“Ty mentioned that, that it’s happened before,” Darcy says, her voice cracking at the idea of some sort of medical catastrophe. She’s already been through that once, once being one time too many. Plump tears bobble on her lower eyelids. “But you think you just might be pregnant? You think that could be it?” She tries to force a smile out from the weight of her concern, and she looks so heartbreakingly much like she did as a toddler. Wide blue-gray eyes, even bigger than mine or Luanne’s, a quivering lip, bursting with the emotion that she was never capable of masking.
“Ty told you?” I ask. I feel like I’m drowning, slipping around in time, slipping around in the gravity of my fears.
“He called me when you stopped talking to him on the phone and he heard a crash,” I hear Darcy saying, as she and Susie each clasp an elbow and pull me upward. My brain is zipping, speeding, trying to keep up, and I have to forcibly home in on her lips to understand the words coming out. I feel like I’m existing inside some warped science-fiction novel with two dueling existences: one in which I am completely losing my mind, in which the world has spun off its axis, and another in which Susie and Darcy speak to me in slow, garbled words, as if life is operating in slow motion, as if life is simply moving on. “You had the car, so I called Susie. We got here as fast as we could.”
“I’m fine,” I say again, though my face feels bloodless and drawn. “I’m sorry you guys had to come get me. Suse, when you got pregnant, did you have … weird dreams?”
“Yep.” She nods. “Oh my God, did I. The weirdest, all about Donnie Parker, who, remember him, I dated before Austin? All the time. Like, every night, I dreamed about the past.”
I swallow, because the one thing I’m not dreaming about is my past.
“But that aside, you’re not fine,” Susie says, reading me clearly. “I can see it. You’re not fine.”
“I am,” I exclaim, shrilly, sharply, a little too defiantly for anyone to believe. I lumber down onto the lowest step and fold my body over my knees. “Please. Can’t we just go home? I’m exhausted. I’ll take a pregnancy test tomorrow. That’s all this is. I’m sure.”
I bristle at the thought of home, of Tyler packing up all of our belongings and whisking us away. Tears announce themselves behind my eyes, then tumble down my pale cheeks, an admission of my despair at the thought of leaving, even though, yes, it was just a dream, a figment of an idea that must have planted itself inside of me, right along with that fetus, a reverse-nesting sort of thing that splays out my fears of being uprooted now that I have to, critically, actually root myself. I wipe my face and tuck my head beneath my legs and hope that the world rights itself when I pick it back up.
“Okay, well, maybe this is good news,” Susie says. “Maybe you really are pregnant! People do faint when they’re pregnant!”
“Yes,” I say, “that’s probably it.” I see Ashley Simmons in my mind, mocking me, telling me that of course I’m not pregnant, that babies and husbands aren’t the answer to everything! I pull my head out from its cocoon and fold my hands over my face, and a crest of nausea sparks in my bowels. “Can we just go home? It smells like mold down here, and I’d like to get some sleep. I’m sorry for this.”
“Don’t apologize again, for God’s sake.” Susie’s hand moves in concentric circles over the spot between my shoulder blades. “I bet it’s that you’re pregnant!”
Slowly, I unfold myself and grab the banister to stand. My legs feel anchored, as if someone has tied concrete slabs to my ankles and then said, “So what, walk anyway.”
Susie takes my hand and says, “Let’s get going,” and I wearily force my legs to comply with my brain and head back toward the bright lights up above.
Darcy brings me a cup of peppermint tea when we get home.
“I checked in on Dad, and I called Tyler to tell him you’re okay,” she says as she passes me the steaming mug. I raise it to my mouth, but the lip is still too hot to sip. She nuked the mug in the microwave, even though I asked her to use the teapot.
“Thank you. I’ll call him tomorrow,” I say. “How’s Dad?”
“Asleep.” She shrugs. “I guess that’s how he stays sober. It’s tough to drink when you’re asleep.”
“Cut him some slack, Darcy.” I blow my breath over the tea. “He’s trying his best. And he’s here so that I can help him.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of that?” she asks, plopping on the bed, bouncing the mattress.
“It’s been a long time,” I answer. “And besides, we all do what we have to.” I brace myself for another rehash of the same old fight. “Please. Just don’t start. I don’t have the energy for a fight.”
She inhales, and I know she wants to say something more, but in an unusual second of self-awareness, she dials herself back.
“So what’s really going on with you?” she says finally. “Are you really pregnant? Am I actually going to be an aunt?”
“You’re an aunt already,” I point out.
“That’s true, but I meant for you,” she says.
“I don’t know—maybe,” I answer. “I’ll pick up a test in the morning.” I squeeze her hand, and we grin loopy grins at the thought of that tiny seed sprouting inside of me. Any of the rancor from the past few days is whisked away; we are sisters, after all, and have spent a lifetime breaking—and then forgiving—each other.
“You’ll make a great mom,” Darcy says, touching my knee. “Really, you will.”
I stare at her for a beat, grateful for her momentary kindness, with so much unspoken between the two of us, and then I watch her beautiful porcelain face, making a mental map, a frozen image like a photograph I would have taken so many years ago. Now, maybe a Polaroid that I’d paste up on my office wall, a remarkable face in a sea of some less-than-remarkable ones. When did she become such a grown-up? I think. Behind her blackened eyeliner and her ever-present pout, she’s evolved into an honest-to-God adult. I never noticed it until now. I look at her, with her face half-illuminated by my nightstand lamp, and her still blond hair falling every which way below her shoulders, and I snap a picture in my mind, an image that I hope will linger for as long as I can remember. She holds my glance more firmly than I realized she was capable of, and I can feel her bolstering me, offering me her back on which to lean.
A knock on the door surprises us both, and Darcy squeaks. Dad edges the door open.
“What?” she says to him.
“Anyone want to join me for a late movie on the tube?” he says, the loneliness and desperation in his voice too obvious to ignore.
“I’ll pass,” Darcy says, rising to leave. “Tilly, we’re testing tomorrow.” She leans down and kisses my forehead. “Good things are coming, for sure.” I nod, a rush of thankfulness for her loyalty passing through me.
She brushes by my father, each of them tilting their bodies ever so slightly so they don’t physically collide, and then he looks at me and offers a little shrug. You know, just one of those things, he shrugs, that his youngest daughter will likely never forgive him for the sins of his past. I shrug back at him, my own admission that for now, in an unusual turn of events, I don’t have the answers we’re all looking for.
He scoots out of the room, his slippers shuffling against the wood floor, and then I hear him thwop-thwop-thwop down the hall to the den, where he will fall asleep on the couch, the noise of the TV lulling him into slumber, just like Tyler, for whom sleep seems to come so easily, so unencumbered. But me? No, I won’t sleep. Not tonight. Not now that I fear that my dreams might be haunted, not now, when I no longer trust myself to dream at all.
eight
The next morning, Darcy tails me like a delinquent puppy dog through the hushed hallways of Westlake High. She hasn’t returned since the very day she graduated, and now, I can’t tell if she’s nervous or repulsed to be back here.
“It still smells the same,” she says, while I tell her to hurry up, and we scuttle over the linoleum floor. “Ugh, I might barf. It’s like half-coo
ked cheeseburger or something.”
“Shhhh! Summer classes are in session,” I say. “I told you this was part of the deal. And please, I’ll remind you again, make yourself as inconspicuous as possible.”
“Don’t be mad at me for wanting to support you!” she says, buoyed with indignation.
“I’m not; I’m sorry,” I reply. “We’re just late. And you know I hate being late.”
Darcy was up this morning at an hour I’d never actually seen her awake, insisting that she join me today.
“I always thought you might actually be a vampire,” I said to her over morning coffee.
“Tyler is away, and I want to share this with you, since he can’t,” she said back, her words remarkably prescient for someone whom I mostly view as a stunted adolescent. I informed her that she’d subsequently be held hostage with me for the duration of the day because I wouldn’t have time to drop her back at the house before my meeting with CJ and then with Anderson to finalize the details of the musical. Darcy just stuck her tongue out and said, “Fine,” as good an example as any of our newly forged peace.
On the way to school, we swung by CVS to buy a pregnancy test, where Louis Lewison (yes, really, his parents named him that) worked behind the register and took forever, forever! on a price check for the Ensure that the elderly couple in front of me was buying in bulk. And now, we are late.
CJ is waiting for me when we rush into my office. Her softball-toned legs are too long for the purple love seat, so her knees angle awkwardly upward, reminding me of a parent sitting in a preschooler’s chair.
“Sorry, I’m late, CJ. It was my fault.” I thud my bag onto the floor and rifle through the contents for her folder, ignoring the pink First Response test that I tucked into the inside pocket and the visceral beat of my heart when I consider what that tiny plus sign might bring. I need to be pregnant; I need to cling to the idea that Tyler and I could be, are, in fact, becoming a family, not just two people who met more than a decade ago and somehow now belong to each other. Because last night, when my body implored me to sleep, my mind refused, and all I could do was replay that bleak, waterlogged scene over and over again—the U-Haul, the boxes—like a movie reel caught on a skip.
“No big deal,” CJ says, then looks at Darcy. “Hey, you’re Darcy Everett, right? I remember you.”
“I am,” Darcy says, making a little curtsy, a symbol of her delight at getting recognized, as if CJ were a member of her fan club.
“I was in seventh grade when you were a senior,” CJ says. “I heard you’re out in L.A. now, landing a record deal or something. Cool.”
“Pretty much,” Darcy says, ignoring the minute detail of the factual inaccuracy of the rumor.
“That is so, so awesome. Like, seriously, you’re like my hero. Getting out of Westlake and becoming famous.”
“Oh, well, yeah,” Darcy says, suddenly interested in invisible lint on her T-shirt. “It’s nothing. I mean, it’s pretty great, but it’s not that big of a deal.”
“Do you think I could call you sometime? Get your number from Mrs. F? I’d love to hear how you did it.”
“Sure, definitely.” Darcy smiles, her composure regained.
“Are you helping out with the musical?” CJ says. “Auditions are next week, right?”
I nod and Darcy gives a noncommittal shrug. “Maybe,” she says. “I’m not sure how long I’m staying.”
I shoot her a glance—another one of Darcy’s flaky nonanswers, when we both know that she’ll be long gone to Los Angeles by the time CJ and the cast line up outside the music room and warble for a shot at the lead.
“And with that, Darcy, please excuse us.” I sigh, plopping into my chair. “CJ and I have a few things to go over.”
She scoots out the door, with a “call me” motion to her ear for CJ’s benefit, and I move my college application folder to my lap.
“Okay, so, I reviewed everything this past weekend, and I think we’re almost there.” I flip through the pages. “The only area you might be lacking is some sort of community service. Wesleyan is big on that.” I look up to see her defeated, punctured, on the sofa. Her face sags like a basset hound’s.
“It’s not such a big deal, CJ,” I say. “We’re way ahead of the game. It’s only July; that’s why we’re doing this so early. There are loads of places to volunteer, and if you start ASAP, you can include it on your app.”
“I barely have time to squeeze in my shift at the restaurant. How the hell am I going to manage this?” She shakes her head. “It’s like everyone is conspiring against me to keep me here.”
And what’s so wrong with here? I want to shout. Why does everyone seem so intent on going anywhere but here? Darcy! CJ! My own freaking husband!
“We’ll make it work,” I say, a false confidence in my voice. “I’ll make some calls, you make some calls. This is doable.”
She pauses. “Johnny dumped me.” Her throat catches.
“I’m sorry, CJ.” I reach over and pat her knee. To the best of my recollection, she’s been dating the basketball forward since late last spring.
“It doesn’t matter.” She shrugs, belying her crumpled cheeks, her scrunched nose, staving off her breakdown. “Ms. F, you have to get me out of here. I can’t be stuck. I can’t be stuck here with Johnny Hutchinson and his stupid friends, and this life in this stupid town.”
We’re all stuck, I think again.
“You won’t get stuck,” I say reassuringly, as much for her sake as for mine. “You’ll get into college, CJ, even if for some reason it’s not Wesleyan.”
“I can’t be,” she whispers. “I can’t be stuck.” Then she looks at me with alarm and says, “No offense, Ms. F. I think you’re awesome.”
“None taken,” I say, perplexed a moment, until I realize that, in fact, I symbolize the very thing she’s fleeing.
“Anyway”—she sighs—“I’ll see you next week for auditions and for prom-committee meeting right after.” She smacks a plastic, empty smile on her face. “Which dessert to order, which punch to make. Good times.”
“It is good times. Did you see the e-mail I sent around about the Arc de Triomphe?” I grin—genuinely this time—drunk on the memory of my own prom, me in a powder blue dress, Ty in his dad’s tuxedo, slow-dancing to “I Will Always Love You,” with the lights in the gym spinning, a wine cooler warming my senses.
“I did,” she says, pushing up her own smile that never quite meets the rims of her eyes. “You’re right; it’ll be amazing.”
After CJ turns out the door, I try to refocus on other work, on busywork, but I keep replaying her pitying, despairing gaze. “I’m not stuck. I’m not stuck.” I say it over and over again, a leftover habit from childhood when I thought that if you repeated something enough times, you could somehow make it true.
I stare out my side window onto the playing field, which will sit empty, quiet, and untouched until the softball team tramples it this afternoon. I run my hand down to my belly. A sign, an inkling, a hope. A chance for Tyler and me to become invincible. Because, despite what I’ve been telling myself—yes, maybe, if I really dig into it—I can acknowledge the fissures. His discontent. But Tyler and I were already supposed to be invincible. From the very first time that he kissed me—we’d all had a few beers and had broken into the football field to blow off some steam on a crisp September night—I knew that we were invincible. I’d been pining for him all summer, the well of emotion catching me off guard.
We’d been friends since elementary school. My mother was barely hanging on. He’d just broken up with Claire Addleman, who was a co-cheerleader and to whom I thus owed friendship fidelity. And yet, we’d kick our feet off the dock of the lake or we’d huddle together at a bonfire in the late hours of the evening, and none of that mattered, especially not my mom. In the little bubble that I inflated around us, Tyler shielded me from all of the anguish that crashed down upon me as soon as I ventured outside of his protection. So when we lay down on the footbal
l field, staring at the clear night and its crystalline sky, and he pressed closer to me, and then rolled his head sideways and then took his hand to move my chin toward his, and then molded his mouth over mine, I knew that it was forever. That bubble, rising around us, washing everything else away.
I knew that we were lucky to meet so young, to avoid the mistakes that some of our friends made: pregnant in high school; divorced at twenty-six; miserable—like Austin—until you make that cataclysmic mistake that shows you that you don’t really know what misery is until your wife emotionally castrates you and kicks your ass out. It wasn’t that it was easy for Tyler and me—the weekends in college driving back and forth, the drunken frat party temptations, the fact that we had to grow up together rather than meeting when maybe each of us already knew who we were separately. But we did it, we endured, in spite of it all.
The bell clangs, tugging me out of the memory.
We’re all stuck, I think again, picking up the phone to check in with Ty, hoping to reach him and say, I might be pregnant, and please, I wish you were here and not up at Nolan Green’s parents’ lake house, and didn’t feel so far away. But I’m sent to voice mail, an empty greeting that offers little reassurance that he is out there, missing me too.
A spider suddenly winds its way up the leg of my desk and onto my prom files. I fleetingly consider granting it reprieve, returning it to its wayward family outside, but instead, I reach down, remove my sandal, and smack, gone, it is gone.
Darcy, always easily distracted, has nearly forgotten her well-intentioned, sisterly determination as we amble down the hallway during lunch period toward the girls’ locker room, the pregnancy test concealed in my hand.
The One That I Want Page 7