The Smart One (31 page)

Somehow, during the conversation where Max told Weezy that Cleo was pregnant, it had come out that they were living together. “You’re what?” Weezy had said, like that was the real problem, like living together was the reason she got pregnant in the first place.

MAX STAYED CALM UNTIL THE VERY END
when he started to cry. She couldn’t blame him. She was about to cry herself, just listening to Weezy repeat herself, letting him know that she really was just so disappointed.

Cleo heard the word “options” and she sat up straight. She didn’t
want Weezy up there talking about her like she wasn’t there. She was right here. They weren’t Weezy’s options, they were hers, and she had decided.

When Max finally came back down, she had moved one step down and had her head resting on her arms on the landing. She was exhausted. Max was walking quickly, and he still had tears running down his face, which embarrassed her so much she had to look away. She was embarrassed because she knew he wouldn’t want her to see him cry. She never had before, and if this hadn’t happened, she wondered how long, if ever, it would have been before she’d seen it.

“I think we should go,” Max said. He was already grabbing his bag and putting stuff in it.

“Now?” It was five in the morning.

“Yeah, let’s get out of here. I want to leave before anyone wakes up.”

“Can you even drive? You had kind of a lot to drink.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s morning now.”

“What did she say?” Cleo already knew, but she wanted to hear it from him.

“I’ll tell you about it later. Let’s just go.”

“But my stuff is upstairs,” Cleo said. The last thing she wanted to do was to walk up there by herself, and run into Weezy in the hall, or see crazy Bets on her way to the bathroom. Her heart started to beat quickly just thinking about it.

“I’ll run and grab it,” Max said. “Can you finish packing my stuff?”

Cleo nodded and he ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. They looked like a couple that was late for the airport.

IT WAS STILL DARK OUT
when they got in the car, and they drove in silence for almost an hour. Cleo was afraid to say anything to him. Every once in a while she reached over and put her hand on his leg, or rubbed the back of his neck, but he didn’t react much. Cleo forced herself to keep her eyes open, even though all she wanted to do was sleep. It used to be that she couldn’t sleep if she was worried, but now she felt like she could sleep anywhere and anytime. Finally they passed
a sign for a rest stop that was coming up, and Max turned to look at her. “Are you hungry?” She nodded, and he turned on his blinker and got off the expressway.

Max said he’d run in and get the food, and Cleo asked for an egg sandwich and a cup of coffee. Max shook his head. “I don’t think you’re supposed to have coffee.”

“Oh,” Cleo said. “Not even a cup?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Forget it. Just get me a bottle of water.”

Max nodded and got out of the car to go get their food. She was so sad just then, for both of them, as she watched him open the door and go in. It was so sad, just fucking depressing, really. Neither of them had any idea what they were doing. They didn’t even know if she could have coffee or not.

Cleo started to cry a little bit, her nose running, and she dug around until she found an old napkin in the car to blow her nose. She was trying to stop the tears before Max came back, but when she saw him walk out with a drink tray and a bag of fast-food breakfast, she started crying all over again.

“I got you orange juice, too,” he said. He put his hand on the back of her head and ran it down to her neck.

“What’re we doing?” she asked.

“We’ll be okay,” Max said. This sounded like such a complete lie that Cleo let out a little laugh. “Here, you should eat.” He handed the sandwich to Cleo and she unwrapped it in her lap.

“We’re really in a lot of shit, aren’t we?” she said. Max was pulling out of the parking lot and onto the ramp to get back on the highway, and he didn’t answer her.

WHEN CLEO TOLD HER MOM,
there was a pause and for a second she thought her mom hadn’t heard her and she was going to have to repeat herself. And then she heard her mom say, “Oh
goddamn
it, Cleo.”

Cleo had breathed in quickly, like someone had surprised her, and then she’d started to cry. On the other end of the phone, her mom sighed. She hated when Cleo cried, she always had.

“Well, have you thought about it?” Elizabeth asked.

“Mom, of course I’ve thought about it.”

“And?”

“And what? I’m keeping it. I wouldn’t be telling you about it otherwise, would I?”

“Cleo, you really need to think about this.”

“What do you mean, I really need to think about it? You think I haven’t thought about it?”

“I’m just saying, it’s a big decision.”

“Yeah, no kidding. And I’ve thought about it. I have. You’re talking to me like I don’t think things through, like I’m some idiot who got knocked up and just decided to go with it.”

“Well, right about now, that sounds pretty accurate, don’t you think?”

Cleo hung up the phone and threw it at the couch. Then she started to really let herself cry, with big, indulgent, dramatic sobs. She waited for her mom to call her back, but all she got was an e-mail an hour later.

Cleo,

I’m upset at the way things were handled today. I understand that you are upset as well, so when you’re ready to talk in a calm manner, I’ll be available.

Mom

“Do you believe this?” she screamed. She ran into the bedroom to show it to Max, holding her phone right in front of his face until he took it from her and read it. Her first instinct had been to hide it, to hide the fact that she had a mom who was such a monster. But then her rage had taken over and she didn’t care about that.

It sounded like a fucking business e-mail:
The way things were handled. I’ll be available
. Good God, her mom was a crazy person. She didn’t even know how to talk to people normally, didn’t even know how to act when her daughter told her she was pregnant.

“I’m never talking to her again,” Cleo said. “She can die alone.”

“Okay,” Max said. “You’re upset.”

“Of course I’m upset. My mom is a horrible person. And can I just point out that she also got pregnant by accident? With me. You’d think she’d be a little more understanding.”

“She’s just surprised.”

“I’m surprised too,” Cleo said. “Didn’t she think about that?”

CLEO WAS STILL THROWING UP
almost every day. They kept waiting for it to stop, but it never did. Max read the pregnancy books they bought and reported back to her. “It says it’s normal for some women to be sick through the whole pregnancy. Mostly it’s just the first trimester, but some people have it the whole time.” He looked up at her with wide eyes.

“What a relief,” she said.

In class, her lips were red and raw from all the retching. She could feel her professors looking at her, probably thinking that she was on a bender, that she was perpetually hungover, that her life was spiraling out of control. The last part was true, of course, just not for the reasons they thought.

As soon as she got home in the afternoons, she’d lie on the couch and watch TV. Sometimes she’d try to eat saltines, but the only thing that ever had any chance of staying down was Fig Newtons, which she’d never liked before.

“Our baby is going to grow up to be a fig,” Cleo said. She was kidding, but Max looked worried.

“Maybe I’ll call my mom to see if she has any ideas,” he said.

Weezy had called them before they’d even gotten back to school. She apologized for the way she acted, Max relayed to Cleo. She was sorry that they’d already left. And she wanted them to know that the whole family would be there to help them through all of this.

Max was relieved, and Cleo was too. She was. For the most part, anyway. She still wished that her own mom would have come around, and if not, it would have almost been nicer if she and Max could have commiserated on how awful their parents were being. Instead, he talked to
his mom every single day, filling her in on doctor’s appointments and asking her advice on every little thing.

Cleo was tired. More tired than she’d ever been in her whole life. Sometimes when she’d be walking to class, she’d think that she was going to fall asleep standing up, because she couldn’t keep her eyes open, and they would close and her head would bob. One night, after dinner, Max came in the room to tell her that Weezy had said that her nausea would be worse if she lay down after meals. “She said to stay upright, just walk around or sit up until you’ve digested.”

Cleo was lying on the couch when he told her this, and she opened one eye to look at him standing there, so eager. “I’d rather throw up all over myself, than sit up right now,” she said. She closed her eyes again and heard Max walk out of the room.

Sometimes Max would be talking to Weezy and he’d just hand the phone to Cleo, without giving her a chance to say no, or even just prepare. She wanted to tell Max that it hurt her feelings, that it made her feel sad when she heard Weezy’s voice over the phone, telling Cleo what it was like when she was pregnant, asking her how tired she was, promising that it would get better. But she couldn’t tell him that, because even she knew it sounded ridiculous, that talking to his mom hurt her feelings, and so she kept it to herself.

There was one night, though, when Max was on the phone with his mom, again, and Cleo was lying on the couch, trying to watch TV, which was hard since Max was talking kind of loud. She turned up the volume, but all she could concentrate on was Max’s voice.

“Yeah, she’s been having trouble with that for a while now,” he said. “It’s making her feel sicker, I think.” Then Max turned to her, lowered the phone from his mouth, and said, “My mom says to drink hot water with lemon. She said it really helps constipation.”

Cleo opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Then, when Max got off the phone, she finally found her words. “Could you please not talk to your mom about my constipation?”

CLEO MADE MAX PROMISE THAT
he wouldn’t tell any of his friends. “Please. Please don’t say anything. I don’t want to be the pregnant girl at college.”

“Okay,” Max said. “But people are going to find out eventually.”

“I know, but let’s just wait, okay? No one needs to know right now.”

“People are going to think something’s wrong when we just hole up in the apartment.”

“Well, you can go out. Just because I can’t drink doesn’t mean you have to stay home.”

“Really?” Max asked.

“Definitely. You can just tell everyone I’m studying or sick or out with other people.”

And she had meant it. Or at least she had meant it until Max came home drunk one night with a bag of McDonald’s and crept into their bedroom to say hello.

“Hey, baby,” he said, and put his face next to hers. He smelled like rubbing alcohol.

“Hey,” she said. She’d been asleep. She rolled away from him and heard him rustling in the bag of food. She looked back to see him unwrapping a Filet-O-Fish.

“Have you ever had one of these?” he asked her. “They’re pretty good. I don’t always feel like them, but tonight I wanted an appetizer to my Big Mac.” Cleo now smelled tartar sauce in addition to the rubbing alcohol.

“Ugh, Max,” Cleo said. She sat up and put her hand over her nose.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. He was slurring just a little bit. “Do you want a bite?” He held the sandwich out to her.

“No! Just get out,” she said.

Max looked hurt. “Do you want some french fries?”

“No, Max. Really, please just leave me alone.”

“Fine,” Max said. “I was just trying to be nice.” He stood up and walked to the door, leaving a few french fries in his trail. He slammed the bedroom door shut behind him and turned on the TV in the other room.

Cleo found him there the next morning, fast asleep, mouth open, with the McDonald’s bag resting next to him. They didn’t talk for almost the whole day, just huffed around each other. Then, just when it was starting to get dark, Max apologized.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

“I know.”

“But I did.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re the one that yelled at me to get out.”

“Yeah, but that was because you woke me up with a Filet-O-Fish on my pillow. Can you blame me?”

“I just wanted to say hi.” Max smiled the tiniest bit.

“Max.”

“I know, I’m really sorry. I am.”

“I’m sorry too, for yelling,” Cleo said. She went over and sat next to him on the couch.

“What a fucking mess,” Max said. Cleo wasn’t sure if he was talking about the apartment or their life.

“I know,” she said.

MAX KEPT ASSURING HER THAT
she wasn’t showing, but she didn’t believe him. “Look at this,” she’d say, pulling her shirt tight across her stomach. “This is not what I normally look like.”

“Well, I know that,” Max said. “I just mean that no one else can tell.”

“But I can tell,” she said.

Max insisted she didn’t look any different, like he thought that was the nice thing to say, but it wasn’t. And so, she finally said, “If I’m normally this fat, then kill me.”

AT THE FIRST DOCTOR’S APPOINTMENT,
she’d been poked and prodded and had blood drawn and everything else. She kept waiting for him to say, “It’s a mistake, you aren’t pregnant,” but he didn’t.

“Your due date is July fifteenth,” he told them.

It was already cold outside, the start of winter, so July seemed far away, which comforted Cleo. They bought a calendar on the way home, the kind that you hang on the wall, because it seemed like they should have one, and they hung it up on a nail in the kitchen, and circled July 15 with a red marker. In the circle, Cleo wrote,
DUE DATE
.

“Well, there it is,” Max said. They stood and stared at it.

“Yep. There it is.”