Someone Like You (11 page)

“It's bad,” Scarlett said, and started crying. “It's really bad.”

“Bad?” Now Marion looked scared. “Scarlett, tell me. Now.”

“I can't,” Scarlett managed, still crying.

“Now. ”
Marion put one hand on her hip. It was my mother's classic stance but it looked out of place on Marion, as if she was wearing a funny hat. “I mean it.”

Then Scarlett just spit it out. “I'm pregnant.”

Everything was really quiet all of a sudden, and I suddenly noticed that the faucet was leaking,
drip drip drip.

Then Marion spoke. “Since when?”

Scarlett fumbled for a minute, getting her bearings. She'd been expecting something else. “When?”

“Yes.” Marion still wasn't looking at either of us.

“Ummm ...” Scarlett looked at me helplessly. “August?”

“August,” Marion repeated, like it was the clue that solved the puzzle. She sighed, very loudly. “Well, then.”

The doorbell rang, all cheerful, and as I glanced out the front window I could see Steve/Vlad on the front porch carrying a bunch of flowers. He waved at us and rang the bell again.

“Oh, God,” Marion said. “That's Steve.”

“Marion,” Scarlett began, stepping closer to her, “I didn't mean for it to happen—I used something, but ...”

“We'll have to talk about this later,” Marion told her, running her hands through her hair nervously, straightening her dress as she headed for the door. “I can't-I can't talk about this now.”

Scarlett wiped her eyes, started to say something, and then turned and ran out of the room, up the stairs. I heard her bedroom door slam, hard.

Marion took a deep breath, composed herself, and went to the front door. Steve was standing there, smiling in his sports jacket and Weejuns. He handed her the flowers.

“Hi,” he said. “Are you ready?”

“Not quite,” Marion said quickly, smiling as best she could. “I have to get something-I'll be right down, okay?”

“Fine.”

Marion went upstairs and I heard her knocking on Scarlett's door, her voice muffled. Steve came in the kitchen. He looked even blander under bright light. “Hello there,” he said. “I'm Steve.”

“Halley,” I said, still trying to listen to what was happening upstairs. “It's nice to meet you.”

“Are you a friend of Scarlett's?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, and now I could hear Scarlett's voice, raised, through the ceiling overhead. I thought I could make out the word
hypocrite.
“I am.”

“She seems like a nice girl,” he said. “Halley. That's an unusual name.”

“I was named for my grandmother,” I told him. Now I could hear Marion's voice, stern, and I babbled on to cover it. “She was named for the comet.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” I said, “she was born in May of 1910, when the comet was coming through. Her father watched it from the hospital lawn while her mom was in the delivery room. And in 1986, when I was six, we watched it together.”

“That's fascinating,” Steve said, like he really meant it.

“Well, I don't remember it that well,” I said. “They say it wasn't very clear that year.”

“I see,” Steve said. He seemed relieved to hear Marion coming down the stairs.

“Ready?” she called out, all composure, but she still wouldn't look at me.

“Ready,” Steve said cheerfully. “Nice to meet you, Halley.”

“Nice to meet you, too.”

He slipped his arm around Marion as they left, his hand on the small of her back as they headed down the front walk. She was nodding, listening as he spoke, holding her car door open. As they pulled away she let herself look back and up, to Scarlett's bedroom window.

When I went upstairs, Scarlett was on the bed, her legs pulled up against her chest. The flowers Steve had brought Marion were abandoned on the dresser, still in their crinkly cellophane wrapper.

“So,” I said. “I think that went really well, don't you?”

She smiled, barely. “You should have heard her. All this stuff about the mistakes she'd made and how I should have known better. Like doing this was some way of proving her the worst mother ever.”

“No,” I said, “I think my mother's got that one pegged.”

“Your mother would sit you down and discuss this, rationally, and then counsel you to the best decision. Not run out the door with some warrior.”

“My mother,” I said, “would drop dead on the spot.”

She got up and went to the dresser mirror, leaning in to look at herself. “She says we'll go to the clinic on Monday and make an appointment. For an abortion.”

I could see myself behind her in the mirror. “Is that what you decided to do?”

“There wasn't much of a discussion.” She ran her hands over her stomach, along the waist of her jeans. “She said she had one, a long time ago. When I was six or seven. She said it's no big deal.”

“It'd be so hard to have a baby,” I said, trying to help. “I mean, you're only sixteen. You've got your whole life ahead of you.”

“She did, too. When she had me.”

“That was different,” I said, but I knew it really wasn't. Marion had been a senior in high school, about to go off to some women's college out west. Scarlett's father was a football player, student council president. He left for a Big East school and Marion never saw or contacted him again.

“Keeping me was probably the only unselfish thing Marion's ever done in her life,” Scarlett said. “I've always wondered why she did.”

“Stop it,” I said. “Don't talk like that.”

“It's true,” she said. “I've always wondered.” She stepped back from the mirror, letting her hands drop to her sides. We'd spent our lifetimes in this room, but there had never been anything, ever, like this. This was bigger than us.

“It'll be all right,” I told her.

“I know,” she said quietly, looking into the mirror at herself and me beyond it. “I know.”

It was going to be done that Friday. We never talked about it openly; it was whispered, never called by name, as a silence settled over Scarlett's house, filling the rooms to the ceiling. To Marion, it was already a Done Deal. She went to the clinic counseling sessions with Scarlett, handling all the details. As the week wound down, Scarlett grew more and more quiet.

On Friday, my mother drove me to school. I'd told her Scarlett had something to do and couldn't take me; then, we pulled up behind her and Marion at a stoplight near Lakeview. They didn't see us. Scarlett was looking out the window, and Marion was smoking, her elbow jutting out the driver's side window. It still didn't seem real that Scarlett was even pregnant, and now the next time I saw her it would be wiped clean, forgotten.

“Well, there's Scarlett right there,” my mother said. “I thought you said she wasn't going to school today.”

“She isn't,” I said. “She has an appointment.”

“Oh. Is she sick?”

“No.” I turned up the radio, my father's voice filling the car.
It's eight-oh-four A.M., I'm Brian, and you're listening to T104, the only good thing about getting up in the morning....

“Well, there must be something wrong if she's going to the doctor,” my mother said as the light finally changed and Scarlett and Marion turned left, toward downtown.

“I don't think it's a doctor's appointment,” I said. “I don't know what it is.”

“Maybe it's the dentist,” she said thoughtfully. “Which reminds me, you're due for a cleaning and checkup.”

“I don't know,” I said again.

“Is she missing the whole day or just coming in late?”

“She didn't say.” I was squirming in my seat, keeping my eye on the yellow school bus in front of us.

“I thought you two told each other everything,” she said with a laugh, glancing at me. “Right?”

I was wondering exactly what that was supposed to mean. Everything she said seemed to have double meanings, like a secret language that needed decoding with a special ring or chart I didn't have. I wanted to shout,
She's having an abortion,
Mom!
Are you happy now?
just to see her face. I imagined her exploding on the spot, disappearing with a puff of smoke, or melting into a puddle like the Wicked Witch of the West. When we pulled into the parking lot, I was never so glad to see school in my life.

“Thanks,” I said, kissing her on the cheek quickly and sliding out of the car.

“Come home right after school,” she called after me. “I'm making dinner and we need to talk about your birthday, right?”

Tomorrow was my sixteenth birthday. I hadn't even had much time to think about it. A few months ago, it had been the only thing I had to look forward to: my driver's license, freedom, all the things I'd been waiting for.

“Right. I'll see you tonight,” I said to her, backing up, losing myself in the crowd pushing through the front doors. I was walking through the main building, headed outside, when Macon fell into step beside me. He always seemed to appear out of nowhere, magic; I never saw him coming.

“Hey,” he said, sliding his arm over my shoulders. He smelled like strawberry Jolly Ranchers, smoke, and aftershave, a strange mix I had grown to love. “What's up?”

“My mother is driving me nuts,” I said as we walked outside. “I almost killed her on the way to school today.”

“She drove you?” he said, glancing around. “Where is Scarlett, anyway?”

“She had an appointment or something,” I said. I felt worse, much worse, lying to him than I had to my mother.

“So,” he said, “don't make plans for tomorrow night.”

“Why?”

“I'm taking you somewhere for your birthday.”

“Where?”

He grinned. “You'll see.”

“Okay,” I said, pushing away the thought of the party my mother was planning, complete with ice-cream cake and the Vaughns and dinner at Alfredo's, my favorite restaurant. “I'm all yours.”

The bell rang, and he walked with me toward homeroom until someone called his name. A group of guys I'd met uptown with him a few days before, with longer hair and sleepy eyes, were waving him over toward the parking lot. No matter how well I thought I was getting to know him, there was always some part of himself he kept hidden: people and places, activities in which I wasn't included. I got a phone call each evening, early, just him checking in to say hello. What he did after that, I had no idea.

“I gotta go,” he said, kissing me quickly. I felt him slide something in the back pocket of my jeans as he started to walk away, already blending with the packs of people. I already knew what it was, before I even pulled it out: a Jolly Rancher. I had a slowly growing collection of candy at home, in a dish on my desk. I saved every one.

“What about homeroom?” I said. For all my pretend rebellion I'd never missed homeroom or skipped school in my life. Macon had a scattered attendance rate at best, and I didn't even ask him about his grades. All the women's magazines said you couldn't change a man, but I was learning this the hard way.

“I'll see you third period,” he said, ignoring the question altogether. Then he turned and started toward the parking lot, tucking his one hardly cracked notebook under his arm. A group of girls from my English class giggled as they passed me, watching him. We'd been big news the last two weeks; a month ago I'd been Scarlett's friend Halley, and now I was Halley, Macon Faulkner's girlfriend.

At the end of second period, someone knocked on the door of my Commercial Design class and handed Mrs. Pate a slip of paper; she read it, looked at me, and told me to get my stuff. I'd been summoned to the office.

I was nervous, walking down the corridor, trying to think of anything I'd done that could get me in trouble. But when I got there the receptionist handed me the phone and said, “It's your mother.”

I had a sudden flash: my father, dead. My grandmother, dead. Anyone, dead. I picked up the phone. “Hello? Mom?”

“Hold on,” I heard someone say, and there were some muffled noises. Then, “Hello? Halley?”

“Scar—?”

“Shhhh! I'm your mother, remember?”

“Right,” I said, but the receptionist was busy arguing with some kid over a tardy slip and not even paying attention. “What's going on?”

“I need you to come get me,” she said. “At the clinic.”

I looked at the clock. It was only ten-fifteen. “Is it over? Already?”

“No.” A pause. Then, “I changed my mind.”

“You what?”

“I changed my mind. I'm keeping the baby.”

She sounded so calm, so sure. There was nothing I could think of to say.

“Where's Marion?” I said.

“I told her to leave me here,” she said. “I said she was making me nervous. I was supposed to call her to come get me after.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Can you come? Please?”

“Sure,” I said, and now the receptionist was watching me. “But, Mom, I think you have to tell them to give me a pass or something.”

“Right,” Scarlett said, all business. “I'm going to put my friend Mary back on the phone. I'm at the clinic on First Street, okay? Hurry.”

“Right,” I said, wondering how I was getting anywhere, since I had no car.

There were some more muffled noises, Scarlett giving instructions, then the same voice I'd heard earlier came back on. “This is Mrs. Cooke.”