The Whole Golden World (14 page)

She thought of Joe then like a distant male cousin. Nice enough, that was all. But then he went back to college and every day she went into Monetti's and Joe wasn't there, her heart hurt.

He came back over Thanksgiving and confessed he'd missed her every day. Their first kiss was in the alley behind Monetti's, next to the Dumpster.

They'd had to close the place when his dad died and none of the kids had the ability to take it, and no buyers wanted to carry it forward. Dinah had cried harder when they closed the place up than she had at Mr. Monetti's funeral, rest his soul.

She leaned against the doorjamb of their little house together, pondering all those intervening years. They fell in love accidentally, when they weren't looking. Could you fall out of love accidentally, too? Sure, she answered herself. Love is hard to find and easy to lose, same as anything small and precious.

Dinah climbed in next to him and gently squeezed his arm in case he was perhaps half awake, and then at least they could share a New Year's kiss. Joe simply turned over in his sleep to face the wall.

22

M
organ moved through the party with the mindlessness of a shark. Rumbling bass from the speakers seemed to vibrate the whole house. Most of the lights were off, though a few table lamps were still lit, and the kitchen—where the keg was, along with Solo cups and some liquor and fruit juice—was a bright halo of light, a beacon of substance abuse for the young and indestructible. Dark shapes clutching each other filled her peripheral vision, and now and then a high-pitched screech of laughter cut through the generic rap-thumping coming from somewhere.

Morgan could care less about any of it, but it was better than popcorn balls at home with her parents and idiot brothers. She was supposed to be spending the night with Britney.

Morgan only wanted to be with
him,
but they couldn't make it work.

It was just too hard for him to find a reason to be away on a holiday. As it was, they'd nearly had a disaster Christmas Day when Morgan had sent him a few texts and the phone vibrated under his wife's hand.

At first when he called her, she almost exploded with joy and delight. She'd run upstairs on the pretense of needing the bathroom immediately, only to hear him scolding her as soon as she picked up.

“You can't keep texting me today,” he'd hissed.

“I wanted you to know I was thinking of you.” Her voice came out as a pathetic bleat.

“Not on Christmas. And not so often.”

Morgan had tightened her fist so hard she wondered if her palms might bleed from the indent of her nails. “As you wish,” she'd said, suddenly remembering that was from
The Princess Bride.

Then he'd softened his voice. “We'll see each other soon,” he assured her. And just before he hung up, “I'm thinking of you, too.”

Morgan waved off a random guy's offer to refresh her beer. She doubted all those hysterical stories about date rape drugs in someone's drink were actually true, but all the same, she preferred to be in control of her own consumption. She'd seen what happened to girls who constantly let guys top off their drinks. They behaved like lunatics until they passed out with puke in their hair, or disappeared with some guy in the back room and came out with their clothes on all crazy, not remembering a bit of it.

No one needed a date rape drug with enough booze around, really.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and prepared to tell the guy to get lost and found herself looking up at Ethan.

He bent down to her ear. “Can we talk?”

She rolled her eyes and looked away.

“Please,” he said. “I really want to talk to you.”

The bass throbbed in rhythm with a fresh pain in her temple. And Britney—who she'd been talking to for a while anyway—had gone off somewhere.

“Fine,” she shouted, and led the way upstairs.

This house—she wasn't even sure whose house it was—had many bedrooms. It was one of the fancier homes in town, along the border to the park. They had to pass several locked doors before they found an unused room. There was a bed, but no sheets or pillows. Some boxes were stacked with a dust cloth over them. No curtains on the windows. A corkboard was mostly empty except for a varsity letter and a snapshot dangling from a thumbtack in one corner. A streetlight outside poured a faint glow into the room, and neither Ethan nor Morgan moved to find a light switch.

She settled on the edge of the bed, choosing a side where her scar would be facing away.

Ethan settled next to her. “I'm worried about you.”

She looked at the floor and shrugged. He didn't know anything about her. None of them did.

“You don't seem like you, lately.”

“What would you know about it? We haven't even talked since I threw myself at you in the most pathetic crush confession ever, which by the way, thanks for making me relive that tonight. Feels awesome.”

“I see you in the hall. I watch for you when I know I'm going to see you, because I miss you lots. And you always look sad. And tired.”

“Okay, first? If you weren't gay, that might be romantic, but now it just sounds creepy. Second, you can't tell about someone just by staring at them. What, you think you were so critical to my health and well-being that I'm rotting away without you?”

“I didn't mean it like that.”

“I don't know how you meant it then. I'm seeing someone, actually. And I'm really happy.”

“You don't look so happy.”

“I'm tired. I'm having trouble sleeping. But I am happy, and I don't have anything to prove.”

“Why are you so mad at me?”

Morgan slumped. He hadn't done anything wrong; he was just being thoughtful, the same way he'd always been. “I'm not. I'm feeling awkward, that's all. And tired. And wondering where the hell Britney went.”

“I saw her go upstairs with a guy.”

“Not David?” David was on vacation in Florida with his family.

“Apparently not. When the cat's away, I guess.”

Morgan snorted. “Maybe they're not having sex. Maybe they're only getting high.” She laughed through a sneer. “I just hope she doesn't abandon me here. I don't want to drive home in the middle of the night, not after this especially.” She gestured with her cup, which she still held in her hand.

“You could stay at my place. I'd tell my folks your ride ditched you.”

“You're not drinking, yourself?”

“Nah.”

Morgan chewed on her lower lip. There was only one place she wanted to be, and it was closed off to her as sure as a medieval castle, complete with moat and alligators.

Ethan nudged her. “It's not as if I'm going to seduce you.”

It was a joke, but it only brought her back to that moment again, with her poetry book lying open exposing every sick thing she was, her lips aiming for his face, his startled recoil.

Morgan stood up roughly, sloshing some of her beer on the floor. She set it down, just as the rhythmic countdown to midnight began downstairs.

“Morgan—” Ethan said, and as she turned, she saw that he'd stood up. He was holding his arms out to her. The countdown grew louder and more frenzied.

She yanked open the door and flew down the hall, down the stairs and through the crush of people to the living room.

At the unified “Happy New Year!” a random guy reached for her and plastered her face with his lips, scruffy face, and tongue. She shoved him away and found her winter coat on the back of a sofa where she'd left it, only with a beer spill down the back.

She bolted out the door of the house.

Morgan trudged along the walk, hearing shouts and revelry from the houses, porches, and streets.

It was too far to walk home. Driving seemed like a bad idea now, and anyway, her car was parked in. The plan had been to walk to Britney's, which was only a few blocks away, and get her car in the morning.

Morgan texted her:

Can we go now? Bored.

She was surprised and relieved by the rapid text back.

Yeah, gimme a sec. Where r u?

Walking. Halfway to your house.

Wait, I'll catch up.

Morgan went to Facebook on her phone and left a falsely cheery update in case her mom checked. “Happy New Year! So excited for 2012 and graduation!” She almost added a “woo hoo” but decided that would be out of character and pushing her luck.

She went to his Facebook. He had no information publicly visible, but he did have a handsome profile picture. That jaw, those mischievous eyes. She sighed. That's when she noticed the picture was cropped from a larger one, and she could glimpse resting on his shoulder a slim feminine hand, and a diamond wedding ring.

She shut off Facebook and peered down the street to wait for Britney.

In a few minutes, Britney skipped down the sidewalk, her hair out behind her like a sail, her breath puffing out ahead of her in delicate clouds.

“Hey!” she said as she caught up. In the streetlight, Morgan could see her cheeks were flushed pink, and her makeup was smeared.

Britney linked her arm through Morgan's and started skipping. Morgan had not been drinking the rum and Cokes like her friend had been and did not join her in the skipping. In fact, she was feeling tired from the beer, not to mention the previous evening's nightmare that kept her up half the night, the classic “scar eats Morgan's head” version.

Morgan often thought such a repetitive dream should lose its power. If only.

Britney was ebullient. Morgan spelled ebullient in her head, just for something to do.

“So, David is out of favor?” she asked.

Britney stopped, pulling on Morgan's arm. “Why, you want him back?” She winked, just playing, or so it seemed.

“Hardly. I'm through with high school boys.”

Britney started up again, this time walking. “Well, ooh la la, college girl.”

“What are you doing after graduation?”

Britney tipped her head so far back Morgan caught her arm so she wouldn't fall. “Oh, who cares!” she shouted up to the sky, shrouded in clouds and dark. “Don't act like my mom on New Year's.”

“I don't care what you do. I was just asking.”

“Okay, then I'll tell you. First? I'm going to get so drunk I can't stand up. Then I'm going to get a job at Aeropostale or something where I can get a clothing discount and fold T-shirts. Then maybe I'll go to community college so my mom will shut up about what I'm going to do with my life. And I'm going to be happy. Isn't that simple? Maybe that's the secret to happiness, Morgan. Being simple.”

Britney giggled and laid her head on Morgan's shoulder.

It couldn't be that easy, nothing ever was. But Morgan also knew she was goddamn tired of being complicated.

23

O
n a snowy January Tuesday, Rain did something she'd never before done. She'd lied to Beverly by calling in sick.

Rain turned the radio to NPR on the drive to Dr. Gould's, hoping that stories of atrocities and natural disasters would keep her mind on the road, and not the day to come.

She parked the car and drifted to the doorway of the clinic; once inside, she perched gingerly on the end of a chair, nodding to the receptionist, who made a note on a chart and knew exactly why she was there.

She'd chosen a chair facing what was labeled the “Success Wall.” Dozens, maybe hundreds, of baby photos festooned the bulletin board opposite her. There were photos of wrinkled specimens in hospital-issued blankets and cherubic toddlers with first-birthday cake on their faces. Every one of them a baby helped into the world by Dr. Gould and her colleagues.

Some days, Rain would choose a seat facing away. Today, she wanted to believe in possibility.

She hadn't told TJ she was here. He had not inquired about the particulars of the cycle after he'd performed his part, and she hadn't volunteered, because this time she wanted time to absorb what the verdict was, before having to anticipate and manage his reaction.

He'd just assumed she'd gone to work, and really, that's where she was supposed to be.

“Rain?” the nurse said, peeking around the door. “We're ready for you.”

Rain was rolling up her sleeve before she even sat down.

Her name was Marta, and she knew better than to discuss the particulars of this morning's blood test. Marta, Rain knew, would act as if this blood test were nothing, just another test to monitor her various hormones.

They would never call it a pregnancy test, even though it was now well past the insemination, and now was the time.

Marta tied the tourniquet. Rain used to look away for the poke, but now she'd become inured. She watched the needle slide in, though today she did let out a small gasp. The pinch seemed harder today.

“Sorry,” Marta muttered, frowning at the needle.

“Oooh, ouch,” Rain said, now turning away as Marta had to dig around.

“I'm so sorry, honey, this happens sometimes, the veins can be tricky, so sorry . . . Ah. There.”

Rain relaxed and could almost feel her blood spurt into the little vial.

“Are you okay?” Marta asked, pulling the needle out and putting the square of gauze on the tiny wound. Rain held it in place for her without being asked, as Marta turned to grab a piece of medical tape to stick on it. “You seem pale.”

“I'm a little light-headed.”

Marta patted her hand. “I'm so sorry about that; usually your veins are so easy. Let me drop this off, and I'll be back with a cup of juice. Take your time.”

Marta left her in the room, and Rain put her head in her hand. She never felt faint over this. It seemed like an ill omen.

Her attention was pricked by a groaning sound from somewhere else in the clinic. As it grew in volume she recognized it as a keening of grief and trauma. Someone had just gotten some dire news. No heartbeat in the embryo, perhaps. Dr. Gould continued to see patients through the first weeks of pregnancy, so it could be a success story reversing itself. Or maybe someone's eggs were in poor shape and the couple had just learned they could not continue trying. There was no shortage of ways for this dream to be dashed.

Marta returned with juice, casting a discomforted glance behind her at the continued wail. “I'm sorry if that upsets you. I wish it could be a happy ending every time.”

Rain accepted the juice and checked the bandage over her needle's poke. “I wish no one ever needed this place at all.”

Marta nodded and then pulled the door shut against the sight of a woman, now quietly weeping, walking past them under her husband's protective arm.

 

When Rain returned home after a stop for breakfast and a newspaper, she checked the clock and groaned. Eleven o'clock. She knew by now that the lab results took at least until 2:30 to come back. Then she'd get a call on her cell, but until then she faced hours of waiting in a quiet house.

Her cell phone rang. She startled with a conditioned panic response, despite her higher brain functions realizing there's no way she could get any news yet.

She glanced down and saw her parents' house number. She let it roll to voice mail rather than face whatever fake drama there was now. Since Brock had endured one frightening but ultimately harmless febrile seizure, Fawn had become a master of paranoid panic attacks, which for some reason they felt compelled to share with Rain, as if she were the only one capable of searching “green poop” on WebMD.

Rain walked to the bathroom, and on entering, sighed with irritation at the used-up toilet paper roll. TJ was getting so absentminded lately, forgetting to gas up the car, neglecting to pay the credit card bill until a second notice and late fee. Maybe this was how the pressure of fertility treatment was getting to him.

Or maybe he was just getting lazy in his thirties about those small acts of courtesy like changing out the toilet paper.

Rain reached under the bathroom sink for a spare roll, and a box drew her attention.

A pregnancy test.

They often came in sets of two. Here was the one left over from the box she'd bought in that last fit of optimism, months ago now.

Another conditioned response—had she become Pavlov's dog?—she had to pee. Badly.

She could get her answer right now. Thanks to modern science and Dr. Gould, she knew down to the exact hour when sperm and egg met—plenty of time had passed for her body to start churning out hormones if one of those sperm really had burst through this time, if the cells had been dividing all along.

Images danced in Rain's head of what those early embryos looked like, as she'd been shown by Dr. Gould way back when during an orientation meeting. Then she remembered the drama of that last test. It was unclear, and there had been giddy joy, then the crush of failure. She'd vowed only to trust the final, definitive blood test answer. Just a few hours, she told herself. She could make it a few more hours.

She ran to the kitchen and buried the test deep in the garbage, under the dregs of last night's dinner.

After going to the bathroom—feeling oddly victorious that she'd done so without peeing on a stick—she picked up her cell phone to call her mother back. She had to get out of the house before she lost her goddamn mind.

 

An hour later, Rain pulled her VW Bug up to her childhood home, where the door stood wide open in the January air, despite their heating bills, despite the presence of an infant in the house who could catch a chill.

Gran would have said, “Close the door, you weren't born in a barn!”

“Hi, Mom,” Rain called, stepping over Dog, who raised his head an inch or so, but did not rouse himself to greet her. Rain glanced down at him, sprawled like a dog-shaped throw rug on the floor. “Ingrate. I took you to the vet when you ate all Fawn's candy. And you barfed in my car.”

“Mom!” Rain called again. “Ready for the mall?”

Angie appeared, barefoot, wearing a denim miniskirt like it was summer 1987. She was yawning and applying lip gloss at the same time.

“Did you just get up?”

“Yes, and what's it to you? Hi, honey. Fawn!”

The last was directed to Rain's sister, who lumbered down the steps at being summoned.

Rain flinched away, not meaning to, unable to help her body's physical response to the sight of her single, younger sister and the bald-headed baby she carried in one arm. Rain thought,
Support his head!
But she said nothing out loud, knowing it would only cause a fight and make Fawn even more determined to let little Brock's head flop all around. Once Fawn had shouted at her, “I'm his mother! You're the aunt,” making it sound as if she'd meant “ant,” a tiny pest.

“What?” Fawn said now, rubbing her eyes with her free hand.

“Want some lunch?” their mother asked. “There are toaster waffles in the freezer.”

Grandmotherhood had not improved Angie's cooking skills.

“Your dad's upstairs; can you check on that computer again before we go?” Angie said, scratching an armpit. “Ricky!” she bellowed now, so suddenly Rain jumped. “She's coming up!”

Rain climbed the steps, avoiding the one that felt splintery and unstable beneath the faded stair runner, and found her father in the room that used to be hers and now served as some kind of office or library or workroom or storage room. In any case, it had a computer, which at the moment wasn't working.

“There's my computer guru,” Ricky said, smiling so wide she could see his missing eyetooth. Rain pretended not to notice, but she always did, as soon as she was old enough to realize most people's parents in her town had all their teeth.

“Hardly,” Rain said. But she was the closest thing her parents had to an expert on hand, and what she knew, TJ had taught her.

“It's running so slow I don't know what all is the problem.” Ricky stood up, his lanky frame nearly filling the space under the eaves where he'd crammed the old plasterboard desk.

Rain clicked around to start defragging the hard drive, something she could have explained on the phone in about ten seconds, truthfully.

“How are things with Mom?” she asked, eyes on the screen, though there was nothing she really needed to see. Her father was like a skittish mutt sometimes; direct eye contact spooked him.

“You know. Up and down.”

Rain fought the urge to smile at this. Up and down was one way to put it, all right.

Angie and Ricky Davidson believed in free expression to the point of ecstatic kisses in the living room or thrown plates in the kitchen. As of now they both worked at Walmart. Which Rain thought might have been a bad idea, considering Angie could barely stand Ricky when they were in the same house, much less at the same job.

“But anyways. How's my girl?” Ricky asked, and Rain smiled.

“Just fine, Pop.”

She'd once started to confide in her parents about trying to get pregnant, but that only launched Angie on a rambling speech about how she needed to “stop trying so hard” and “let it happen.” Then speculation that perhaps TJ was “firing blanks.”

“There, that should do it,” Rain said. “Don't touch this for a while, okay? Just let it run. It will come up with a little box when it says it's complete, then hit ‘OK.' I'm going to the mall with Mom.”

“Make sure she doesn't take out a second mortgage to buy baby clothes.”

“You got it. Love you.”

Rain headed for the stairs. As she passed the door across from the landing, it swung open to reveal her brother, Stone, pale and thin as a sapling and nothing like his namesake. He was rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Hey, sis, can you help me with—”

“Call me later, okay?” she called over her shoulder, as she ran lightly down the steps, thinking at this rate she might never get out of the house.

Rain squeezed her sister from behind as Fawn smeared her toaster waffles with peanut butter, patted Brock on his fuzzy baby head, then she waved at her mom, who was perched on a kitchen barstool on her cell phone.

“Are we going, or what?”

Angie nodded and carried on her phone conversation as she followed Rain out to the car, then as she went back inside again for something she forgot. Waiting for her mother as she warmed up the VW, Rain recalled her childhood friends' breathy envy the few times they'd come to the house and saw how little her parents cared what she did or where she went. “Wow,” they'd say, “you're so lucky.”

Be careful what you wish for,
she'd answer back, but only silently, already figuring out that to get along you have to go along, letting everyone believe what they wanted to believe if that made them happy to do so.

As they pulled away at last and Angie finally hung up her phone, Rain noticed in her rearview mirror that her mother had left the front door wide open.

 

Angie strolled along next to Rain in the mall, nibbling a soft pretzel and chattering on about some reality show. Though Rain knew Beverly and Layla were both working, and she was not likely to get caught shopping when supposedly sick, her old schoolgirl impulse was to keep looking around for a truant officer or some such thing.

Rain was barely listening. She'd hoped that her mother would be a distraction, hoped that by getting her out of the house she'd have some alone time with her away from Fawn and the baby. On their best days, when Angie wasn't fighting with Ricky or sleeping off a party, they used to enjoy hitting the mall together. It had been Angie who convinced the teenage Rain to get a second ear-piercing up in the cartilage part of her ear. It had hurt like fire and gotten infected and Rain let it close up again. But in that moment they'd been women together, aligned in confederacy of hormones and gender.

Today, she'd chosen a stupid place to escape from thoughts of a baby. It was midday in a shopping mall, right after Christmas, and the place was crawling with mothers pushing strollers and dragging toddlers along to spend gift cards. She should have called Alessia instead and gone to get a pedicure. But then, Alessia was a walking reminder of fertility herself, now that her belly was round and cute.

Angie seized Rain's arm, her ragged red nails scratching Rain's skin. “Oooh! Let's go in there!”

Gymboree.

“Oh, not now, Mom . . .”

Rain pulled back, feeling like a recalcitrant toddler.

“Wait out here if you want, but I've gotta get in there and pick out something for Brocky.”

Rain slumped with resignation and followed her mother in.

She gave in to temptation and checked her phone for the first time since deciding to go out. She'd refused to let herself check the time all through lunch, and until now in their wandering she'd not once looked at any type of clock. She'd even removed her watch before driving to the house to pick up Angie.