Hooked (8 page)

“It’s Wednesday night,” I called after him.

He came out of his room, still in his suit pants and a brand-new white undershirt. His undershirts and socks and towels always looked brand-spanking-new. It was a complete mystery to me. He either bought new ones all the time or it was some secret of Rula’s, our longtime housekeeper who Mom and Dad shared after they split. It was his one fashion statement. “Why not get it over with, that way you’ll have the whole weekend free in front of you.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, unwinding some more yarn from the ball.

“What are you doing?”

“Crocheting,” I said.

“Crocheting what?” He went toward the cluster of plants in the corner, arranged as precisely as a landscaped garden, and stood over each with his brass watering can.

“A scarf, it’s just practice. I just learned.”

“No kidding,” he said, looking up at the sculpted bust of the headless, armless woman in the corner. He’d bought it at an antique show, and whenever I looked at it, I wondered if Dad secretly hated women. “I’m all for hobbies where you’re actually making something. People don’t make things anymore. But start your homework soon, okay? How’s it going? Any tests this week?”

I told him I got a B-plus on a geometry quiz I’d taken that Monday.

“Where does that leave you?” he asked, setting the watering can down and balling his hands into fists at his sides. “Where does that leave your average?”

“I’m in good shape, don’t worry.”

“You’re sticking with that idiotic plan of yours?” he blurted, his metal eyeglass frames catching the light as he flinched in disgust. I’d applied early decision to NYU, which had effectively snuffed out his dreams of my attending Wesleyan for good.

“My idiotic plan?” I asked, stopping what I was doing to glare at him. He was completely incapable of editing himself. It was like thoughts came into his head and he would vomit them out without thinking about how the other person might react. Mom said he had Asperger’s syndrome, that it just hadn’t been diagnosed.

“I’m sorry,” he said flatly, plucking a dead leaf off the rubber tree plant he’d had forever. “I’m just really, really disappointed.”

“NYU is a great school and it’s the perfect fit for me,” I said, borrowing lingo from Ms. Weiss, my college counselor at school. “If they ding me, then I’ll apply everywhere else. It’s a waste of time, pursuing other schools right now.”

“Well, I couldn’t disagree more,” he said, tossing the dead leaf angrily into the wastebasket by his leather chair. “You did yourself a huge disservice, not leaving your options open.” He sat down in his leather swivel chair and started opening mail, the sharp sound of ripping envelopes cutting through the thick silence. I focused intently on my hook, torn between explaining to him, calmly and coolly, how carefully I’d thought about applying to NYU, and telling him to go screw himself for being his usual jackass self.

I looked at the photograph of
Mixed Nuts
, his beloved sonar racing boat, on the bookshelf. Ever since I was a tiny thing, Dad had found countless ways to demean me via sailing. When I was four, he took me out on his boat and tried to teach me how to read the wind. “It’s there, Thea, you have to pay attention,” he said again and again, flailing his arms in frustration. “Pay attention.” But the wind was completely lost to me. I couldn’t see it, only the menacing August jellyfish dotting the water and our big, brown shingled house gone all Shrinky-Dink from afar. When I started sailing lessons, he bet me I couldn’t get to the nun in the harbor a half a mile from our house, so of course I had to try. I got to the nun easily, but getting back took hours. Every so often, Dad would emerge on the lawn and watch with binoculars, as passively as if he were watching TV. I sailed the boat to the end of the bluff, my hands blistering from gripping the lines, then diagonally back toward the house, over and over, telling myself I was making progress.

“Why couldn’t you get in the dinghy and help me?” I asked when I finally made it in, freezing from my still-wet suit yet burning with rage.

He lowered the paper he was reading and looked up at me, as if he’d just realized where I’d been. “You’re going to have to get in a whole lot quicker than that, kiddo, if you ever want to race with me.”

That’s how life was with him, I thought, seething as he crumpled up paper and tossed it into his basket. My potential was the only interesting thing about me. If there was something to be achieved—winning a sailing race, getting into Stuyvesant, getting a high grade—count on Dad to swoop in, demanding dedication and results. Otherwise, I wasn’t worth his time.

I went to the kitchen and looked in the fridge for something for dinner. There was Old Amsterdam Gouda wrapped in wax paper in the drawer, just like at Mom’s. I made grilled cheese sandwiches with an overripe tomato and we had them on our laps in the living room. He ate his while I squeezed mine and tore it apart, feeling sick from imagined pregnancy symptoms. Part of me was afraid he’d be able to discern my potential problem just by looking at me, and I got a shiver down my spine at the thought of him finding out.

“So when is the turkey coming?” I asked.

“Tomorrow morning, between nine and eleven,” he answered, not looking up from his paper.

“Do you think they’ll drown it in rosemary bushels again?” I asked. Thanksgiving always came from some herb-crazy caterer uptown, which we joked about every year.

“I don’t know, Thea,” he said lifelessly. He could go
forever without talking. When I was younger, I’d sit in the living room with him, and the silence compared to Mom’s chatting actually confused me. But that night I could tell he wasn’t talking because he was still pissed off about college. I picked up the empty plate from his lap and went to my room for the rest of the night.

“I wish the weekend weren’t over,” Will said on the phone Sunday night. “Four days without you. Sucky.”

“I know,” I said, telling myself I wouldn’t mention the potential problem until I knew for sure what the deal was. “I’m so sick of Dad, I can’t wait to get out of here.”

“Uh-oh, what happened?”

“Nothing specific,” I said. “Wait, that’s not true. Let’s see, I spent Thanksgiving morning making these hors d’oeuvre–y things he likes, or at least I thought he liked.”

“What did you make?”

“Devils on horseback,” I said. “Mom made them for parties all the time when I was little and he would devour them.” I remembered hearing her heels clomping restlessly around the kitchen as she filled the hors d’oeuvre tray with olives and toothpicks. Mom was always really animated when she threw parties. When it was just me and Dad, she was bored. “But when Dad’s guests came on Thanksgiving, I put the hors d’oeuvres out and he wouldn’t touch them. The pudgy trader guy and his wife ate all of them. When I mentioned that Dad
used to eat entire plates of them when Mom made them, he glared at me as though I’d insulted him. ‘Well, that was then, Thea.’ I swear I can’t win with him. You’re lucky your parents are still together.”

“My dad says divorce is overrated,” Will said.

“He’s right!” I said.

“Yeah, but it sort of sounds like he’s considered it as an option.” He laughed. “Parents.”

“Parents,” I said.

“What else?” he asked. “Did I mention I wish you were here?”

I threw the blankets off and sat up. “Will, I’m scared,” I said, immediately wishing I’d waited. “I think I might be pregnant.”

“What? We’ve been on the phone this whole time and you don’t say anything until now?”

“I wasn’t going to say anything until I took a test.”

“You’re on the pill!”

“I know, but it can still happen. Remember when I stayed up there a few weeks ago? I skipped it that day,” I said.

“That was one pill!” he said.

“Well, I’m probably just late,” I said, remembering that Vanessa’s cousin had done the same thing—skipped one pill—and gotten pregnant. There was a long silence. A door slammed on his end.

“I almost wish you hadn’t told me. How am I going to sleep?”

“Sorry,” I snapped. “Don’t worry. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, I’ll take care of it. It’s not your problem.”

“It’s not my problem? Of course it is.”

“Well, it’s not even a problem yet. I’m just a little worried.”

“In a way it’d be cool,” he said.

“What would?”

“Having it,” he said.

I heard Dad walk by my door on the way to his bedroom and turn out the light. “What do you mean?” I whispered.

“I don’t know. I know we can’t. It’s just nice to think about. A little green-eyed G-Rock baby, rockin’ the bridge.”

“It’s late,” I said, lying down and pulling the covers back up. I looked at the ceiling and found the streaks of light shining in from the building across the street. They formed a distorted face across the beams—eyes, nose and straight, mean mouth. She looked like a mean queen.

“Call me tomorrow,” he said. “It’s going to be okay, okay?”

I waited until Monday morning to take the test at school, a weird place to do it, but I thought taking it there would make it less likely to come out positive. I was wrong.

Debbie Marshall was on the phone with her mother outside the stall as I was waiting to look at the stick. The volume was so high I could hear both sides of the conversation. She was telling her mother how all the seniors liked her, and how she was the only freshman invited to the holiday dance. I saw
the lines the same moment Debbie’s mom cackled that the only reason they liked Debbie was because of her “big booty butt.”

I stepped out of the stall and breathed the cold air coming through the crack in the window. All I could think was, Where would it sleep? My room at Mom’s was tiny. Dad had carved it out of the living room when I was two and they’d decided I should have my own room. It was hard getting me to sleep in there at first. “Daddy had to come in a hundred and fifty times the first few nights to put you back in bed,” Mom had said. “It was our fault for keeping you in our room for so long. We were hippies about that one particular thing.” My room didn’t have real windows, just a couple of glass blocks along the curved side of the wall to let in light from the living room. Babies needed windows. Air.

It would be easier in Vanessa’s room, I thought. She had a deep closet you could fit a crib into, if you took off the sliding doors. I had a closet at Dad’s but not in my room at home. Just an armoire. Mom had made this stripy pattern all over it with a comb when the paint was wet. There was the armoire and my bed, which took up the whole wall on one side. My desk stuck out along the wall across from it. I had to walk sideways in between my desk and my bed because the pile of clothes on my chair would fall off if I walked straight. I thought, We could build a loft bed, where I’m on top, and the baby’s in a little crib underneath. That’s the only way it could fit. Or we could not build a loft bed and I could get an abortion.

I left the bathroom to find Vanessa. She was in homeroom and I wasn’t supposed to go in there. Mr. Scarpinato eyed me like I was going to start an insurrection.

“It’s an emergency,” I whispered, and for some reason he let me pull her into the corner.

“What?” she asked.

“I’m pregnant.”

“No!” she said, her smile catching me off guard. It made me smile too.

“Yes.”

“Have you told him?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay, well, do that, and we’ll figure out the rest.” She looked out the window, thinking. “We can find out who Jamie’s doctor was.” Jamie was her cousin in New Jersey who’d had an abortion a year earlier. “I’ll call her.”

I ran my finger along the radiator dust, picturing Jamie, her red hair falling off the sides of a doctor’s table, her freckly, pointy knees sticking up in the air. I looked at Vanessa, who was watching me with her arms folded. “What the hell?” I said, shaking my head at her.

“Don’t worry,” she said, grasping my shoulders. People were staring at us. “We’ll figure it out.”

Mr. Scarpinato cleared his throat, pulled a piece of chalk out of his brown polyester pants and started writing on the blackboard for his next class.

I went back to the bathroom to call Will.

“So, yeah,” I said.

“No way,” he said. “What do we do?” Any trace of wistfulness in his voice from the night before had vanished.

“We’re finding a doctor.”

“Well, I’ll go with you.”

“No,” I blurted. “It’s okay. Vanessa’s going to come.” I knew right away I had to keep him out of it. In the back of my
head I worried that any shared downer experience would be dangerous for us, and I couldn’t have that. I hung up, stuck my phone in my jeans pocket and stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, the new me.

I sped out of Dad’s house that night like it was any other night and I’d just spent the weekend there instead of ten days. I’d told Will, and now I had to tell Mom.

“See you Wednesday?” I called from the door.

“See you Wednesday,” Dad answered from his leather chair in the living room, where he was surrounded by piles of paper he’d dragged home. Mom used to pick up his briefcase and call him “the brick salesman.” I could tell he was hoping for a little more departure fanfare—a hug, for example—but I wasn’t up to it.

Mom was unpacking when I got home.

“So how was it?” I sat on the love seat next to her bed.

“We had a great time,” she said. “It’s a beautiful area. We’ll go when you’re old enough to drink.”

She threw me a couple of blouses, catching my eyes for the first time. “Can you throw those in the dry cleaning? How are you? How was Daddy’s?”

“Okay.”

“I love Beryl,” she said. “She’s a bit over the top and socially ambitious, the complete opposite of me. But she’s good on trips.”

“You met people.”

“We met people, no one earth-shattering, other single type-As, mostly from New York.”

She circled the bed, arranging piles, pouring shoes out of bags, not yet ready to stop moving. I knew I was about to catapult her back here, home, where she didn’t really want to be.

“I don’t know why I brought these.” She licked her thumb and wiped a smudge off a strappy grape sandal.