Monday, Monday: A Novel (11 page)

They had been so careful. Surely she couldn’t be pregnant.

On the Drag, she sat in a booth at the Rexall and drank a Coke in the air conditioning and waited for Billy to pick her up at the corner.

Later, when she was back in Lockhart, the wait became terrible. She felt nauseated and feverish and tried to tell herself this was only due to her emotions. But every passing day confirmed her anxieties. She worked on the books at the hardware store and went home exhausted to fall on the sofa and watch TV with her parents, fearing that the ease and contentment of everyone around her was only based on their ignorance of a secret she wouldn’t be able to keep for long. Already she felt like a moral outcast. Her mother was helping to plan a neighborhood party for later in the summer, and Shelly promised she would go to Luling and pick out the watermelons herself. But she had no idea what her life would be by that time. The people who loved her now might not love her as much then.

She called Billy and asked him to take her back to Austin on Thursday. He was working that day, he said, but he could take her on Friday.

This time he parked on the Drag, and said he would meet her back at the truck in an hour. She walked to Sabine Street in a hurry, and was ushered into the doctor’s office.

He told her to take a seat and looked at her curiously. He was a balding man with a nice manner. “You don’t have to answer this, but I have a suspicion that you’re not married.”

“The test came back positive?” She knew by the look on his face.

“Yes, my dear. It did.”

He asked if she wanted to talk. She sat in the chair and looked at him and tried to manage her thoughts. But everything had gone sideways. She tried to stand up and the room became dim.

“Sit for a minute,” he told her. “Take some deep breaths.”

She stayed for nearly an hour, and cried, and admitted she wasn’t married, and that she didn’t know what to do. He offered to put her in touch with the sisters at the Home of the Holy Infancy, a Catholic home for unwed mothers on Nueces and Twenty-sixth Street. She could live there until she had the baby. The sisters would arrange an adoption.

But Shelly had seen the home—an imposing brick building—and had seen the pregnant girls out for walks and the sisters pushing baby strollers. She had felt sorry for the girls, and now could not imagine being one of them. And she wasn’t interested in giving the baby up for adoption.

After a while she dried her tears, paid the bill, walked to the art building on campus, and climbed the stairs to the studio. When she didn’t find Wyatt there, she left him a note in his mailbox. “Can you meet me on Sunday in the parking lot of the Nighthawk on South Congress? I’ll be in my mom’s station wagon. I need to talk to you about something.”

She didn’t attempt to hide her swollen face from Billy. He had been waiting a while when she climbed back into the truck. “I’m expecting,” she told him flatly.

“Expecting what?”

“A baby.”

The truck sat idling.

“Just drive,” she said.

“God, Shelly.” After a minute he said, “Can I ask who the father is?”

When they were on the highway, she said, “He’s married.”

“Oh. Man.”

“And I love him. And I don’t know what to tell him. He has a baby already.”

“He doesn’t know you’re expecting?”

“I have to come back on Sunday and tell him.”

“Oh God, Shelly. Is he going to leave his wife?”

“No.”

“But what about you?” He waited. “Do you think you could … you know. Have an abortion?”

“No.”

“I mean, I know it’s against the law,” he said. “What about giving the baby up for adoption? A lot of people want kids.”

“I couldn’t give it to strangers.”

“What is your father going to say?” Billy had always liked her father. His own father was drunk all the time.

“I don’t know. And my mom. I don’t know who to worry about most.” She was most worried about Wyatt.

“Worry about yourself,” he said.

“And the baby,” she said.

“What about Spain, or wherever it was you were going?”

She stared at the road.

11

IN THE RAIN

Friday night she lay awake staring at the darkness. Storms threatened on Saturday. Thunder rumbled in the distance, the skies grew dark in the afternoon, and the evening came without any change in the color of the sky. The night stretched out forever. On Sunday Shelly awoke to the sound of a heavy downpour. Over bowls of oatmeal, her parents invited her to an afternoon social at the church. But she asked instead to borrow the station wagon. “I’d like to go to Fentress and skate this afternoon, since I’m cooped up working all week.” From the doorstep, she watched her parents drive off in the rain in her father’s patrol car.

At noon, she left for Austin. Rain beat hard on the windshield for an hour as she drove. In the parking lot of the Nighthawk restaurant she waited nearly an hour for Wyatt, fearing he wouldn’t come. He finally drove up and parked beside her, the rain pummeling him as he got in the station wagon. “I had Nate with me,” he told her. “I couldn’t leave until Elaine got home. What’s the matter?”

“I’m … you know.” The words wouldn’t come out.

He waited.

“I’m going to have a baby. I’m sorry,” she said.

At first he thought she wasn’t serious, and he continued to think this for a few seconds even after he knew she was. His thoughts went back to the motel room. “How could that be?”

“I don’t know—it just is. I had the test on Friday.”

“Oh, Shelly…”

“Don’t say anything yet. First of all, this can’t ruin your life or your family. I won’t let it. Second of all, you have Nate already. So that’s enough said about that. You can’t leave him. I wouldn’t love you if you could do that. And I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. So don’t even think about that.”

He was already shaking his head. “I’m not going to leave you alone in this.”

“It’s the only way I can do it. I’m not giving you any choice.”

“But the test could be wrong. Did the doctor say—”

“I threw up this morning. My breasts are sore. I wish I didn’t believe it, but it’s true. It won’t help for you to say otherwise.”

She had started to cry, in spite of having promised herself she wouldn’t. He pulled her toward him and held her. His jacket smelled of damp wool. “We were so careful,” he kept insisting. “I don’t see how it could have happened. I’m going to figure out what to do.”

“It can’t be
fixed
. The baby isn’t going
away
. And I won’t have an abortion.”

“You can’t raise a baby on your own.”

“Of course I can. I’ll quit school. I’ll get a job in Lockhart. They’ll hire me full-time at the feed store.”

“But you can’t stay in Lockhart for the rest of your life.”

“I’m not talking about the rest of my life. I’m talking about getting on my feet.”

He couldn’t stand the thought of himself. “Look what I’ve done,” he said. “You trusted me, and look what I’ve done.” He had come to her aid, and then he had wrecked her life. And now he wanted her more than he could ever remember wanting anyone. And the world was melting in the rain around him. His little boy was waiting at home. His wife, his future, and what was left of his self-respect required that he open the car door and go back to where he belonged.

Finally she told him to go. “You have to,” she said.

But he couldn’t leave her. He kept thinking there was a way to reverse what had happened. He had been telling himself every day that at some point he was going to do the right thing about Shelly—that at some point he would be sure what the right thing was. And now that chance would never come. “I’m not going to leave it like this,” he said.

“I love you,” she told him. “But we’re not in this together. I can’t keep seeing you. Not if I have the baby. Please. Just go.” But even as she said this she clung to him. The rain against the windows formed a gray curtain between them and the world. He kissed her face while she cried.

In the end he stood in the rain watching the taillights disappear from the parking lot, then got in his car and pounded the seat beside him and shouted against the noise of the rain. Absently, mechanically, he willed himself home to Elaine.

Shelly drove back toward Lockhart, blinded by the deluge. The swipe of the windshield wipers made her dizzy. She wanted Wyatt more than ever before. She felt there was nowhere left in her life to go, and pulled to the side of the road. Pushing the door open, she stumbled out, as if the rain could wash something away. She buried her face against the hood of the station wagon and let the downpour soak her.

When she was driving again, she began to talk to herself because she felt so lonely, and after a while she realized she was talking to the baby as well. “We’re going to get through this,” she said, clutching the steering wheel with dripping hands. “First I’ll talk to my mom tomorrow. We’ll see what she says. She has a weakness for babies.”

Meanwhile Wyatt was home. He ate what he could of his dinner and bathed his son, and thought about telling Elaine the truth, and vacillated between two worlds: one here, in his home, with his family, and one out in the rain with Shelly. He was twenty-five years old. He had married too young, and married the wrong woman. He was trapped in his life.

12

THE MINNOW BABY

Shelly suffered through the night, tossing sleeplessly and crying in her pillow because she loved Wyatt so deeply and could not be with him, and because everything she had ever wanted would be out of reach now and maybe forever. Her only solace throughout the night was also her torment: the baby, the tiny, tiny thing, cozy inside her, protected and nourished, that no one could take away.

In the morning when her father left for work, Shelly made a cup of hot chocolate and wandered, as if casually, still in her pajamas, into her parents’ bedroom, where her mother was searching for something inside the closet, her freckled back exposed by an open zipper.

Shelly sat on the bed and watched her. The window beside the bed revealed a rusty swing set from her childhood in the rainy backyard.

“Mom?” she finally said, sipping her hot chocolate while gathering courage. “I’ve done something. It’s not as bad as you’re going to think. I’ve worked out what to do, so please be calm. I’m going to have a baby. I don’t want to say who the father is, because I’m not going to marry him.”

Her mother turned to look at her, the back of her dress hanging open, her hand on the doorframe. She came over and sat on the bed. She was a slender woman, but she sat down heavily and stared at the dresser against the wall.

“I know you think it’s terrible news,” Shelly said. “I promise you that it’s not. I know exactly what I’m going to do about it. I’m going to quit school, and work full-time. If I can stay here with you and Dad for a while, then I’ll get on my feet, and later be on my own.”

Her mother’s face had started to crumple.

“Please, Mom. Don’t cry.”

Her mother rocked forward and back. She opened her mouth but didn’t say anything. She patted Shelly’s leg without looking at her, and Shelly only felt frightened by such a hopeless gesture. Finally her mother spoke in a shaking voice, “Oh, honey … I don’t believe this could happen.”

“There’s no point saying that, Mom.”

“After all your hard work to get over the accident…”

“Yes, after that.”

“I can’t believe you would do this.”

“Getting shot wasn’t an
accident
. And it has nothing to do with this. I know you’re disappointed in me—I’m disappointed in myself. But I can’t think about that right now. I have to do what’s right for the baby.”

“Adoption is what’s right—”

“No it’s not.”

“Of course it is. How can you question that?”

“I don’t think it is!”

“Who is the father?”

“I told you I don’t want to say.”

“But you’re not even dating anyone. Not that I knew of. He won’t marry you?”

“I don’t want him to marry me.”

“Is he not a good person?”

“He’s a good person. He’s the best person I know. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But why wouldn’t you want him to marry you? Is he … Is he already married?”

“Stop, please?”

“Oh, Shelly.”

“Don’t say that. You’re acting as if I’ve destroyed my life. And it isn’t destroyed.”

“Tell me he’s not married.”

She flung the lie at her mother. “He isn’t married!”

“Thank goodness for that. Thank goodness. I didn’t think you would do that. But you can’t raise a baby without a father.”

“Why not? Widows do. Nobody tries to make widows give up their children.”

The conversation went nowhere. Words seemed to evaporate even before they were spoken. Nothing could be decided. Shelly got up and left the room while her mother was still talking, and she stayed away from her the rest of the morning. Before noon, she left without saying goodbye, and walked through town to the hardware store. She left it up to her mother to tell her father what had happened. He would be home for lunch. Already the story no longer belonged to her. Her parents could say whatever they wanted about it. The only thing that still belonged to Shelly was the baby.

She worked all afternoon at the store, nauseated from the syrupy smell of sweet feed, and wished for Wyatt magically to appear. She pictured the baby swimming inside her like a minnow. Sorrow made it hard for her to breathe. She dreaded the conversation she would have to have with her father.

At five o’clock, she walked home and found her father at the kitchen table, waiting, his face flushed and sad. “Do you want my opinion?” he asked Shelly as she sat down. “It would be a mistake to keep the baby, honey. Your mother and I can look for a good family. You owe it to the child to give it a mother and father who have a livelihood and a home.”

A scared part of her began to fear she would come to see it that way.

“You’re not going to say who the father is?”

“I really can’t. No.”

“Well, he’s a coward,” her father said. “That much we know. What kind of a man would do this and not show up?”