Too Soon for Jeff

by Marilyn Reynolds

  “God, Mom. I’m not thinking there’s going to be a kid.”

  “I think you’re wrong about that. I think you’re going to get a kid.”

  We talk for a long time. There aren’t any easy answers, but I feel a little better anyway. Then my mom tells me she’s going to call Christy’s parents and invite them to come over tonight.

  “God! Why?”

  “Because I told Mr. Calderon to come back tonight. Because we’re all involved in this, one way or another.”

  I take a shower while she’s on the phone so I don’t have to hear even one side of the conversation. I dread the evening.

  Ever since I got to know her, Christy’s mom liked me a lot. Whenever I’d go over there she’d give me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. She always called me mi hijo, meaning son, and she felt kind of like a second mom to me, too. She always had something for me to eat, even if I’d stopped by just for a minute.

  In my house, my mom and I each take care of our own stuff. Sometimes we eat together and sometimes we don’t. She’s raised me to be self-sufficient—fix a basic meal, clean up after myself, do my own laundry, that kind of thing. But Mrs. Calderon would always wait on me. I admit I liked it.

  When the Calderons arrive at our house this evening, though, there is no kissing, or calling me mi hijo. Neither of Christy’s parents will so much as look at me. Christy ignores me, too. All three of them say hello to my mom, but I guess I’m invisible.

  Mr. Calderon is wearing a tie and Mrs. Calderon is wearing high heeled shoes and the pearls she wears every Sunday. They seem formal—stiff. Christy is wearing jeans and a big sweatshirt that comes down to her thighs. No one is smiling.

  My mom offers coffee or tea to everyone, like this is going to be a party. I think we should get it over with, not waste our time making a social event of it.

  Mr. and Mrs. Calderon both say they’d like a cup of coffee, then Christy asks, “Do you have anything without caffeine, Mrs. Browning?”

  What’s with her? She drinks coffee by the gallon. I’ve never seen anyone drink coffee the way Christy does. Except, now that I think of it, I haven’t seen Christy drink coffee lately. Also, it’s been a while since I’ve seen her wearing anything but jeans and a long sweatshirt.

  “I’ve got some herbal tea,” Mom says. “Would you like that?”

  “Please,” she says.

  I follow Mom out to the kitchen and help bring out the drinks. No way am I going to sit in the living room, alone with the Calderons.

  The first thing Christy’s dad says after he gets his coffee and one of those little chocolate-covered Pogen cookies is that Christy and I have to get married right away.

  I say I’m not ready to get married yet. Mr. Calderon starts that pacing business again, like he was doing last night. Mrs. Calderon starts crying, and Christy sits still as a statue, her face turned away from me. No one says anything. The only sound is of Mr. Calderon’s footsteps, softened by the carpet, and the ticking of the clock. The question I asked myself standing on the freeway bridge comes back to me. What am I doing here? Tick. Tick. Tick. Then, after about his tenth trip, back and forth, back and forth, in rhythm with the clock, he explodes.

  “I KNEW IT!” he yells. “I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT!” He is facing his wife, who sits covering her face with her hands, shaking with silent sobs. “She should have stayed with the nuns at the mission! Never ever should she have met this bad boy! She was a good girl and now she is ruined. He has taken my daughter and turned her to dirt!”

  “Mr. Calderon . . .” my mom starts.

  “This boy! This big-shot, debate team, going-to-college boy has ruined her! He is not ready to marry! Not ready! Not ready? Ready to make babies! Ready to turn girls to dirt!”

  He stomps over and stands directly in front of me, looking down at me, pointing his finger.

  “You will marry Christina!”

  “Daddy!” Christina yells. She is on her feet and standing between us, nose to nose with her father.

  “I will not marry anyone who doesn’t love me! Who doesn’t want to marry me! You can’t make me!”

  I’m shocked. I’ve never, ever seen her talk back to her father.

  She turns on me. “I wouldn’t have you, you . . . you . . . baby killer!” She is screaming, red faced.

  “Calm down,” I say to Christy, but she’s already turned back to her dad.

  “You! All you care about is what your stupid old church says!”

  He gasps. Then yells, “Sacrilege! You are not my daugh­ter!” He slaps her, hard. “Tramp!”

  I jump between them, standing so close I can feel his breath in my face. My fists are clenched tight. My mom rushes in.

  “Stop this instant!” she says, pushing Mr. Calderon toward the other side of the room.

  I feel Christy’s head against my back, feel her shaking sobs. Her mother is up now, begging her father to sit down. I turn and put my arms around Christy. Her dad walks out the door, slamming it behind him, rattling the windows in the living room. A car door slams and Mr. Calderon drives away.

  Christy steps away from me. We stand looking at each other, shocked into silence. Then my mom gets an ice pack for Christy. Her face is white with the imprint of her dad’s four fingers.

  “You stay here tonight,” my mom says to Christy.

  Christy shakes her head no. Her mom opens her arms to Christy and they stand in an embrace, rocking, both of them crying. After a while Mom says, “Has your father ever hit you before?”

  Both Christy and her mom say he hasn’t.

  “Maybe a little spank,” Christy says. “But he’s never really hit me, like this.”

  “I think I should call the police and report this,” my mom says. “It is child abuse, you know.”

  Mrs. Calderon pleads with my mom not to do that.

  “He will be all right now. I know him. It is all right. He will be sorry.”

  The two moms and Christy talk about I don’t know what. I can hardly listen. I keep thinking if only she’d agreed to an abortion, and not left her private papers sitting around—or, if only I’d always used a condom . . . or . . . if only I’d broken up with Christy in the fall, when I knew it should be over . . . if only, if only, if only.

  About forty-five minutes after Christy and her mom leave, there is a knock on the front door. My mom opens it a crack, then takes off the safety chain and opens it wide. I listen from the den.

  “I guess I have to stay here tonight after all, Mrs. Browning,” I hear Christy say. “My dad won’t let me in. He says I don’t live there anymore.”

  I hear Christy crying, and Mom murmuring something. After a while they come into the den.

  “Jeff, get the sheets and a couple of blankets from the linen closet, would you, and help me make up this bed,” Mom says, pointing to the sofa bed where I’m sitting.

  “He wouldn’t even let me take any clothes, or my books for school, or anything,” Christy says.

  My mom brings a flannel nightgown.

  “Take a shower, Honey. You’ll feel better.” Christy nods and goes into the bathroom—my bathroom—and doesn’t come out for a long time.

  “This is temporary, Jeff,” my mom says. As if I were begging to have Christy move in.

  “I’m not the one who suggested she stay here tonight,” I remind Mom.

  “What would you have done if you’d answered the door? Told her she couldn’t come in? Let her sleep in the garage? What?”

  “No. But don’t blame me for her staying here, that’s all.”

  “Well, I doubt if she’d be here if it weren’t for you! I’ve got a test in my intensive care nursing class tomorrow night and I can’t concentrate at all right now.”

  We bicker back and forth until we hear the bathroom door open, then we stop and pretend to be watching TV. Christy comes out in my mom’s nightgown and sits in a chair opposite me, brushing her long, wet hair. Her eyes are puffy from crying.

  After my mom says goodnigh
t, I go sit on the arm of Christy’s chair. I take the brush from her and brush the back of her hair. “I’m sorry for the way things are,” I say.

  “Me, too,” she sighs.

  I brush her hair for a long time, smelling its cleanness, feeling the fine texture. She leans against me, then turns her face toward me. I kiss her red cheek, her toothpaste-tasting mouth. I don’t mean to. It happens. That’s all. She stands and pulls me toward her. I feel her nakedness under the nightgown, feel her full breasts. She holds me tight, leans into me, tightens her grip on my butt. We move to the sofa bed and lie on our sides, facing each other, as close as we can get. She guides my hand under her nightgown to the dampness between her legs.

  “I love you, Jeff.”

  “I love you,” I tell her.

  She unbuttons my Levis, and we do, quietly and quickly, the deed that got us in so much trouble in the first place. After we lie together for a while, I tiptoe into my own room.

  Do I really love her? I don’t know. We’ve been together so long, she’s like a habit. I always feel like I love her, when I say it. But now? Now I’ve got that tied-down, closed-in feeling again. If I really loved her, I don’t think I’d be feeling so down right now. Would I?

  Chapter

  7

  By the end of the week practically everybody in the whole school knows Christy is pregnant. Kim and her other friend, Dana, are always patting her on the stomach and saying, “How cute.” It makes me want to puke.

  I’m trying to keep my distance from Christy, figure out some stuff, but it’s hard, what with her staying with us.

  Kelly, the girl who sits across from me in English, is acting cold. Last week, when I had my breaking-up speech all planned and thought I would soon be free, I’d fantasized about walking around Old Town with Kelly, checking out the Espresso Bar, just hanging out.

  I hadn’t asked her out or anything, or even mentioned that I was breaking up with Christy. But we talked a lot in English, and kind of flirted with each other. Right now she’s flirting with Ray, who sits behind her. I don’t care. It was a stupid fantasy anyway. I don’t even like espresso coffee.

  Mrs. Rosenbloom is handing out test papers and I notice that most of the kids already have theirs. This is not a good sign, since she always hands them back in order, from highest to lowest grades.

  “Sixty-two percent,” she says as she hands me my paper. “What happened to you, Jeff?”

  I shrug.

  The bell rings but Mrs. Rosenbloom says, “One moment, class.” Still standing by my desk, frowning down at me, she warns us, “Sometimes seniors get lazy their last semester. I must caution you not to let up. Most of you in here are college bound—act like it!”

  I get one low grade all year and she decides to lecture the whole class. I grab my books and push my way out the door, practically running into Coach Petersen.

  “Hey Brownout. How’s the Masterdebater?” he says, making it sound like masturbator.

  That does it. I’ve taken enough shit for the week. Instead of going to fourth period, I find Benny.

  “Let’s split, Dude,” I say.

  “You mean now?” Benny says, looking at me like I’m crazy.

  ‘Yeah, now. Right now.”

  “Sounds good to me,” he says, a smile growing across his face.

  When we get in the car and start driving, Benny says, “I can’t believe it. Mr. Schoolboy’s starting the weekend early.” He laughs and punches me. “What made you decide to have some fun?”

  “Coach Petersen’s a dick,” I say.

  “So? What’s new?”

  “He’s still ticked off because I dropped football and stayed in debate. It’s not like I could do both and work twenty-five hours a week at the Fitness Club. I’m sure I’m going to choose football and lose a debate scholarship? I don’t think so. I should just have told him, ‘Get real, dick.’ And old lady Rosenbloom decides to use my one low test score as a reason to lecture the whole class on the short­comings of seniors. And . . .”

  “Hey. Chill out,” Benny says. “Where are we going?”

  I have been paying no attention to where I’m driving. We’re practically to Foothill Boulevard.

  “Let’s go up to Angeles Flats,” I say.

  “Cool,” Benny says. “You know, you can’t let stuff get you down. You’ve got to take it a day at a time, like me.”

  “No offense, B.D., but you’re not exactly my role model.”

  “Role model?” he says, looking puzzled. “I don’t get it.”

  “My point exactly,” I say.

  “Hey, should we go back for Jeremy?”

  “He wouldn’t leave early.”

  “That’s what I thought about you,” Benny says with a laugh.

  ‘Yeah, but Jeremy really wouldn’t.”

  Neither of us says anything for about a mile, then I ask the question that’s been on my mind.

  “Have you heard about Christy?”

  “Christy? Your Christy?”

  ‘Yeah. My Christy,” I say, sarcastically.

  “No. What about her?”

  ‘You sure you didn’t hear about her?”

  “No, Dude. What’s to hear?”

  “I thought everyone knew,” I say.

  “Knew what? You want me to play twenty questions? Is it animal, vegetable or mineral?”

  “Animal, I guess . . . She’s pregnant.”

  “Christy is?”

  ‘Yeah.”

  “Hey. Cool. You’re gonna be a dad.”

  Benny has this stupid grin on his face, like I’ve just told him I won the lottery or something.

  “God, Benny. You can be such an idiot sometimes.”

  “You’re not happy?”

  “NO, I’M NOT HAPPY! Geez, why would I be happy?”

  “I don’t know. I might be happy if my girlfriend was pregnant.”

  “You don’t have a girlfriend,” I point out to him.

  “Yeah. But I’m saying if . . .”

  “You also don’t have any plans for your life. I’ve got a lot I want to do before I have to turn into Mr. Responsibility.”

  “I’d be happy,” he says, and I remember thinking a long time ago that Benny sort of liked Christy—just the way he joked around with her sometimes. None of us would ever try to cut in on somebody else’s girl, but for a while I thought that if Christy and I ever broke up, Benny would be there waiting.

  “We should go back for Jeremy,” Ben says.

  “What? We’re halfway there.”

  “I don’t care. This is a big deal. Turn the car around. C’mon.”

  Benny grabs the wheel and pulls it to the right.

  “Benny! Watch what you’re doing!”

  “I’m serious. We’ve got to go back for Jeremy,” he says. “Happy or not, this is a big event. The first of us to hit the target with our awesome sperm.”

  “God, you’re a butthead,” I say.

  “Yeah, but I’m the one you wanted to leave school with. Huh!”

  We go back to get Jeremy. I’m sure he won’t come, but I park in front of the school and Benny jumps out. He’s back with Jeremy before the narcs even notice.

  “Pregnant?” Jeremy says.

  I nod.

  “For sure?” he says.

  “For sure.”

  “My most sincere condolences,” Jeremy says.

  On the way to the mountains, Benny tells me to stop at a Seven-Eleven. He runs in and comes back with three six-packs.

  “Celebration time,” he says, pulling a beer from the carton.

  “Don’t open that in here,” I tell him.

  “Hey, what’s the difference? We’re illegal, open or not.”

  “Just don’t.”

  “Okay,” he says. “We’re almost there, anyway.”

  We park in the Angeles Flats turnout, then walk down a gully and up a hill on the other side. We sit on the top, on a big flat rock. The air is clear today so we can see beyond the high rises of downtown Los Ang
eles and the clump of skyscrapers at Century City, all the way to the ocean. Benny and I can even see the outline of Catalina Island. Jeremy can’t make out the island because he has very poor distance vision. Benny hands us each a beer.

  “You didn’t steal these, did you?” Jeremy asks.

  “No, why do you say that?”

  “I can’t imagine anyone selling it to you.”

  Benny pulls out his wallet and shows us his brother’s I.D.

  “Twenty-one. No problem,” Benny smiles.

  I hardly ever drink beer, or anything alcoholic. I’ve seen people do some amazingly stupid stuff when they’re drunk. Besides, I don’t much like the taste. But I’m thirsty, so I take the beer from Benny and tip it back for a long swig. The sun is warm overhead. A ridge to the east is charred and barren looking from the fires last October, but directly below us and to the west the trees are beginning to show fresh green growth.

  This is the first place I brought Jeremy and Benny after I got my car. When we were little kids, in Scouts, we camped up here a couple of times. We’ve had some great times up here. At night it can be a party place, but right now we’re the only ones here. You can see down in the gully though, beer cans and broken bottles, empty styrofoam food containers, dirty diapers—I hate that.

  “Hey, why so down?” Benny says. “At least you know you’re not shooting blanks.”

  “I wish I had been.”

  “Are you sure Christy won’t consider an abortion?” Jeremy says.

  “Ah, that’s cold, Dude. I’d never want a girlfriend of mine to have an abortion. It’s his baby, J.J.”

  “I don’t want a baby, Ben! Maybe when I’m thirty or something but not now!”

  “You’re cold. You’re both cold,” Ben says, downing his beer and opening another.

  “It’s stupid to have a baby now,” Jeremy says to Benny. “Look at Christy. What’s her life going to be like?”

  “My sister had a baby when she was sixteen,” Ben says.

  “Oh yeah, your sister,” Jeremy says. “That’s different.”