by Caela Carter
Aunt Linda writes: 1. ASK MOM FOR HELP.
“What about Todd?”
“You know about Todd?” Those words rush out of me like a pipe bursting open. His name feels too intimate in my mouth. I can’t control anything. I am simultaneously holding myself back and spitting words all over everyone. I can’t even control my mouth, and I’m supposed to grow up and control this baby in just a few months? It’s impossible.
But Todd. I could do it with Todd. If we both got away from Jacksonville and we could create a little family …
“Your mom told me about him. He’s your boyfriend, right?”
“No,” I answer. “And that’s two.” Now is where Bad Evelyn finally climbs out of her shell and shows herself to Aunt Linda—stoned and drunk and naked. This is the part where my aunt who used to turn me into a burrito, who came to my rescue this year, who trusts me with her children—this is where she realizes that she never liked me to begin with. This is where I get kicked out again. This is where I really have nowhere else to go. This is where I lose the last person I have to talk to.
“Your mom said you were quite fond of him.”
I nod.
“So what do you expect from him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think, Evie. Would you ask him for help?”
I shut my eyes and picture him—running out of the locker room in his football uniform, passing me a beer in Sean’s backyard, tearing into a sandwich with his teeth after bringing me an army’s worth of food. Him naked underneath me, pulling at my legs and ass to get as close to me as possible. I try to remember what we used to say to each other. Can I ask him to think about helping me again? I try to imagine sitting down with him and his mom and Rick, working out a plan, because they would be darn good grandparents.
I can’t see any of it.
But he shouldn’t be off the hook. It’s his mistake too.
I imagine telling him I’m taking him to court and the picture is really clear. I see his mom finding out after he gets served. She’s crying rivers down her face, then forcing him to do the right thing. This makes sense.
But I can also see us living somewhere far away, just us two—three, I mean. I can see myself cooking for him and see us sitting next to each other at a dining room table with textbooks open between us, learning, loving, being in college.
“I would ask him for help,” I say. And what will he say? What will he say?
Aunt Linda writes 3. ASK TODD FOR HELP. And I’m touched because she didn’t even write number 2 on the list. So, even though I’m not sure about this, I add, “And if he says no, I’ll get my mom to help me take him to court.”
Aunt Linda widens her eyes. “Okay, I guess that answers the question as to where you’ll live then.”
What’s she talking about? “I don’t think I have much of a choice about that, actually.”
“Evelyn, they both love you. You could live at either place.”
Todd? Love me? She thinks I could live with Todd? I want this so much, I almost believe her, even though she’s never met him.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you and your father, but I do know he loves you no matter how he messed up. He would take you in, I’m sure.”
“I’m going to have to live with him,” I say.
“No … Evie … you …” Shock crosses Aunt Linda’s face like a slow-motion slap. And then I get it too.
“He … he moved out again?” I ask.
“They didn’t tell you?” she says.
Fuck. Fuck these tears.
“Hold on,” Aunt Linda says. “We’re calling your mom right now.”
Fuck these fucking tears. “No!”
“Evie!” Aunt Linda calls, but I’m already running up the stairs.
I run to my desk and hit Reply.
So you finally got a clue and moved out, huh, Daddy? Finally set Mom free from the stupid Silent House? Congratulations. I hope you and your dentist live happily ever after.
Strangely, as soon as I hit Send, my tears are gone. All the anger seeps out my fingers and into my computer. I’m nothing but exhausted. I crash onto my bed and listen as Aunt Linda berates my mom on the phone downstairs. I know she is talking loudly so I can hear.
“Judy, she’s seventeen almost. You really can’t think you don’t need to tell her this stuff … When … act like a family…. It is despicable to let her find out this way. … Yes, you should…. Yes, you do need to listen to this from your little sister, and another thing …”
But Aunt Linda doesn’t get it. It’s not my mom’s fault. Mom doesn’t talk. She doesn’t know how. We never really talked. We just don’t. It’s not how we work. Of course Aunt Linda doesn’t get it, her family is so filled with noise and talking and planning and cooking together and eating together and dishes together and homework together and playing together. That’s not how we work, though. Besides, what was Mom supposed to do? Yesterday when we were on the phone was she just supposed to say, “And by the way, your father left again”? In the middle of asking me how I feel and how my grades are and how cold it is here, she’s just supposed to throw that into a conversation? That’s ridiculous.
No, it’s all the Stranger’s fault. Again.
But. I can picture my senior year now—living with my mom in that big house, which will be just as silent but not as creepy. And not as silent at all because the bean will be there, probably screaming because I have no idea what I’m doing. Maybe I won’t get to move away to some romantic tiny apartment with Todd, but he’ll come over and play with the baby and maybe sometimes I’ll cook everyone dinner. And my mom will pay for someone to take care of bean while I’m in school. Life will go on, but with a baby in it. We’ll just put up caution tape and avoid the Stranger’s half of the hallway: that house is huge for just two—three—people anyway. We’ll make the house smaller and just forget about him.
The weirder thing is that I can almost imagine the Stranger too: taking bean on a Sunday and showing up at his apartment downtown or wherever and letting him play grandpa while I drink tea or some stupid thing they do in real families. Maybe life will just move forward.
But he should have told me. He knows how to talk. It’s not something you just forget.
“Do you want to live with me and Mom, beanie?” I ask my belly button. “How does that sound?”
I step down the stairs to the kitchen, where Aunt Linda is still having what she calls an “assertive” conversation with the phone. I know my mom is on the other end, rolling her eyes and trying to use as few words as possible to get Aunt Linda to hang up.
I put my hand out to show her I want the phone.
Aunt Linda stops in midsentence and puts it in my palm. “Linda?” Mom is saying. “I’m trying to consider your points, but I am still extremely disappointed in your decision to inform my daughter about the dissolving of her parents’ marriage at a moment when she is extremely vulnerable and truly needs to focus elsewhere.”
“It’s me, Mom.” I almost just call her Lawyer outright.
“Oh, Evelyn! I’m so sorry, Evelyn.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say, turning so I can’t see Aunt Linda’s reaction to that statement.
“Okay.”
“I just want to know, can the baby and I come live with you for my senior year? Will you help me with the baby and, like, bills or whatever? Like, finding someone to take care of it while I’m in school?”
“Of course, my Evie! I’m so pleased to hear you’ve made a decision.”
A decision. I didn’t even realize that’s what I was doing, but it is. Three decisions down, who knows how many to go. The phone starts shaking in my hand so I push it back toward Aunt Linda and walk on unsteady knees up the stairs. I puke for the first time since the morning sickness ended, then lie down on my bed. “Well, bean, I hope you like us,” I say.
Dads
Every morning I sit at my desk and reread the e-mail I know I need to send soon.
&nb
sp; Todd,
I’m bringing your baby home. The baby and I are moving in with my mom, I guess. You’re going to need to help. You are a dad. We need to talk. I think maybe you should call me.
E
He keeps writing me stupid things about school and our classmates (whose lives seem so easy now) and basketball and Sean’s parties and sometimes how he misses me, which is probably complete bull, but I hope not. I don’t respond. I keep e-mailing Lizzie dumb questions about school and parties and her family and her dad. She doesn’t usually respond. When she does she always reminds me how mad she is at me.
I imagine Todd reading the e-mail and immediately jumping for his phone, calling me and saying he’ll help however he can until we can get away together. He’ll say that he can get an after-school job, and I’ll say he probably doesn’t have to do that (because, let’s face it, he probably doesn’t). He just needs to come over and spend time with us every day. And he’ll say he can’t wait until he gets to see me every day again.
I know he told me I’d have to take him to court. But there’s no way. Once he sees bean, once he realizes it’s a real person, there’s no way.
Still, it takes me weeks to actually send the e-mail. I send it the Friday morning that’s two weeks before winter break, two and a half weeks before Christmas.
At lunch that day, I sit across from Maryellie and ask, “What do you think he’ll say?” I make my face look nervous, but actually, I’m excited.
“What can he say?” Maryellie asks. “You’re right. He needs to help.”
I sigh.
“This is why I’m glad I only had sex with Mario.” Mario, Maryellie’s boyfriend and soon-to-be baby daddy, is a year out of high school and works in a gas station. Maryellie says they’re going to move in together before she has the baby, but she’s due in a month so that seems unlikely.
Although Maryellie is still my only friend at school, and she’s no Lizzie, school is okay now. My brain wanders, so even though the curriculum—except for AP chem—is much easier than it was at St. Mary’s, I still have trouble pulling Bs. But somehow I don’t care. The rest of the girls mostly ignore me, but when they talk to me there’s a softness in their voices that I’ve never heard before going to school here. The teachers, too, seem to really want me to be happy. Everyone is gentle with each other here. I don’t walk around on eggshells. I don’t refer to these classmates as jerks and boneheads, even in the privacy of my own brain.
“I only had sex with Todd,” I reply to Maryellie.
Her eyebrows shoot toward her forehead and she shifts her butt around on the Plexiglas bench. “Really?” It’s hard to fit the table between her gargantuan belly and my slightly swollen one.
“Don’t sound so surprised!” I say and she laughs, and I love how easy it is to make her laugh like that.
“I just figured, because he’s not your boyfriend, right?”
“No … it was complicated.” I remember how few people know about this. I want to talk about him, but the words stick to my tongue. I don’t know why: it’s not like Maryellie is going to spread rumors about Todd and me at Saint Mary’s.
“So why’d you do it with him?” she asks.
I remember Aunt Linda telling me that when you talk to people, you’re giving a little bit of yourself to them. If I don’t start talking, I’ll stay alone forever.
“I was punishing my parents,” I answer and laugh.
Maryellie nods like this makes perfect sense. “You did that well.” We laugh again. “Hey, will you come to my baby shower on Sunday?” she says, and it surprises me. Maryellie has come over a bunch of times now to help me watch my cousins, but she’s never invited me to her house.
“Yeah,” I say. “Of course. Do I get to meet Mario?”
“At a baby shower?” she asks, laughing again. “No. It will just be me and my mom and my aunts and cousins and a few of the other girls.” With each word the laughing leaves her voice more definitively. Finally she says, “You know, we don’t have a big house or anything. It’ll just be in my apartment.”
I nod, although I have no idea where she lives. “I’ll come. Thanks.”
When I get home, Todd has not replied. He was always forgetting his phone at home, though. And he probably left for school before I sent the e-mail because it’s an hour later in Florida. And he wouldn’t be home yet because of basketball practice.
A question floats in the back of my brain—how is Todd going to come over to help with the baby after school if he’s at practice all the time? Will he have to stop all those sports? Will he—? But I leave it there.
I’ll take a nap before dinner and by the time I wake up, he’ll have replied.
His face looms when I close my eyes and I think about him the way I do most often: naked and cuddled next to me. I imagine his football-player arms hoisting himself up, one hand planted on either side of my shoulders as he whispers how hot I look. In my fantasy, I flatten Bean out of my stomach, but I keep my boobs and legs just the way they are: curvy, full of texture so his hands can grab at my ass and actually take hold. He would always whisper “Is this okay?” right before he started. After, he settles his body behind me, our skin touching in every place possible and whispers questions about my life through my hair and into my ear.
Yeah, I know: sex was the problem.
I always make him put condoms on in these fantasies, even though, really, it’s a fantasy. It can’t make me more or less pregnant than I already am.
When I wake up it’s dark and Nora is yelling up the stairs for me to come down and join them for dinner. I blink and rub my eyes, briefly looking at the pile of books on my desk that I will have to tackle later in the weekend. My door bursts open and Cecelia jumps onto my bed, covering my forehead in kisses.
“Dinnertime, Evie-Teeny!” she sings. “Dinnnnnertime! Dinnnnnertime!”
I hoist her onto my hip and swing my feet to the ground. I’m still in my skirt.
“How do you have so much energy, Little Cousin?” I ask her.
She squeezes her arms around my neck, and I wonder if bean will be this full of affection in four years.
“Evie, I don’t think you should call me that anymore,” she says. “I’m getting pretty big, you know.”
I laugh and tilt my head back to look at her. “So what do you want me to call you?” I ask.
“I think I’m your Medium Cousin now.” And when I burst into laughter I realize it’s offending her so I suck it back in. It’s nice to be sucking in laughter instead of tears.
“You got it,” I tell her, slipping my feet into slippers and nuzzling my nose into her neck.
“And if he asks, will you tell Santa I’ve been good?”
“Good? You’re the best medium girl I know!” I put her down and she scurries to the kitchen.
It’s hard to imagine that I won’t live here next year. If I could guarantee that bean would be just like Cecelia—affectionate, full of energy, always making noise—or even Tammy—contemplative, intelligent, and gentle—it would be easier to picture loving it.
I check my e-mail again after dinner and I talk my heart out of speeding up when he still hasn’t replied.
To distract myself, I click on the Daily Dad Mail. I’ve replied to a few now—curt and nasty things that I need to shake out of my fingers so I can manage to fall asleep.
Pumpkin—
I need to see you. I’m not sure if they will have told you already, but I arranged with Linda to spend the Christmas holidays with you in Chicago.
Oh, hell no.
Your mother and I both agree that I really need to come. Of course, she’ll come too if you’d like to see her, but we’ll leave that up to you. My coming is non-negotiable. We need to talk. I’m afraid you are very misinformed. I miss you terribly. I love you more than anything. I cannot let you disappear from me no matter what mistakes I’ve made or how hard you try.
I arrive the morning of Christmas Eve. I know this might be a difficult holiday, but
I am truly excited to see you regardless.
Love, Dad
At the words Christmas Eve, I remember being Christmas Evie—my dad would spend the entire Christmas season every year until I was maybe ten coming up with a Christmas Evie outfit. On the morning of the twenty-fourth he’d put me in a white sweat suit and wrap me in red tape to make me a candy cane, or he’d cover an entire leotard in holly and dress me as a wreath, or he’d plaster me in pine needles and turn me into a tree. I was a Christmas cookie, a Christmas star, a Christmas present, a Christmas snowflake. But no matter the costume, he called me the Great Christmas Evie. Then we’d go out caroling, just the two of us, while Mom made soup for dinner. We’d go around our Jacksonville neighborhood and usually it wasn’t even cold enough to need a coat yet and we’d ring the doorbells of all the neighbors and we’d scream Christmas carols into the night with absolutely no talent at all. The neighbors started expecting us; they’d show up on the porch saying, “It’s the Christmas Evie!” and the best houses would give us hot chocolate or cookies. The Christmas Evie.
It’s weird when you realize how easy it would be to make someone smile and you still don’t want to. If I showed up at the airport on Christmas Eve in antlers or a Santa hat—even something that simple—I know he would see me and call out “The Christmas Evie!” and his eyes would light up even before they wander to my swollen middle.
It’s almost tempting.
Except that I don’t want the jerk to come here to begin with. The wimp. The fool. He can’t torture Mom anymore, so he decides to show up in Chicago and ruin my Christmas—maybe the only one I’ll ever have with Cecelia and Tammy—and bean—all of us together? He has to come and interrupt Santa? He has to negate the fact that Nora and Aunt Linda have even asked for my input as to what Santa should bring the girls? He gets to watch their faces light up when I give them the princess dolls I bought at the mall—a pink dress for Celie and a purple one for Tammy, complete with glitter and a matching tiara for each little girl?