Good Luck, Fatty?!

by Maggie Bloom

  I have an unclean thought that involves me and Tom and that secluded old tree house. “Now what?” I whisper.

  His body is hot against mine. “Turn around,” he says.

  I’m pinned in place and will be just as trapped if I’m able to wiggle myself to face him. “I don’t know if…”

  Out of nowhere, his tongue shoots to my ear (a crime of opportunity?) and something tightens in his frontal pants region. I want to scream (in a good way). He says, “Trust me.”

  I do as he says, twist and shimmy between his arms (all the while massaging my squishy flesh into his considerably leaner bod) until we end up eye to chin. Now I can barely breathe, and the junk in the box is digging a hole into the small of my back. “You’re up, Houdini,” I say.

  “What’s your rush?” He cocks his lips fiendishly. The stuff behind me shifts, and he gives it—and me—a good ramming. “That should do it.”

  There is a release of pressure from my backside but not from his front. Impulsively, I tip my face up and mold my lips to his, that anxious tongue of his darting and probing. I settle my hands on his hips and try to inhibit the memories of other boys entering me.

  Tom’s a virgin, I remind myself. And, oh yeah, there’s a teeny-tiny speck of a chance I might be pregnant.

  His hands go from holding up the box to caressing my back and hips and then…

  Crash!!! Bang!!! Boom!!!

  The contents of the box clatter about our feet, a fair amount of the noise absorbed by the speckled carpet. Still, I glance at the stairway, expecting someone to come running. But no one does, the merriment upstairs in full swing.

  Tom and I bend over at the same time, conking heads. “Ow,” I whine, an instant headache developing. (Can his head really be that hard?)

  He rubs at his temple. “Wow, do you drink titanium-fortified milk or something?”

  So he thinks I’m thick-headed too? Fantastic. “As a matter of fact, I do,” I declare, with mock indignation.

  From the looks of the items strewn across the floor, the box belongs to Mr. Cantwell, not Wilma (unless she’s a little on the freaky side). I reach for an upside-down magazine and turn it over. It’s a Playboy, circa nineteen eighty-five.

  Tom and I exchange embarrassed but excited glances, the Playmate on the cover enticing us to look further with her moony blue eyes and cherry-kissed smile. I pass the magazine to him and say nothing.

  We gather up a bunch of other personal memorabilia and guy stuff (matchbooks from various motels and diners; a giant marble and a brittle, peeling baseball glove; a couple of Penthouses to complement the Playboy; a magnifying glass with half an inch of dust caked to it; and a cache of vinyl records).

  “These are awesome,” I say, sifting through the 33s (the big, old albums the size of pizza boxes) and 45s (the smaller records with one track on each side). Until I was eight, Gramp had a Pioneer turntable, which he’d fire up every Sunday evening for some Chubby Checker, Elvis Presley, or The Platters. When the thing died, we couldn’t afford a replacement.

  Tom takes the records from me and, one at a time, stacks them in a neat pile. “Holy shit,” he says when he gets to a particular 45 with a jacket image of a voluptuous topless chick riding a bike and wearing nothing but bikini bottoms and tube socks. “I remember this,” he says, turning the record over in his hands as if he’s unspooling a filmstrip of old memories.

  “What is it?” I ask (besides a little soft-core porn, since the cover model is mostly naked but pictured back-to).

  He gets a faraway look in his eyes. “My mom used to sing this to my dad every year, instead of Happy Birthday.”

  I glance at the record jacket and note that the tunes are by Queen, a band about which I know next to nothing. “Bicycle Race?” I say, reading the title of the A-track.

  Tom chuckles, shakes his head. “Uh-uh,” he says. “The other one.”

  I feel weird reading the title of the B-track aloud, but I do it anyway. “Fat Bottomed Girls?”

  He grins. “She thought it was about her, I guess,” he says, without a trace of self-consciousness, or pity, or meanness.

  “Do you have a record player?” I ask, wondering how a song about an overgrown body part could inspire an actual fat person to adopt it as their anthem.

  He raps his knuckles against a blond wood cabinet that’s the base of our archeological dig.

  I blink. “Huh?”

  He raps again. “Right here.”

  “That’s a record player?” I ask. The turntable Gramp had was the size of a suitcase.

  “Not the whole thing,” he says, in a tone that suggests I may be brain-dead. “Just the guts.”

  “Does it work?”

  “Last I knew.”

  Without me having to ask, he begins unearthing the cabinet, and I arrange the boxes out of the way, along the wall. Together we drag the cabinet over by the sofa, where there’s access to an electrical outlet. With a what-the-hell? shrug, he plugs it in (since when do we plug in furniture anyway?). Then he flips the lid open, revealing the turntable inside. “Got the record?” he asks, his string-bean fingers extended.

  “Oh, hang on.” I slip over and fetch the 45 from the floor and return it to his waiting hand.

  “Here goes nothin’,” he says, an air of skepticism in his tone as he slides the vinyl disc over the spindle, powers the turntable on (it’s spinning!) and gingerly coasts the needle to the sweet spot at the record’s edge.

  All I can do is stare at that glossy black disc revolving and revolving (this thing won’t put me in a trance, will it?) as the music starts to crackle out. “It’s working!” I squeak, suddenly giddy at our success in resurrecting a bygone technology. “I can’t believe it!”

  As Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, a band about which I know next to nothing but not absolutely nothing (they do sing Bohemian Rhapsody, after all) croons about the virtues of rounded feminine derrieres, Tom gets inspired to sample a bit of this fat girl’s bottom.

  And I let him, at least for now. But before things can progress to the next level between Tom Cantwell and me, I’m obligated to bring him up to speed on the whole sordid truth of my sexual promiscuity, including the fact that I may now be carrying Brent Flynn’s (or Justin White’s or Craig Benson’s) baby.

  chapter 8

  LUCKILY MARIE and Duncan decided they were above celebrating Christmas, despite their return to the motherland (too much commercialism, consumerism, and plain old American greed, they said), which left me to enjoy a pleasant holiday with Orv, Denise, and Denise’s family.

  By the time New Year’s Eve rolled around, I hadn’t laid eyes on my parents in nearly two weeks, and things had almost returned to normal.

  Then the phone rang.

  “Hello?” Denise says in the kitchen.

  It’s seven p.m., and Orv and I are settling in for a rerun marathon of Penal Code 911. Ever since I told Orv about Lex Arlington and the Yo-Yo race, he’s been obsessed with all things Lex-related. (I bet if I asked him Lex’s birth date or his favorite song, he’d know.)

  I’m not paying strict attention to the conversation in the other room, but Denise’s tone has gone wildly animated. I slide off the couch and peek around the corner, just in case I’m missing something of consequence.

  As soon as Denise spots me, she hangs up. “Get your coat,” she tells me, her voice tight and professional. “We’re going to the hospital.”

  I wrinkle my brow. “Why?”

  “Orv, come on!” she shouts into the living room. “Your Aunt Marie’s in labor!”

  Something makes me stop breathing for a few seconds. Maybe it’s the realization that, as little as I’ve mattered to my parents thus far, their loyalties will now be divided even further. Or maybe it’s the fear that I may be walking in Marie’s shoes in another eight months, give or take.

  Orv plods into the kitchen, his feet heavy even without those steel-toed boots he scuffs around in eight to twelve hours a day. “It’s New Year’s Eve,” h
e says, as if the stork should be off getting snookered from the dregs of some hobo’s peach schnapps instead of ushering new life into the world.

  “What do you want me to do about it?” Denise snaps. She hustles for the door, leaving Orv and me frozen and confused. Without looking back, she adds, “I’ll be in the car.”

  * * *

  When we get to the hospital, Denise wields the Royale into a fifteen-minute parking spot at the cusp of the emergency room and orders me and Orv out.

  “Where are we going?” Orv asks with a disinterested yawn, the passenger door expectantly agape.

  I slip out of the car and wait on the sidewalk for my guardians to settle whatever nagging issue is ping-ponging between them. “Just head for the maternity ward,” Denise instructs with a flustered eye roll. “I’ll meet you there.”

  Orv quits while he’s ahead, joins me on the sidewalk and hesitantly leads the way. At a second-floor nursing station, he stops and says, “Have you got a Marie…” He stares a second at my ear. “…Cotton here?”

  The young lady behind the desk, a raven-haired beauty with a dash too much black eyeliner, consults an erasable whiteboard and tells us, “She just went into surgery. Y’all can wait in the visitors’ room, around the corner.” She waves a dagger-nailed hand to direct us.

  I tug Orv by the shirtsleeve and say, “Thanks.”

  Duncan is perched on the edge of a boxy chair by the visitors’ room entrance, his elbows on his knees, his hands steepled in prayer. He fails to notice me and Orv as we approach.

  Orv waltzes right past my father and plops down on an angular loveseat, but I figure it would be just plain rude of me to do the same. “Duncan?” I say, stopping by an empty chair beside him. His eyes are closed, and they don’t look like they plan on opening any time soon. “Dad?”

  He mouths the end of a prayer I should know by rote, the words escaping his lips as a solemn whistle. Finally his eyelids part. “Roberta!” he exclaims, then catches himself. “I mean, Bobbi, of course.” He rises and drapes his arm around me, gives my shoulder a squeeze.

  Why does this feel so awkward? I think. Shouldn’t my father’s touch be more like home?

  It isn’t.

  I wriggle away and take a seat, ask him, “How’s everything going?”

  “Fine, fine,” he replies, pursing his lips and clasping his hands behind his back, as if he’s gearing up for a round of pacing.

  I glance ahead into the room and notice a gouge-my-eyes-out-adorable set of toddler twins with white-blond hair, checkered overalls (matching, obviously), and railroad conductors’ caps. I wonder what my brother, Roy, will look like. Or my baby.

  “Mr. Cotton?” a shrill voice asks behind me.

  In the doorway is a chubby lady (maybe twenty pounds lighter than me), in seafoam-green scrubs and a surgical mask pulled down around her neck.

  “Yes?” my father says.

  The lady (a doctor, I assume) tells Duncan that my brother weighs in at nine pounds, two ounces, possesses the expected ten fingers and ten toes, and, after a bit of scrubbing by the nurses, will be happy to receive visitors. Marie, she informs him, should rest—at least for an hour or two—before the swarm of company descends.

  Duncan trails the doctor to the nursery, and Orv and I stay behind to catch Denise. Three or four minutes later, she bombs in, her eyes bloodshot and puffy. “What’s the matter?” I say.

  She whacks what looks like a clump of snow off the shoulder of her denim jacket. “Nothing.”

  “It’s snowing?” I say, unable to hide my awe.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Orv stands up, takes a sideways step toward the doorway. “Let’s get this show on the road, so we can get home before the bars let out.”

  Bars? Plural? This is rural North Carolina, not downtown L.A. (though I suppose Orv’s still right, since there isn’t much else to do around here but drink).

  Orv, Denise, and I form an orderly line and march to the nursery, where we peer through the glass at Duncan in his goofy gown-and-mask getup, rocking my swaddled baby brother to sleep.

  My eyes begin to pulse with tears, but I can’t tell if they’re the kind of tears that make Yiddish grandmas clutch their chests with joy or the kind that spring from a life of neglect and disillusionment.

  Orv taps the glass like patrons are warned against doing at the zoo. Then he lets out a high-pitched psst! sound, and Duncan looks up.

  I wave my father and the baby over. “Oh my God,” I murmur as Duncan tips Roy’s perfect face our way. My brother is a dead ringer for Marie.

  Denise forces a smile, conjures a few syllables of baby talk and a series of halfhearted cooing sounds before breaking out in a heaving sob. “I’m sorry!” she cries. She sucks a wad of snot down her throat (or at least that’s what it sounds like). “I…” (sob) “…just…” (sob) “…can’t…” (sob). She drags the arm of her jacket over her dripping nose and then turns and rushes down the hall.

  And I run after her.

  * * *

  There’s not a single chain drugstore in Industry, which makes shopping for a pregnancy test a pretty indiscreet affair when you’re a tubby teen who, one way or another, knows just about everyone in town.

  I hoist the front tire of the Schwinn into a bike rack beside a restaurant called Big Daddy’s and around the corner from Marlowe’s Drugs and Sundries, the only place I can think of that might stock a First Response or an EPT. (What I wouldn’t give for a Walgreens or a Rite Aid right now.)

  I never spent the twenty-five dollars I’ve had since before Christmas (Denise lumped my items in with hers at Derby’s) so I’m hoping that, if I’m lucky enough to nail down a pregnancy test, the crinkly wad of ones and fives stuffed in my jeans will cover it.

  As I slip in through the side door of Marlowe’s, which has a jingly bell over it, just like The Pit—da-ding! da-ding!—the pharmacist (Mr. Marlowe?), a crotchety-looking dude with an obvious toupee and wire-rimmed bifocals, glances up at me. Stupidly, I smile. Now there’s no way I’ll have the guts to plop an EPT down on the counter, even if this place has one.

  But I can’t leave yet (I just got here, for God’s sake), so I wander down the shampoo aisle, as if I’m searching for a new product to straighten, or volumize, or de-frizz my mane. Where in the world are the pregnancy tests anyway?

  I pluck a giant bottle of Pantene off the shelf and spin it around, pretending to check its label for pesticides or a cruelty-free logo. Meanwhile, two young mothers (former classmates of Denise) wrestle baby strollers through the aisle in tandem, one of the strollers rubbing my ankles as it goes by. I glance back and spot a cherubic little face smiling at me. Since when did infants get so gosh darn cute?

  I refocus my efforts, case the joint so that, next time I show up (today is not my day, obviously), I’ll know exactly where the pregnancy tests are and will be able to nab one and run.

  For the life of me, though, I can’t seem to find the damn things. After ten minutes of eyeballing shoe polish and denture cream and foot powder, I’m still at square one. “Can I help you?” Mr. Marlowe asks as I shuffle past his glassed-in pod.

  I whip my head around as if he must be speaking to someone other than me.

  Negative.

  “Uh…” Quick! Grab anything! my brain squeals. I reach for a giant pack of watermelon-flavored gum. “I’ll take this,” I say as I slide it across the counter.

  Mr. Marlowe floats down from his perch, rings up the gum and sends me on my way. A few steps past the cash register, I notice the condoms…and the pregnancy tests.

  At least now I know.

  * * *

  “Have you seen Buttercup lately?” I ask Harvey between customers at The Pit. Sometimes my little buddy takes off for a few days at a time, especially during what passes for winter around here, but this time it seems like he’s been gone a lot longer.

  “Geez…” Harvey says, sounding concerned. “Now that you mention it, I don’t think the bugger’s been around for th
e better part of a month.”

  I knew it. “Where do you think he went?” I ask absently as I thread a new seat onto a wrecked bike Harvey and I are restoring.

  Harvey clamps an air hose to the valve stem of the bike’s back tire and starts pumping the deflated thing up by hand. “He’s a stray, Bobbi,” he reminds me gently. “He could be anywhere.”

  Or nowhere. “I should look for him.”

  Harvey shakes his head. “How are you going to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” I say with a shrug. I give the bike seat a tap into its ultimate position. “I can check the places he hangs out, see if he’s off hurt somewhere, or if anybody’s got a lead on him.”

  “What about your training?” Harvey asks with an edge of disappointment. “The Yo-Yo’s only ten weeks away.”

  I’ve been waiting for him to bring this up. Frankly, I’m surprised he’s held out this long. I twist a new rubber grip onto one of the bike’s handlebars and say, “I’ve been doing eight or ten miles a week with Tom.”

  He stares at my stomach, as if he doubts I’m biking as many miles as I’ve claimed. “My offer still stands,” he tells me. “I’d be happy to take you on. And I’ve got quite a few tricks to jumpstart your progress. Don’t you want a shot at winning this thing?” He caps the valve stem of the back tire and moves on to the front. “The prize money for your age group is a thousand dollars.”

  I wouldn’t mind a cool grand, but I’m also a realist. “I’m not trying to be a downer,” I say, “but I don’t think there’s much of a chance I’d win. Since Lex got involved, the Yo-Yo’s blown up.”

  When the race consisted of thirty people, I’d assumed (probably erroneously) that I had as good a chance as most folks. But at last count, we had twelve-hundred registered riders (the largest number for which the town would grant permits) and another thirty-five hundred cooling their jets on the waiting list. Near as I can tell, I’m dead in the water.