“Why not? There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“Because I shouldn’t have.”
“We’re already having a baby together. What difference does it make?”
“Look, buddy.” She points the drippy end of the pancake spoon at me like a knife. “There’s a difference. And just because I screwed up, doesn’t mean you’re getting the milk for free whenever you feel like a glass.”
Whoa. The hormonal truck is starting to take u-turns already. I don’t say that out loud, of course. I know better. Instead, I back away with my hands up in surrender and I laugh.
“That’s fine,” I tell her. “But if you happen to be the one that gets thirsty first, I just want you to know, I’m not stingy with my milk at all.”
“I noticed,” she says, but she lowers the spoon.
***
I still kind of go out for pancakes. She gives me a list. Along with a few surprises, I pick up things from the corner store that have never had a place in my house before. An entire bag of flour and one of sugar. A small brown bottle of vanilla flavoring. Baking powder, a bottle of vegetable oil, syrup, vinegar. I grab a few other surprises while I’m at the store too.
When I come back, Sher’s hair is wet from a shower and she’s wearing the pants Hale must have bought her. But she’s not gone. It’s a step in the right direction. I give her the things from the list and stash my other purchases in the gym bag under my bed.
I hang around the kitchen while she makes pancakes from the stuff I brought her. She doesn’t have a recipe and she doesn’t measure. She just dumps stuff in the bowl, including a little of the vinegar, which makes me question if she’s trying to feed me or kill me. But when she slides perfectly brown pancakes out of my frying pan, I’m amazed. It’s not like I’ve never witnessed the creation of a pancake before, but I’ve never seen it happen in my kitchen. Growing up in a house full of women, I was expected to take out the garbage, kill spiders, and trap mice, but no one ever asked or taught me to cook. I survive on take-out, sandwiches, and the pity of family and friends who invite me for dinner.
I wait for Sher to finish making all the pancakes before I sit down with her to eat. But her plate remains empty and she just sips her milk.
“Do you feel sick?” I ask.
“Only a little. The smell does it.” She frowns. I get up and open the window. She giggles a thank-you. I sit back down, cutting into the pancakes with the side of my fork.
“They look great.”
“They’re cheap.” I see the faint blush spread over her skin. Gorgeous. She giggles again. I want to keep her talking, just to listen to her voice.
“How do you just dump stuff together and make them without a recipe?”
“I make them all the time for my sister and my brothers. Well, I used to, pretty much every morning. It’s the only thing they’ll all eat.”
I take a bite. They taste even better than they smell. When I say so, she just chews her nail and grins.
“Anything you want to talk about?” I ask. I try to say it smoothly, as if I’m just making conversation and not like I know there’s something that she told Hale and needs to tell me. I don’t know that she buys it, especially when she lowers her lids to squint at me.
“Like what?” she asks. No giggle.
I bail on the mission with a shrug, and throw her a wide-eyed, what-are-you-so-guilty-about look instead. “I don’t know. Anything? I’m eating. You talk.”
She shifts in her chair and eventually opens up her eyes again, satisfied that I don’t know anything. Which I don’t. Not yet, at least.
“I did want to talk to you about something,” she begins. Here it comes. I keep my eyes on my plate so I don’t spook her.
“Mmm hmm?” I hum with a bite. She’s silent. I glance up. Oops. Too soon. I shouldn’t have looked. Sher leans back in her chair, crushing her lips together. She runs her thumb up and down the side of her milk glass.
“I, uh…I wanted to talk to you about…living together.”
“Mmm.” I nod. That’s not what she wanted to talk about, but that’s what we’re going to talk about now.
“How’s it going to work?”
“What do you mean? You’re going to stay here, growing a baby, and I’m going to come back here after work.”
My attempt at humor splatters on her silence like a failed bungee jump. She taps the glass with her fingers. I didn’t answer her question correctly.
“Maybe I should just apply for college now,” she says.
I chew up the last bit of pancakes on my plate. “Sure. Sounds like a good idea. Just don’t schedule classes for the last few months before you’re due. Do you have due date yet?”
She frowns and there it is again. Somehow, I’m not answering her question. Like there’s a different question than the one she’s actually asking, and I’m supposed to know it. Along with the right answer.
“I haven’t figured out the due date yet,” she says.
“You haven’t been to a doctor yet?”
“No.”
I put my fork down on my plate. “Not at all?”
“I’ve taken five hundred pregnancy tests and I’m late. I keep puking.” She levels her glare, right before the Hormonal U-Haul comes swinging around at me. “You don’t get false positives on tests! It’s not like I can fake a bunch of baby hormones!”
Although it crosses my mind that there could be a glitch, she sure acts pregnant. I reach a hand across the table, but she moves hers off her milk glass, out of my reach.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I say. “We’ve got to get you in to see someone. Just to make sure everything’s okay.”
“Fine,” she says, tight lipped.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you worried about insurance?”
“I don’t have any.” Her jaw loosens and she bites her lip instead, but I get the feeling that insurance isn’t the real problem.
“We’ll figure it out,” I say, but she still doesn’t let go of the lip. “What’s the problem? Are you embarrassed?”
She goes full-blown cherry tomato. Bingo.
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“Like that would make it better?” Her cheeks flood with a deep crimson.
“It’s just a doctor,” I try to reason. “You don’t have anything he hasn’t seen a million times before.”
The crimson morphs to a shade so deep it resembles a purple bruise.
“Why don’t we just throw the Hobbit up on the NY Times Square jumbo-tron? I don’t want some stranger looking at it. Touching it! Oh my God…” She covers her mouth. “I’m going to puke.”
“Your hobbit?” I chuckle. She flashes me a glare and I try to stop laughing at her. “I’m telling you, it’s no big deal. I’ll come with you. I should be there anyway.”
“For what? Proof?”
“Holy hormones,” I laugh at her. “No, I want to be there because I want to hear every single thing anyone has to say about my baby.”
Sher’s phone rings. She looks at the screen and then answers with an unreasonable scowl. “Hello?”
She stands up and stalks away from the table. Her volume is set too low to hear whoever is on the other end. I strain for a wisp of a tone that would signal if it’s a guy or a girl on the other end, but I can’t hear a damn thing. She turns the corner to the bedroom.
“I don’t live there anymore,” she whisper-speaks into the phone. “No…you can’t just dump on me whenever you feel like it…just leave me alone and stop calling.”
She clicks her phone off and goes into the bathroom. I sit at the table for a while, waiting for her to come back and explain everything—or anything, actually that would reduce the stack—but she doesn’t. This girl’s got a whole life that I don’t know about and she isn’t willing to drag out and show me.
The longer I sit and wait, the more my brain wanders. I wonder who was on the other end of the phone. What Hale kno
ws that I don’t. What I’m getting myself into.
I think of more of the things that I hadn’t thought about before. The promises I made and the consequences of talking Sher into having the baby. Insurance, a house for Sher, a car for her, diapers, cribs, clothes, future college costs. The imaginary bills pile up in my head until I’m just as queasy as she is.
I have to get back to work soon. It will be a relief to get back to something I know.
***
When Sher emerges from the bathroom, her hair is up and she’s put some make-up on. She drifts past the kitchen and toward the door, smelling faintly of hair spray and looking like a five-alarm fire.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“I have some stuff to take care of,” she says lightly.
“By yourself?”
“I’ll grab the bus at the corner.” Not looking like that, you’re not.
“I have a car, you know. Where do you want to go?”
“I’ll just take the bus. Thanks anyway.” Her smile and even the giggle she locks up behind it, draws my nerves tight.
“It’s no problem. I can take you wherever you want.”
She rubs her forehead roughly.
“What I really want, Landon, is for you to stop trying to babysit me,” she says. “I told you I’m not going to the clinic, and I’m not.”
“I didn’t think you were.” It’s the truth. What I don’t say is the actual truth. Looking like you do right now, every man out there is going to take one look and start thinking of how many ways he could get you pregnant.
“Then don’t worry about it. We’re not a couple, so we don’t have to start pretending that we are,” she says. Considering the intimate, staring-sex we just had this morning, her response draws me up short. There wasn’t any pretending happening in bed. Nobody can fake that kind of intensity, but whatever her problem is, it’s becoming mine too. My patience is about the consistency of chewing gum that’s stretched between the cement and the bottom of her shoe.
“Wasn’t that you howling in my bed? Did I get that wrong again?” I say. I regret it as soon as it’s out of my mouth. She’s not the calm one. It’s on me to keep things under control and the control just exited the building.
“Fuck you,” she says.
“You’re right,” I take a deep breath and start again. Apologetically. “Fuck me. That wasn’t fair. Okay, look, we’re not together, but you’re living here. We’re having a baby together. I don’t think it’s babysitting to ask where you’re going or if you need a ride. I’m just trying to help.”
She leans back against the living room wall, staring at the carpet. “Landon, don’t take this the wrong way, but I really like you. I just can’t, you know?”
I squint, trying to figure out what she just said.
“Wait, what?” I say, but she grabs her purse.
“I’ve got to go,” she says as she slips out the door. It’s like we’re in the epicenter of a chick flick and she just took her dramatic exit. My brain is still staring at the door when she shuts it, stammering, Wait, what? Then my body kicks in and I’m out the door, hopping down the steps after her, grabbing her arm before she can leave things hanging like that.
“Don’t start talking psycho,” I tell her, “and don’t run off when I ask you a question.”
Instead of continuing the movie scene, she turns like a rabid dog that I’ve caught by the neck. She twists back and bites me. What the…? I let go with a yelp.
“I swear…quit biting me!” I growl at her.
“Then quit grabbing me!”
“Just tell me what you’re talking about! What do you mean you can’t be with me? Is that what you were saying?”
“Look.” She rounds on me like she’s going to swing her purse at my head and I flinch backward, but the purse stays passively looped at her elbow. “I have to remember that you are not the beginning or end of everything, Landon. I was here, I was me, way before you were with me. I had other—ideas—about things. I was somebody else a few days ago and now I’m this.”
What the hell is she talking about? “So?”
“Exactly. You take care of who you are and I’ll take care of who I was. Mind your own beeswax.” She turns to go. I grip my temples. She’s going to make my head explode, I swear it.
“Ok, whatever,” I call after her. “Go take care of your…whatever.”
She doesn’t look back. I try to just let her leave. I go back up to my apartment. I pace. I look out the window, I hear the bus. I pace. I tell myself to calm down, whatever she’s talking about is no big deal, but the damn walls are closing in without her between them, like they’re trying to push me out, trying to send me after her. I grab my car keys.
I jog downstairs, calling Oscar on the way.
“Hey buddy,” he answers on the first ring. “How’s it going?”
The bus is long gone and I realize I have no idea where it’s headed. And I’d look like a total lunatic stalking a bus. I lean against my car. “Something’s going on with Sher.”
“What’s up? Is she okay?”
“Yeah, she’s fine, but she was talking to your wife and I overheard some of their conversation. There’s something Sher’s not telling me, and whatever it was, it seemed like Hale is trying to get Sher to spill it.”
“She told you about the baby…what else is there? What do you think is going on?”
“No idea, but can you fish around for me?”
“I will, but I don’t know what I can get out of her. Now that I think of it, I did ask her about Sher yesterday, just how she was doing, and she gave me the entire girl-code speech, start to finish. I thought that was a little weird.”
“Something’s up. Well, give it a shot anyway, would you?”
“Will do.”
“Thanks,” I tell him before I hang up. I call my sister next.
“You again?” Gina says when she picks up.
“Can you swing a late lunch?”
“Can’t. We have a huge order to get out. Your new girl must really be doing a number on you. You’ve never needed this much lunch.”
“She is.”
“Well, I got five minutes. Spill.”
“She’s holding back. I think she wants to be with me, but then she runs off, and I have no idea what she wants from me.”
“That’s chicks for you, you know that,” Gina says. “Why’d she run off exactly? Didn’t you do what I told you to?”
“What’d you tell me to do?”
“Don’t give her a reason to leave. You gotta give her a better reason to stay with you than to leave you.”
“I’m trying,” I say.
“Try harder, then.”
“Thanks, that helps,” I snap. Gina chuckles on the other end.
“Hey, I’m not your fairy godmother. I’m just your fairy sister. My powers are limited. You’re going to have to make your love life work on your own.”
“Thanks anyway. I’ll call you later.”
“Don’t forget what I said,” Gina says, and she yells at someone to keep the assembly line moving, before she gets off the phone.
I’m left standing in the parking lot, without any strategy, even though I’ve got to make the next move.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I PACE. It might be the longest afternoon of my whole damn life, waiting for Sher to come back. I grind up what Gina said, over and over, trying to break it into pieces I can work with. Give Sher a reason, give her a life. The things she wants to do though—horse riding, pole dancing, tattoos, sex with strangers—I’m not sure how okay I am with letting her have four whole episodes of ‘Sher Gone Wild’. I’m sure as hell not going out to recruit a dude to do her on the beach.
That’s when the light bulb really fires.
Sher just wants to get some ‘wild’ out, so she can settle down and be a mom. I’ve had some ideas up my sleeve, but it’s time to put them into motion. There’s nothing that says you can’t share your off-the-hook wild phase with
the father of your kid.
Of course, the pregnancy limits some of the wild.
But not a whole lot.
I get on the phone to make some arrangements and I’m still on when Sher comes back. I watch from the apartment window as she gets off the bus and I leave the door open a crack, so she doesn’t have to knock. She swings it open with a palm on the door and wide eyes and spots me on the phone right away. She comes in, giving me a little wave as she pulls off her shoes and then dumps her purse on the floor with a sigh that sounds exhausted and defeated all at once.
I finish with my arrangements and hang up. All I want is to hear how she’s doing, what she’s been doing, what she wants to tell me. I lay my phone down on the coffee table.
“How’s it going?” I ask. I’m not even going to take a run at her beeswax. She sighs again and walks over.
“I’m sorry I was such a bitch,” she says. She looks so worn through, I want to gather her up in my arms and tell her I don’t even care anymore.
“I’m sorry you were too,” I say and then I know just how tired she is, because instead of taking a swing at me, she gives me a weak, apologetic smile. I take her hand as her gaze falls away from mine. “Are you hungry?”
She nods, but she looks like she’s going to cry.
“You sure you’re okay?” I ask gently. It’s like throwing a tanker of gasoline on a bonfire. She puts her hand over her mouth as her eyes well up and next thing I know, the dam bursts and she’s sniffling.
“You are so nice to me,” she says.
“Yeah? Well, it’s easy to be nice to you,” I tell her. I drape my arm around her shoulders and give her a quick squeeze, but she turns in to me and buries her face on my chest. She lets loose, sobbing, until she’s saturated my shirt, right over the left nipple. I stand there and let her work use me as a Kleenex, until she’s drained down to just a sniffle. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she say and obviously, she means no.
“We can talk over dinner,” I say. She sniffles.
“Do you want me to cook?”
“Nope. I’ve got someplace special to go for dinner.”
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