What Comes After (13 page)

“And then what?”

“Oh, you know,” Beatrice said again. “Then you get dressed, and they’re in a hurry to leave, and you kind of are, too, because you don’t quite know what to say next, or to talk about. And then you see them at school and it’s awkward, and you want them to call, and they don’t, or you call them and they don’t call you back. And your best friend has moved away and isn’t allowed to talk much on the phone, and your parents still aren’t speaking to each other, or to you, and the next thing you know, you miss your period and think you might be pregnant.”

I opened my mouth to say something to comfort her, to tell her I wished I could have helped her through all that. But then I thought about how she hadn’t been there for me, and how she hadn’t even asked how I was doing. So I just told her I was glad she was OK now, and I told her I missed her. It sounded automatic, and it sounded automatic when she said it back, “I miss you, too, Iris.”

I lay awake for a long time that night after we hung up. I stretched out on my bed and felt my abdomen with both hands, trying to imagine being pregnant. I’d always been so thin, though. Where could there possibly be room for a baby? I wondered what it must have been like for my mom when she was pregnant with me, as young as she was then — not much older than Beatrice. Or me.

I felt my rib cage, which stood out now that I was lying down. I cupped my breasts and thought of them swollen. Not Victoria’s Secret swollen. More like the nannies’ pendulous udders, hanging low with all that milky weight.

Being pregnant had made Reba and Jo Dee skittish sometimes, and more dependent on me. Otherwise, though, they went on about their goat lives just like the others: foraging in the field, eating their hay, bumping and butting and climbing and sleeping. So what was the big deal about being pregnant? Other than the fact that once you had your kid, if you were human, it was supposed to change the whole rest of your life.

I guessed it hadn’t changed my mom’s life, though, and I kept thinking about her that night, imagining her pregnant with me, and wondering what it must be like for her now, to have missed out on being my mom. Wondering what must have broken inside her, and how badly, for her to have left the way she did.

One night in October, Aunt Sue made Book and me leave the house again because her company was coming over. It was a Friday, but the football team was off that week. Book’s face turned a dark shade of red, and he flattened his giant sandwich down on his plate.

Aunt Sue narrowed her eyes. “Was there something you wanted to say about something, Book?”

He didn’t look up, just hunched his shoulders protectively over his plate, as if he was worried she would hit him. “No, ma’am.”

They were at the kitchen table. I was across the room on a stool, eating a saltine and an apple.

Aunt Sue nodded. “All right, then. I expect y’all to be gone by seven.”

Book scooted his chair back. “I don’t want her along,” he said, pointing at me without looking at me.

Aunt Sue shrugged. “So have Tiny drop her off in town and pick her up later.”

“Couldn’t I just stay here?” I asked. “I could just hang out in my room, or out in the barn with the goats. I could bring a space heater out there.”

Aunt Sue looked in my direction, though not exactly at me, as if she couldn’t be bothered to bring me fully into focus. “Oh, you’re going to town,” she said. “There’s no discussion about that.”

I sat in the back of Tiny’s truck again, though it was cold during the ride. They dropped me off at a mall, which surprised me. I hadn’t realized Craven County was big enough to have a mall, or a parking lot as massive as the one surrounding it — a black ocean of a parking lot, with the cars and trucks huddled together close to shore.

I had no idea how I would spend the next four hours. I didn’t have any money. I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, or a way to get there even if I did.

The mall doors swooshed open just then, before I could go inside, and Littleberry stepped out, along with two other guys and two girls, none of whom I recognized. One of the guys lit a cigarette and handed it to one of the girls. They were all dressed in standard-issue black on black, plus Doc Martens, except for Littleberry, who had on duck boots, which made me smile, even though I could tell with just a glance they weren’t L.L. Bean. He separated himself from his friends when he saw me.

“Hey, Littleberry,” I said.

He pulled off his black wool hat, freeing a wild mass of black, curly, Jim Morrison hair. His bottom lip looked normal, so I guessed he was dip free. “Hey, Iris. I never seen you here before.”

“First time,” I said. I looked past him into the gaping mouth of the mall: Gap. Disney Store. Sbarro. Claire’s. Starbucks. Dick’s Sporting Goods. JC Penney. “Looks like a retail dream come true.”

Littleberry grinned as if he was proud of his mall. Maybe he was. He pulled his knit cap back on. I wasn’t sure why he’d taken it off in the first place. “Hey,” he said. “We’re gonna go smoke a blunt. Wanna come?”

I considered my options. I had only smoked once before, and it had given me a headache. But that would be nothing compared to what four hours in the mall would do to me. Plus, I kind of liked the idea of hanging out with Littleberry.

“Sure,” I said. “Thanks. That sounds great.”

“Awesome,” Littleberry said. I followed him and his friends across the vast parking lot, past the scrum of cars and trucks, past the security lights, and past the emptiness after that, until we reached a berm topped with a wall of pines. It was already dark where we were. We scrambled up the berm, even deeper into the dark, and sat in a line with our legs hanging over the side, looking back at the mall.

“Feels like the end of the world,” said one of the guys, who looked like Opie on
The Andy Griffith Show.

“End of the mall,” said the other boy.

“Same thing,” said Littleberry, sitting next to me. He busied himself with a little penknife, disemboweling a cigar. I felt a little nervous, sitting so close to him, and I wasn’t sure why. His arm rubbed against mine while he worked, but I didn’t mind. He smelled like fresh pizza.

“The first time my mom brought me to this mall was when she bought my confirmation dress,” said one of the girls.

“You’re a Catholic?” said the other girl.

“Yeah. A lapsed Catholic,” said the first girl.

“What does that mean?” Opie asked.

The other boy said, “It means she lost her virginity in like the fourth grade.”

“Shut up,” Other Girl said. “It just means she doesn’t go to Mass anymore.”

The guy who wasn’t Opie asked Lapsed Catholic if she’d ever been molested by a priest, and she told him to shut up, too.

Opie said, “Hey, you know Mr. DiDio, the guidance counselor? I heard he used to be a priest.”

Littleberry gave a last lick to the cigar paper to seal up the blunt. “Nah,” he said. “Mr. DiDio, he’s not Catholic. He’s, like, a Buddhist. I bet he’d smoke this blunt with us if we asked him to. I mean, if nobody would find out and all.”

From what I remembered of my one brief meeting with Mr. DiDio, my first day of school, I had to agree.

Littleberry struck a match and handed me the joint. I took a small hit, but it made me cough so hard that I nearly fell off the berm.

“You OK, Iris?” Littleberry asked, his hand hovering over my back, ready to give it a helpful slap.

I nodded vigorously even though I kept coughing. I finally managed to pass the joint on to Opie. Opie took his hit, then passed it on to Lapsed Catholic, who gave it to Not-Opie, who handed it to Other Girl. Each one took a hit. It went around three times, and then Littleberry swallowed what was left.

“Littleberry ate the roach,” Lapsed Catholic said.

Somebody laughed, but it wasn’t me, even though I thought it was kind of funny. I guessed I might have been high. I couldn’t be sure, though, since I’d never been high before. Some minutes must have passed without my being aware of it, because the next thing I knew, I had my shoes off and was clapping them together for no particular reason except that I liked the sound.

I’m not sure how softball came up in the conversation, but it did. I said I loved softball. Somebody said we should play. Littleberry and Other Girl and Not-Opie left. They said they were going to Dick’s Sporting Goods to get equipment. They vanished somewhere into the black parking lot. Opie and Lapsed Catholic and I lay on our backs and looked up through the pine branches to the smoky sky. Three jets went past in precision formation, leaving vapor trails that looked like scars, but then dissipated slowly, imperceptibly. Stars managed to break through the clouds.

I asked them why Littleberry knew so much about head wounds.

“Oh, yeah,” Opie said. “You mean that thing he wrote for his class, that thing about his dad? He showed me that. That was sick.”

I kept studying the vapor trails. “That was about his dad?” I asked, surprised. “It didn’t ever mention his dad. Just how to treat the wound. The bandages and gauze and shaving around it” — I gestured at the sky — “and the discharge and infection, and antibiotics and saline solution.”

“Had to be his dad,” Opie said. “His dad was in one of those wars, like Afghanistan, and a bomb blew a hole in his head. A chunk of his skull came off or something. I heard his brain leaked out. Some of his brain.”

“Ew,” Lapsed Catholic said. “That’s not even true. He’s got all his brain. There’s just the wound, and some kind of trauma. He has to go to the VA hospital at Camp LeJeune a couple of times a week. They’re having a hard time getting it to heal up. He can walk and everything. They just have to keep changing his dressing where it won’t heal.”

“Well, that’s kind of like his brain leaked out,” Opie said.

“Maybe,” said Lapsed Catholic.

I wasn’t sure how the two of them went from that conversation to making out, but they did. I got lost for a few minutes, feeling bad for Littleberry and his dad, and wondering what happened to the vapor trails I’d been watching earlier.

Lapsed Catholic and Opie stopped making out as abruptly as they’d started.

“Hey,” Opie said — to both of us, “check this out,” and then he rolled down the berm. He landed hard on the pavement at the bottom. I heard the splat.

“Oh, man,” he moaned. “My elbow.”

Lapsed Catholic and I burst out laughing like it was the funniest thing we’d ever seen. Soon we heard Opie laughing, too, from down there on the ground.

We were still laughing when Littleberry and the others came back, which could have been a minute later or an hour. Not-Opie pulled something out of his long coat. It was an aluminum softball bat. He held it high over his head as if it was a sword.
Excalibur
or something. I slid down the berm and asked if I could see it. I felt so good holding it that I nearly started giggling. I choked up on the handle a little and took a couple of loose swings. I hadn’t had my hands around a bat since July, when I quit the select team in Maine. I positioned my feet, laid the bat on my shoulder, choked up on the bat again, and swung a few more times. The bat weight was good for my size, though I generally preferred something shorter.

“We got these, too,” Littleberry said. He held up some balls. The others did, too. Regulation softballs — some white, a couple orange — and baseballs, and even a few rubber T-balls.

“Where’d you get all this?” I asked.

Littleberry laughed. “Borrowed it.”

I didn’t know what to think. My dad would have been disappointed in me for having anything to do with stealing. Then again, he would have been disappointed in me for smoking the blunt, too.

“Pitch one to me,” I said.

“Which one?” Littleberry asked.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“OK.” He lobbed one of the orange softballs at me, underhand. I cocked the bat, rotated my hips around, let shoulders and arms and bat follow through, and crushed it — deep over the berm and through the pines.

Somebody whistled.

“Another one,” I said. “A fast pitch this time. And step back more. I don’t want to kill anyone.”

A white softball came at me, faster, but still with some arc. I cracked it straight back at whoever pitched it — Opie, maybe — and it hit him hard in the thigh. He yelped in pain, which made us all laugh.

Littleberry pitched the next one, a baseball, overhand, and I fouled that one off. He threw another baseball, harder, and I blasted that one into the trees just like the first softball. In Maine I’d been a singles hitter, a spray hitter. A contact batter. I didn’t have much power, but I always put the ball in play. Coach had me second in the lineup, so I bunted a lot, to move our leadoff hitter over. I worked hard on my sprinting; I killed myself getting out of the box and down to first. I beat out a lot of throws, too, even when they played the infield in.

Tonight, though, I was a power hitter. They kept firing balls at me, all of them overhand now, each guy trying to throw harder than the others. None of them had strong arms, though, and I murdered every pitch — I was just
crushing
them — except one so far over my head I would’ve needed a ladder. After five minutes, maybe not even that long, they ran out of stuff to throw, and everybody just stood there.