If I Knew You Were Going to Be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go

by Judy Chicurel

  The light of day was dying, slowly, leaving inky smudges in the sky. I wanted to walk over and put my arms around her, but Liz never liked being touched; she shrugged off embraces, even on her birthday, was the first to scream, “Lezzie!” if you even laid a hand on her arm. I leaned back and lit a cigarette.

  “I thought maybe if I told my mother,” Liz said. I sat up and stared at her. Mrs. McGann was the same age as the rest of our parents but she seemed older. Her hair was iron gray and she never visited Antoine’s on Main because, she said, if God had meant for your hair to stay the same color all your life, he would have made it so. Mr. and Mrs. McGann went to mass every morning, not just on Sundays. They believed in everything the Church said. They believed that the Holy Communion wafer was the body of Jesus. I saw Mrs. McGann’s face one Sunday as she walked back from taking Communion up on the altar. I had never seen her smile that way before. She looked—transported. She looked like she was in a much better world than the one the rest of us lived in.

  “I thought maybe if I told my mother,” Liz said, “she’d see it my way, you know, help me have the baby. I mean, let’s face it, she’d much rather I had the baby than—than this.” She blew ragged smoke rings out over the garden. “And then I thought, what am I, nuts? She’d rather I was dead. She’d rather I was dead than having a baby with no husband, than—than any of it.”

  “Liz,” I said.

  “Don’t ‘Liz’ me, you know it’s true.” Liz leaned forward on the railing, away from me. I couldn’t see her face. “She’d ship me off someplace for sure, some home for unwed mothers in fucking Nebraska or someplace, as far away as possible, make me put it up for adoption, then make me come home and go to church with her every morning and wear a big scarlet ‘A’ for asshole every day around the house. I’d never hear the end of it.” She lit another cigarette, and, even from where I was sitting, I could see her hands shaking. She threw the match into the air so that it would land below us, in the tomatoes and lettuce and green peppers. Every night before dinner, I would go down to the garden and pick vegetables for the salad. I liked the smell of things growing in the earth.

  “That’s what would happen, all right,” Liz was saying, her voice bitter. “My parents would love Jesus no matter what he did, but they would never love me again. They send money to save the innocent babies in the Congo, but they would never love their unmarried daughter’s baby.” She shook her head back and forth. I didn’t say anything. I knew Liz’s parents. I knew what she said was true. “I can just see my mother’s face. My father—hey, he hardly knows I’m around now, right? I mean, if I told him? Like, tried to force Cory into a—a shotgun situation, some shit like that?” She snorted. “My father would blame me. I bet you my next paycheck that’s what would happen. And Cory, it’s like he wasn’t even worried about that. Wasn’t even worried that I might tell my father, that he would—because he knows, right? He sees it every day, the way my father treats me. You’ve seen him, the way he acts. And once this happened, it’s like I wouldn’t even exist. And my mother, that look on her face—”

  “Liz,” I said. “Liz, come on, man. You didn’t do anything wrong, okay? You loved someone, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Says the virgin,” she said, sighing. She came over and sat down next to me on the chaise. We sat like that for a while, listening to my mother’s friends laughing, the clink of coffee cups, forks scraping the last little bits of Sara Lee chocolate layer cake from their plates. Liz’s head was bent so far down it was almost touching the floor. I had to lean forward to hear what she was saying.

  “I need to know you’re with me, Katie,” she said. “I mean, I thought you were going to be the one to bag out in the first place.”

  “Liz—”

  “I’ve heard you say it! ‘If abortion was around, I wouldn’t be here today.’ I’ve heard you say it a hundred times.”

  “I never said it a hundred—”

  “Katie, I know you,” she whispered fiercely. “You’re so fucking dramatic—”

  “I’m so fucking dramatic?” I said, thinking of the crown of roses, the red velvet wedding dress.

  “In your head, you’re more dramatic than the rest of us,” she whispered. “What happens when we get there? What if you’re sitting around waiting and you start thinking it’s you I’m killing and not—”

  “Stop it!” I whispered, just as fierce. “Shut the fuck up right now or I’ll—”

  “I need to know,” she said savagely. “I need to know if you’re with me, because if you’re not, it’s cool, no, really, man, it is; I can do this by myself, but you have to tell me now. I don’t want to feel all safe when I go to sleep tonight and then find out that I’m—” Her head dropped lower, her hair spilling over the porch floor.

  I lit another cigarette. Wherever my mother was now, the one who’d given me up so I could have a better life, she hadn’t been in the smokers’ bathroom at school that day when Barbara Malone began yanking the hair from my scalp like a deranged warrior, or jumped on Barbara’s back, threatening to dunk her head in a toilet bowl if she didn’t leave me alone. But Liz had. It was Liz who lit my first cigarette, brought me down to Comanche Street, gave me a place to belong. I started to say something, but stopped when I saw her face. It was contorted, her lips quivering, her eyes dry but darting wildly, as if seeking shelter. I took hold of her hands, held them hard against my heart.

  “I’m here, man,” I said. “I’m here, I swear. I swear on my mother’s life.”

  Liz nodded, then gently removed her hands from mine. After a while she whispered, “To think I wanted him to marry me.” She covered her face with her hands, and the sound of her sobbing was drowned out by the crashing of tiles against the kitchen table, the triumphant cry of “Mah-jongg!” by one of my mother’s friends.

  The Next Morning

  Liz insisted we take the 7:27 bus; the few of our friends’ parents who worked in the city, including my father, took the 7:55 train that left from the same station, so we’d miss having to run into any of them. No one else we knew got up that early except the surfers and they’d be in the ocean, not at the bus station. She wanted to check into the motel and get her bearings before heading over to the doctor’s place. We had the address but no phone number; the doctor refused to speak to her clients on the phone. “We can pretend it’s like a vacation,” Liz said. I agreed, even though it wasn’t like we were going to Aruba or someplace. Silverwood was only about two hours away, one of the arty beach towns where painters and writers supposedly had summer places.

  There was a thin streamer of gold against the sky as we walked out to the buses after buying our tickets. I paused for a minute to look at the sky, thinking, when you lived by the water, even the bus station could look beautiful in the early morning light.

  “Well, well, look who’s here,” I heard, and turned to see Mitch, leaning on a trash dumpster while he tried to light a cigarette. He was wearing his military-issue sunglasses.

  “What the fuck is he doing here?” Liz whispered, panicked. “I thought he never left Comanche Street.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked Mitch. My voice sounded loud in my own ears.

  He exhaled and began hobbling over to where we were standing. Away from Comanche Street, he looked taller, straighter, his cane making him seem more distinguished, even though the closer he got, you could smell the booze and sweat.

  “Had a rough night,” he said, his voice sounding like crunched gravel. “Couldn’t get to sleep even after the bar closed; fucking birds were on the ledge outside, sounded like they were in the room, for chrissake. I’m due for a visit to the VA hospital to stock my meds and make sure I’m still alive, so instead of killing a whole damn day I’ll only kill a whole damn morning, can you dig it? At least the Goddamned train is air-conditioned. But the real question is, where are you two fine beauties off to at this time of the morning? And what
’s with the funereal garb?”

  Liz mumbled, “Later, man,” and began walking to the opposite end of the station, where the buses were parked.

  “I better get going,” I said. “So we don’t miss the bus.”

  I could feel Mitch’s eyes watching me behind his sunglasses. He scratched the stubble on his chin. Finally, he asked, “There something you want to tell me, baby doll?”

  “Like what?” I asked innocently.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s why I asked. Everything all right with you and Sister Morphine over there?” He jerked his head in Liz’s direction. “Not like her to be so quiet.”

  “No, we’re cool,” I said. “She’s just not into being up this early. Thing is, we both have to be to work in the afternoon and we have to buy a—a birthday present for one of our friends from school, you wouldn’t know her, they’re having a surprise party for her next weekend and this was the only time—”

  “Shine it on, darlin’,” he said softly. “I get the drift.”

  I felt my insides relax a little. “Listen, don’t tell anyone you saw us, okay?”

  Mitch nodded, watching me from behind his sunglasses.

  “All right, later,” I said, but he pulled me back as I turned to go. He fumbled in his pocket and came up with a twenty-dollar bill and held it out. “Here,” he said. “Buy yourselves some lunch or something.”

  “C’mon, man, I don’t want your money,” I said, but he shoved the bill into my hand, crumpling it between my fingers. “Take it,” he said, his voice low and steely.

  You live over a bar, I wanted to say. You sleep on torn sheets. You wake up screaming in the night. “Thanks,” I whispered instead. I could feel my throat begin to tremble. I kissed his cheek quickly and then turned and began walking toward Liz and the bus that would take us to Silverwood.

  • • •

  L iz hadn’t said much on the way to the bus station and she wasn’t saying much as we rolled onto the Meadowbrook Parkway. She just kept lighting cigarettes, staring out the window. The bus wasn’t very crowded; most of the seats were empty but we were still sitting way in the back. It’s funny, but the people I hang out with, we always gravitate to the back of everything: classrooms, movie theaters, buses. There was a young mother with four kids sitting near the middle, all redheads, and two of them looked like twins. They were keeping her pretty busy, climbing all over the seats, clamoring for juice and cookies, hitting each other. But outside of that, it was pretty quiet.

  I thought about my own mother, the one who gave me up. I always pictured her brushing her long, black hair, staring out the window, waiting for someone. Sometimes, I pictured her sitting at a scarred brown vanity table, staring into the scratched mirror, dressed only in a bra and girdle with her flesh bulging between the elastic borders, a glass of something amber by her side. She looked sad like that, staring into the mirror. Had she thought about doing something like this? Had she gone for a two-hour bus ride alone or with her best friend and then chickened out halfway there? Or stood in an alley outside the doctor’s door and then fled before even knocking? Or made it as far as the table and then gotten so hysterical that the stern-faced, short-haired, thin-lipped doctor had thrown up her hands and said, “I can’t do this, here, take your money and go”? I never thought about my father, except when people told me I looked part Indian, especially in the summer when I tanned very dark. I thought maybe he’d been part of the Shinnecock tribe we’d studied in Local History at school. My mother had been a good Catholic girl. I’d been adopted through St. Joseph’s Sanctuary in Fog River, a home for unwed mothers behind a huge brick wall not far from the ferry. I thought about what would have happened if she’d kept me. Would she stand in the doorway of the bathroom while I put on my mascara, screaming that I’d end up living over a bar with six kids if I kept hanging around street corners? Sometimes lately when I looked in the mirror I wondered if she’d recognize me walking down the street, if there was enough of her in me for that to happen. But when I thought about her, it wasn’t a burning in my heart, the way it was when I thought about Luke. I wouldn’t be thinking about her now if I wasn’t on my way to an abortion doctor.

  I was so into my thoughts I didn’t realize at first that my seat was rocking. I thought something had broken loose and the seat needed adjusting. Then I realized it was Liz. She was shaking so bad that the seats were vibrating.

  “Jesus, Liz,” I said. I thought maybe she had a fever and we would have to call the whole thing off. I put my hand on her arm, and she grabbed hold of me.

  “Nanny’s right, I’m going to hell,” she said, speaking fast, in a low voice. “After this, it’s the only place for me. I’m going to hell and there’s nothing, not one Goddamned thing I can do to save myself.”

  “Liz—”

  “I know I did a lot of bad things in my life, but I always thought I could make it up later, you know, when we got older. But I can never make this up. I can never save my soul after this. Best thing that could happen, I die on the table, right in the middle—”

  “Stop it!” I said, grabbing her shoulders. “Stop it right now! You’re not going to die, it’s a clean, safe place—”

  “Yeah, yeah, so clean, you could eat off it, like my mother says,” she said bitterly. “Maybe we could have a dinner party after I—WILL YOU SHUT THAT FUCKING KID UP!” she screamed suddenly, jumping out of her seat. “SHUT HIM UP! SHUT HIM UP, GODDAMNIT!”

  One of the red-haired kids had been crying, but now he stopped mid-wail, abruptly and completely. Everyone was looking at us, including the driver in his rearview mirror. Liz sat down, lit another cigarette, and went back to staring out the window. She had stopped shaking.

  The mother of the crying kid was coming at us, snorting fire. I ran up the aisle before she could reach Liz, blocking her way.

  “Out of my way,” she said, eyes blazing. “Just who the hell does she think she is, yelling about my kid like that?”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I said, talking fast, “she’s upset. She’s upset and—”

  “Huh!” the mother said. “She don’t look too upset to me. She—”

  “She’s—we’re on our way to a funeral,” I said. “It’s—it’s someone close to her, very close, and she’s just—she’s really not herself.” Now I was glad we were dressed in black so the funeral story would be more believable.

  “I don’t care what she is,” the mother said. “She’s got no right—”

  “Her nephew,” I whispered. “It’s her favorite nephew. She can’t stand even being around—I mean, your kids, they remind her—”

  The mother stared at Liz, her eyes narrowed.

  “Since it happened, she’s been like—she has these outbursts . . .” I trailed off and raised my eyebrows, trying to make it sound like Liz was one step away from the county asylum.

  “How old was the nephew?” the mother whispered.

  “Four,” I said. “Only four years old. It was so tragic, it was—”

  “My God, how did it happen?” the mother whispered.

  But my imagination was suddenly exhausted. “I can’t talk about it,” I said, making my voice sound sorrowful. “I’m sorry, but it’s just too—I just can’t—”

  “Sure, sure, I understand,” she said, patting my shoulder. “Well. We all have our days. Had a few myself. You can imagine, with this crowd.” She jerked her head toward the kids, who were watching her, openmouthed. “Tell your friend I’m sorry for her loss.” She turned and walked toward her children. She took the two smallest ones with the reddest hair on her lap and began talking softly to them. They were all quiet, listening, their eyes wandering back toward Liz, who was staring out the window.

  I walked to my seat and sat down. I put my arm around Liz’s shoulders. For once, she didn’t flinch. She leaned against me and closed her eyes. We rode like that the rest of the way.
/>   Right Now

  The room was hidden from the rest of the house. It was the widow’s watch at the top, connected to a small staircase behind an oak closet in the bathroom, so small that it seemed made for children, not adults. “I feel like Anne fucking Frank,” Liz muttered as we climbed into the space. I smiled. I was happy that Liz sounded like Liz again.

  Prisms of light danced from the tiny triangular windows. Bottles of colored glass hung from the walls, casting violet shadows against wide, weathered planks that looked like whitewashed driftwood. In the center of the room was a narrow bed dressed in white. And above the bed, something we hadn’t been able to see from the street: a skylight.

  There was a portable metal table against one wall, covered with a white cloth, and on the shelf above the table, a tape player; strains of Joni Mitchell singing “California” floated through the air. A woman younger than the doctor was standing by the table, assembling instruments, checking things over. She wore jeans, a white peasant top, and flip-flops. The doctor gestured toward her and said, “My assistant,” and I remembered: no names. When the woman turned toward us and smiled, my heart sank; she looked almost exactly like Marily Weiss, a girl at Elephant Beach High School who Liz hated with a passion because she had told Mrs. Jacovides, the home ec teacher, that Liz was trying to copy her answers on a quiz when Liz really wasn’t. One time, Marily came into the smoking bathroom by mistake—you could tell by looking at her that she’d never smoked a cigarette in her life—and Liz threatened to wrap her tongue around her tonsils for telling lies and started coming toward her, and Marily screamed and ran out of the bathroom without even taking a piss. I was hoping Liz wouldn’t notice the resemblance, but now she was lying on the bed while the doctor swabbed her arm with cotton, holding a needle in her hand. “Valium,” she explained. “Within five minutes or so it should be taking effect.” Liz was lying very still beneath the white sheet, staring with great interest at the skylight in the ceiling.