“You should have called.”
He leaned against the door frame. He smelled of cigarettes and booze. “That guy, Sal? Got laid off. He didn’t expect it, either. Some of us guys went down the Aviation for some drinks to make him feel better.”
I laid down on my stomach and started to cry.
“What’s the matter?” he said.
“I don’t know,” I lied. The matter was I wanted my mother.
I had big plans for my marriage. They went something like this: My friends come over every night. We have pajama parties and play music as loud as we want. Instead, like I said, they deserted me to Spring Lake. where they had new and changing boyfriends, went skinny-dipping and floating on inner tubes, and never thought of inviting me, because I was pregnant. The only girlfriends who called me up were Virginia, who would be going to college in the fall and had to stay in Wallingford to work for the summer, and Fay, because she was married now too. She’d married the guy from the nuclear submarine the day after graduation, as planned.
Finally, my friends invited us to a huge party. Ray and I drove Virginia and Bobby, who would be leaving for boot camp in a couple of weeks. Everybody would be there except for Fay, because she was visiting her in-laws in Virginia. By the time of the party, it had been positively confirmed that Fay had conceived on her honeymoon. I was ecstatic that now I wouldn’t be the only mother.
I could think of nothing but the party for weeks. I was sure everybody would be shocked to see how fat I’d grown and that they’d make a big fuss over me. But my girlfriends seemed different. For one thing, their skin was tanned, and for another, they were surrounded by guys I’d never laid eyes on. There were empty beer cans and scotch bottles overflowing from garbage bags in comers. Beatrice, who used to think she was ugly, was wearing tight hiphuggers and a low-cut jersey. She was with a guy named Donnie, who’d just come back from Vietnam, where he’d been a para medic. But his last three months all he did was load bodies in plastic bags onto planes. Beatrice told me this in the bathroom while she plucked her eyebrows. “I’m such a mess, Beverly. I’ve been drunk for a month.”
“Really?”
“We have beer for breakfast. Beer and toast.”
“You’re lucky.”
“I’m broke. I spent all my graduation money. We all are. In two weeks I start at the Knights of Columbus with my mother. I don’t want to go back to Wallingford. You’re lucky you don’t have to work.”
“I know.”
No one made a fuss about my hugeness, so after my third rum and Coke, I lifted my shirt up in the kitchen to show off my belly. People gathered around to touch it. “What does it feel like?” they wanted to know.
“Heavy. I get backaches and heartburn.”
“Ugh.”
“But it moves. Sometimes you can see it under my skin.”
“How weird.”
Then I got drunk, noticed this beautiful guy walk in the door, and forgot myself. I asked him to dance. We did the Jerk and I forgot all about the umbilical cord and fetus strangulation and that I was even pregnant. I closed my eyes and really got into it. I imagined he was watching me and wishing I wasn’t married. I imagined that if I weren’t married, I would dance with this guy for the rest of the night. Then we’d go outside and talk by the lake. He’d be from a different town. We’d go there and I’d meet new people. I felt his hand on my arm and opened my eyes. “Won’t you hurt the baby?” he said.
I turned and walked through the kitchen and out the back door, stunned. I sat on the ground between two parked cars until I was sure I wouldn’t cry, then I looked for Raymond. He was leaning against a car. He took the last swig of a beer, then squashed the can in his fist and burped. He was with Armond White, who was home on leave from the army.
“You’re drunk,” I said when I stood next to Raymond.
“Tell me one thing,” Ray said. “We were just talking. How do you lose my socks in the wash? What the hell happens to them?”
“You’ve had too much to drink,” I said.
“Ah, come on.”
“I want to go home.”
“We just got here.”
“Why don’t you leave the guy alone?” Armond said. I had a longstanding gripe with Armond. He was the moron who told Raymond that if you had sex more than once in twenty-four hours then you were safe after the first time. I knew Armond was stupid, like most of Raymond’s friends, but I believed him because I thought they taught guys all about birth control in the army.
“Mind your own business, Armond,” I said.
“You let your wife talk like that, man?”
“Let your wife? I talk however the fuck I please.”
“Nice language.”
“Raymond.” I thought I’d murder him if he didn’t walk away with me that instant.
“You think you’re pretty tough, huh?” said Armond. “Remember, tough cookies crumble.”
“All over your face.”
“Beverly, come on.” Raymond hugged me from behind and pinned my arms to my sides as he walked me away backward.
“You have such assholes for friends,” I said.
“So? I’m an asshole,” Ray said.
“Let’s go home.”
“I’m having fun. We never have fun anymore. Don’t let’s leave yet. Please? Besides, what about Bobby and Virginia?”
“How can you even talk to somebody so stupid? I’m so tired.”
“You’re always tired. You hate my friends. We never have any fun.” He tried to kiss me on the neck. “Come on, Bevy. All your friends are here. You been looking forward to this for weeks. Why aren’t you having fun?”
“If we stay longer you’ll get drunker.”
“I promise. If we stay another two hours, I won’t drink anymore. Maybe one beer.”
“One hour.”
“All right.”
One hour later I couldn’t find him. An hour after that, I found him lying on his back on top of a picnic table by the lake. Drunk. I told him I wanted to go home.
“I want to go home. I want to go home. You know who you sound like? What’s her name in The Wizard of Oz.” He thought that was a riot.
“You said only one beer.”
He sat up and swayed so far to the right he almost fell off the table. I felt like hitting him. “Give me the keys,” I said.
He dug in his pockets, then shook his head up from his chest. “What am I doing? No way. You’re really something.” He pointed his thumb at me. “The big boss. Everybody thinks I’m pussy-whipped. That’s why I got drunk.”
“I’m going,” I said, and started walking toward home, which was fifty miles away. The road was dark and deserted. I passed the little stand, closed now, where the year before I’d sat on a picnic table and flirted with some college guys who’d asked me if I was a nonconformist, a word I’d never heard. I’d walked nearly a mile and was not only getting cold but scared, because the trees made an arch over my head and blocked off the moonlight, when Raymond finally pulled up with Virginia and Bobby in the backseat. “You walked far,” he said.
“I’m freezing,” I said.
“Get in, baby,” he said.
“Let me drive.”
“Please, Bev?”
I felt sorry for him. I could be a bitch. Plus, I didn’t want to make a scene in front of Virginia and Bobby, who’d seen too many already, so I got in and ignored his weaving all over the road. About ten minutes later, Raymond nodded out and our VW flipped like a pancake. Sand chimed around me and time slowed down as I thought, Now, at last, I’ll lose the baby.
Then everything was still and silent. Virginia said, “Bobby?”
“I’m all right,” he said.
“Beverly?” she said.
“I’m okay,” I said as I squeezed myself out of the upside-down car. Bobby and Virginia looked dazed standing a foot apart staring. The only sound was the whir of wheels spinning. “Where’s Ray?” Bobby said after a minute. It was strange we’d forgotten him.
“Do you think it’s his brain?” I said.
Bobby put his ear to Ray’s chest. “He’s alive,” he said.
We walked across the street and banged on a door. A woman’s voice yelled, “Get out of here before I call the cops.”
Bobby said, “Fuck you, lady.”
At the next house, the woman called an ambulance and we went back to the car to wait.
“Goddamn!” Bobby kicked a fender.
“Bobby, don‘t,” Virginia said, because Bobby could get crazy.
“That’s my buddy,” Bobby said. “Look at him, man.”
I couldn’t. Neither could Virginia.
At the hospital they wheeled Ray away, then a doctor examined me. He listened to my stomach with a stethoscope and said the baby seemed fine. Then he bandaged my knee and my forehead where it had hit the windshield and told me I could go home. Bobby and Virginia got picked up by Virginia’s father, and I hung around to wait for Ray to get out of X rays. His eyes were black-and-blue and opened. When he saw me, he started crying.
“His collarbone and his nose are broken,” a nurse told me.
“I should’ve let you drive,” Raymond cried.
“It’s all right,” I said.
“I could’ve killed you. I love you so much.”
“I love you too. Don’t cry.”
The nurse rolled him away sobbing.
“You all right?” my father said when I called home for a ride. I’d been praying I’d get my mother.
“Yes.”
“Him?”
“Broken collarbone and nose.”
“Was he drinking?”
“A little.”
“Did they book him?”
“No.”
“The car?”
“Totaled.”
“Jesus Christ. What’s the matter with you kids? I ought to have his license taken away. Now, what’re you gonna do for a car?”
My mother came to pick me up, then it was her turn. “He’s gonna miss work,” she said. “What’re you going to do for money? I do what I can, but you know your father and me don’t have a pot to piss in. I don’t know, you kids think you can go around acting like teenagers.”
“We are teenagers.”
“You’re having a baby. You have responsibilities. What’s it going to be like when the baby’s born? How would you’ve felt if you lost it? You better smarten up.”
I leaned my head back on the seat and watched the streetlights disappear into the car roof and hummed not a song but a drone, like a bumble bee.
“What’s that?” my mother said.
I kept humming, and she never knew it was me.
Once I got home, I was afraid murderers and escapees from mental institutions were lurking by the windows, so I went directly to the bathroom, locked the door, and sat on the floor next to the toilet. I felt so lonely, I even confessed to myself that I wished I could’ve gone home with my mother. I hugged the bowl and yowled great sobs like opera.
Then the baby moved. It was the first time since the accident. My crying trembled to neutral.
Maybe I’d been lonely for the baby. I realized I’d been talking to her for months without thinking. Maybe I would’ve been sad if she died.
I went to a fortune-teller by the railroad tracks. Her trailer smelled of cat piss, and she was as wide as a Volkswagen. She sat me down and dealt some cards. She said I was having a girl, which I already knew, and that within five years I’d have two more children and move into a split-level house. My daughter’s name would begin with J.
I began making plans. My daughter would look just like me, and when she was born she’d have a round little baseball head covered with black hair. Her eyes would be big and brown. She was going to be my best friend and there’d be nothing in the world we wouldn’t talk about. I’d tell her every last detail about my life up to her birth and after. She’d definitely go to college, and I’d call her Nicole, after a schizophrenic on my favorite soap opera. Ray said if it was a boy, he wanted it named after him. I said, no way. I wasn’t naming our girl after me. We settled on Jason, after Jason McCord in The Lawman, and his middle name would be Michael, after my father.
CHAPTER 5
LABOR started on a Sunday night in the middle of September. It was so hot that week that the neighborhood dogs had taken to roaming in packs in a flurry of heat madness. Cats dived under cars and into open cellar windows to escape them. One day I saw the dogs toss a doll in the air and rip it limb from limb, a cloud of white foam clinging to their coats. I was almost two weeks late, and if I didn’t deliver soon, I was planning to throw myself in the middle of that pack of mangy dogs and be done for.
We went for macaroni at my mother’s on Sunday, a ritual I’d missed maybe a half dozen times in my entire life, only this time I felt a pain after dinner while we were watching The FBI and eating lemon meringue pie, but I didn’t say anything. Raymond wanted to stay for the Sunday night movie, but I told him I didn’t feel too well and wanted to go home. As soon as we walked into our house, a slimy liquid drooled down the inside of my thigh. “Oooh, gross! Raymond!” I yelled. “I think I’m in labor.”
“You’re kidding,” he said.
We tossed my overnight bag into the backseat of our Chevelle (my father had found it for five hundred dollars and co-signed for the loan), and I suggested we take a ride once around the duck pond before we went to the hospital. The new Beatles song “Hey Jude” came on the radio.
“That’s it!” I said. “That’s what we’ll name her—June.” I’d misheard the lyrics.
Ray drummed his thumbs on the dashboard, jerked his chin in and out, and said, “Cool.”
I was scared to death in the labor room. First they shaved me, then they gave me an enema, then after I waddled out of the bathroom and back into the room, they laid me in a crib like a beached whale. Immediately, the nurse poked some fingers in. I was three fingers, the middle circle. Five fingers was the biggest. When you stretched that wide it was bingo, birth. The Puerto Rican women came in and left within half an hour, screaming, “Mama! Mama! Mama!”
There was a pretty woman lying in the crib across from me. “Hi,” she said after the nurse left.
“Hi.”
“I’m Louise Baker. This is my first baby. You too?”
“Yeah. My name’s Beverly Bouchard.”
“If I scream like those ladies, shoot me, okay?”
“You think it’s gonna really hurt?”
“I’m sure it does, but it can’t hurt that much.”
“How long you been here?”
“About an hour. I haven’t seen a doctor yet. I go to the clinic.”
“So do I. I never saw you.”
“That place is the pits.” She pulled back her long blond hair and began making a braid. “I go to Central Connecticut College. I mean, I did. After I was six months, I quit. My boyfriend still goes there. I’ll probably go back after the baby.”
“What were you going to school for?”
“My major? Anthropology.”
I wasn’t sure I knew what that was, but I’d rather die than ask her. I noticed her legs weren’t shaved. I wished I’d seen her at the clinic. Everybody else spoke Spanish, and there never were enough folding chairs to go around. I’d had to wait a minimum of four hours every time, and if I’d met Louise there, we could’ve talked for whole mornings. By now we’d be good friends. But, probably, a person who went to college would think I was too stupid.
“Do you have medical insurance?” she asked.
“No. You?”
“Do you realize if you don’t marry, your boyfriend’s insurance won’t cover you? We refused to marry. We put our politics in action. Art and I believe it’s an archaic formality binding you together by law. My parents don’t even ... oh bo
y. Here comes one.”
My pains had stopped altogether. I told the nurse. A doctor came in. He was young and handsome. His hands were slender and long. I’d never laid eyes on him before. “Hello,” he said. He looked at my chart. “Mrs. Bouchard, I hear your pains have stopped.”
“Yes.”
“We’re going to give you a little something to get them started again, speed things up.”
The nurse handed him a needle and he stuck it in my ass. Within ten minutes, I was in agony and there was no breather between contractions. The doctor came back and said, “Okay, Mrs. Bouchard, we’re moving right along. Now, I’m going to give you some Demerol to ease it up a bit.” He gave me another shot in the ass. Before I passed out, I had a hallucination. I saw the kitten I’d had when I was a kid. It was jumping up over and over again, trying to get in the crib with me.
I don’t know how long I was out before I awoke to Louise screaming, “Oh God, oh God, oh God. Ah ah ah ah aaaahhhhhh!”
Sweat started raining from every pore of my body. When she stopped screaming, she saw me looking at her through the bars and said, “I’m sorry, but it hurts so much,” then she started crying.
I wished I could die.
Louise was long gone when the nurse rolled me onto my back, put my ankles in my hands, and told me to push. It was too humiliating. I kept thinking how even Jacqueline Kennedy must’ve held her ankles in the air and grunted like she was taking a shit. The next time the nurse appeared, she looked between my legs and started breathing heavily. “Okay, Mrs. Bouchard, I’d like you to stop pushing now. We’re paging your doctor. Don’t worry, everything’s fine.”
“I can’t help it,” I cried. “I have to.”
“Please, Mrs. Bouchard, try not to push,” she said as she wheeled my cot into the delivery room. I felt betrayed by every living mother. Why hadn’t they warned me?
“This is horrible.” I started crying. “Where’s the gas? Give me the gas,” I yelled. “Don’t I get gas?” The nurse strapped my knees into stirrups, then positioned a round mirror above to distract me. “Look, Mrs. Bouchard, look. You can see the head.” It was slimy green and protruding. I covered my eyes and yelled, “Take it away, I can’t stand it, I don’t want to!” Finally, an Oriental intern walked in. They clamped a gas mask on my face and it was over.
Riding in Cars With Boys: Confessions of a Bad Girl Who Makes Good Page 5