Читать книгу We Are Water - Wally Lamb - Страница 13

Viveca has left the prenup on her desk in the study: six legal-size pages with little cellophane flags to indicate the places where my signature’s supposed to go. She’s signed it already in her deliberate, forward-slanting penmanship. I haven’t signed it yet and may not. What’s she or her father’s lawyer going to do if I don’t? Stop the wedding? No, she wouldn’t do that. I’m not powerless in this relationship. Gallery owners need artists more than artists needs gallery owners … But that’s not fair. I mean more to Viveca than those commissions. She loves me. I know she does. But I also know that she envies me my creativity, my treacherous rides inside the cyclone. “Other agents have approached you. Haven’t they, Anna? You can tell me,” she’s said more than once. That’s where my power comes from. I know what her professional insecurities are, and also her personal secrets: that she terminated a pregnancy by a former lover, a man who refused to leave his wife; that she was not an only child like she tells everyone but had a mentally retarded brother who was hidden away at some training school. Profoundly retarded, she told me. She used to hate it when her parents made her go with them on those visits and she had to look at him, drooling and wearing a dirty helmet, banging his head against the wall. I’ve made it my business to know these things but have told Viveca very little about my own history. I hold my cards close to the vest, the way I did all those years with Orion. I may have been powerless against those floodwaters. Powerless against Kent’s secret visits to my room. But I learned about power the day that I got on that Greyhound bus and the driver pulled out of the depot and carried me away from the black hole that had almost sucked me in. The black hole that my life was about to become with Albie Wignall …

I’m seventeen again, stuck in Sterling because that’s where my foster family lives. I’m dating Albie, not because I like him very much, but because one thing has led to another. Two of those snooty girls from my high school, Holly Grandjean and Kathy Fontaine, finally have noticed me—well, not me so much as what we sell at Jo-Jo’s Nut Shack. “Oh, wook. Gummy bears! I wuv Gummy bears,” Kathy says, and Holly says she “wuvs” them, too. I’m not sure why they’re talking baby talk. Are they making fun of me? But then, I decide they aren’t because Holly looks up from my merchandise to me and says I look familiar. “Don’t you go to Plainfield High?” she says, and I nod and tell them that all three of us were in the same gym class freshman year. I’m so grateful that they’re acknowledging my existence, these girls I thought I hated, that I shovel scoop after scoop of gummy bears into an open bag and tell them to just take them instead of paying for them. And then, at the end of my shift, my boss, Leland, points up at the surveillance camera mounted over the entrance to Jordan Marsh. It’s aimed right at my kiosk. Leland tells me to take off my Jo-Jo’s apron and not come back because I’m fired.

But a week later, I get another, better job waitressing at Friendly’s. My manager, Winona Wignall, assigns me to the take-out window, which the newest waitress always gets. But within two weeks, Priscilla is the new girl, and I’m serving people at the counter and making tips. Over the next weeks, Priscilla and I become friends, bonded by the fact that, out of all the Friendly’s waitresses, Winona likes us two the least.

Winona’s son, Albie, is twenty-three but he acts younger. He works at the Midas Mufflers down the road. After work, he comes over to Friendly’s to eat and hang around. He starts picking my section to sit at every time, and it’s kind of flattering, although he’s not much of a tipper. One time all he leaves me is eleven stacked pennies. Albie’s over six feet tall, and he’s blond and broad but not really fat, which is a miracle because when he comes in, he’ll eat a Big Beef with fries and a Fribble, and sometimes after that, will have dessert, too—a sundae, usually, which, when he orders it, he always calls it the Albie Special. The Albie Special is four scoops of chocolate almond chip ice cream, strawberry sauce and hot fudge, and chopped peanuts, the whole thing topped with whipped cream, jimmies, and cherries (three instead of the usual one). Sometimes when I put those sundaes in front of him, our other customers look over at it, and they’re probably thinking, wow, how does that guy rate? This one Holy Roller couple who comes in all the time? (They asked Winona once if they could leave their religious pamphlets for our other customers to take and she said no.) They always stare over at Albie’s sundae while he’s eating it, and I feel like going: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods. (My foster family sent me to parochial school, and I can still recite all the Commandments.) Instead of reminding them about the tenth commandment, though, I told the Holy Rollers that Albie pays extra for his sundae. He doesn’t really. He gets all that extra stuff for the price of a regular hot fudge, plus you have to give him his mother’s employee discount besides. Winona calls Albie “Big Boy,” which fits him size-wise but also is pretty funny because Albie acts childish, especially around his mother, who he still calls “Mommy.” He’s not all that much younger than my brother Donald, except Donald is already married and acts like a grown-up, which he is. So is Albie, technically, but he lives in his parents’ basement and still gets an Easter basket, which I know because all during Lent, Winona kept buying stuff for Albie’s Easter basket and hiding it in our break room. One time, Priscilla stole two Almond Joys from one of the bags. She snuck me one, and whenever we looked at each other during that shift, we couldn’t help laughing.

One night, while Albie’s holding up his elbows because I’m wiping down the counter where he sits, he asks me out. I didn’t expect it, and I don’t know what to say at first, so I say, “Let me think about it.” Then later on I tell him yes, okay, I’ll go. Because, hey, I’m not stupid. He’s my boss’s son.

For our date, Albie takes me to the drive-in. It’s a double feature: the first and second Planet of the Apes movies. (I’ve already seen the first one and thought it was stupid, but Albie picked the movie.) At intermission, he asks me do I want anything from the snack bar. I tell him yes please, a box of Good & Plenty. When he gets back in the car, he’s got my candy plus, for himself, three foil-wrapped hot dogs and a big soda. In between eating my Good & Plenty, I keep shaking the box, which is partly just this habit I’ve had since I was little but also partly because I like the sound. It comforts me.

Albie keeps looking over at me while he’s eating and I can smell that he has liquor breath. “Did you put something in your Coke?” I ask him.

“It’s not Coke. It’s root beer.”

“Yeah, but did you?” He nods, smiles, and pulls a half-empty bottle out of his back pocket. When he hands it to me, I squint and read the label. LONG JOHN’S GINGER BRANDY, it says. Eighty proof.

“You know something?” Albie says. “You’re pretty.”

“No, I’m not,” I tell him. I’m thinking about what I heard someone call liquor once: “Dutch courage.” I don’t know why. What’s so Dutch about getting drunk?

“Yes, you are, and you know you are, too,” Albie says. Ha! I think. He’s either drunk or blind. But then I think, well, maybe in Albie’s eyes, I’m like those girls at the mall who I got fired trying to impress. He scoots closer to my side and starts playing with my hair and my left ear. Then he leans over and starts kissing my neck. He’s trying to be sexy, I guess, but it just tickles, plus now his breath smells like both brandy and hot dogs, which isn’t very appealing. After a while, he reaches down and takes my hand in his. It makes me think of that song “I Want to Hold Your Hand” that’s on my brother Donald’s Meet the Beatles! album. When Donald got married and moved out of state, he gave me all of his old Beatles albums, which I still play quite a bit, even though the Beatles broke up because of Yoko Ono. Instead of watching Return to the Planet of the Apes or thinking about what Albie’s up to, I start singing that song in my head. And when I touch you I feel happy inside … It makes me think about this girl in my fourth grade public school class named Carol Cosentino who used to wear a pink sailor hat that had all these little metal Beatles buttons pinned all over it. Carol’s favorite Beatle was George, I remember. I wonder whatever happened to her. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that Albie, while he’s still holding my hand, is using his other hand to fiddle with his pants. Then I hear this snap-snapping sound and I see his belt flying into the back. From the way he just lifted his butt off the seat, he might have just pulled his pants down. I’m not sure, but I’m certainly not going to look over there and find out. But then he moves my hand over to his side and puts it down there—him and his Dutch courage. I can feel that he’s still got his underpants on, which is a relief, but I can also feel that he’s got a lump in there. A “boner,” I’ve heard boys at school call it when they’re talking dirty in the cafeteria. “Please?” he whispers, moving my hand up and down against his lump. I let him do it, not because I want to but because he said please, which makes me feel, kind of, that it’s me who’s in control of the situation, not him, and also because if Albie likes me, then maybe Winona will like me better, too, and assign me to Section A, where those lawyers from the office building next door always sit, and they’re big tippers. Those booths are Althea’s section, usually. Althea is Winona’s pet and she used to be Albie’s girlfriend. One day I overheard her telling one of the other waitresses that she broke up with him because he has no class. But according to Albie, he broke up with her because, unlike me, Althea is “a bitch on wheels who thinks her shit don’t stink.” That’s one thing I have to say for myself: I never, ever leave a bathroom smelly; I’m very careful about that kind of thing. I keep matches in my purse even though I don’t smoke, and whenever I have to use the toilet and, you know, get the bathroom smelly, I always light a match and burn some toilet paper to, what’s it called? Oh yeah, fumigate it. Part of me wants to yank my hand away from Albie’s lump, but another part of me says, what do I care? It doesn’t even feel like it’s my hand that’s doing what he’s making it do, and while he’s over there, mouth-breathing and making my hand go faster, I try thinking of other things. I make up this game where I have to think of all the songs on Abbey Road in the right order: “Come Together,” “Something,” “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” I get all the way to “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” and then I can’t think of what comes after that. It’s like my mind’s gone blank or something. Thinking about other things is something I learned to do on those nights when Kent would sneak into my room. I’d recite stuff they made us memorize in school: the Ten Commandments; the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries. I can still remember some of the Mysteries—the Annunciation, the Nativity, Finding Jesus in the Temple. And, let me think … the Resurrection, the Crowning of Mary as Queen of Heaven. (One time, this girl who sat next to me, Tammy Tusia, had to go to the office for being sacrilegious because she leaned over and said to me, trying to be funny, “Gee if Mary got queen, who got first runner-up?” and Sister Presentation heard her say it. Luckily, I didn’t laugh so I didn’t get in trouble.) So that’s how many mysteries? While I’m counting how many I’ve said, Albie starts going, “Oh, god! Oh, fuck! Faster!” Oh, and there’s the Scourging at the Pillar, the Descent of the Holy Ghost. Albie starts to groan and now I can feel the wet stuff. I know from Kent that after the wet stuff comes out, they quiet down and stop bothering you. I finally remember the song that comes after “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” It’s “Here Comes the Sun”—the one George sings. I wonder if Carol Cosentino, wherever she is, still likes George the best, even though he has long scraggly hair now and a beard that makes him look like a hillbilly. In my opinion, the Beatles looked better when they had their Beatle haircuts, like on the Meet the Beatles! cover.

It’s after midnight by the time the drive-in gets out, and when Albie pulls up in front of my foster family’s house, he asks if he can kiss me good night and I say no, it’s late and I have to go in, and he accepts it. See? I’m in control. Not him. “Can I call you?” he asks. I make him wait a couple of seconds. Then I say, “Yeah, okay.” Albie’s not handsome or anything, but he’s sort of cute. Priscilla from work thinks he’s borderline fat and has kind of a pig face, and I can see her point, too. Upstairs, while I’m getting ready for bed, I decide Albie’s ugly-cute, like Ringo. Not that he looks anything like Ringo. He looks like Winona, although he acted kind of insulted when I told him that.

On our next date, Albie and I go to the drive-in again. Saturday Night Fever is playing this time, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing it because I’ve had a little bit of a crush on John Travolta from when he was Vinnie Barbarino on TV. But Albie’s wrecking it for me because he keeps telling me he’d bet me any amount of money that John Travolta is a homosexual. (How would he know?) I’m sitting there, trying to enjoy the movie, and Albie keeps saying stuff like, “Look! There’s your evidence. That’s a flitty walk” and “You know who dances like that? Queers, that’s who. I swear on a stack of Bibles: that guy is light in the loafers.”

“Do you mind?” I finally say, and after that he shuts up for a while, thank god. Then, halfway through the movie, there’s lightning and thunder and it starts pouring. The movie stops and it says on the speaker that they’re closing but giving everyone fog passes at the exit. When we get ours, Albie says he sure as hell would hate to sit through that faggy John Travolta movie again and, to be funny, I guess, he puts the fog passes in his mouth, chews on them, and then spits them out his window. I don’t like Althea, but she’s right about him: Albie’s got no class.

It’s early still, so we go to Kelly’s Drive-Thru and get Cokes and clam fritters, and while we’re eating our food, the rain stops. Albie throws out our trash, and then he starts his car and drives us out to Oak Swamp Reservoir, which is a make-out spot for kids our age. Well, my age. It’s easy to forget that Albie’s six years older than me. He parks and turns off his engine but keeps the radio on. They’re playing that song “Baker Street,” which I like, but when I say I do, Albie says it sucks and that he wants to listen to some real music. He reaches under his seat and pulls out a Judas Priest cassette and puts it into his player. “Yuck,” I say. “Where’s my earplugs?” and Albie says I obviously don’t know good music and turns up the volume. We start making out a little, and he guides my hand down there again to that same area as last time, big surprise, and he’s got his lump again. “Please, sweetie. Please,” he says. It makes me think of that thing my father said to me that time when he caught me feeding veal loaf to our cat, Fluffy, under the table. “You start that, Anna Banana, and he’ll pester you nonstop.” One thing about my father: whenever he got finished working on our car, he always came in and washed his hands with that scratchy soap powder, Boraxo, to get the grease off. But Albie always has greasy hands, and, when he gets close to you, he smells like … mufflers.

Five minutes later, Albie still hasn’t finished and my hand’s starting to go numb. Then something unexpected happens. He puts his hand between my legs and starts tongue-kissing my mouth at the same time. I let him because it feels kind of strange but also a little bit good, and the more he does it, the less I want him to stop. “Mmm, you’re wet,” he whispers.

“No, I’m not,” I say. Am I?

“Yeah, you are,” Albie says. “You’re so wet, I almost need a mop. You’re good and ready for it, aren’t you?”

I know what “it” is, and I don’t want it in me, but I don’t not want it, either. I’m confused. So when he pulls me into the backseat and gets on top of me, I let him. He pokes his thing all around down there but his aim is bad. Then he finally figures it out. He starts whispering stuff like “Oh, Jesus” and “Oh, baby” and he’s pumping his hips faster and faster, and that’s when, all of a sudden, I think about birth control. “Hey!” I say. “Stop. I don’t want to get pregnant.” He says it’s no problem, that he’ll pull out before he “nuts,” which, I think, must mean when his wet stuff comes. There’s a lot about sex that I still don’t get, but I know it’s their wet stuff that gets the girl pregnant. And Albie does pull out, too, going, “Oh, fuck! Oh, Jesus!” I don’t appreciate the fact that he’s gotten his stuff all over my stomach, and even a little of it on my new pocketbook, which I only bought the day before yesterday at Two Guys because Althea was out sick and I got assigned her section and one of those lawyers gave me a twenty for a bill that was only four dollars and seventeen cents and said to keep the change.

The next Monday in English, Mrs. Sonstroem has us read aloud from the book we’re reading, A Tale of Two Cities. I’m trying to concentrate, but a part of me is back at the Oak Swamp Reservoir with Albie, and him making me feel that tingly way. “Miss O’Day,” she says. “You’re next.” I hate reading out loud and have been hoping the bell would ring without me getting picked. No such luck. Plus, I’m not sure where the last person left off and Jeannie Baker has to lean over and point to where. Before I start, I see Kenny Lalla and John Marchese smirk at each other and I hear Stanley whisper under his breath, “Get ready.” Get ready for what? I wonder, but I start reading. And when I get to the sentence “My father has been freed!” Lucie ejaculated, the boys—first just Kenny and Stanley, and then a bunch of the others, all start laughing. None of the girls are laughing out loud or anything, but some of them are smiling at each other, and Betsy Yeznach’s hand is covering her mouth. I don’t get what’s so funny.

“All right, that’s enough!” Mrs. Sonstroem, who almost never yells, starts yelling. “Maybe if you’re all this immature, we shouldn’t even read Charles Dickens, who happens to be one of the very best writers of all time.” Then she says something about pearls and swine that I don’t get. One of the boys starts making pig snorts and she gives him a detention. Then the bell rings.

After school, and after I’ve changed into my Friendly’s uniform and still have a few minutes before I have to leave for work, I look up ejaculate in my foster family’s dictionary. 1. To utter suddenly and passionately; to exclaim, it says. Then, 2. To discharge abruptly, especially to discharge semen during orgasm. I look up semen. Then I look up orgasm. Okay, now I get it, I think. “Semen” is the guy’s milky discharge and “orgasm” is the highest point of sexual pleasure, marked in males by the ejaculation of semen and in females by vaginal contractions.

The next time Albie takes me out, we skip the drive-in and go right to the reservoir. I’ve put my pocketbook out of range this time. He pulls out in time again, and I think to myself: he just had an orgasm and ejaculated his semen. Unlike the last time, I’m not feeling much of anything myself, but at least I know the names of things now.

For our next date, I have to go over to the Wignalls’ house for dinner. I get embarrassed because once the food’s on the table, I start eating, but Albie and his parents are just looking at me. Then Mr. Wignall says they like to say grace first. “Oh,” I say. “Sorry.” He and Winona hold out their hands and I take them and Mr. Wignall thanks God for the bounty that’s in front of us. He and Winona have their eyes closed, but Albie and I don’t and Albie’s looking at me with this goofy grin on his face and making cross-eyes to be funny. When Mr. Wignall’s done, he opens his eyes again and says, “Let’s eat.” Winona’s done the cooking and it’s creamed dried beef on “toast points” (which is really just regular old toast, as far as I can see) plus beets (which I hate). The Wignalls pour vinegar on their beets, so I do, too, and the vinegar soaks all into my toast so that I have to eat this mushy pink vinegar bread to be polite. Mr. Wignall has seconds and Albie has thirds. For dessert we have green Jell-O with canned fruit in it, which is something Mama used to make, too. Except at our house, everyone got their own separate dish of Jell-O, but at the Wignalls’ it’s in a big bowl and you pass it around and then squirt Reddi-wip on top. And in the middle of dessert, Mr. Wignall says to Winona, “Sweetness, would you pass me some more Jell-O?” I almost start laughing, thinking about how, the next day at work, I’ll tell Priscilla about Winona’s husband calling her Sweetness and how it’ll crack her up. It’s like I’m a spy or something. Then Winona says, “Would you like more cream, too, Sweetness?” and Albie says there is no more, that he ran the can dry, which is no surprise because he squirted so much cream on his Jell-O that, if he was my kid, I would have yelled at him for being a pig and not thinking about anyone but himself.

After dinner, Albie and I go over to my foster family’s house because nobody else is home. We’re watching Dallas, and Albie says he’d bet me any amount of money that Lucy Ewing is a slut in real life, too—that she probably doesn’t even have to act. Then he tells me that, a few weeks back, he had a dream that Lucy Ewing was sucking his dick. I roll my eyes. No class, I think.

“Hey, can I ask you something, Sweetness?” Albie says. It nearly makes me puke, him calling me that. Who does he think we are? His icky parents?

“What?” I say, and Albie says he was just wondering if I would ever want to try something like that.

“Like what?”

“Sucking my dick. I bet it would really turn you on.”

I get up from the couch, turn off the TV, and tell him to go home. “And if you ever say something like that again to me, Albie Wignall, I’m going to tell your mother you said it, and don’t think I wouldn’t because I would.”

He says maybe I should just become a nun, and I say yeah, that’s a good idea, maybe I will, and he says I’m lucky someone like him even gives me a second look, and I say “Ha, that’s a laugh and a half!” and tell him again to go home. He gets up and, on his way out, slams the door so hard that he’s lucky my foster father isn’t home because he gets real mad when anyone slams things and he’d probably chase Albie all the way down the sidewalk.

The next night at Friendly’s, Albie is all apologies, saying how he respects me, he really, really does. “Let’s take a drive and clear the air after you get off work,” he suggests. I tell him no three different times. Then finally I say yes just to shut him up. And when my shift’s almost over, he gets up and says he’ll wait for me out in his car. When I go to wipe off the counter, I see that he’s left me this tip that’s dimes and nickels and quarters shaped like a heart. He probably thinks he’s being romantic, but all’s I think is that it’s pretty corny. Still, when I scoop it up and count it, it comes to two dollars and eighty cents, which is the most he’s ever left me, so I guess he really is sorry.

But guess where we end up. In a way, he can’t help it, I guess. I read in a magazine last week that, on an average, girls think about sex twice in an hour but for guys it’s seventeen times. This time, after he puts his thing inside of me and I can tell he’s getting ready, I tell him, “Pull it out! Pull it out!” and he says he can’t, it feels too good, and anyways, he doesn’t need to because he’s taken a pill that stops the girl from getting pregnant when the guy “nuts” inside of her. A pill that men take? Here’s how stupid I am: I believe him. So I let Albie have his orgasm inside of me—that night and the next two or three times after that. And then one day at work, I go up to two of the older waitresses, Ginny and Mary Beth, who are both in their thirties. Mary Beth is married and it’s common knowledge that Ginny “gets around” down at the Anchor Clanker where all the sailors go to drink and meet girls. I ask them if they’ve ever heard of this pill men take so that the woman doesn’t get pregnant. Instead of answering me, they just look at each other. Then they both start laughing, and I feel like the idiot I am. I’m three weeks late, which is why I asked them, and now I know why I am.

It’s Saturday, my day off—the day I’ve decided I’m going to tell Albie. I just wish he was in a better mood. He and Winona have just had one of their big fights, and in the car on the way over to Olympic Pizza, he’s saying stuff like how Winona’s “the wicked witch of the West” and his father’s “pussy whipped.” In the fifteen minutes since he picked me up, he’s told me three times already how much he hates his mother’s guts. It’s quiet at the pizza place. We take the booth by the window. Albie orders a toasted salami grinder with fried onions and peppers, plus a quart bottle of Dr Pepper. I order a small Sprite and three stuffed clams. I’ve felt sick to my stomach all week, but suddenly I’m hungry, even though I’m nervous. When our food comes, I tell myself that as soon as I finish my second stuffed clam, that’s when I’ll tell him I’m pregnant. By now I’m only half-listening to his complaints about his mother, but he gets my full attention when he says that sometimes he daydreams about her getting killed in a car accident or getting struck by lightning and dying. “Winona Wignall, R.I.P.,” he says. “I should be so lucky.”

It’s ignorance, that’s what it is. He has no idea how awful it is to have your mother die. “Don’t even say stuff like that,” I tell him.

“Why not?” he says. “It’s a free country.” He takes a huge bite out of his grinder. There’s a strand of shredded lettuce sticking out of the corner of his mouth and he’s so stupid, he doesn’t even realize it. “Maybe someday I’ll take out my hunting rifle and put me and my dad out of our misery.”

I get so mad when he says it that I kick him under the table. Not that it must hurt very much. All I’m wearing is sandals.

“What the fuck?” he says. “What’d you do that for?” And when I don’t answer him, he lifts up his leg and stomps down hard on the top of my foot with his big clodhopper work boot. The pain shoots all the way up my leg and puts tears in my eyes. For several seconds I can’t even catch my breath. I wait until the nausea passes.

Here’s how I tell him. I say, “That’s a nice way to treat the mother of your child, you asshole!” I didn’t want it to come out that way, but I have to admit that the look of fear on his big fat face is satisfying.

“What did you just say?” he asks. I put my arms tight across my chest and don’t answer him. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

I nod without looking at him.

“By me?”

“Oh, no, Big Boy,” I say, real sarcastic. “It couldn’t be yours because you take that pill that doesn’t really exist. Remember?”

He tells me to stop fucking with him, and I tell him to pull that strand of lettuce out of his mouth because it looks disgusting.

“Are you having a kid or not?” he says, in this voice that’s loud enough that a customer who’s sitting at the counter swivels his stool around and looks at us. I’ve only eaten one of my stuffed clams, but I’ve lost my appetite and my foot’s throbbing, goddamn him. He better not have broken it if he knows what’s good for him. I get up from the booth and limp toward the door. I have first shift the next day, and it ought to be a whole lot of fun wearing my waitressing wedgies for five hours if my foot’s all black and blue and swollen. Albie follows me out of the restaurant and I scream it over my shoulder, “I’m not having a kid, you jerk! I’m having your kid! Deal with it!”

Albie’s scared to tell his parents, mostly his mother, so it’s me who finally has to call the meeting. “It’s urgent,” I tell Winona. The four of us are seated at the Wignalls’ kitchen table: Albie, his father, Winona, and me. There’s coffee mugs in front of each of us, and Winona’s put out a plate of Oreos that nobody’s touching. Winona doesn’t say much when she hears what we have to tell her, but her nostrils keep flaring and she’s teary-eyed. Then finally she says, “Big Boy, how could this have happened?”

Albie’s face is flushed and it doesn’t help that he’s got this naughty boy grin on his face. “The usual way,” he says. “Male plus female equals baby.”

Winona reaches over and backhands him. “Don’t you dare give me that wiseguy attitude at a time like this!” she yells. At first I think he might stomp on her foot or something, but Albie just reaches for the Oreos. Winona tells him he has to marry me now because it’s the only decent thing to do. “But I guess I better say good-bye to that beautiful church wedding that I’ve always dreamed about for my boy and his bride.” Those tears in her eyes are probably because the bride she’d been dreaming about is Althea, not me.

Albie makes the point, feebly, that he and I have other options.

“Like what?” Winona demands, and when he doesn’t answer her, she slams her coffee mug down against the table and says, “Just what do you think we are, Albert Wignall? Trailer trash? You’ve got obligations to this girl, and you’re damn well going to meet them. And if by ‘other options’ you mean what I think you do, then shame on you!”

“Yeah, but Mommy …,” Albie says. He turns from his mother to his father. “Daddy, what do you think?”

Mr. Wignall looks back and forth between the two of them and takes his sweet time answering. “Your mother’s right,” he finally says. “You had your fun. Now you got to pay the piper.” At this meeting, I’m more or less being treated like I’m invisible. Why is that? I’m the one who’s pregnant. Don’t I count? What if I don’t want to marry him?

But in another two weeks now, I will marry Albie, not because I want to but because he’s 50 percent responsible for the baby that’s growing inside of me. No, more than that—75 percent maybe, him and his imaginary men’s pill that stops women from getting pregnant.

Albie doesn’t give me a ring; he gives me a hundred dollars and tells me to go down to Ogulnick’s Jewelers and pick out something I like. None of the diamond rings are anywhere near my price range, so I settle for this little ring with a garnet chip in it that’s really just a friendship ring, not an engagement ring. Winona says I shouldn’t wear it to work because my male customers will give me better tips if they don’t think I’m “spoken for.” Ha! Like that’s the reason she doesn’t want me wearing it, not because she’s embarrassed that Albie’s “knocked me up,” as he puts it.

When I finally call my brother to tell him about my situation, Donald says I don’t even sound like I like this guy. What am I marrying him for?”

“Because of the baby,” I tell him.

“And that’s the only reason?”

“Yeah. What other reason would there be?”

But after I get off the phone, I start thinking about it, and if I really, really want to be honest with myself, I think I’m partly marrying Albie because, even after all these years—twelve of them now—I still miss my own mother as bad as ever. Maybe Winona isn’t perfect—ha! no maybe about it!—but in under seven months she’s going to be my baby’s grandmother, so she might soften toward me and maybe even start treating me like a daughter a little bit. Who knows? Maybe next Easter, I’ll get an Easter basket like Albie.

My wedding dress is pastel orange with a matching headband. When Winona takes me shopping, she nixes my wearing white or wearing a veil, since Albie and I “jumped the gun” and conceived a child in sin. I have to oblige her because she’s paying for the dress, which she likes way more than I do. There’s no bridal shower, no fancy invitations. There’ll be no graduation this coming June for me, either; I dropped out of school when I started showing. No one from my foster family or my real family is coming to the wedding, not even Donald, who says he can’t in good conscience support this marriage. On Albie’s side, the only people who are coming are Albie’s parents—they’re going to be our witnesses—plus Winona’s mother, who’s always clacking her false teeth and telling me to call her by her first name, Bridey, and Mr. Wignall’s father, who has thick gray hair growing out of his ears and wears a hearing aid that’s always whistling. The only other person I wanted to invite is Priscilla from work. I’ve heard Winona tell Althea that she thinks Priscilla is “one of those girls who should have been born a boy,” by which she means, I think, that she’s a lesbian. Which she is. Priscilla’s not coming to my wedding, though, because I didn’t end up inviting her after Winona gave me this stupid excuse about how she doesn’t feel comfortable fraternizing with people who work under her. What she really meant, I’m pretty sure, is: no lesbians allowed. She’d probably croak if she knew about that afternoon when Priscilla drove me out to the place where she boards her horses, Lucky and Gal, and after we went horseback riding, we made out in the barn and her fingers gave me those “vaginal contractions” that it only dawned on me later was an orgasm—my first.

Even though we’re going to get married to prove we’re not “trailer trash,” as Winona puts it, Albie keeps talking about me getting an abortion. One of the other guys at Midas Mufflers and his girlfriend had “a little complication they had to take care of” a while back, he says, and Albie’s got the name of their doctor. But I am not getting an abortion, no matter that it’s legal now and no matter how much he keeps bugging me about it.

It doesn’t matter, though, because on the day we go to town hall for our marriage license they’re closed for lunch, and when we go back to Albie’s car to wait until one o’clock, I look down and there’s blood seeping through my white shorts. “Uh-oh,” I go.

“Jesus, what now?” Albie says, and I just point.

He drives me over to the emergency room and everyone there is real nice to me, real sensitive, even Albie. When I can’t stop crying and my little box of tissues runs out, he goes out to the nurses’ station and gets me a new box. And when we leave the hospital, he holds my hand on the way out to the car. Back at the Wignalls’, Winona holds out her arms and folds them around me and I cry against her shirt, partly because I’ve lost the baby and partly because this is the nicest she’s ever been to me. Don’t let go, I want to say. Please just keep holding me.

But Winona does let go, and in the days that follow I am both sad about losing the baby and relieved that now I don’t have to marry Albie after all. It’s like when you’re playing Monopoly and you pick up a get-out-of-jail-free card. I decide to get out of Sterling. My foster family’s away at the lake for the weekend. I can pack and leave them a note—tell them I decided it’s time for me to move on now that I’m almost an adult. And I can just not show up for my next shift at Friendly’s. I’ll just disappear.

I call Priscilla and she picks me up and drives us toward Hartford. On the way there, the car radio plays that Beatles song “Here Comes the Sun,” and she and I sing along with it. Little darling, I feel the ice is slowly melting … In the motel room we rent on the Berlin Turnpike, Priscilla and I make fun of Winona, eat pizza, and drink beer. We get drunk and crazy, jumping on the two double beds, flying past each other in opposite directions until I flop facedown on the mattress and realize I’m still a little sore from my miscarriage. It was a silly way for me to behave, especially since I was almost a married woman and a mother. But I’m not either one of those things now, and so what? I’ve been on a starvation diet as far as fun’s concerned, and being free from Albie has made me giddy. I know that it’s only for this one night. Priscilla has to get back to her horses and her job. And I have to not go back to Sterling, or to the stupid clod I almost married. I still feel sad about the baby, but in a way it was for the best. If it had lived, I probably would have never gotten free of Albie and his parents, and even if I did, my baby’s last name would be Wignall. And my name, too. Annie Wignall: yuck! “Do me a favor, will you?” I ask Priscilla. “The next time he comes into Friendly’s and you make him a sundae, spit on it.” She kisses me and says it’ll be her pleasure, and that she’ll spit in his “fucking Fribble,” too.

Later, in the dark, Priscilla climbs into my bed and we start making out. She does the same kind of stuff she did to me that day in the horse barn and I like it and don’t even feel sore anymore. I do the same things to Priscilla, and I like doing that, too. But after we’re both finished, things get quiet. I can tell from her breathing that she’s fallen asleep and I get scared. Get up and go look out the window at the cars going by—the people inside them getting to wherever they’re going. And yeah, I’ve gotten away, but I have no idea where I’m going to. It’s like I’m a little girl again, in the backseat of that social worker’s car the day they came and got me. Drove me away from Daddy. I’m crying, looking out the back window at Kent, who’s running down the road after me. What Kent does to me is bad, but are these people bad, too? Where are they taking me? I don’t even care that my father’s drunk all the time. I just want to stay and live with him. And what about my brother? Donald’s at college and won’t even know where I’m going, where they’re taking me …

I get back in bed. Reach over and touch Priscilla’s shoulder. Take her hand in mine. I keep holding on to it so that I’ll feel safe and be able to fall asleep. And after a while, it works. My panic fades away and I begin to doze. The next morning when I wake up, she’s still asleep. We’re still holding hands.

Priscilla buys us breakfast at a diner next door to the motel, but I can’t eat much. I have a stomachache. On our way out, she asks the cashier how to get to the bus station and then drives me over there. “Where to?” the ticket guy asks me. He waits. “Miss? You’re holding up the line.”

“Three Rivers,” I say. I’m not sure why I’m going back to where my family used to live—where the flood was—except that I have to go somewhere and it’s the only place I can think of. Priscilla gives me two twenties and a ten and says it’s not a loan, it’s a gift to help me start over until I can find a job. She waits with me until the bus comes, and when I get on it and the driver pulls away, Priscilla waves to me and I wave back. I’m crying, partly because I’ll miss her but also partly because I’m doing something daring and powerful. Something life-saving, even. I’ve gotten the hell away from Albie, and from his mean-ass mother, too, and that’s why I’m doing this. Later on during this bus ride, I realize it’s my birthday. I’m eighteen. Happy birthday to me.

Getting a pay-by-the-week room in Three Rivers is easy; I manage that in about an hour after I arrive. But getting a job is harder. There’s a Friendly’s on East Main Street, but when I go in there to fill out an application, the manager says he only wants experienced waitresses. That’s what I am, but it’s not like I can put down Winona Wignall as a reference. Shop Rite says they don’t need any grocery cashiers right now, but they’ll put my application on file and maybe call me in a month or so. A month? I can’t wait that long. My room costs forty dollars a week, and between the money Priscilla gave me and my own money, I only have thirty-three dollars left. And anyway, how are they supposed to call me when I’ve left the space for my phone number blank? A sign in the window of a dress shop says SEAMSTRESS WANTED. Too bad I can’t sew. I go to the library and read the want ads. Some business is looking for a typist. Too bad I can’t type. A drugstore wants a part-time clerk and delivery boy. Too bad I’m not a boy and don’t have my driver’s license. Two days later, there’s a new ad. A “café” called Electric Red is looking for dancers. Okay, I think, I can dance.

The catch is: you have to dance topless on a little stage across from the bar. But my week’s rent at the rooming house is almost up. I’ve been living on peanut butter, Wonder bread, and tap water all week. Forty bucks a night plus tips, the manager tells me. His name is Rusty. He’s the bartender, too. Dancers get an extra dollar for every cocktail they can get the customers to buy them between sets (when you can put your top back on), an extra two dollars if the guy buys another drink for himself, too. “I give you girls ice tea instead of liquor, but the jamokes who are running up a tab don’t have to know that,” Rusty says. “Another girl just gave her notice, so I can start you tonight.” I’m hesitant but desperate, so I decide to give it a try.

My shift goes from nine o’clock until 1:00 A.M., but we get breaks. There are three of us dancers. Gloria is kind of flat-chested, but she’s a wicked good dancer. Rusty’s girlfriend, Anita, is the other one, even though she has stretch marks and is kind of thick in the middle. “Some guy starts getting grabby with you, I’ll give Rusty the signal and he’ll handle the situation,” she’s promised. The sound system blares sexy disco music: “Rock the Boat,” “Get Down Tonight,” that Donna Summer song “Love to Love You Baby.” My dancing is awkward at first because I’m so nervous and self-conscious about my boobs showing. But it helps that the spotlight on us makes it hard to see any of the men who are watching us. Older men, mostly, which somehow makes it easier. After a while I use my technique from before: thinking of things I’ve memorized to take me someplace other than where I am: the Commandments, the Religious Mysteries, old TV jingles. Come and listen to my story ’bout a man named Jed, a poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed … Who can turn the world on with her smile? Who can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile … It’s not so bad. By my third night, I’ve made enough money to pay for two more weeks’ rent on my room and go grocery shopping. But on my fourth night, while I’m in the middle of dancing to that stupid song “Afternoon Delight,” I look out at the crowd and can swear I see my cousin Kent out there among the old coots. I keep dancing but I’m freaking out, not concentrating, and I fall off the front of the stage and twist my ankle. The music stops and when the lights go on, I can see it’s not him—that it doesn’t even really look like him. But that ends my dancing career.

After the swelling goes down and I can walk on my ankle again, I go looking for other work. My luck is with me, and I get two different part-time jobs on the exact same day. In the daytime, I’m a fry cook at Josie’s Fish & Chips. At night, I work the shoe rental counter at Three Rivers Ten Pin. Both jobs leave me kind of smelly, from cooking grease and from the antifungal spray you have to squirt into the bowling shoes after people hand them back in. I’m grateful for that spray, though, because sometimes those shoes come back smelling like the jar of Limburger cheese my father used to take out of the refrigerator and spread on crackers. But hey, work is work. Every once in a while, one of the bowlers asks me out, but I always say the same thing: “Sorry, but I already have a steady boyfriend.” I’m not that interested in men, or women either for that matter. Mimi, one of my coworkers at the bowling alley, brings me to a women’s bar one night, but all the public affection—kissing and dancing crotch to crotch—makes me uncomfortable. “Not my scene,” I tell Mimi the next time she asks me to go with her. Priscilla and I are still in touch, though, and when she visits me those two times, we do stuff. But then she gets a steady girlfriend, a welder at Electric Boat named Robbin, and we lose touch.