. You ever gonna see or talk to any of these girls after this?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  “That’s honest. How many songs you think I can learn on the guitar before you have your baby and leave?”

  “Maybe three. My turn. Are you afraid of anything?” I asked.

  She thought about it for a while. “Yeah.”

  “What?”

  “Fucking up with my kid. My turn. Where’s the dad to your baby?” There was a knock on the door. Jill and I both looked over and yelled in unison, “Come in, Tilly.”

  Tilly peeked her head in, smiling. “Is Liz telling a story or something? Why aren’t you out in the lounge?”

  Jill sat up from the bed and shoved her socked feet into her flip-flops on the floor. She pushed and pushed until she got the socks to bend for the thong part between her toes. She looked at me and said, “We’re not finished.”

  We all headed to the lounge. The Love Boat was just ending. Alice came in to check the chore chart.

  “Alice,” I asked. “How long do you think you’ll keep the Christmas decorations up in here? Isn’t it almost Easter?” There was a plastic green garland, drooping along the far two walls in the lounge. Alice squinted.

  “Thanks, Liz. I’ll just add that to the chore chart for you and Jill this week.”

  The phone rang loudly from the booth out in the hall. Tilly jumped up and ran like a bat out of hell, just like she always did, hoping it was Rick calling for her. We all waited for her to run back in and pout about it being for someone else, but she didn’t return. Amy looked up from the card game and said, “Thank you, Rick!” Then she looked over at Jill, who was playing cards against Wren. “Jesus, Jill, you need to go play cards as your job. You’ve never lost one game to any of us.”

  “My mom is a master at cards,” Jill said. “Only thing she really knows how to do. She played every day. I’d come home from grade school, couldn’t see through the smoke in our front room to get to the kitchen. Poker, all day e
very day. Maybe it’s in my blood.”

  “You could use that shit, Jill. Go play in some of those street games, make some money,” Deanna said.

  “What do you think I been doing?”

  “No shit? You play in the alley?”

  “That’s where they found me before I came here.”

  Deanna laughed. I looked over at Nellie, to see if she knew what the alley was, but she was bent over her chair and breathing heavy. I jumped up.

  “Nellie, you okay? What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, something’s wrong.”

  “SHIT, where’s Alice? Nellie, you don’t look good. Shit you guys, somebody go find Alice right now. Nellie, is it labor? Your stomach?”

  “Yeah … hold my hand.”

  She squeezed it so tight I yelped. “Is this the first time you’ve felt a pain?”

  “No.”

  “Nellie, you’re supposed to tell us, remember?”

  “I didn’t want to be a faker like fuckin’ Gina. Shit, fuck, fuck, it hurts.”

  Wren came back with Alice. Alice rushed over, bent down, and asked, “Think it’s time, Nell?”

  “Yeah, I think.” I didn’t know what was going on inside of me, but I was petrified for Nellie. My heart was pounding. And then it dawned on me. I really, really didn’t want Nellie to leave. And having the babies meant she was leaving. Alice called the hospital from the lounge phone.

  “They’re sending a wheelchair,” she said. “Nellie, just relax, and try to breathe normally.”

  “Alice, these babies aren’t fucking due yet.” Nellie looked terrified.

  “Twins come early sometimes. It’s fine.” Alice stroked her hair. “They’re going to take good care of you at the hospital.”

  “Liz,” Nellie said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You know, if these babies come and I leave, or fucking die, you have to be Mac.”

  “What?”

  “From Cuckoo’s Nest. You never picked a person. So you’re Mac, you’re really Mac anyway.”

  “Okay, I’ll be Mac, Nell. You’re going to be fine.”

  “You’re not dying, Nellie,” Alice said. “You’re having a couple babies, it’s very different.”