Slurping down the last of the soda, she threw the hot dog end out the window. It hit the car next to us and left a greasy ring, a circle of shine on the same level with the driver’s head.
I’m gonna pee, she said, picking up the plastic bag and walking off toward the public bathroom.
It was too hot to stay in the car, so I took the leftover Twizzlers down to the water. Even the little kids had moved out of direct sunlight. They lounged on old bedsheets next to their mothers, sucking Capri Suns and tearing into oranges, eyes dulled flat by the heat.
I kicked off my sneakers and took off my socks, balling them up and stuffing them into the toes of my shoes. Cracked mussel shells and bits of stick poked into my sweat-softened soles. I focused on that painful feeling and tried not to think about what a baby would mean. A baby, when I was bleeding and maybe already staining the crotch of my too-wide jeans.
The dock was old and needed new boards in most places. The wood was going soft and mulchy along the edge and there were splinters. I walked down to the bench at the end and sat with the package of candy in my lap. Watched the light shine off the top of the water like slivers of aluminum foil winking in the sun.
Brynn had already applied for college. Lots of different ones. I’d seen the forms on the kitchenette table in the trailer, plopped down on the Formica, gathering food stains. I had some forms of my own, too, but I wasn’t considering them. Of the two of us, Milo was the one who was actually interested in that shit, even though he was a grade behind us. He was looking at some of the same places as Brynn. I thought of the two of them, packing up their things and moving out of state. Abandoning me while they moved into an apartment together. Made new friends, attended classes. I’d be left with my father in the back of the shop.
Brynn stomped over to me, boards vibrating down to the end of the dock. I’d chewed a hole in my lip, biting at the dead skin until it was alive with blood, leaking down the pressed seam of my mouth. She dropped the pregnancy test. It hit the wood with a flat smack that knocked drops of pee onto my forearm. I wiped the mess on my jeans.
Guess I’m gonna be a mom, she said, and laughed.
The test had two little pink lines slicing through the center. Looks like it.
Unless I go somewhere. Take care of it.
Birds called in the trees near shore. The kids behind us finished their snacks and splashed back into the water. From somewhere out of sight, the humming drone of a boat filled the air with white noise. Brynn held her shoes. They were leather sandals that striped her feet tan and white. Her toes scrunched down into the dock, the nails coated in sparkly blue nail polish. I’d never wanted a baby in my life, but now I stared at Brynn’s stomach and thought about the price of losing it.
You should keep it, I said, looping my arm around the back of the bench. There was still a droplet of pee on my skin and I left it there; let the sun cook it into my flesh. We’ll work it out.
Walking to the edge of the dock, she dropped her shoes. One flipped over, sole bright with green gum.
I’m gonna be the worst mom ever. She took one giant step forward and dropped into the lake. Water splashed up onto the dock, leaving dark wet prints in starburst patterns.
10
The cop didn’t arrest me, but he did make me perform all the sobriety tests in the middle of the parking lot. He took my driver’s license and pointed me to the lines, refusing to let me leave until he’d done a full background check. After I listed the alphabet backward, twice, he told me that my truck would be towed and I was responsible for getting another ride. He stood there, flashlight beaming migraine rays into my skull, while I tried to remember how to operate a cell phone. The cab took twenty minutes to arrive.
When I reached my apartment, I walked inside and crawled onto the couch. My hangover was so intense that my tongue had dried to sandpaper in my mouth. I rolled around on the cushions until the sun came sliding through the window blinds, and then I abandoned the pretext of sleep altogether, trying not to think about what would happen next.
Milo showed up fifteen minutes later. He was still wearing his suit, though it was considerably rumpled. The shadow of his incoming beard was so thick it looked fake, like something he’d put on as a prop.
“You want some coffee?” I tossed some shit off the only other chair in the room. Milo threw himself down on the couch, and I perched on the edge of my seat. The apartment smelled like old food and rot. I hadn’t taken the garbage out in a couple of weeks, and there was the cloying, syrupy scent of meat gone rancid permeating the air.
“I’d like a beer.”
I hadn’t expected that response. “What time is it?” I asked. It couldn’t have been later than seven.
“Morning. Barely.” He stretched out his legs until they nearly knocked over the coffee table. “And I don’t care. Just gimme a fucking beer.”
I went into the kitchen and rolled my shoulders, trying to relax. There were a couple of Millers stuffed in the door beside some ancient bottles of salad dressing, a two-liter of flat Coke, and an expensive jar of fancy champagne mustard Lucinda had left behind. I grabbed the beers and wondered if she ever thought about that stupid mustard. It cost more than fifteen dollars a jar, mustard that made your mouth tingle when you slathered it on crackers. It was an awful waste of money, and I couldn’t help but be charmed by the fact that she’d buy something so pointlessly impractical.
Scrounging around for some kind of snack to settle my stomach, I unearthed a bag of stale chips in the back of the cabinet and brought everything back out to the living room. Milo hadn’t turned on any of the lights. He lay flat on the sofa, legs extended over the arm. He’d tossed his shoes onto a pile of my dirty clothes.
I handed him one of the beers and took a long pull of mine, emptying a third of it. A tension headache brewed behind my eyes. I set down my beer on the edge of the coffee table and unplaited my braid; it loosened incrementally, a painful kind of pleasure. My hair still smelled like shampoo. I draped it over my face and inhaled.
“So you’re not even going to ask?”
Milo stared up at the ceiling, as if he could see through the cheap speckled popcorn coating and into the steadily blueing sky above.
My fervent prayer was that Donna had pulled through to cancel the event. Milo showing up seemed to confirm that possibility, though maybe it was wishful thinking on my part. One voicemail didn’t mean shit in the grand scheme of things. I thought of my mother with her painted head, standing next to the figure of my father she’d posed atop the water buffalo. The boar with its wounded sides, our family Christmas lights pouring and puddling on the ground like gore.
“Worse than we thought?”
He hummed, rubbing his cheek against a stained throw pillow. Lucinda had spilled a whole glass of wine on it and I’d never cleaned it up, so the fabric smelled like hell. I needed to throw it out.
“Never even went inside. The whole place burned down.”
I nearly upset the beer into my lap. “The fuck are you talking about?”
“Yep.” He shook his head, pressed the bottle to his temple. “Huge. Place smelled like burnt rubber.”
Maybe he was lying to make me feel better.
Shrugging, he dug at the beer label with his thumbnail. “All of it, gone.”
No, it couldn’t be true. It was too convenient. A massive fire, suddenly obliterating all of my problems. All of my family’s problems. Lucinda’s problems. Donna’s too.