Rules for Life (5 page)

When I stepped back inside I heard the toilet flush in the upstairs bathroom. In a minute Anne started down the stairs. She was green. Lima bean green, and her lipstick was gone. Another one of my mom's rules popped into my head:
A smile and the correct red lipstick can take off five years
.
I was pretty sure Anne didn't want to hear that. She held onto the railing as though the stairs were rocking under her like a boat. She looked like someone who had just puked her guts out.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I'm not sure,” she said. She tried to smile, but it was mostly just lips stretching. “I think I caught something. It can't be anything I ate. I've hardly eaten all day.”

I backed up a few steps. I didn't want to catch whatever germ she had.

Dad suddenly appeared beside me. “Anne, what's wrong?” he asked. He reached out to touch her. She wrapped one arm around her stomach and waved him back with the other hand.

“It's just my stomach, Marc,” she said.

“Do you need a doctor? Can I get you anything? Do you want to lie down for a while?” I'd never seen my father make so much fuss over someone heaving her cookies. A thought began to buzz in my head, like a mosquito hovering around my ear.

Anne shook her head. “I'd just like to go home.”

“Okay, I'll take you.” Dad's hands hovered all around Anne.

I stood there and listened as the car drove away and my own stomach slowly sank to the floor.
No way
, a voice in my head kept saying.
No way
. I grabbed my bag, fumbled in the bottom for my keys and used them to lock the front door behind me.

I started walking, faster even than I usually went. I could hear the blood rushing in my ears, or maybe it was the ocean.

10

Rafe was out running. The entire hockey team was out running up hills and through the trees in Ashburn Park. Cross-training. Jennie Watkins told me.

Great. Why couldn't he be chasing a puck up and down the rink? Or working on surreptitiously hooking someone's skate blade with his stick? Or even practicing his “Who me?” face for the referee?

I needed Rafe. I needed someone to tell me I was wrong— small-minded, suspicious and wrong.

Lisa wasn't around either. She was at the radio station doing something for Sean, her stepfather.

I watched Jennie run the stairs at the gym, from the floor to the nosebleed section, working a wad of gum like some bionic cow chewing its cud. And I actually had the wild idea, for a second, that I could talk to her. I mean, I've known Jennie since first grade. Back then she used to chew little bits of newspaper with flour-and-water paste when we did papier-mâché.

The idea disappeared faster than my warm breath in the cold gym air. We weren't that kind of friends.

I could have just gone home, waited around and talked to Dad. Let him see the slimy, suspicious thing inside me. That thought hung around a lot longer, but then it stretched out to nothing. I couldn't talk to him. Not because there was a chance I might be wrong, but because I was pretty sure I was right.

I heard Jason before I saw him. I stopped on the sidewalk and let people move past as the music came toward me. It was just Jason's voice and his guitar, and for maybe the millionth time I thought how beautiful his music was.

He was usually in front of the downtown liquor store on Friday. The manager had run Jason off the sidewalk three times and threatened to have him arrested. Then people coming into the store on Fridays started asking where Jason was. Now he sat right next to the doors.

There were maybe fifteen or so people listening to him, all stockbroker–investment-banking types that worked in the office building next to the liquor store. I knew he wouldn't stop until he was ready, but I edged around until I was standing in his line of sight. He finished one song and went right into another. All I got was that Mr. Spock from the old-time
Star Trek
thing he does with one eyebrow. He's such an asshole sometimes. Jason, I mean.

When he was finished, everyone clapped, even me. Most of them dropped something in Jason's guitar case. There was at least as much paper money as there were coins.

I walked over to him. “Good day?” I asked as he shoved the bills into one pocket and everything else into the other.

He shrugged. “Not bad. What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“What about?”

“Dad.”

Jason snapped the last clasp on the guitar case and stood up. “So what did he do now? Did he and chickie-poo elope or something?”

“Her name is Anne,” I said. “Jason, I just need to talk to you.”

“I need something to drink first,” he said.

I flinched. I couldn't help it.

“Jesus, Izzy. Coffee. I need some coffee and something to eat. I didn't have any lunch.” Jason leaned forward and exhaled in my face. “See, nothing but the evils of bad breath.” He picked up the guitar case. “C'mon. Let's go to Casey's. I don't want to hump this thing any farther than I have to.”

He handed me his backpack and I slipped it over one shoulder. We headed down the street to Casey's Diner.

“Hey, is this about the bed?”

“It's not about the bed.” I hiked the backpack up a little higher. It was heavy and something clinked inside. “What's in here?” I said.

“Stuff for my kids' class. We're making musical instruments. Drums, shakers, things like that.”

“You like it?”

“You mean the class? Yeah.” He stopped for a second and switched the guitar to his other hand. “Little kids, they don't care about keeping perfect time or being in tune. All they care about is making lots of noise and having fun.”

We were at the diner then. It was almost empty. Jason slid into a booth against the wall and set his guitar case on the floor. I sat across from him.

A waitress appeared and set a cup of coffee in front of Jason. “The usual?” she asked.

“Please,” he said. He gave her that smile he does, the one that could make a woman on her deathbed sit up and shave her pits. It's worked on every woman Jason's ever met. Except Mom. And me. I guess if you were related to him you had some kind of genetic immunity.

The waitress had to be at least fifty, and I swear she was blushing when she turned to me. “What can I get you?” she said.

“Large fries with extra gravy and a large milk,” Jason said.

“Small milk,” I said, giving him a squinty-eyed glare. Maybe I didn't have a smile that made people drool, but I did a great glare.

Jason slouched against the green vinyl seat. “So, what's going on?”

As soon as I said it, it wouldn't be a “maybe” idea floating in my head anymore. It would be real. Or at least a real suspicion. I took a deep breath and then I just said the words. “I think Anne's pregnant.”

“Holy shit,” Jason said. Then he started to laugh.

Now I'd finally said it out loud, I had to say all of it. “She was at the house when they were moving the bed and stuff. Except she was upstairs puking.” Jason was still laughing. “Will you stop that,” I snapped.

He took a gulp of coffee. “Sorry. It's just that Dad's always been paranoid I'd knock up some girl and now
he
has.” He couldn't get rid of the smirk. “Though I suppose it could be the flu or something.”

“I don't think so. When we went to dinner she didn't have any of the wine.”

“There are other reasons people don't drink, Izzy.”

“But Dad must have told her about you … and stuff. If she'd had a problem, wouldn't she say so?”

“Nah, sometimes we just do the secret addict handshake with each other and leave it at that.”

The waitress showed up then with our food. The French fries were homemade, nearly floating in rich, brown gravy. I grabbed one and let the gravy drip onto my tongue before I shoved it in my mouth. It was almost as good as when Rafe slid his tongue in my mouth.

I picked up my fork.
Fingers do not belong in your nose or on your plate. Rule #9
. Or maybe it was
Rule #10
.

Jason's usual turned out to be a hot chicken sandwich with a side of coleslaw. For a few minutes we just ate. Then Jason said, “What if she is pregnant? It's not the worst thing in the world.”

“What if she did it on purpose, so he'd have to marry her?”

Jason set down his fork. “She didn't ‘do it' by herself. And it's not 1963, Izzy. They don't have to get married.” He pushed his plate away and leaned against the back of the booth again. “Maybe she is pregnant. Maybe they planned it. Maybe it was an accident. Accidents happen. You have been paying attention in sex ed, haven't you?”

“I've known about sex since I was six,” I said. “I'm the one who explained it to you.”

“So you know protective garments have been known to fail,” Jason said. “Anyway, all you have to do is wait for a few months and then you'll know one way or the other.”

“I don't want to wait for six months or nine months or whatever until Dad says, ‘Here's your baby brother or sister.' I want to know now.” I pushed my own plate aside. The last few fries were soggy.

“Okay, so they're getting married because she's pregnant, not because Dad wanted someone to talk to. That should make you feel better.”

“Well, it doesn't.”

“C'mon, Dad has to have learned something from having you and me. Maybe he won't screw it up.” Jason stretched his arm along the back of the booth. “What's that saying? Third time lucky.”

“More like here we go again,” I muttered.

“Anyway, look at it this way. Dad will be so busy with a new wife and a new kid you'll be able to do whatever you want.”

I thought about leaning across the tabletop and jamming my fork right in the middle of Jason's forehead. “You mean I'm going to start acting like you?” I said instead.

He gave me a snarky look. “You? The perfect child starts acting like Jason the screwup? Right, like that'll happen.”

“I'm not trying to be perfect, Jason,” I said, working to keep my voice down when what I really wanted was to scream at him. “I'm just trying to keep Dad from doing something I know is going to be a disaster. You know, it wouldn't kill you to think about someone else besides yourself once in a while.”

He laughed. “I couldn't do that. I'm too selfish to do anything like that. Anyway, it gives you the chance to look even better because I'm such a bad boy.”

I stood up. This was stupid.

“Hey, Izzy, don't get mad. Where are you going?”

“I'm not mad.” And I wasn't, really. I'd stopped getting mad at Jason about the tenth time I'd found myself sitting beside him on the bathroom floor while he woofed his cookies, holding on to him so he wouldn't pitch headfirst into the toilet bowl and drown.

I pulled on my jacket, found a ten in my bag and set it on the table.

“You don't have to do that,” Jason said. But he didn't push the money back at me.

If I wanted to know whether Anne was pregnant, I had to ask someone who knew. And I couldn't see myself stopping by her apartment to say, “So, are you knocked up?”

Dad was the only person I could talk to. Appropriate or not.

11

The house was empty when I got home. I grabbed a handful of chocolate chip cookies—the last ones from the batch Mrs. Mac made to celebrate Rafe fixing her oven. I didn't really want them, but I lay with my feet against the back of the sofa and my head on the floor and ate them anyway. I cranked up the stereo until the loose pane of glass in the antique wooden cabinet on the wall above the right speaker just barely started to rattle.

I looked over at my mother's picture in the middle of the mantel. It had been taken out at the lake the fall before she died. She was squinting a bit into the sun, but she had that smile she always seemed to have, sort of like she had a secret, but if you came and sat down beside her she'd share it with you.

“You would know what to do,” I said to the picture. Then I felt dumb because, number one, I was talking to a picture, and number two, if my mom had been here, none of this would've been happening.

Finally Dad came in. I pulled my legs down off the back of the sofa, sat up and aimed the remote at the stereo to ease down the sound. “Hi,” I said. “Is Anne okay?”

“She's all right,” he said. He sighed and looked at his watch. “I'm going to order a pizza. I don't feel like cooking.”

“Sure. How about the vegetarian with bacon?”
You're
stalling
, a little voice said in my head.

“It's not a vegetarian if it has bacon,” he said. He always said that.

“I know,” I said. “But if you order the vegetarian and get them to put on the bacon, you get more vegetables.” I always said that.

Dad shook his head and reached for the phone. “Call me when it gets here,” he said when he'd hung up. He stuck a twenty under the edge of the telephone and started for the stairs.

Do it
, the voice said. “Dad?”

“Yeah?” He half turned, but he was still moving toward the steps.

“Is there anything I should know?” That was so lame I realized as soon as the words were out.

Dad at least had enough guilty conscience to get a little red in the face. “What do you mean?” he asked. Which wasn't what he should have said.

Was this how it was going to be with Anne in our lives? No one saying exactly what they meant? No way was I letting that happen.

“Is Anne pregnant?” Couldn't get any more exact than that.

He swung around. “I thought you might figure it out.” At least he wasn't trying to lie.

“Well the puking up was a dead giveaway.”

Dad sat on the edge of the rocking chair by the fireplace.

“Were you going to tell me?” I asked. “Or were you going to wait until the baby got here and tell me it was one of those happy-face-price-rollback deals at Wal-Mart?”