I looked at the gun, opened the cylinder, and saw that there were no bullets in it.
I laughed and laughed and I don’t remember much after that. I’m pretty sure I dropped the bottle of wine, which I only know from later, from looking at my hoodie and seeing little burgundy splotches against the gray fabric. The last thing I remember is distantly feeling hands grabbing my shoulders, my whole body being shaken. Through a tiny slit of light, I saw Jenny’s face close to mine, could see she was yelling, but couldn’t hear what she was saying. She really was beautiful, even with short hair.
EPILOGUE
I WAS FIRED FROM EDDIE’S.
I wasn’t fired because of the incident at Jenny’s. I didn’t even think Peter, or Darryl, or Willie, or anyone at work found out about that. I just failed to show up for my shift and didn’t call anyone back. Apparently, Peter and Darryl both called me several times. I tried to explain to Peter that the cell phone he’d been trying to call me on no longer worked, had broken a couple weeks back, that even if it had been working, I was in a Bakersfield hospital that day, wouldn’t have been able to answer. He didn’t care, told me that he could find plenty of people that didn’t disappear and wind up in weird hospitals, people who had working cell phones.
I woke up the morning after that night at Jenny’s without realizing how long I had been asleep or that I had even woken up. It just felt like I had closed my eyes, taken a very long blink, and when I opened them, I was staring out a window that faced a brick wall. I heard a whimper and I looked to my other side and saw an IV in my arm, Billy and Mom rising from chairs.
Billy told me in a monotone, looking not at me, but out the window at that brick wall, how he was woken in the night by a phone call and was half asleep when he realized what a strange woman was yelling into his ear. He and Mom were soon driving without even changing out of their pajamas.
“That woman almost called the police, you know. Her husband really wanted to, was horrified that a drunk, pregnant girl he’d never seen before had brought a gun into his home—his home, where his son slept—that this girl was clearly dangerous.” Billy choked on the word “dangerous”; I looked over his shoulder to see Mom crying silently into her hands. “You’re lucky the gun wasn’t loaded and the woman insisted that you weren’t dangerous, that you were just a girl who was in a bad situation, that you were having a hard time. But who is this woman and how the fuck does she know about your situation or the time you’re having?”
Billy finally looked at me, no tears in his eyes. “Who is this woman?”
The doctor came in soon after and told me, in front of Billy and Mom, that I’d had a blood-alcohol content of .17 and that, given my state—he gestured awkwardly to my belly—this was highly dangerous. “You are pregnant,” he said. “Heavy drinking while pregnant can result in miscarriage or stillbirth, and there are a range of lifelong physical, behavioral, and intellectual disabilities your daughter could be born with.”
“My what?” I asked.
“What?” The doctor frowned. He was young, his hair blond and long, and his name tag didn’t read anything funny, just said “Dr. Carroll.” If this man was named Dr. Oldman, it wouldn’t have been funny. I wanted to ask him if he was a surfer.
“You said my”—I tried to swallow and it hurt, the inside of my mouth tasted awful and stale—“daughter. You said ‘daughter.’ ”
“Yes,” the doctor said. “You are going to be having a baby girl.”
I sobbed into my hands until maybe Mom, maybe Billy, maybe Dr. Carroll or a random nurse pulled my face from my hands and pushed me into their chest to stifle my sounds.
A week later, I got a new job, bagging groceries at the local supermarket.
Every hour I thought about quitting, but I was eighteen, didn’t know how to do much of anything, twenty-one weeks pregnant.
It really wasn’t that bad. The work was easy. Even a chimpanzee that had been hit over the head multiple times with a rock by his chimpanzee friends could’ve figured out a way to grab what was given to him, put it in a brown, recyclable bag, smile, and say, “Have a nice day.”
The only bad moments were if people purchased a jar of pickles. When the jars were passed my way to be bagged, I just looked up at the fluorescent lights and hummed quietly. It must not have been that quietly, though, because on my third day Marina, the cashier I was paired with, leaned over to the cashier on twelve, jerked her head at me, and said, “Did Donnie give me one of those Special Ed high schoolers again?”
One day, Rita came into my lane. She didn’t seem to be hurt in any way, but she never had seemed that way even when she was being hurt. We made eye contact when I passed her three bags and she said, “Thank you,” and I said, “Have a nice day.”
Another day, Darryl and a short guy with a mustache and a thick, neck-swallowing chin showed up in my line. I figured the guy was Carl after I watched the way he put his hand on Darryl’s shoulder and told him to put the magazine back, there was no need to waste money on things like that. When I handed them their bags, Carl said, “Thank you,” and I ignored him, looked at Darryl. He gave me a “Hey,” nothing more. I gave him a “Hey” back. “Do you guys know each other?” Carl asked. I wanted to turn to him and say, “Yes, we do. And I know you too. I hope you realize how fucking lucky you are,” but I just said, “We used to work together.” Darryl took a bag of cantaloupes and cucumbers from me and said, “Thank you.” I watched them walk out of the automatic doors, hand in hand, and said, “Have a nice day.” Marina leaned over to twelve again and whispered loudly, “Donnie needs to stop hiring retards.”
After my shifts, I didn’t drive anywhere except home. Jenny’s old street would’ve been on my way, but I took a different route. It added an extra five minutes.
At home, if Mom was there, I would sit next to her on the couch and watch whatever was on. We watched a lot of game shows, Wheel of Fortune mostly. As the pinwheel spun around, I would try to work up the courage to ask her all the things I wanted to know—was she able to look at me without thinking of Dad, did she like Billy more than she liked me, was she still excited about the baby, her granddaughter, did she know I didn’t hate her and never hated her, I worried she hated me?
One night, we were watching Full House instead of Wheel of Fortune, and I heard myself saying, “I just worry that I’m a lot like Dad.”
Without turning from the screen, she said, “You are.”
Before I could really process this, let it take me to a dark space, she continued, “You’re smart and have an eye for detail. Your dad was always pointing out things he noticed, things I never would’ve seen myself. Your sense of humor is similar too, not a loud ha-ha, in-your-face kind of funny, but quiet, a little dark, honest funny, is what I always thought. It’s why people liked him so much. Did you know that everyone in the neighborhood loved him? He had a way with people, connected to them in just one interaction, and it’s because he never pretended to be anyone but himself. You loved tangerines growing up, could eat them all day. Your dad made sure to become friends with Steve, the guy who sells fruit by the freeway, so he could get them at a discount and you’d never have to ask if we had any left.” The credits of Full House started to roll. Neither of us made any move to change the channel. “You have his eyes. On first glance, brown, but if you looked close, you could see how complex they were—light brown rimmed by a dark green, makes me think of moss growing on tree bark.”