Someone Else's Love Story

  Mimmy sat across from us in the matching chair, all alone. She heard him out, and I was so safe in my meadow that I barely registered it even when she started yelling.

  “What poop, what poop, what utter poop!” Even in a state, Mimmy’s vocabulary didn’t lose its sugar. “You did this. You did this!”

  Walcott’s taller mom, Aimee, put her hands out, like she was surrendering, and said in her kindest voice, “Charlotte, I know how upsetting this must be, but Walcott is telling you the truth. We drove Shandi to see my gynecologist. She confirms that your daughter is pregnant, and also that her hymen is intact. Dr. Kaye believes that the boy who drugged your daughter might have ejaculated prematurely at the . . . oh dear. At the gate, as it were. Close enough so that—­”

  My mother was positively gawping by then, her jaw unhinging and swinging up and down about nine times before she could get it under control and form words. “You took my daughter to the doctor? You did?”

  “Drove her, yes. She asked us to.”

  I stayed in the sunshine place, pretending a meadow full of fairy mushroom rings where nothing any of them said had one damn thing to do with me. The magic yellow motes of cheery pollen in the air had probably made the baby happen, but I felt a distant kind of sorry for Mimmy. She’d been blindsided in her warm and lacy living room, all pink and cream and gold. She’d served sweet tea to the whole family, unfailingly polite, only to have them tell her this? She’d given Walcott free run of her house for years and years, against her better judgment, and now he was explaining that her daughter had caught pregnant at a party, the way other girls catch colds.

  Mimmy bared her teeth into a shape that was nothing like a smile. “Are you stupid? Do you know your son sneaks out of your house fifty times a week? Do you know how many times I’ve caught your kid in my daughter’s very room, after midnight?”

  That snapped me back. I activated and said, real mad, “Mom, he always had his pants on, though.”

  Mimmy turned on me with her gorgeous eyes gone all slitty. “Why are they even here? You could at least do your own explaining.”

  A fair point, but I turned my face and looked past her, back at the drapes. Now it felt like the only thing behind them was our little front lawn.

  Walcott’s shorter mother, Darla, said, “According to our doctor, no one is having sex with your daughter. Not our son, certainly. Walcott is not sexually active yet.”

  Aimee said, “I don’t think we should speak to Walcott’s sex life, Darla.”

  “Of course not. I’m just saying he doesn’t have one,” Darla said, smoothing her Indian-­print skirt down over her legs.

  Walcott turned to me and said in a low, conversational tone, “I want to die now. You?”

  “Ten minutes ago,” I said, but all the mothers in the room kept right on talking.

  Aimee was still focused on Darla. “When the time comes, I hope he will talk to us about it. But we have to respect his privacy.” She turned back to my mother. “I can tell you this, we’ve given him fistfuls of condoms. Absolute fistfuls.”

  Darla chimed in, “This happened in Atlanta, anyway. Walcott wasn’t even in the same county.”

  That brought my mom up short. She paused, blinking, and her righ­teous fury dialed down a notch. It wasn’t like the news delighted her, nothing like. But I saw her get a tiny tickle in the schadenfreude as she registered that this happened on Dad’s watch.

  “Does her father know?” she asked, and she sat up a little straighter when Aimee shook her head. “So when was this exactly?” She was talking to me, but I looked away, as if all the things happening inside me were not really my business. My mother turned back to Aimee. “Do you know? How long ago? How far is—­ Does she want to—­”

  She couldn’t even say it, but she needn’t have worried. If I was going to have an abortion, I never would have let Walcott tell her I was pregnant at all. Stopping the little wad who was so busy making himself into a Natty—­it didn’t seem fair. I didn’t know this small person who had taken root in me, but his existence felt like a trick that had been played on both of us, together.

  Aimee said, “Shandi doesn’t feel that’s an option.”

  “Although it is, Shandi,” Darla said in a low tone.

  She might have gone on, but my mother said, “She said no. Don’t you push that child.”

  Darla held up her hands. “Not pushing, just making sure she knows her options.”

  My mother got frosty and said, “She knows her Chris­tian options.”

  Aimee stepped in, peacemaking. “We’re not trying to overstep our bounds here. Shandi already made a decision, and we can all agree to respect that and deal with the situation as it is.” While Aimee was helping everyone tread quickly over unstable ground and back to good manners, I leaned into Walcott and whispered in his ear, desperate. “Go call my dad and tell him. Fast.”

  Walcott jerked and turned to me. “Are you frickin’ serious?” he hissed.

  I nodded. If I let my mother tell him, it would become another weapon in the endless war. She’d imply that I’d never have gotten pregnant here, where an ever-­vigilant Trinity had six eyes on me; in Atlanta, Judaism’s single God had blinked. She wouldn’t be able to help it.

  To be fair, had the situation been reversed, Dad would have found the same scant solace in pinning it on Jesus. They were both from such devout families, but when they’d met in college, those traditions hadn’t felt important. All four of their parents had pushed against them, and they’d pushed back super hard, eloping at the tender age of twenty. It was them against the world, until I came. I know all kids blame themselves when their parents get divorced, but I was the one kid who was actually right. The question of what faith to raise me in put a chink in them; their families hammered at the crack I’d put in their foundation until they shattered.

  I held Walcott’s gaze and whispered, fierce, “I can’t let her enjoy telling him. I could never look at her again. I’d have to run away to New York and be a hooker and eat a pound of heroin and die.”

  Walcott swallowed, looking sick, but he got what I was saying. He always did. “Well, we can’t have that.”

  I passed him my cell phone.

  He got up, said, “Bathroom,” to three pairs of questioning mother eyes, and left the room.

  He took care of it. Again. I didn’t even have to try not to listen, much less explain it myself. Never. Not once. Just sat there, like today, waiting for my turn to get a bullet.

  I looked at my hands, still streaked with William’s blood, and knew I couldn’t sit quiet and helpless ever again. I couldn’t be that person anymore. Natty deserved better. So did I.

  “You ready?” The fireman said. “We’re taking him out.”

  I carried Natty, following the fireman over to William, now up on a gurney. He had a paramedic on one side, holding up a bag of fluids that were running down into his arm. There was room for me on the other side. They had given me the wife slot, where William’s wife would go if this were a hospital drama on TV.

  He met my gaze as we started moving, and I knew he felt it, too, how of a piece we three looked. How right this was. Even in this crowd of busy strangers, the fireman and the paramedics could see how we belonged. As we walked, I put my hand on his warm, bare chest, high up on the unshot side, the way a wife would. And why not? This was destiny. He had said so, and right now, today, I had decided to deserve it. The girl who was walking out of the Circle K with William Ashe was not a person who would wake up spraddle-­legged on a beanbag chair and just fucking take it.

  I put the top down, and Walcott drove, mostly because a cop who looked alarmingly like Samuel L. Jackson had said I shouldn’t. But I didn’t feel shaky. I felt like I could have flown home.

  Walcott drove fast, and once we were back on the highway, I put my arms in the air, cupping my fingers. The wind pushed at my hands, a
nd I pushed back.

  “Suck it, wind,” I hollered. “I’m bigger than you.”

  “Tamp it down, Easter Candy,” Walcott said, grinning. I gave him raised eyebrows at the nickname, and he explained, “You’re like a kid on a bad sugar high.” He jerked a thumb back to where Natty slumped heavy-­lidded in his car seat. “That one’s crashing already. Turn your volume knob down, and he’ll blink out like a bug light.”

  “You’re right,” I said, softer. Natty was so done in he had pink circles around his eyes. “Do you realize you saved someone’s life today?”

  Walcott had grabbed one of my beach towels out of the car and pressed it to the shot cop’s bleeding shoulder, which was a weird synchronicity, considering I did pretty much the same thing with William such a short time later. Me and Walcott, on this day destined to practice the first aid we’d quasi-­learned together while passing endless notes in Health class.

  Maybe Shot Cop had been young and sweet and beautiful; I honestly couldn’t remember a single thing about her except how the blood had opened up like a red poppy on her pale blue uniform. Maybe Walcott already loved her secretly, and would ditch CeeCee and track Shot Cop down and poem her into loving him back. He and I could have a double wedding. My traitorous brain added if William is all right, and at that thought, my heart gave a panicked little hiccup.

  Busy saving the cop, Walcott hadn’t called anyone except 911. Not Mimmy, not my dad, not even his own mothers. Even after the cavalry of cops arrived, he hadn’t thought to do it.

  “Why didn’t you?” I asked, as we zoomed down the highway toward Dad-­n-­Bethany’s, so freaking late. The actual being-­a-­hostage part hadn’t put us much off schedule. It was the paperwork. We’d had to wait around until that older cop who looked so very disturbingly much like Samuel L. Jackson was ready to take my statement.

  “I was busy,” Walcott said in a quiet voice. I could barely hear him.

  “Doing what?” I asked.

  “Praying,” he said, which shut me up.

  I never thought of Walcott, son of yoga-­obsessed, quasi-­Buddhist lesbians, as a prayer. I thought of him as more of a meditator, really, and then I got the giggles, imagining him cross-­legged with hands at heart center in that parking lot, trying to om my sorry ass to safety.

  Natty fell asleep—­deep, fast, floppy asleep—­three minutes later. We drove on, quiet for his sake, but my head was full of plans. William would be fine. I was making him be fine with all my faith in it, because he had to be. If he was going to die now, then why would destiny put us together in that Circle K? William would recover, and I would go to him and he would help me. I wasn’t sure what a gene therapist did, but genes were the only link I had to finding Natty’s father. William would finish falling in love with me over his electron microscope, helping me seek justice.

  Natty didn’t even wake when we got to Dad’s house and I peeled him out of his car seat. He lay slumped on my shoulder, in that drooling, boneless state that only cats and little children know.

  Bethany answered her pretentious wind-­chimes doorbell and stood blocking the door, staring me down, a gin-­and-­diet-­tonic clutched in her perfectly manicured claws.

  “Well, look who finally decided to put in an appearance,” she said.

  Here it was, past dinner, the little boys already upstairs, and Bethany still had perfect makeup and a perfect blowout and was wearing perfectly understated, wildly pricey jewelry. She was exactly like her house, expensive and elegant, but not at all comfortable. She wasn’t actually beautiful, but no one noticed because she was always so smashingly put together, plus she had that kind of raily, curveless body made for hanging clothes. I always felt big-­assed and bobble-­boobed and like I probably had food on my shirt around her.

  But not today. Today she looked like a sun-­bleached bone with a hank of black hair on the knob end, and I was chock-­full of living juices.

  I said, “I’m sorry, we—­”

  But she was already turning away, talking over her shoulder, heels clicking against her immaculate terrazzo floor as she walked away to grant us access.

  “I don’t want you to be sorry, Shandi. I want you to be courteous and thoughtful. I want you to realize that other ­people, inconvenient as it may be, have lives and plans that do not revolve around you. This would be so much more useful than being simply sorry.” Her tone was frosty and instructional, but I wasn’t fooled. This was how Bethany did righ­teous fury. “I, for example, had a Pilates class this afternoon. It’s my one time all to myself, to take care of me and de-stress, and instead I waited here for you, endlessly.”

  Dad must have heard us. He came into the foyer, looking comfy in jeans and a soft cotton shirt.

  He dropped a kiss on the top of Natty’s sleeping head, tugged my hair, and said, mildly, “We were getting worried, kiddo.” He wasn’t on call; I could smell scotch and the ghost of a good cigar on him, and I could hear the news on TV in the living room ahead of us: warm brown daddy smells and sounds. “Want me to go lay the little man on the sofa? He looks like he’s down for the count.”

  “Yes, please,” I said. “He weighs five hundred pounds. Maybe even tuck him in bed? I don’t think we can finish the move tonight, Dad. Natty’s done in.”

  “Sure. It’s not a problem if they stay over, is it, B?” Daddy said, his easy smile including Walcott. He took Natty, who stirred and stuffed his index finger in his mouth, the way he had when he was just a baby. Dad headed for the basement.

  “We’ll see,” Bethany said, her already thin lips disappearing entirely into a pressed-­together slash.

  If I didn’t have the ace of almost being shot nestled sweetly in my pocket, I knew we’d be back on the road in half an hour, as soon as her lecture was done. Then tomorrow Dad would FedEx me a pony by way of apology.

  Bethany said, “Your father didn’t give you that expensive iPhone strictly for playing that game with the upset birds and texting your little friend here. He gave it to you so you could call, should you for some unimaginable reason need to be almost four hours late.”

  This was a true Bethany-­style reaming, and the longer she went on, the happier I got, basking in the stream of icy invective.

  Walcott beetled his eyebrows at me. He knew I could stop this lecture any second. I had the best excuse in the universe for not calling—­“Sorry, B, there was this gunman, and he wouldn’t let me use my phone!”—­but I didn’t.

  She owed me, for all the times she had given me oblique crap about getting knocked up—­“Being ready to become sexually active, Shandi, includes understanding all your options in regards to birth control, and also having the maturity to openly discuss these options with your chosen partner . . .”—­and me unable to defend myself and say, “Do you think I never practiced putting a condom onto a banana in Health? Do you think that I, a doctor’s daughter, believed that I would not get pregnant if I jumped up and down twenty times after intercourse?” But I never did defend myself, because Bethany didn’t know how I got Natty.

  That information stayed in a tightly closed circle: Walcott. Mimmy. Dad, who was smart enough about his second wife to leave her outside any loop involving me. Aimee and Darla, who’d loved me since I was little, and who decided to love Natty, too, on principle. I hadn’t even let myself think about it, until now. I was simply another knocked-­up high school girl, certainly not the first one seen in Lumpkin County or Atlanta.

  Now I stood in Bethany’s vaulted ice-­blue foyer, getting deeper into a giddy form of PTSD every second, deserving reassurance and a belt of medicinal whiskey, or maybe a Valium. Bethany had an endless supply of those. But instead I was getting martyred.

  It was too delicious to pass up. I sent a psychic look at Walcott that said, Beloved friend, go beetle your brows elsewhere because I have more than earned the coming moment.

  He grinned, rueful, conceding my point with his
complicit silence, and Bethany harped on, digging herself in ever deeper, until finally, finally, she asked me the million-­dollar question: “Why didn’t you call?”

  I’d been waiting for that one, the way a baseball savant waits for the soft, fat pitch he knows is coming, right over the plate.

  “I was held up,” I said, deadpan.

  Walcott snorted and then bent a little at the waist, felled by a sudden coughing fit.

  “That’s it? That’s your whole explanation. You were held up?”

  When she repeated the phrase, Walcott lost it. He couldn’t hold it to a cough. He outright howled, and I was so punchy and crazed by then I lost it, too. We folded, helplessly gaffawing and shaking like Jell-­O, leaning on each other to keep from sinking down to the floor. Bethany’s salon-­shaped eyebrows arched up high and higher and ever-­angry highest. Actual color rose in her cheeks, as she stood furiously on the outside of my awful joke.

  “You were held up,” she said, not yelling yet, but close, closer than I had ever heard her come to a harsh, raised voice, and Walcott laughed so hard tears spurted out of his eyes.

  “Yes,” my dad said. He had come back into the foyer. He looked pale and sick. Our laughter clicked off. I stood up straight, still hanging on to Walcott, though. “She was held up. It’s on TV. Shandi is on the television.”

  “She whatted? She what?” said Bethany, her voice getting shriller and higher with every little barked question. “She was what?”

  I pushed past her, dragging Walcott. We all followed my dad back into the living room. Sure enough, there I was. It was so weird to see myself on Dad’s big flat-­screen. I hadn’t noticed anyone filming, but the camera had caught the scene from pretty far away. They must have been in the Hardee’s parking lot when we came out. I hadn’t clocked the news van, what with the host of cops swarming all over. Even SWAT had been there, standing around their black van, smoking.