The Speed Queen

by Stewart O'Nan

  33

  I didn’t do anything while I was pregnant with Gainey, no booze, no drugs, not even cigarettes. Maybe a drag here and there, that was it. All of a sudden I couldn’t stand the taste of them.

  All I did was eat. I drank whole gallons of milk. My belly button popped when I was just six months. We’d go to Beverly’s Pancake Kitchen for Sunday brunch; walking in it was like Jack Sprat and his wife. Lamont would order the short stack while I’d have the chicken-in-the-rough and a Black Cow followed by a slice of 7-Up pie, and he wouldn’t say a word.

  I was worried that my drinking might do something to the baby, that my body was already too messed up from the speed. The first time I went to the doctor I was afraid she’d see the tracks on my arms. The pamphlets she gave me didn’t help. I kept seeing pictures of babies with just skin where their eyes were supposed to go. I remembered those calves in the sideshow tent with six or seven legs. I’d have these dreams where the doctor pulled something that looked like a starfish out of me. I’d wake up screaming and Lamont would hold me.

  He was so sweet, putting up with me. We had a water bed, and I couldn’t get out of it by myself, so he’d help me. I couldn’t get up from the couch without him giving me a hand. Anything I wanted, he’d get for me.

  “You want something?” he’d say. “What do you need?”

  When I first found out, I was worried. I wasn’t sure Lamont wanted kids. We’d never really talked about it, and I didn’t know, with him being a foster kid. I didn’t tell him the day I did the test. The plus turned pink and I threw the little plastic case into the sink so hard that it cracked. I waited until Friday, when we both got paid, and I made him a nice steak and a baked potato. I put a tablecloth on and made sure I looked good.

  When I called him in from the TV, he stopped and looked at the table.

  “What’s the occasion?” he said.

  “Nothing,” I said, but he was looking at me like something was wrong, and I couldn’t help it, I started to cry. I pushed past him into the bedroom and slammed the door.

  “Marjorie!” he called. “What’s wrong?”

  “What do you think is wrong?” I said. “I’m pregnant.”

  I could hear his work boots on the floor in the hall but he didn’t say anything. I lay there across the bed, waiting.

  “Well?” I shouted. “Are we going to kill it?”

  “That’s up to you,” he said.

  “It’s not up to me. It’s yours too.”

  “Do you want to have it?” he said.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Let me in,” he said, and I got up and unlocked the door.

  He laid down and put his arms around me and I knew we’d be okay.

  Every night he rubbed my back, and when I couldn’t get to sleep he’d stay up and talk with me. Sometimes I’d cry. My hormones were going all over.

  “Are you happy?” I’d ask. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” he said.

  And I was terrible to him. When I was crying and he asked me if I was all right, I screamed at him. I said he cared more about his car than he did about me. I took all the books I could find out of the library and made him look at the pictures. It was easy for him, I said; it only took guys five minutes to have a baby.

  I was scared because I didn’t know what it was going to be like. My mom was talking to me again because of it; she tried to tell me I’d know what to do when the time came. I didn’t believe her.

  “I know it hurts,” I said, “but what does it hurt like?”

  “I don’t know,” my mom said. “It’s not the kind of pain you remember.”

  “Is it like a sharp pain that goes away or a dull pain that just stays there and grows?”

  “Stop working yourself up,” she said. “It’s a natural process. Your body will know what to do. Just be thankful you’ve got my hips.”

  I know it was supposed to help, but all I could picture was my pelvis snapping like a wishbone.

  Everything she said scared me. First I’d feel my water break and run hot down my legs. Between then and the delivery I had to worry about infection. Sometimes the baby could get sideways or strangle on its own cord. Sometimes when the head didn’t crown right they had to cut you. And then there was the whole C-section thing. In the diagram they made it look like opening one of those little cereals you eat right in the box.

  “Don’t worry,” my mom said. “There’s nothing you can do about it anyway.”

  That was the problem, I wanted to say; I felt helpless. I was getting bigger and bigger and the time was going by so slowly. We’d picked names and I’d had a shower and we’d bought a crib. We did the amnio and it was okay; it was a boy, so we started calling my belly Gainey. It was summer and uncomfortable. Now just standing hurt. It got to the point where Lamont and me had to stop making love. I flipped the calendar and there was my due date circled in red. It was like now, I was just waiting for this thing to happen to me. It was coming and there was nothing I could do.

  And for everyone else it wasn’t a big deal. My doctor, my mom—they’d all been through it before, they knew everything that was going to happen, but that didn’t tell me how it was going to feel.

  I’d cry and Lamont would tell me everything was going to be all right, but I could tell he was scared too. I said he didn’t have to be in the delivery room and then in the middle of the night one night I changed my mind and made him promise.

  My doctor got my due date wrong by two weeks. It was supposed to be July 4th, which we thought was neat, but it turned out to be the 19th. We were ready to go that whole time, we had a bag packed and everything. When I finally went into labor we were relieved.

  It was right after dinner on the 18th. We had take-out from Johnny’s Char-broiler. I was on the couch watching something and my stomach just started to cramp. It was like I had to go so bad but I couldn’t. Your muscle hurts like a charley horse; the best thing is not to fight it but that’s your instinct. It hits you and then goes away, but you know it’s coming around again. Lamont called my doctor. My water hadn’t broken so she said not to come in until my contractions were seven to ten minutes apart. Lamont took his watch off to time them.

  We watched TV until midnight, and they were still twenty minutes apart.

  “You should get some rest,” I told Lamont, but he said he was okay. He was drinking my diet Pepsis and smoking up a storm. I could barely stand the smell.

  The late movie was Alien. Lamont clicked it over to Letterman.

  We were sitting there about ten minutes later when the backs of my thighs felt wet. I looked down and the couch was soaked. I kept apologizing while Lamont called.

  He’d backed the Roadrunner into its spot so we could take off. He put two towels down on my seat and helped me in. He started the engine and flicked on the lights, released the emergency brake and rolled out of the lot. It was like a robbery; we hardly said anything. I’d never seen him take Choctaw so slowly. There was nobody out, but he was careful to signal, and careful of his mirrors.

  The doctor wasn’t there yet, and the nurse made us wait in a room with another woman who was crying between contractions. They hooked me up to a machine to measure mine. The lines looked like earthquakes. I tried to relax, but every time one hit I’d clench my stomach like I could stop it.

  “You’re doing great,” Lamont said.

  “How many minutes was that?” I said.

  “Fifteen?”

  “No,” I said. “That’s wrong.”

  The other woman was crying.

  “Be quiet!” I said.

  Finally the doctor showed up. When she pushed her hands into my belly, she yawned coffee breath right in my face.

  “I can give you something for the pain,” she said.

  “I don’t want any drugs,” I said, partly afraid she’d see my tracks.

  Two hours later, I was pleading with her for a shot.

  “I thought you wanted it to be natural,” Lamon
t reminded me.

  “Didn’t you hear what I just said?” I screamed. “Now give me the shot.”

  He came back in this stupid blue mask and I laughed at him. A contraction caught me by surprise and I started to cry. The doctor checked to see how dilated I was; her fingers searched and it hurt. The orderlies came and moved me onto a gurney and clapped the rails up.

  The doctor was wearing blue too, and there was a tent of it around my legs. There was a mirror I could look in but I didn’t. I still didn’t know what to do, and I said so.

  “You’re okay,” the doctor said. “I just need you to keep pressing down. Dad, can you get that arm? Okay, here we go.”

  I was too tired to push, and then I held my breath and tried. The lights made me sweat but I was still cold.

  “A little more,” she said, like I wasn’t trying.

  “Come on,” she said. “You can do it, Mom.”

  I gritted my teeth and said some unnecessary things.

  “There,” she said. “Great. Okay. You’re all done. You can relax now.”

  “You did it,” Lamont was saying. He had my hand.

  “I think you’re going to be very happy,” the doctor said.

  It was okay, I thought, I could die now. There was nothing left of me.

  The nurse brought Gainey to me in a blue blanket and put him on my chest.

  He was moving his little hands. His eyes were closed but his mouth was open like a baby bird’s. He had hair, he even had tiny eyebrows.

  “Well, look at you,” I said. “So you’re the one who’s been causing all this trouble.”

  34

  Sorry, I’m getting a little ahead of myself there. I start telling that story and I can’t stop.

  We were married before I started to show. It’s not hard to figure out, all you have to do is count backwards. I won’t lie; a lot of things overlap in here, like me already being pregnant at that Christmas party, or the other arrest. I’m sure you’ve got that too. What’s important is that we stuck together through all of that stuff.

  Sister Perpetua says love endures, and that’s what Lamont and me did—we endured each other. I still am. After everything that happened, if he pulled up and opened that door for me again, I’d still get in.

  It’s funny though. When I’m driving, I’m always by myself.

  I never thought I’d get married. I never thought I’d have a kid. These weren’t things I wanted right then. They weren’t things I’d think about the way some girls I knew did. It was all kind of a surprise.

  Lamont proposed to me at the Saturday flea market at the Sky-Vue Drive-In. We were at this booth where this old guy sold knives and cast-iron skillets and bleached steer skulls. Him and his wife sat in plastic lawn chairs under a canopy off of their camper; they never got up unless you had your money out. They had a bunch of old campaign buttons and pocket watches and Mexican coins in a glass-topped box, and in there was this pearl ring. The pearl had colors all swirled around in it, the way oil makes a rainbow on water.

  “That’s pretty,” I said, to see what Lamont thought.

  “How much is it?” he said.

  The little tag was turned over.

  Lamont got the man up. His hands were big, his fingers square as fish sticks.

  “Four hundred dollars,” he said, and held the glass top open like it was a question.

  “Can we see it?” Lamont said. I don’t know why; we couldn’t afford it.

  The man pinched it up by the band.

  Lamont tried to take it with two fingers but he missed. It dropped in the dust under the table, and he knelt down to look for it. He had it before I could help him, but he didn’t get up. He stayed there on one knee and held the ring out to me. And then he proposed. He said it just like you always hear.

  People walking by were staring at us. People stopped. The old man’s wife got up from her chair to see better. I didn’t know what to say. We’d been fighting all week about how I hadn’t told my mom yet, and now here he was being sweet. It was his baby, he knew that. I did love him. He was all I had.

  “Yes,” I said, “I will,” and the people around us clapped.

  Lamont slipped the ring on my finger, price tag and all. I still have that tag. It’s going to go to Gainey. I’m keeping the ring.

  When I told my mom, she didn’t say anything at first. I had to repeat it.

  “I heard you,” she said. “I’m just trying to think.”

  “We’re going to have a baby.”

  “I knew there was a reason,” she said. “I was hoping that wasn’t it. What does this boy do?”

  It was going okay, I thought. She could have just hung up.

  “Will you come?” I asked her.

  “It would be nice if I had a little warning.”

  We didn’t say anything then.

  “Of course I will,” she said. “What kind of mother would miss her daughter’s first wedding?”

  “So?” Lamont said when I got off.

  “She’s coming.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  That Friday we got married at Edmond City Hall. My mom gave me her dress. It was yellowed and smelled of mothballs but it fit. Lamont rented a tux. We picked up my mom on the way. She wore blue, and hadn’t had her hair tinted. I flipped the seat up so she could get in back. She reached between us to shake Lamont’s hand.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said.

  “Just don’t be like the last one,” she said.

  Lamont gave me a look, and I shrugged like I didn’t know what was going on. I knew we’d fight about it that night, but right then I didn’t want to get into it. Nothing was going to ruin my wedding day.

  We were there early. My mom was our only witness so we borrowed the lady from the Traffic Bureau. In the pictures she’s the only one smiling.

  35

  We decided on Las Vegas for our honeymoon, but we didn’t have enough money. We got all the maps and tour books from the Triple A, and at night after work we’d lay them out on the coffee table and go.

  “The Sahara,” I’d say.

  And Lamont would go, “We’re playing seven-card stud and drinking Jack and Coca-Cola.”

  “Pepsi.”

  “Okay. We’re at the Sands—”

  “We’re playing blackjack and eating the free sandwiches. We’re at the Flamingo—”

  “We’re winning. We’ve got all these silver dollars from hitting the slots, and instead of blowing it, we go upstairs and pour them all over the bed.”

  “Then what?” I’d say, and he’d pick me up and carry me into the bedroom and kick the door shut behind us.

  After a while, we didn’t even make it to Vegas. We’d get off 40 and stop at the Petrified Forest or the Painted Desert or the Grand Canyon. The overlooks were empty, the sunset throwing shadows. We stopped in the middle of Hoover Dam and climbed onto the roof and pulled off each other’s shorts. Lamont’s bikinis fell until we couldn’t see them. The vinyl was warm against my back. Lake Mead was upside down and blue.

  “I love you, Marjorie,” he said. “I love you so much.”

  And I believed him. Because it was true then.

  36

  I wouldn’t say my relationship with my mom got better while I was pregnant. We talked now, and sometimes I’d visit her, but she wouldn’t come to our apartment and she wouldn’t talk to Lamont. Whenever he answered the phone, she’d ask if I was there, and if I wasn’t, she wouldn’t stay on. She called him “he” and “that boy of yours,” as in “What would your father think of that boy of yours?”

  She came to Casa Mia just once, for my shower. Garlyn was drunk and spilled the guacamole on the carpet. She started bawling and swabbing at it with her hands.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m just losing one of my best friends in the whole world.”

  My mom swooped in with a wooden spoon and a bowl. In the kitchenette, she said, “I can’t believe
anyone would come to something this nice in that condition.”

  “She’s my friend,” I said. “And that is her condition.”

  “She reminds me of someone we both knew before she cleaned up her act.”

  “My life is not an act,” I said.

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

  We both said some things then. The kitchenette was right next to the living room, there was a bar in between. Garlyn came over to apologize; she was still crying. She wanted to hug my mom but I got in between them.

  “I don’t know what you’re thinking,” my mom said later. She was on her knees, scrubbing at the green stain. “You’re not doing her any favors by putting up with it.”

  “What am I supposed to do, write her off?”

  “Are you saying that’s what I did with you?”

  “I’m not saying anything,” I said. “Why is it that every time we talk about anything it always comes back to me and you?”

  She quit and walked past me and ran water onto the sponge. “I don’t know why you invited me here if you’re just going to treat me this way.”

  “What way?”

  “Maybe it would be better if we just spoke to each other on the phone.”

  “Maybe it would,” I said.

  She got her purse and checked to make sure she had exact change for the bus. “Well,” she said at the door, “it’s been pleasant.”

  “For both of us,” I said.

  But here, listen to this. Out of everyone, my mom was the only one who came to my trial. Every day she had a new outfit on and her hair looked just done. Mr. Jefferies said it was important to show the jury that I had people who believed in me, and he called her and she came. She got a babysitter for Gainey and sat right behind us in the first row with the people Mr. Jefferies hired. And she didn’t have to, she could have just stayed home.