Hello Loved Ones (46 page)

“Nell, really! Then both of us would be ruined. I’d be the slut, you’d never be able to go to school, or have a job. Everyone would look down their noses at us!”

“They already do.”

“So why make it worse?”

Nell stood, too agitated to be still. “Sally, I’ve thought this through! You could go away for a while. And, well, I might get married. People would think the baby was mine.”

Sally scoffed. “Who’s going to marry you?”

This was no time to feel hurt. Anyway, it was a good question.

Nell shrugged. “I sort of asked Gizzy.”

Now Sally looked shocked. “Gizzy? The
mailman?
”

Nell nodded, wishing she could enthuse about her upcoming date. Wouldn’t she have liked to share this landmark with her only sister! Cheated again!

“What did he say?”

“He said he wants children.” Nell spread her hands out, as if to say
see? See how this is meant to be?

“Children of his own, not someone else’s.”

“Don’t you think I’d be a good mother?”

“It’s not you. The kid’s whole life would be a lie, just like mine. I can’t do that.” Sally crossed her arms again. Everything about the way she stood, the look on her face, said
leave me alone
. Nell wanted to scream. That’s right! Open up to a near stranger,
bare yourself!
But shut the door on a sister who only wants to talk!

“Sally, please. It could work!”

“I want to go to Hope College. Frannie’s dad is going to get me in.”

“You could still do that. Just later.”

Sally gave a harsh little laugh. “Come on, Nell. You don’t want me to go to college. Just because you haven’t gone, you want to ruin it for me.”

Nell had to bite her tongue.
She
ruined it! Was she in the backseat of a car panting like an animal with a low-life mechanic?

“It’s not about that.”

“Then what is it? You love Gizzy?”

“You’re so immature!” Nell snapped. “You think love is such a big deal?”

Sally gave her a wide-eyed stare. “Yeah.”

“That just shows how childish you are. Anyway, why wouldn’t I love him? What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing. Except a broken leg.”

Nell’s hand slammed the table. “Exactly! And whose fault is that?

“He was in an accident.”

“Like I said, you’re so childish.”

There was a pause while Sally looked at her. Then, in a low, suggestive voice, she said, “In some ways I’m older than you. In fact, in one very big way.”

Nell jumped up. “Anyone can do what you did,” she cried. “The hard part is what comes after.” She thumped her chest. “
I’m
willing to do the hard part.”

“What about
my
hard part? I’d have to deliver it! Then just hand it off. What if I can’t do it?”

They were shouting at each other. Just what Nell didn’t want. She thought of the list she’d worked on so carefully: How to Convince Sally. Number one was
stay calm
. What a waste of time that wretched diary was!

She took a deep breath. “You
can
do it.” she said, more quietly. “Please think about it.”

Sally grew quiet too. At last she heaved a sigh, as if she were giving up. It made Nell freeze, expectant.

“I’m going to Grand Rapids,” Sally said, her gaze level and sure. “It’s for the best. You’ll see.”

She walked out and Nell didn’t try to stop her. She felt as if someone had thrown a blanket over her. A quilt, maybe, each square representing the work she’d willed herself into taking on. Gizzy’s filthy house. His ill-concealed burps. Her fear and fascination surrounding sex. The bedtime stories she was planning to read to Mandy. Little acts of civic duty to impress the local police. The salvation of her sister. Raising a
child
. The temptation to hide, to take cover and ignore all of it, was suddenly too strong. She was giving up.

Lenny

Lenny was not a team player. That’s why none of the scouts wanted him. How they spotted it, he didn’t know. He’d never known how people marked him with just a glance.

Anyway, the way he figured, whatever it was that marked him meant that leaving town was a waste of time. Ever since that day in the bleachers with his dad, he’d known he wasn’t going anywhere. And when Sally told him her doctor visit was going to cost three hundred dollars, well, his old plans were a train leaving the station.

He pulled a sock out of the small chest of drawers that was in his basement room and took out the roll of bills he had hidden inside. Two hundred twenty seven dollars. Six months of working at the marina. He threw all his clothes into a duffel bag, tied a clean bandana on his head, grabbed his Slugger, and pulled the door shut behind him.

It didn’t take long to walk home. He was a little unsure about where to put his things. Should he reclaim his room? Or crash on the couch? The fact that he hesitated bothered him. He no longer knew what to do. He was stepping into the outfield here, with no choice but to wait and see what would come his way.

Once the money was put in an envelope and left on Sally’s bed, he picked up his bat and walked aimlessly back toward the church. He sat on the front steps, across from the Texaco, and studied the sky. It was a brilliant blue day, breezy, with cotton ball clouds tumbling over one another.

He waited. And thought.

Here’s the thing about baseball: it can drag on for hours. Ho hum. Death by boredom. Then comes the crack of the bat. Physics in motion. Some molecular magic sends the ball deep to center field, but someone bobbles it and the second baseman misses the relay throw. Do you turn on the guy because of one error? Do you tear up his trading card? Even if you’re not the greatest team player, you know enough to stick with him. You join the crowd as it roars and comes alive, and who knows? Maybe it’s only that sudden energy, the perked up shoulders and stamping feet, that leads to bases loaded in less than five minutes. Who’s to say what brings about the change? The point is, you can’t ever give up. The optimism is there all along.

Sally

How many hundreds of girls had sat in a car beside their fathers to be driven to a football game, or sleepover, or dance class? How many of those girls had rolled their eyes over the same tired exchange: Drop me here. Not
too
close.

Give me a kiss, hon.

Dad, please!

Little pieces of father-daughter speak that Sally would never know. The same way she could never know that her first time catching a ride with her father would be
this
—going to an abortion. The worst part was that she was dressed like she was going to prom, in a starchy, purpley-pink dress.

“You look nice,” Pastor Voss said after she’d settled herself awkwardly, her skirt balled carelessly in one hand so she could shut the door.

She scowled at him. He couldn’t bother to shave? She thought of Richard and the night of the banquet. At least he had cleaned himself up.

He must have read her look. “Sorry. I’ve been living out of a suitcase.”

Deliberately, she turned her face from him and watched the row of wood A-frame houses sliding away, not wanting to hear anything about where he’d gone or how he was living. When she first heard the news that he had left town, it was like a little trap door in her closing and blocking off a route that, given time, she might have considered taking. But now that she was sitting beside him, she felt only a curious flatness.

“How long until we’re there?” she asked, and even her voice was flat.

He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled loudly. “
Psshew.
About thirty-five minutes, I’d say.”

She waited to see what else he’d say. He remained silent and she tried to fix her mind elsewhere. There was the parking lot of Charlie’s Market, where an old woman struggled in vain to unstick two shopping carts, and a scrappy-looking kid hopped on one foot, holding something smooth and brown in his baseball cap.

You never knew about people. Still, she felt certain that he didn’t like her much. She considered asking him about it, but he’d only lie.
I like you. I ... well, I love you, of course
. Then she’d feel worse. This is love?

She thought again of Richard. It bothered her that she kept wondering things like, where was he right now? Would Lenny tell him where Sally was going, and why? Would she ever tell him herself? Or, for that matter, would she ever see him again? And the most disturbing of all: why did she care? Why was she wasting time feeling mushy over someone who didn’t belong to her?

Whistle,
whoosh
was the sound of Voss’ breathing. Sally found it odd and unpleasant and it made her cringe. Richard would be chatty, at least. For all his bluster, his hooks and barbs would be just the thing to pin down this empty, floaty feeling that had descended over her recently.

It must be the pregnancy. One moment nodding off, eyelids made of lead. The next swallowing hard against a rolling, churning storm in her stomach. She preferred the relative peace of this flatland. In this state, when she thought of the fetus inside her sapping away her life force, leaving her a useless, hollow shell, she wasn’t overcome with fright. Besides, the nothingness ought to be familiar. She’d been seeing it for years in Pastor Voss’ face when he looked at her. She’d heard it in Richard’s voice when he announced to the world that she was a bastard child. She was nothing to them. And now, she was nothing at all but a receptacle for some errant, poisonous seed. The sooner she could have it extracted, the sooner she’d return to herself.

“Why couldn’t my mom come?” she asked in a thick voice. Her mouth was dry and tasted of bile.

He let out a heavy sigh. “This is tough on her.”

Sally smiled weakly and shook her head.

“It’s complicated,” he added.

“If she thinks you and I are going to make up for lost time or something stupid like that…”

“Honestly, I don’t know what she thinks.” She heard the edge in his voice and studied him a moment. No. There would be no making up. She may as well ask.

“Why are you doing this?”

He seemed to think. “You deserve a chance.”

“Why?”

This made him move uncomfortably in his seat and make a sound as if he would speak. She practically leaned toward him. Nothing. Again she was amazed that a man who delivered sermons every week could be so tongue-tied.
He really knows nothing about me!
She didn’t know why, but this scared her. The floaty feeling intensified. With it came a disturbing darkness around the edges of her sight, as if she were a horse wearing blinders to keep from being spooked. She focused on the grainy vinyl of the dashboard.
I’m okay. It’ll be over soon.

But would it? She had set out to find her dad, to find a missing piece of herself. Instead, she felt parsed out, divided into too many pieces. There was the old Sally, unwilling to take her dear Uncle Ollie to the banquet, insisting on having everything just
so
, no matter what. There was the part or her that loved her sister and her brother and knew that the risks they’d taken for her required a courage that was at least equal to her own. And the part that hated them for it. And then the new Sally, who, whether she liked it or not, belonged to this sweating, sighing lump beside her.

How she longed to be anywhere but here! In another time, worlds away, she might be at Frannie’s house, with Frannie’s mother and father and nine-year-old brother Justin. They’d be pulling boxes of Chef Boy-ar-Dee mix from the cupboard, preparing for the Valkema Friday night ritual of pizza, Pepsi, and, for the grown-ups, a game of Rook. The Dorns would come, from down the street, or Mr. and Mrs. De Vriendt from church, and Sally, suddenly shy before these social, smiling creatures, would help Frannie fill their plastic tumblers with ice cubes and set soda cans beside each plate. Until they were eight years old, Frannie and Sally spent these evenings playing Barbie dolls, absorbing themselves in the minutia of Barbie’s world: Barbie would
never
wear heels to a garden party! Well, she’d never accept another date with Ken either, after seeing him with
Skipper!
These nights, Sally felt safe in the bubble of childhood, buoyed by the presence of capable, God-like adults.

She wasn’t a girl anymore. Just a few months ago Mr. Valkema had invited her and Frannie to join the adults in the card game. Sally had held the cards reverently, fanning them out the way she saw the others do. She had listened patiently as Mr. Valkema tried to explain trumping and bidding, but it was just so
boring
, and, with a single, flickering look at Frannie, the two of them had given up and rushed upstairs, laughing
Gawd!
Flopping dramatically on the bed. If
that
was what grownups called
fun
. Well, no thanks!