Junk Love, page 7
“You know, sweetie.” His mom rested her fork hand. “Like your toolset from Gigi and Papa. Tools fix things like people fix things.”
“Or screw them over.” Brett chewed.
Danielle’s fork clinked on the china as she gave him laser eyes, but Brett just nodded at his son as if imparting grave wisdom. Owen nodded back, then popped a tomato into his mouth.
“Fork, please,” his mother said.
“Man Boy was right about one thing.” Brett wiped his lips on the ivory napkin. “Or his therapist was. Love is a choice. Dating’s all fireworks and adrenaline. Other hormones, too, but that medical stuff is your deal. Sparks either light something lasting or fizzle out. People like Man Boy are crappy kindling.”
His wife shook her head at “crappy.”
“You have to be mature to offer real love,” he continued. “Love requires sacrifice, putting the team before the self. That’s the choice.”
While Holly searched for an Owen-appropriate way to tell her big brother that he was evidence against his theory, being an immature butt-head, Owen asked, “Aunt Holly?” with his mouth full of greens.
“Swallow first,” his mom said.
He gulped. “You never answered me about God.”
Brett and Danielle studied Holly.
“We were working on his Lego police station, and Owen told me about Sunday school.”
“What was the lesson, honey?” Danielle asked.
“Miss Elaine shook up the box of Legos.” He demonstrated with his little hands. “She asked how long we had to wait before it came together.”
Since the lesson still annoyed her, Holly cut to the chase. “Owen asked if I believe in creation.” She plopped a dollop of tartar sauce on her plate, allowing time for redirection.
“Don’t leave the boy hanging.” Brett took a tuna bite.
Seriously?
Danielle smiled, waiting.
Turning to her nephew, she asked, “Where did we leave off?”
“You said we could have been made on purpose.”
Brett grinned.
She hoped her brother wasn’t getting his hopes up. I’m not buying any golden tickets to heaven today.
“You have an excellent memory,” she said. “I don’t know whether God created us or not.”
“You don’t know?” Owen dropped his oily fork on the tablecloth.
Nodding, she scrunched her mouth. “It’s more fun to be sure about something, huh? Creation makes sense to me in some ways. Ask your mom to teach you about entropy next time you clean your room.”
Danielle was still smiling, not giving her a signal to rein in her corrupting commentary. Owen’s perpetually inquisitive brow was low and certain. Holly was proud of him for thinking through important things. Remembering what had happened when she was eight, only two years older than him, she wanted to bubble-wrap him or hand him a sword.
“Question for you, bud,” she smiled. “If you could make animals, would you make them stiff and unchangeable? Or would you make them flexible, so they could adjust to new things and change if they needed to?”
* * *
The beachy blue kitchen was even sunny at night, glowing beneath the recessed lights.
After Danielle rinsed a wine glass, she said, handing it over, “I didn’t want to talk about this in front of the boys, but the hormone talk reminded me of something I realized back when I was breastfeeding Owen.”
“That God didn’t give newborns teeth for a reason?” Holly cradled the glass in the fluffy dishtowel.
She smiled. “Would you agree that people can be selfish jerks?”
“Of course.”
Danielle meditated on the bubbly washrag. “God rigged us to not be complete jerks because we need each other.”
That was a stretch, but Holly was still curious.
“Like that African proverb,” she continued, setting a wet glass in front of Holly. “‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’”
“I like that.” Sort of. She saw truth in the sentiment but having a lonely slog ahead of her as a single woman, which might be the only way she could be healthy, sounded unhappy. Even if she could go fast.
“Putting your desires aside for your baby is hard. Same with marriage.” Danielle rubbed the soapy cloth around the last wine glass.
“I’m surprised you only realized people can be selfish jerks after you had Owen. You’d known Brett for years by then.”
She cracked a smile while she rinsed.
“What was your big realization?” Holly sighed. She was happy for Danielle, who had all the answers, but her answers didn’t apply well to Holly’s life. Still, she asked, “God designed us to stick together? Needing the pack, all that?”
“Why I had such a hard time trusting your brother.”
The glass slipped in her hand. “What?”
“God’s rules are for our protection. Including sex outside marriage.” Her eyes twinkled, teary, but she smiled. “Thanks for how you handled Owen.”
“Of course. I meant it.”
“I think that’s what you’re feeling—unprotected. In your relationships. Before your brother, I had so many boyfriends I felt like an overused piece of tape.”
It took a second for her to register the wet pan Danielle was holding out.
“God designed us to connect despite our innate selfishness. Hormones are one way He does that.”
“Oxytocin.”
“Exactly.” Danielle eased the salad bowl into its bubble bath. “One purpose of sex is to bond a committed couple. We’re not designed to attach to someone, rip apart, attach, and rip apart… That’s what I mean about tape. I was so jaded from failed relationships, I…”
“I feel you.”
“It sucks.” She gave Holly a sweet, sad smile. “I’m sorry you’re going through that.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s not forever.”
“For you, maybe,” Holly muttered, depositing the dried bowl on the countertop.
“Would you be up for a challenge?”
“If it’s Brett’s idea, I need to hear it first.”
“Your clients try elimination diets sometimes, right? If something is making them ill, but they don’t know what it is?”
“That’s why I’m swearing off men.”
“What about just sex?”
“Dating without sex?”
Danielle nodded.
“At my age?”
“Some men are up for that.”
“Gay men looking for a beard, maybe.”
“Brett can grow his own beard just fine.”
Holly stared. “You waited?”
“Technically.”
“Nice job. Not for you. It can’t take much self-discipline not to touch my brother. He’s gross.”
CORA
Friday, March 11, 2016
“I think you’re damn lucky to be alive, kiddo.” On the ginormous flat-screen TV, the sneaky villain, Burke, with his dark poofy hair faded into the background as the camera panned to the hero, Ellen Ripley, sitting in the spaceship’s hospital bed.
As Ripley stared down toward her feet, Cora inhabited her shell-shocked brown eyes, haunted by solitary horror—solitary because the aliens had killed her entire crew in the first movie. Cora’s ears stayed on the couch next to her mother, whose knitting needles clicked like metal heartbeats. Her mind went back to the desert hospital.
“You and your sister are lucky to be alive.”
Are all social workers like this, trying to be your friend from the end of a 10-foot pole? He can’t catch crazy. He doesn’t need to hold his clipboard like a chest plate, standing far away at the foot of the bed.
Jonesy’s green cat eyes pulled back with his orange pointed ears, transforming him as he hissed, fangs out. Ripley stared forward.
It’s only a movie—a nightmare in a movie. Cora slid her hands into the pockets of her pale green fleece vest, clenching the thin phone brick within.
Ripley groaned, curling in as if she carried an alien parasite about to burst through her abdomen.
Chemical currents tore through Cora’s skin like lightning-fast worms. She yanked her feet off the ottoman, clutched the back of the ecru couch, and wobbled, grabbing the fuzzy back of Wes’ chair behind his tousled brown head before she dragged herself away from the dominating TV and hell-bent speakers.
Her dad’s balding red head turned from his armchair.
“Are you okay?” her mother called as Cora staggered into the beacon of kitchen light.
“Want us to pause it?” Wes yelled.
“No!” As she slipped in her socks to the hall bathroom, her answer was drowned out by Ripley’s guttural projectile scream.
The toilet seat clicked up and she clenched her curls to her neck. She waited.
Her mom tapped the door. “Are you okay?”
“I just need a minute,” Cora called through it.
“Your stomach again?”
“Mm-hm.”
“I hope it’s not from dinner.”
“Dinner was great.”
“Iron supplements can upset your stomach. Maybe you should stop taking that?”
She should have hidden those like she hid the folic acid. A cramp hit lower, so she dropped the hollow seat and her jeans.
“Go ahead and watch the movie,” she said. “I’ll be out soon.” Another cramp.
“I’ll be in the kitchen. Will you call if you need me?”
“Mom. You don’t have to do that.” Cora could still hear her at the door. “Fine.”
While her mother’s footsteps receded, she pressed her forearms over her lurching gut. The broad mirror above the sink reflected her wild red hair around sunken green hazel eyes. Picturing Jonesy, she wanted to hiss at herself.
When she wiped, the toilet paper had a streak of blood. She stared at it, then released it into the water. There was quiet. Like the charged calm before a thunderclap. Like a moment of silence.
“Did we lose her?” Wes’ voice bounced off the hardwood floors of the kitchen. The pantry door squeaked.
“Tummy trouble,” their mom told him. “She said you don’t need to wait.”
“But she’ll miss her boyfriend.” After a pause, the pantry door clicked closed. “Not A-hole.”
“Wes.”
“I didn’t say the word. Or his name.” The microwave buttons beeped. “Mom. Michael Biehn. The Marine? In the movie?”
Cora pulled her phone from her pocket and typed in the Google search bar.
“The age difference is kind of disturbing if you think about it,” he added. “Ripley’s half a century older than him.”
A “fully formed baby”? The article’s illustration showed a pink, bean-shaped baby in a human palm. Had she killed it? She had wished that the pregnancy might not last. She hadn’t made a prenatal appointment yet.
Gunshot popping came from the kitchen. Wes was making popcorn.
The dead baby’s going to come out of me. A tear ran down her cheek.
“You alive in there, Raco?” Wes’ voice ricocheted off the door.
Cora gulped air. “Watch the movie.”
“We’re watching this for you.”
“Watch what you want.”
His feet thumped away. “You still want to watch All of Me, Mom? I’ve seen Aliens a hundred times. Dad doesn’t care.”
She cramped again. Was the baby going to just fall out? She couldn’t let it drop into the toilet. She would have to bury it. The idea of a bloody baby in her hand was too much. The idea of a secret burial—in what, a shoebox? Like a dead bird?—was too much. She would have to tell her family. She couldn’t bear this alone.
The pain moved up from her abdomen to grip her head and chest. Was it her fault? She hadn’t aborted it. She had quit Effexor, taken the right vitamins…but she was wishing it away. Maybe it felt unloved?
After a while, the cramping was over. Instead of using the word “miscarriage,” she Googled: 10 weeks pregnant bleeding.
The top article read:
common occurrence…not necessarily cause for concern…normal pregnancy…birth to healthy babies.
* * *
When Cora walked to the family room, Steve Martin had replaced Sigourney Weaver on the TV.
“You’re alive!” Wes held popcorn in a pincer grip, ready to throw it at her.
“I’m going to bed.”
“Already?”
Their mom left her knitting and came to her. “Good night.” When she hugged her, her curly salt-and-pepper hair tickled Cora’s cheek. “Do you need anything?”
“I’m okay.”
Her dad gave her a little smile as he came in for a hug. “Good night,” he said, patting her back.
“Good night, Dad.”
“‘Night!” Wes yelled from the couch.
Cora got a glass of water and cut through the regal navy-and-gold dining room. Light from the old-fashioned streetlamps woke the shimmering wall hangings. The Tree of Life, Stoclet Frieze print hung sectioned in three gold frames across the midnight blue wall. It was elegant and palatial. Her mom used to say the swirling branches were beautiful like Cora’s hair. But it was creepy.
Before Aiden, she had been anxious for the hugging couple in the far-right frame because the jealous woman on the left leveled such a menacing stare at them, like she was gearing up to vault through the golden frames and attack them.
During the blistering season of Aiden, she was the woman being hugged.
Since New Year’s, she identified more with the lone, glaring woman. Cora padded closer to her. Maybe it wasn’t jealousy. Maybe the woman was judging the hugging couple. Maybe she knew the guy and was watching out for her naïve friend. And the man bent forward, making the woman in the hug tweak her neck back and face the sky. That did not look comfortable.
Headlights from the hilly street hit the scowling woman and, for a moment, she appeared to hold a bundle. A baby? She scrutinized the upturned hands. The woman wasn’t holding a baby but the mental picture stuck. Would that be her someday? If she kept the baby, would she ever find love? She wanted nothing to do with love right now. But someday, maybe…?
Sighing, she took the stained wood stairs beneath the gigantic chandelier that topped the open foyer and glimpsed her family—most of her family—watching the movie. Upstairs at her bedroom door, the slick slope of the brass lever was cool under her fingers. To her right, the door to Julie’s room was closed, too.
It was dark inside her big sister’s room except for moonlight. The trio of angled windows showed shadowy evergreens. The wooden king-sized bed took up most of the room, inherited when their parents upgraded bedroom furniture. It was only occupied in Cora’s mind: she remembered Julie there almost a year ago.
Julie’s cropped head is puny in front of the giant sham pillows. “Close the door.”
I do it.
“Can you keep a secret? Even from Mom and Dad?”
“What is it?” Something’s not right. Not the “not right” I’m used to, us shut in like invalids—something’s worse.
“I need to know whether I can trust you. You need to promise. Promise you won’t share what I’m going to tell you—with anyone.”
“Okay.” I sit on the side of her bed.
“I can’t stay here. If I stay here, I am going to die.”
Is she saying she’ll kill herself? Chronic fatigue syndrome isn’t terminal.
“I have to leave. We can’t make it on our own because of our health. My CFS is worse than your mono, but we need each other. We can call Mom and Dad once we’re gone so they know we’re okay. But they’ll try to stop us if they know we’re going.”
The gigantic pines rustled in the gloom, uncharacteristically ominous, but Cora sat down anyway. She used to covet her big sister’s room, but now it was morbid. The gold Berkeley pennant glowed. Julie’s miniature globe stood still. The frames holding memories of her high school cheerleading, her semester at Oxford, her European vacation with her old boyfriend—she couldn’t see them well in the dark. Maybe they had darkened for Julie, too.
Her parents laughed downstairs, which made Cora smile a little. They didn’t laugh much anymore—even less since the private investigator had reported last month that Julie was living in a homeless shelter in the Tenderloin District. Tight, exhausted, defeated, she sighed. Then she clasped her hands and bowed her head.
God, please protect Julie. She opened her eyes. Am I just as bad as Julie, praying? Is God a figment of my imagination?
The room felt full of ghosts. Grateful she wasn’t carrying one, she held her belly. She should make a doctor’s appointment. The doctor would keep her secret, but she couldn’t hide the baby forever.
Cora imagined her parents, aghast: “You’re not thinking of keeping it?” “What about UW? You want to be a single parent with a high school diploma?”
She needed a plan. Maybe University of Washington would let her defer her admission one more year? Probably not. She had been lucky to get the first deferral when they suspected she had chronic fatigue syndrome, too, and they scheduled her to see the immunologist.
Mountaindale University was a blessing keeping her on track for UW, but it wasn’t competitive. Her dream of getting out of small-town Utah, living in Seattle, spreading her wings, and leaving home—the right way, like Julie had done when she went to Berkeley and made the family so proud… Was that over?
Maybe she should rethink the med school plan. She didn’t have to be a doctor. She wanted to help people, but her parents might want another M.D. in the family more than she did. Maybe a nurse. That still required a lot of school. High school diploma. A single mother with a high school diploma. That’s who was going to bring this poor—literally poor—baby into the world.
Cora wanted to throw up. She wished her mom could comfort her in her misery, like how she used to hold back her hair when she had to puke as a child. But she wasn’t a child anymore. If she were a child in her parents’ house, she would need to obey them. And if they were in charge about the baby, she would be getting an abortion.
“Or screw them over.” Brett chewed.
Danielle’s fork clinked on the china as she gave him laser eyes, but Brett just nodded at his son as if imparting grave wisdom. Owen nodded back, then popped a tomato into his mouth.
“Fork, please,” his mother said.
“Man Boy was right about one thing.” Brett wiped his lips on the ivory napkin. “Or his therapist was. Love is a choice. Dating’s all fireworks and adrenaline. Other hormones, too, but that medical stuff is your deal. Sparks either light something lasting or fizzle out. People like Man Boy are crappy kindling.”
His wife shook her head at “crappy.”
“You have to be mature to offer real love,” he continued. “Love requires sacrifice, putting the team before the self. That’s the choice.”
While Holly searched for an Owen-appropriate way to tell her big brother that he was evidence against his theory, being an immature butt-head, Owen asked, “Aunt Holly?” with his mouth full of greens.
“Swallow first,” his mom said.
He gulped. “You never answered me about God.”
Brett and Danielle studied Holly.
“We were working on his Lego police station, and Owen told me about Sunday school.”
“What was the lesson, honey?” Danielle asked.
“Miss Elaine shook up the box of Legos.” He demonstrated with his little hands. “She asked how long we had to wait before it came together.”
Since the lesson still annoyed her, Holly cut to the chase. “Owen asked if I believe in creation.” She plopped a dollop of tartar sauce on her plate, allowing time for redirection.
“Don’t leave the boy hanging.” Brett took a tuna bite.
Seriously?
Danielle smiled, waiting.
Turning to her nephew, she asked, “Where did we leave off?”
“You said we could have been made on purpose.”
Brett grinned.
She hoped her brother wasn’t getting his hopes up. I’m not buying any golden tickets to heaven today.
“You have an excellent memory,” she said. “I don’t know whether God created us or not.”
“You don’t know?” Owen dropped his oily fork on the tablecloth.
Nodding, she scrunched her mouth. “It’s more fun to be sure about something, huh? Creation makes sense to me in some ways. Ask your mom to teach you about entropy next time you clean your room.”
Danielle was still smiling, not giving her a signal to rein in her corrupting commentary. Owen’s perpetually inquisitive brow was low and certain. Holly was proud of him for thinking through important things. Remembering what had happened when she was eight, only two years older than him, she wanted to bubble-wrap him or hand him a sword.
“Question for you, bud,” she smiled. “If you could make animals, would you make them stiff and unchangeable? Or would you make them flexible, so they could adjust to new things and change if they needed to?”
* * *
The beachy blue kitchen was even sunny at night, glowing beneath the recessed lights.
After Danielle rinsed a wine glass, she said, handing it over, “I didn’t want to talk about this in front of the boys, but the hormone talk reminded me of something I realized back when I was breastfeeding Owen.”
“That God didn’t give newborns teeth for a reason?” Holly cradled the glass in the fluffy dishtowel.
She smiled. “Would you agree that people can be selfish jerks?”
“Of course.”
Danielle meditated on the bubbly washrag. “God rigged us to not be complete jerks because we need each other.”
That was a stretch, but Holly was still curious.
“Like that African proverb,” she continued, setting a wet glass in front of Holly. “‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’”
“I like that.” Sort of. She saw truth in the sentiment but having a lonely slog ahead of her as a single woman, which might be the only way she could be healthy, sounded unhappy. Even if she could go fast.
“Putting your desires aside for your baby is hard. Same with marriage.” Danielle rubbed the soapy cloth around the last wine glass.
“I’m surprised you only realized people can be selfish jerks after you had Owen. You’d known Brett for years by then.”
She cracked a smile while she rinsed.
“What was your big realization?” Holly sighed. She was happy for Danielle, who had all the answers, but her answers didn’t apply well to Holly’s life. Still, she asked, “God designed us to stick together? Needing the pack, all that?”
“Why I had such a hard time trusting your brother.”
The glass slipped in her hand. “What?”
“God’s rules are for our protection. Including sex outside marriage.” Her eyes twinkled, teary, but she smiled. “Thanks for how you handled Owen.”
“Of course. I meant it.”
“I think that’s what you’re feeling—unprotected. In your relationships. Before your brother, I had so many boyfriends I felt like an overused piece of tape.”
It took a second for her to register the wet pan Danielle was holding out.
“God designed us to connect despite our innate selfishness. Hormones are one way He does that.”
“Oxytocin.”
“Exactly.” Danielle eased the salad bowl into its bubble bath. “One purpose of sex is to bond a committed couple. We’re not designed to attach to someone, rip apart, attach, and rip apart… That’s what I mean about tape. I was so jaded from failed relationships, I…”
“I feel you.”
“It sucks.” She gave Holly a sweet, sad smile. “I’m sorry you’re going through that.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s not forever.”
“For you, maybe,” Holly muttered, depositing the dried bowl on the countertop.
“Would you be up for a challenge?”
“If it’s Brett’s idea, I need to hear it first.”
“Your clients try elimination diets sometimes, right? If something is making them ill, but they don’t know what it is?”
“That’s why I’m swearing off men.”
“What about just sex?”
“Dating without sex?”
Danielle nodded.
“At my age?”
“Some men are up for that.”
“Gay men looking for a beard, maybe.”
“Brett can grow his own beard just fine.”
Holly stared. “You waited?”
“Technically.”
“Nice job. Not for you. It can’t take much self-discipline not to touch my brother. He’s gross.”
CORA
Friday, March 11, 2016
“I think you’re damn lucky to be alive, kiddo.” On the ginormous flat-screen TV, the sneaky villain, Burke, with his dark poofy hair faded into the background as the camera panned to the hero, Ellen Ripley, sitting in the spaceship’s hospital bed.
As Ripley stared down toward her feet, Cora inhabited her shell-shocked brown eyes, haunted by solitary horror—solitary because the aliens had killed her entire crew in the first movie. Cora’s ears stayed on the couch next to her mother, whose knitting needles clicked like metal heartbeats. Her mind went back to the desert hospital.
“You and your sister are lucky to be alive.”
Are all social workers like this, trying to be your friend from the end of a 10-foot pole? He can’t catch crazy. He doesn’t need to hold his clipboard like a chest plate, standing far away at the foot of the bed.
Jonesy’s green cat eyes pulled back with his orange pointed ears, transforming him as he hissed, fangs out. Ripley stared forward.
It’s only a movie—a nightmare in a movie. Cora slid her hands into the pockets of her pale green fleece vest, clenching the thin phone brick within.
Ripley groaned, curling in as if she carried an alien parasite about to burst through her abdomen.
Chemical currents tore through Cora’s skin like lightning-fast worms. She yanked her feet off the ottoman, clutched the back of the ecru couch, and wobbled, grabbing the fuzzy back of Wes’ chair behind his tousled brown head before she dragged herself away from the dominating TV and hell-bent speakers.
Her dad’s balding red head turned from his armchair.
“Are you okay?” her mother called as Cora staggered into the beacon of kitchen light.
“Want us to pause it?” Wes yelled.
“No!” As she slipped in her socks to the hall bathroom, her answer was drowned out by Ripley’s guttural projectile scream.
The toilet seat clicked up and she clenched her curls to her neck. She waited.
Her mom tapped the door. “Are you okay?”
“I just need a minute,” Cora called through it.
“Your stomach again?”
“Mm-hm.”
“I hope it’s not from dinner.”
“Dinner was great.”
“Iron supplements can upset your stomach. Maybe you should stop taking that?”
She should have hidden those like she hid the folic acid. A cramp hit lower, so she dropped the hollow seat and her jeans.
“Go ahead and watch the movie,” she said. “I’ll be out soon.” Another cramp.
“I’ll be in the kitchen. Will you call if you need me?”
“Mom. You don’t have to do that.” Cora could still hear her at the door. “Fine.”
While her mother’s footsteps receded, she pressed her forearms over her lurching gut. The broad mirror above the sink reflected her wild red hair around sunken green hazel eyes. Picturing Jonesy, she wanted to hiss at herself.
When she wiped, the toilet paper had a streak of blood. She stared at it, then released it into the water. There was quiet. Like the charged calm before a thunderclap. Like a moment of silence.
“Did we lose her?” Wes’ voice bounced off the hardwood floors of the kitchen. The pantry door squeaked.
“Tummy trouble,” their mom told him. “She said you don’t need to wait.”
“But she’ll miss her boyfriend.” After a pause, the pantry door clicked closed. “Not A-hole.”
“Wes.”
“I didn’t say the word. Or his name.” The microwave buttons beeped. “Mom. Michael Biehn. The Marine? In the movie?”
Cora pulled her phone from her pocket and typed in the Google search bar.
“The age difference is kind of disturbing if you think about it,” he added. “Ripley’s half a century older than him.”
A “fully formed baby”? The article’s illustration showed a pink, bean-shaped baby in a human palm. Had she killed it? She had wished that the pregnancy might not last. She hadn’t made a prenatal appointment yet.
Gunshot popping came from the kitchen. Wes was making popcorn.
The dead baby’s going to come out of me. A tear ran down her cheek.
“You alive in there, Raco?” Wes’ voice ricocheted off the door.
Cora gulped air. “Watch the movie.”
“We’re watching this for you.”
“Watch what you want.”
His feet thumped away. “You still want to watch All of Me, Mom? I’ve seen Aliens a hundred times. Dad doesn’t care.”
She cramped again. Was the baby going to just fall out? She couldn’t let it drop into the toilet. She would have to bury it. The idea of a bloody baby in her hand was too much. The idea of a secret burial—in what, a shoebox? Like a dead bird?—was too much. She would have to tell her family. She couldn’t bear this alone.
The pain moved up from her abdomen to grip her head and chest. Was it her fault? She hadn’t aborted it. She had quit Effexor, taken the right vitamins…but she was wishing it away. Maybe it felt unloved?
After a while, the cramping was over. Instead of using the word “miscarriage,” she Googled: 10 weeks pregnant bleeding.
The top article read:
common occurrence…not necessarily cause for concern…normal pregnancy…birth to healthy babies.
* * *
When Cora walked to the family room, Steve Martin had replaced Sigourney Weaver on the TV.
“You’re alive!” Wes held popcorn in a pincer grip, ready to throw it at her.
“I’m going to bed.”
“Already?”
Their mom left her knitting and came to her. “Good night.” When she hugged her, her curly salt-and-pepper hair tickled Cora’s cheek. “Do you need anything?”
“I’m okay.”
Her dad gave her a little smile as he came in for a hug. “Good night,” he said, patting her back.
“Good night, Dad.”
“‘Night!” Wes yelled from the couch.
Cora got a glass of water and cut through the regal navy-and-gold dining room. Light from the old-fashioned streetlamps woke the shimmering wall hangings. The Tree of Life, Stoclet Frieze print hung sectioned in three gold frames across the midnight blue wall. It was elegant and palatial. Her mom used to say the swirling branches were beautiful like Cora’s hair. But it was creepy.
Before Aiden, she had been anxious for the hugging couple in the far-right frame because the jealous woman on the left leveled such a menacing stare at them, like she was gearing up to vault through the golden frames and attack them.
During the blistering season of Aiden, she was the woman being hugged.
Since New Year’s, she identified more with the lone, glaring woman. Cora padded closer to her. Maybe it wasn’t jealousy. Maybe the woman was judging the hugging couple. Maybe she knew the guy and was watching out for her naïve friend. And the man bent forward, making the woman in the hug tweak her neck back and face the sky. That did not look comfortable.
Headlights from the hilly street hit the scowling woman and, for a moment, she appeared to hold a bundle. A baby? She scrutinized the upturned hands. The woman wasn’t holding a baby but the mental picture stuck. Would that be her someday? If she kept the baby, would she ever find love? She wanted nothing to do with love right now. But someday, maybe…?
Sighing, she took the stained wood stairs beneath the gigantic chandelier that topped the open foyer and glimpsed her family—most of her family—watching the movie. Upstairs at her bedroom door, the slick slope of the brass lever was cool under her fingers. To her right, the door to Julie’s room was closed, too.
It was dark inside her big sister’s room except for moonlight. The trio of angled windows showed shadowy evergreens. The wooden king-sized bed took up most of the room, inherited when their parents upgraded bedroom furniture. It was only occupied in Cora’s mind: she remembered Julie there almost a year ago.
Julie’s cropped head is puny in front of the giant sham pillows. “Close the door.”
I do it.
“Can you keep a secret? Even from Mom and Dad?”
“What is it?” Something’s not right. Not the “not right” I’m used to, us shut in like invalids—something’s worse.
“I need to know whether I can trust you. You need to promise. Promise you won’t share what I’m going to tell you—with anyone.”
“Okay.” I sit on the side of her bed.
“I can’t stay here. If I stay here, I am going to die.”
Is she saying she’ll kill herself? Chronic fatigue syndrome isn’t terminal.
“I have to leave. We can’t make it on our own because of our health. My CFS is worse than your mono, but we need each other. We can call Mom and Dad once we’re gone so they know we’re okay. But they’ll try to stop us if they know we’re going.”
The gigantic pines rustled in the gloom, uncharacteristically ominous, but Cora sat down anyway. She used to covet her big sister’s room, but now it was morbid. The gold Berkeley pennant glowed. Julie’s miniature globe stood still. The frames holding memories of her high school cheerleading, her semester at Oxford, her European vacation with her old boyfriend—she couldn’t see them well in the dark. Maybe they had darkened for Julie, too.
Her parents laughed downstairs, which made Cora smile a little. They didn’t laugh much anymore—even less since the private investigator had reported last month that Julie was living in a homeless shelter in the Tenderloin District. Tight, exhausted, defeated, she sighed. Then she clasped her hands and bowed her head.
God, please protect Julie. She opened her eyes. Am I just as bad as Julie, praying? Is God a figment of my imagination?
The room felt full of ghosts. Grateful she wasn’t carrying one, she held her belly. She should make a doctor’s appointment. The doctor would keep her secret, but she couldn’t hide the baby forever.
Cora imagined her parents, aghast: “You’re not thinking of keeping it?” “What about UW? You want to be a single parent with a high school diploma?”
She needed a plan. Maybe University of Washington would let her defer her admission one more year? Probably not. She had been lucky to get the first deferral when they suspected she had chronic fatigue syndrome, too, and they scheduled her to see the immunologist.
Mountaindale University was a blessing keeping her on track for UW, but it wasn’t competitive. Her dream of getting out of small-town Utah, living in Seattle, spreading her wings, and leaving home—the right way, like Julie had done when she went to Berkeley and made the family so proud… Was that over?
Maybe she should rethink the med school plan. She didn’t have to be a doctor. She wanted to help people, but her parents might want another M.D. in the family more than she did. Maybe a nurse. That still required a lot of school. High school diploma. A single mother with a high school diploma. That’s who was going to bring this poor—literally poor—baby into the world.
Cora wanted to throw up. She wished her mom could comfort her in her misery, like how she used to hold back her hair when she had to puke as a child. But she wasn’t a child anymore. If she were a child in her parents’ house, she would need to obey them. And if they were in charge about the baby, she would be getting an abortion.
