Strange but True (33 page)

“What do you mean, you don't care? These are your teeth we're talking about. Your smile.”

Melissa pushes open the car door and steps out into the hot summer air. She hears some sort of banging sound, like a faint series of gunshots or perhaps a muffler backfiring far off in the distance. “Mom,” she says, ignoring the sound and looking into the car. “Even if I had something to smile about, which I obviously do not, it hurts to move my face. Do you understand that? It hurts to smile or frown or smirk or even talk to you right now. So like I said, I don't care when you make the appointment. I don't care.”

With that, Melissa slams the door, storms into the house, and marches up the stairs, clenching that CVS bag in her hands the whole way. When she passes her sister's room, Stacy is inside, stretched out on her bed, yammering away on the telephone. Ever since the accident, all phone restrictions have been lifted. Their parents did not make any sort of official decree, but Stacy is on it at all hours, and neither of them has told her to get off the way they normally would.

“Chaz called me twice from the base already,” Melissa hears her say to the person on the other end of the line. (Probably Seneca Lawson, she guesses, or another one of Stacy's fellow “technical virgins.”) “I think he is still in shock. In a way it's a blessing that he had to leave so soon afterward.” She pauses. “I need to call Rutgers about registering for my fall classes, but I haven't felt up to it yet. Hold on a sec—” Stacy puts her hand to the receiver and calls out, “Hey, Miss.”

Without uttering a word in response, Melissa keeps going down the hall. They have not spoken since the accident, and she isn't about to start now. Not only did Stacy ruin a big part of that last night with Ronnie, but while Missy was stuck in intensive care for more than a week, Stacy and Chaz were released from the hospital after only three days.

They
went to the memorial service.

They
went to the wake.

They
went to the funeral.

They
got to say good-bye.

On top of everything else her sister has done, those facts make Melissa hate her all the more. She walks into the bathroom and shuts the door. After double-checking to be sure it's locked, Melissa leans against the wall and says a prayer to God that the test will turn out the way she hopes. In the mirror of the medicine cabinet, she catches another glimpse of her face. The same thoughts that have been haunting her for weeks wash over her once more: Who is going to want me now? Who is ever going to hold me, or kiss me, or love me again? No one, that's who. Not like this anyway. It is all the more reason why Melissa wants to be carrying Ronnie's baby—not just to keep some part of him alive, but also to keep some part of her old self alive as well. She sees this as her last chance at the life she might have lived. Finally, she pulls the e.p.t. kit from the bag, trying her best to keep quiet despite the crinkling plastic. She tears open the box and reads the instructions:

After removing the plastic top, hold the tip in the urine flow for a minimum of five seconds. The test must be kept on a flat surface while developing. Wait three minutes for a result. If a single pink line appears in the windows you are not pregnant. If two pink lines appear in the windows you are pregnant…

Melissa pulls the wand from the foil packet, which looks vaguely like a toothbrush. She tugs down her shorts and sits on the toilet, holding the tip between her legs for five seconds. When she is finished, she sets it on the edge of the vanity. Since she is not wearing a watch, Melissa stares at the tiny windows and silently counts, One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three… When she gets to one thousand fifty, there is a knock at the door. Melissa sucks in a nervous breath and holds it.

“Missy,” her father says in his Sunday sermon drawl. “Are you okay in there?”

“I'm fine.”

After his footsteps recede down the hall, she looks at the windows again. There are no pink lines yet, and now she has lost count. For what seems like an eternity, she waits, forcing herself to look away in order to make the time go faster. Melissa stares up at the ceiling, then back at the windows. She stares down at the white linoleum floor, then back at the windows. She even stares in the mirror again, holding her gaze the way no one else will, then back at the windows.

Still, no lines.

Finally, she picks up the instructions and searches the fine print for some scrap of information about what to do if nothing appears at all. The only thing she finds is an explanation of something called human chorionic gonadotropin, which goes on forever. When Melissa can't stand reading anymore, she tosses the paper on the floor and stares at the windows one last time. And that's when she sees it: a single pink line before her eyes.

I am not pregnant, she thinks. I am not pregnant after all.

Even though it hurts to cry, Melissa's face crumples and the tears begins. She puts a finger to her mouth to keep her lip from quivering as she wonders if the test could be wrong. It even says right there on the box that these things are only 99 percent accurate. Doesn't that mean there is a 1 percent chance? And if she isn't pregnant, then why has her period not come? Melissa thinks again of that sermon her father used to give about the importance of praying to Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. But where has that ever gotten her? For the first time in her life, she defies that stupid rule and prays to whomever she damn well pleases.

Melissa prays to Ronnie.

“I love you,” she whispers. “I love you, and if you can hear me, I want to have your baby.”

There is so much more Melissa wants to say to him, but she realizes that it is best not to say it in this house where her father, her mother, or her sister might hear. Melissa gathers up the contents of the kit as well as the plastic bag and the instructions from the floor. She takes one last look around to be sure she has left nothing behind before stepping out of the bathroom. Down the hall, she hears Stacy whining about her broken arm. Melissa tucks the CVS bag beneath her T-shirt then rushes past her room and down the stairs.

“Missy,” her mother calls from the living room. “Where are you going?”

The screen door slaps shut behind Melissa and she hurries across the yard. Her mother comes to the front porch and calls out to her again, but she doesn't follow any farther. At the corner, near Wendy Dugas's dismantled jump, Melissa stops and takes off her flip-flops so she can move more quickly. The pavement feels hot and gritty against her bare feet, a feeling that reminds her of childhood as she continues on past the church. She takes a left onto Runnymede Avenue, then a right onto Hashen Street, heading in the direction of the cemetery on Faldoma Road. Melissa has been there before, but not since Ronnie was laid to rest. Years ago, the place was an airfield, and on summer days like this one, her parents sometimes took Melissa and her sister to watch the biplanes do loop-de-loops and the wing walkers perform midair stunts. After too many fiery crashes, though, the place was shut down. It went unused for ages—the grass grew tall, the metal hangar rusted and collapsed—until last summer, when it was announced that the field would be turned into a cemetery.

On her way there, Melissa cuts through the town park, which is more crowded than usual. People are laying blankets all around as though they are getting ready for a game. She walks by a young mother sitting on a bench holding a book in front of her child's face. “Blue,” she says. “This is the color blue. Can you say it? Blue. Blue. Blue.” The child says nothing so the mother turns the page. “Red. This is the color red. Can you say it? Red. Red. Red.” Melissa keeps going past the tennis courts, where two women dressed in white are hitting the ball back and forth over the sagging net, grunting each time they swing and make contact. When one of them finally misses, the other lets out a throaty heckle and shouts, “Yes! I got you! I finally got you! It's about time I got you!”

In the distance, Melissa hears the same banging sound as earlier. She ignores it and continues walking. In bare feet still, she cuts back onto the road and heads through another series of streets. Nearly forty minutes later, she reaches the entrance to the cemetery. Sweaty and breathless, Melissa stops at the mouth of the unpaved driveway, looking over the field before entering. Since her father drags the family to every single funeral of an old person from church who has no loved ones alive to attend, Melissa has been to her fair share of cemeteries. But this place feels different from the others. Those are usually cluttered with headstones, as well as the occasional statue of a lamb or angel, its eyes and mouths worn away from years of rain and snow. Here, there are no statues at all—only a small cluster of a half-dozen or so stones in the far end of the field where the hangar used to be, since not many people have been buried here yet. There are no fancy wrought-iron gates either—just the old chain-link fence that used to be here way back when she came to see those air shows. Most of the field is still covered by tall grass, burned brown by the sun so that it resembles a wheat field.

Melissa spots a single stone with a small heap of flowers in front. She figures it must be Ronnie's and begins walking up the dirt road and across the grass, talking to him once again. Melissa tells him how lonely she is without him. She tells him how desperately she wants the test to be wrong. She tells him that she is not going to go to Penn now that he is gone. She tells him how awful her parents and Stacy have been acting toward her. And when she gets to the smooth gray stone engraved with his full name—
RONALD CHARLES CHASE
—along with the dates that bookend his life—
MARCH
17, 1981 to
JUNE
18, 1999—Melissa grows silent. She does not want to cry anymore today, so she fights back her tears and sits beside those flowers, which are wilting like the ones in her bedroom.

As the hot summer sun beats down upon her, Melissa stares at those letters and numbers on the stone, then up at the blue sky. A memory comes back to her then, not of Ronnie, but of herself as a little girl. She remembers looking up at a wing walker and feeling so afraid that he might fall that she let out a shriek and buried her face in her father's side. She remembers too that her father picked her up in his arms and told her that everything would be okay. Staring up at that same sky above her now, Melissa wishes that her father, or someone else, anyone else, could offer her that kind of comfort today.

Missy pulls the pregnancy kit from the CVS bag again, hoping that by some miracle there will be two lines in the windows. But there is still just one. Even if she is not going to have Ronnie's baby, Melissa makes the decision right then and there that she is still going to move out of her parents' house. She wants to find a secluded place, like whatever animal she saw in that documentary, so she can be alone in her grief. With this in mind, she removes the newspaper from the bag and turns to the Classifieds. Melissa scans the listings, which include all sorts of large, expensive homes that she cannot afford. Then she spots an ad at the very bottom of a column:

Partially Renovated Cottage

One Bedroom with Kitchenette

Rent: $600 per month plus utilities

Available: August 1

Contact: Gail or Bill Erwin at…

Melissa reads and rereads those words, wondering how she can get her hands on that kind of money, which is so much less than the others, but still a lot for her. That's when she hears a sound in the distance. It is not the sharp, sudden banging she heard earlier, but a low rumbling that causes her to lift her head. A silver Range Rover is coming up the drive, raising a cloud of dust as it approaches. Melissa stretches her neck forward and sees that it's Ronnie's father behind the wheel. Embarrassed to be plopped down so casually beside his son's grave, she closes the newspaper and stuffs it back inside the CVS bag along with the pregnancy kit, the fish licorice, and the cards. She stands and lifts her hand to wave. Dr. Chase waves back, and she can tell by the look on his face that he is surprised to see her.

After he comes to a stop and steps outside, Melissa notices how much he resembles Ronnie—something she never realized before. Certainly, his graying hair, the wrinkles around his eyes behind his silver, wire-rimmed glasses, and his slight belly pushing against his blue Polo shirt are not the same. But there is a similarity to his darker complexion, his tall frame set off by bulky shoulders. He is wearing khaki shorts and loafers without socks. His legs are long, lean, and hairy, just like Ronnie's. There is a plastic ID card strung around his neck that Melissa remembers all the doctors and nurses wearing at the hospital. When he walks to the grave, Dr. Chase looks Melissa in the eye and does not look away. He is the first person—the very first person—to hold her gaze since the accident, and it leaves her feeling unsettled. “How are you?” he asks.

“I'm okay,” Melissa says in the smallest of voices. Her mind flashes on another long-ago memory of her parents snapping a picture of her and Stacy beside the wing walker after he came down from the sky. Melissa can still remember how shy she felt around that man, not unlike the way she feels now. “I used to come here when I was little,” she says out loud without planning to. “I mean, with my family, to see those old daredevil shows.”

He looks around the field, and she can tell that he is seeing the place as it used to be, rather than what it is now, then turns to face Melissa again. “So did we. The stunts were too scary for Philip. He used to wait in the car with my wife. But Ronnie loved them.”

“I bet he did,” Melissa says, then stops and stares down at the mound of dying flowers between them, at Ronnie's name and those dates etched into the stone. She imagines that years from now, his name will be worn away like the features on those statues in the other cemeteries she's been to.