Locked Out

by Anna Chastain

  Now I do turn my head to look at him, a hesitant look on my face. But he’s chuckling quietly, not at all offended.

  “Yeah, I get it. He’s kind of a pain in the ass, anyway.”

  I opt not to respond this time, instead choosing to scoot myself all the way back in my chair and put my feet up, like he originally suggested, I mean, maybe just for a minute or two?

  “You live here in the Cove?” Red asks from the chair next to me.

  “Yes, I live over on Cherry Street.”

  “By Mermaid’s?” He follows up, referring to the beach, not the mythical creature.

  “Mmhmm.” There’s a narrow, sandy path out my back gate, in fact, that leads right down to the beach itself.

  “I like your hair.”

  This time, I do turn in reaction to his words and immediately smile. I didn’t pay it any mind before, you know, five minutes ago, but his hair and my hair…yeah, we’re both members of the crazy hair club. He fluffs his beard and then his hair and next thing I know, I’m laughing and, holy moly, it’s been a while since I’ve done that, I think.

  “We’re not, you know, related, are we? Who’s your mom? Wait, no, who’s your grandma?” He winks, laughing at his own joke.

  “I think we’re safe.” In fact, neither of my parents were redheads, but my dad’s mom was, ‘til the day she died, in fact.

  “Red, your implication is kinda gross,” Grace says, coming up behind me from out of the shop. “Hey, Holly.”

  “Oh, boo,” Red tells her, sticking out his tongue. “I’ll go watch the counter while you girls talk.”

  Grace thanks him and takes the seat he’s just vacated.

  “So, what’s up?”

  I pull my legs back off the stool and under me, smoothing out my striped skirt. Its buttons make for good fidget toys, which is one reason I like it, the other being its expandable tie waist.

  “I had an ultrasound today and I thought you might like to see a picture and show it to your parents,” I tell her, feeling shy. I will not allow myself to feel sad that I don’t have my own group of people to ooh and ahh over it, but that I have to borrow someone else’s, instead.

  “Yes!” She holds her hands out and wiggles her fingers excitedly, and I pass her the grainy square photo.

  “You can take that one, my doctor gave me several.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was the type to frame the tiny picture, but it was definitely going to hang on my fridge for a while.

  “Tiny little baby,” Grace wonders aloud. “Did you find out the sex?”

  “No, the little thing was being modest. My doctor said we can look again in a couple of months.”

  “Do you want to know?” Her pointer finger is tracing the outline of my baby and I know then that Grace will be a great auntie to my little banana.

  “I do.” I’d like to be as prepared as possible and, somehow, knowing the sex feels like at least one of the unknowns is answered.

  I watch as Grace’s finger pauses and she bites her lip, looking like a person who wants to say something but doesn’t know how.

  “You can say it,” I sigh.

  She looks up at me, but hems a haws a bit more. “What about my brother?”

  “What about him?” The question pops out snottier than I’d intended.

  “Are you going to show him?” She looks worried, or maybe afraid that she’s going to upset me or scare me away. Little does she know, my pale skin is thick.

  “Grace,” I gentle my tone, “your brother has had no contact with me, I don’t think this,” I gesture to the little picture, “from me, is what he wants to see in his inbox tomorrow morning.”

  She mulls my words over. Now, there’s no question she knows her brother a whole lot better than me, so I’m curious what her opinion is.

  “I’m trying to sort through what I want for my brother and what I think he wants,” she tells me honestly and I’m grateful for her insightfulness. It’s not often that people can remove their own desires and bias from those they love; side effect of the emotion, I guess, wanting to see them all happy and settled.

  “He really hasn’t contacted you at all?” She grabs her long hair and sweeps it back from her face, laying it over one shoulder.

  I shake my head. “And, Grace?”

  “Hmm?” She hums absent-mindedly, her fingers combing out her hair.

  “Do what you’d like with regards to the ultrasound, but please don’t say anything about me if you talk to him.”

  Her head tips to the side, disappointment obvious on her face. “Okay.”

  I smile before rising from the chair

  “Holly?”

  I pause at the top of the deck stairs and turn back to Grace.

  “Just because…I mean, even if…” she huffs, impatient with her own words. “I’ll always want to be a part of your and this baby’s life.”

  If Dean isn’t around, is what I hear in the silence.

  “Thank you,” I tell her, then wave low and head down the stairs and back to my car. I’ll head home, eat a quiet dinner, cuddle with Mr. Bubber Chop a bit, then I’ve got some work to do, and there’s a new series on the BBC channel that I’ve found myself swept up in, so I’ll probably watch a couple episodes of that.

  I stare a bit more at the ultrasound photo as I stick it to my fridge with a magnet.

  I suppose, at some point, I’m going to have to figure out what exactly I’m going to do with this baby once he or she arrives. Up until now, the whole actual baby part, as in, tiny human growing inside of me, has been kind of an abstract thought. I haven’t spent a lot of time around babies in my life, I don’t know how to change a diaper, I don’t have first-hand mothering experience. What I do have is a long list of what not to do and that is etched permanently onto my brain. I had no clear picture, no fantasy of what my future family would look like, necessarily; I’ve always just had this feeling that I wanted one. Parenting on my own, I mean, it’s not my first choice; it would be nice to have a partner in this, but I would never admit that out loud.

  I wonder what my grandma would say. Eh, my grandma would be ecstatic. And when I think of the years I spent living here with my grandma, I feel confident. She was a single, independent woman raising her teenage granddaughter and she was amazing. If she could take me on, a scraggly, skinny, traumatized orphan who was scared of her own shadow, and build me back up, well, then I’d be fine. This little baby fruit would be better than fine. Dean or not, this baby was going to be the most loved baby in the history of babies (plus, also, I’m reading so many different parenting books, I can figure out the rest).

  And then, as if to punctuate the previous evening’s musings, my little fruit decides to make its presence known the next morning. Standing in front of the mirror, my hair out to there, my eyes a bit wild with wonder, I feel a little flutter in my belly that leaves me breathless and excited.

  “Well, hey there, fruity, nice of you to join the party.”

  Chapter 6

  Holly

  “So, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?”

  “Oh, I got big plans, lady, big plans,” I fib and Maya knows it, she’s expecting it.

  I’m scanning in books and it’s the last day before our week of Thanksgiving break. Naturally, Maya is here avoiding her own work. In the two weeks since my ultrasound, my stomach had really started to swell into a baby bump, where before, it was like I’d just eaten a really big meal that made all my pants super uncomfortable. And I gotta say, I was kinda digging it. I was petite at 5’2”, and also on the lean side, dare I say skinny, and the only place I’d ever had curves was on my head (‘cuz my hair, you see).

  “Well, you know you’re always welcome at my house.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So, what, are you gonna go hang with the in-laws?”

  I shoot her a glare.

  “Would you please stop referring to them as my in-laws?” I beg.

  “Well how would Emily Post have me refer to your baby daddy�
��s family, hmm?” She asks, such a snot, while fanning herself with a stack of bookmarks.

  “Ugh,” I drop my head to the counter, my hair making a nice cocoon around my head. In a fit this morning at my hair’s lack of cooperation, I’d mistakenly left it down. By mid-morning it had already ballooned to epic proportions. “Is it too late to run away, you think?”

  “Oh, yeah, definitely.” She attempts to move my hair away from my face but fails. There is no end to it, so I save her the trouble and lift my head back up.

  “Besides, even if you did run away, this hair is like a tracking beacon, boop, boop, boop.” She’s flailing her hands above her head, flicking her fingers out with each boop sound.

  “You’re just jealous,” I say, unable to keep from giggling.

  “No, I’m not,” she assures me. Maya has long, silky dark hair that is probably so easy to brush. “I mean it’s gorgeous, you are gorgeous, but I would so not have the patience to deal with all that.”

  “It is a challenge,” I mumble in agreement.

  “I bet they can see your hair from space, girl,” she continues on, feeding my giggle fire while starting one of her own.

  “Once, when I was around seven, I didn’t brush my hair for a week and I developed this huge dreadlock under here,” I lift my hair and hold up a chunk of it to show her where the giant tangle had been. “My mom spent probably an hour trying to comb it out and sort through the mess. And when she couldn’t…” I turn my fingers into scissors and mime a snipping motion that makes Maya gasp and cover her mouth with a hand.

  “No she did not,” she says, disbelieving. “She cut off your hair?”

  “Just the giant chunk of dreadlock.” I shrug, like it’s no big deal, but for months I couldn’t put my hair up because of all the short spiky strands waiting to grow back out underneath. Plus, it was summer and I was soooo hot.

  “Oh, honey, that must’ve been horrible.” She commiserates with me and my sobering family confession, and suddenly I’m sorry I’ve brought us both down.

  “Well, lesson learned.”

  “Can I ask why the hell your mother or father wasn’t helping you brush your hair?”

  “Like you said, this,” I hold up a handful of curl as proof, “is a lot to handle.”

  “Hmm,” is her response and she’s obviously unimpressed. “Kids are a lot to handle. Period.”

  There’s nothing I can say to that so I just smile at her.

  “Do you think your little nugget in there will be a redhead too?” She must sense my readiness to move on (this is why I love her so) and moves away from the subject of my family.

  “Not sure,” I shrug. “I’m the recessive one in this equation and I didn’t stop Dean the night we did the deed to ask if there were redheads on his side of the family, know what I mean?” Though I’ve now met his Uncle Red, so obviously there are.

  “Oh! Speaking of Dean…” she straightens up to glance around the library and make sure we’re still alone. “I Facebook-stalked him the other night.”

  “What? What does that mean? Oh, god, Maya, what did you do?” I’m frozen, thinking about all the possibilities of a Maya set loose on Dean’s Facebook page.

  “It’s nothing, harmless fun-wait. Does that mean you’ve never looked him up on Facebook?” She looks at me incredulously.

  “Maya, I hate Facebook,” I remind her.

  “Pfft, everyone hates Facebook, but we all still spend way too much time scrolling away,” she waves away my comment.

  “Wait, so does that mean he has a Facebook page?” Annnd, now I’m curious.

  “He does,” she responds, her voice low, eyebrow lifting; she loves that I’m intrigued. “But, it’s super old and probably hasn’t been updated since Facebook was invented.”

  “Oh.” See, this is the problem with caring: disappointment.

  “But,” and I’m back to curious, “his sister posted some pictures from this past summer that were probably around the time all that happened,” she aims a finger at my belly and I instinctually clutch it.

  “Really.” Now I’m looking around furtively. “And?”

  “Girl, he is hot,” she concludes. And, friends, this is not news.

  “I’m aware, Maya,” I wave a hand in front of my belly like I’m introducing Exhibit A in the case of Dean’s hotness.

  She leans forward, elbows on the counter, her face in mine.

  “No. Girl. He is hot.” She keeps staring at me as if her repeating her previous sentence makes her meaning any clearer.

  “And, again, I’m aware.”

  “Dating a hot guy can be difficult.”

  “Good thing we’re not dating,” I retort, ready to be done with this new conversation now.

  Her eyes narrow, her finger tapping against her pouty lips as she creepily continues her silent assessment of me.

  “Hmm.” Is the response of her findings, apparently and, just like that, she’s onto a new topic.

  “Welp, gotta go, I have a meeting with Cameron Wynn, she wants to discuss graduating a year early.” She rolls her eyes and makes a face.

  “That horrid girl, how dare she be so brilliant and goal-oriented,” I goad.

  “Hey, now, you know I hate it when they’re smarter than me.”

  “You must hate a lot of these kids, then,” I say to her retreating back. Her response is a backhanded middle finger and I’m grateful there are no students here because I laugh. Hard.

  My big plans for the Thanksgiving break are actually to put together this IKEA crib (some things just can’t be purchased vintage) and to rearrange my bookshelves for more efficient placement of items and books. I have three white, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that line an entire wall of my second bedroom and I’m thinking I’m going to need to use at least some of those shelves for baby stuff, i.e. diapers, wipes, and I don’t really know what else yet, but everybody says babies come with a lot of stuff. So, I’ve purchased some baskets and crates to hold books and that way I can place them around the house like little mobile bookshelves. I mean, it’s not like I’d get rid of the books.

  What my plans do not consist of is interacting with my “in-laws” as Maya so loves to refer to them. I’ve been having awkward feelings since stopping by for a visit after my ultrasound appointment and have therefore been playing the avoidance game. The majority of my brain thinks that reaching out to share the picture was an impulsive gesture that implies a desire for a relationship I am not prepared to follow through on; which, naturally, leaves the rest of my brain feeling guilty for not being able to forge a relationship with my unborn baby’s family. Only family, no less.

  Welp, nothing like a set of poorly illustrated, foreign-language directions to keep my mind focused on something other than my pathetic thoughts.

  Two hours later…

  I’m sweating. My hair is an unholy mess. And, oh my goodness, I am ready to throw the pieces to this crib in a trash can out back and light it all on fire. A roar comes from somewhere deep inside of me, and that’s enough to shock my brain straight. I’ve never roared. I am not a roarer, I’m a roller (as in, roll with the punches, remember?), but if ever a situation called for a little roaring, I do believe it would be this one. However, I do not want this type of reaction to escalate, so I stand up (shutting the bedroom door behind me) and go into the bathroom to splash some water on my face and attempt to smooth down my hair.

  Maya was right: my hair probably could be seen from space. It was worse than Medusa’s snakes. At least snakes had smooth skin, whereas my hair was a cacophony of copper curls which did nothing but fight with each other atop my head. And right now, they were so far gone that the only solution was to douse the strands with detangler and wind my hair into a bun (which happened to be almost as big as my head). When I was in fifth grade, my mother thought cutting it short would help. Spoiler alert: it didn’t. I’d looked like one of those crazy trees from a Dr. Seuss book. And honestly, my mother never knew what to do with me, hair or girl.


  But, hello brain, off topic much?

  Hair up, deodorant reapplied, and sun hat in hand, I head out my back door to follow the path down to the beach. There’s a nice little spot, where the trail that leads from my backyard meets the sand of Mermaid’s Cove, where there’s a small grouping of trees for shade and where I’d set up a couple of mismatched patio chairs from a yard sale for seating. Sometimes other people would come along and enjoy the little viewing spot and I didn’t mind; even better, over the years, others had added pieces of their own design: a low table that had seashells glued around the edge had appeared one day, and a couple of wooden foot stools another. The most recent addition was a cooler disguised as a side table that fit nicely between the chairs. Last Christmas, someone hung shiny ornaments on the branches above. The whole scene exemplified what I loved about this place; people I’d never even met contributing to make a space more comfortable, more enjoyable, with no expectation of profit (unless you counted having an awesome seat for a beautiful view profit).

  But today was a bit too chilly, so I passed the chairs and headed out toward the hard-packed sand. I needed a walk and I needed to let the landscape before me work its magic.

  The beach is nearly empty today. A couple of surfers are lined up against the horizon, waiting for the waves to roll back in; a family, braced against the dropping temperatures in sweatshirts, is camped out on a blanket, the two little ones digging in the sand with their plastic shovels; an older man is walking his dog along the shoreline. Most people who visit our little beach town go to Blue Beach (original name, I know); it’s closer to the downtown area with shops and restaurants. Mermaid’s Cove, the little strand I could see from my bedroom window, was a local favorite. True, the water isn’t as brilliantly hued as Blue Beach’s, but I was more than willing to trade the azure waters for the peace and quiet I could find here.

  All the more reason for me to be surprised when I spy a long-legged blonde walking towards me, hand in hand with someone I assume is her husband.

  Crap. Crap, crap, crap.

  I’ve never been terribly efficient in a crisis, and if you don’t consider needing to hide from an uncomfortable situation a crisis, you’re wrong. I freeze in the sand, which means when the next wave rolls in and I don’t grab the skirt of my maxi dress in time, I end up soaked to the knees. Perfect.