The revolving doors blinked, and Lucas entered the lobby. She waved to him, and he crossed the plush carpet, sidestepping waiters with trays of nibbles. He’d worn his funeral suit and a dark-green shirt.
“Hey,” she said, adjusting his tie. “Looking snazzy.”
“I couldn’t find the right shoes.” He looked her over. “You look incredible.” He threaded his fingers through hers and squeezed. “I like your flower.”
“Cherry!” Vi trotted up, her gargantuan purse clinking as she moved. “Isn’t this amazing?” She patted her bag. “I snuck some of my mom’s wine coolers in case it gets boring.”
“Vi, this is supposed to be a classy affair.”
Her best friend and fiancé glanced at each other, then at her.
“What?”
“Since when do you care about classy?” Lucas chuckled.
“Or call things ‘affairs’?” said Vi.
Cherry ruffled. “Fuck it,” she said, doing a crack imitation of herself. “Let’s get our seats.”
“You go ahead, Vi,” said Lucas. “We’ll be right behind you.”
“All right, but if you guys ditch me to hook up in the parking lot or whatever, I’m gonna be pissed.”
Vi tottered toward the theater, rattling as she went.
The lobby was clearing out, and soon they were alone.
“What’s up?”
He searched for the right words. “Is everything okay? You seem different lately.”
“Well, my house did burn down.”
“Yeah. No, I mean, you seem sort of distant. Like you’re all up inside yourself, looking out.”
“I’ve had a lot on my mind, Lucas. You know?”
“I know!” He touched her arm, trying to avoid offense. “I just wanted to make sure we were okay. I don’t want you to feel . . . if things have changed for you, I mean . . . we don’t have to.”
She didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sure what he was saying. “What do you mean? What are you even saying?”
He looked away, pushing his breath out. “Nothing. Never mind. This is stupid.”
“No! What is it?” She jerked away from his touch. Why was she suddenly so pissed off? So terrified? “You brought it up.”
“Fine,” he said. “It’s just, I thought when you and Ardelia started hanging out, there was no way the whole movie-star lifestyle would interest you, because you’re Cherry and you don’t give a shit about glamour and clothes and money. But now it kinda seems like it does interest you. And I can’t understand how you could be friends with a person like Ardelia”— he took a breath, readying himself —“and want to marry a person like me.”
“Fuck . . . what?” Suddenly she was holding back tears. “I mean . . . where the fuck is this coming from?”
Lucas’s voice was even, but his hands were trembling. “Does that mean I’m right?”
She was stunned. She’d had no idea he felt this way. How long had he been holding this in? What kind of girlfriend was she, not to notice? It was like lowering binoculars and being startled to discover how far away everything really was. The great gulf, the great space you cannot fathom, inside the person you love.
“You’re not right!” She held his fingers, squeezed them, pulled him back to her. “Listen. This has been the most insane month of my life. But it’s over now. These people are leaving, and it’s just you and me. Whatever happened while they were here, it doesn’t change anything, okay? It doesn’t change anything about you and me.”
He wanted to believe it. She could see it stirring inside him. “You sure? Because if you want to call it off . . .”
She kissed him. “I wanna marry you, you dick.”
And suddenly it seemed doable. Things could go back to normal. Maybe she could forget about what had happened with Maxwell. In fact, she promised herself she would. She was moving on. She was rolling with it. She wasn’t a different person. And to prove it to herself, she grabbed her boyfriend by the hand and yanked him down the stairs, through the revolving doors, and out into the warm evening air. A few stragglers were coming up from the parking lot, and Cherry and Lucas raced past them, two kids up to no good.
“We’re totally gonna get caught,” Lucas said when they reached the gazebo. It was dark, eerie, private. Their gazebo.
“I don’t care.” She pulled him down, hiding them both behind the gazebo’s whitewashed fence. The concrete was gritty and cold, but she didn’t feel it. She just felt the warmth of him, his fingers pressed into her wrists, her thighs, drawing on her, marking her as forever his. She didn’t know if the world was vibrating or if she was. This was happening, this was happening. And, yes, this was exactly what she wanted, here in a familiar place, with his familiar smell and familiar touch, at home, at home, at home. He wrapped his arms around her from behind, his green sleeves and her red dress — in and up, in and up, just like the poster said.
She couldn’t breathe. He was saving her life.
Vi had saved them seats in the back row. Onstage a man in a flannel suit was droning thank-yous.
“Where have you been? This has been so boring. There was a speech from the mayor, and then the arts council, and then . . .” Vi’s eyes went wide. She looked Cherry up and down as if she were glowing green from head to foot. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! You guys were just doing it, weren’t you?”
Someone shushed them.
“Shut up,” Cherry hissed, trying not to giggle. She was soaring. She was stratospheric. Lucas looked away to hide his face. He was shaking with laughter.
“Holy shit!” Vi squeezed Cherry’s hands. “You totally just lost your V-card. It’s all over your face, you slut.”
The guy who’d shushed them turned around in his seat.
“Will you please be quiet?”
“What’s that?” Cherry said as loudly as she could, putting a hand to her ear. The man scowled and turned back as Lucas and Vi melted with laughter.
“Classic Cherry,” said Vi, stifling her own laughter.
“Yeah,” said Cherry. Classic me.
It felt so good to be Classic Cherry again. How could doing something for the first time make you feel like your old self?
She held Lucas’s hand, feeling warm and sore and elated.
The director introduced his “Olive and Stewart,” and Ardelia entered stage left in a voluminous green gown. Trailing in its wake was Maxwell in a sharkskin suit. The sleaze. Cherry felt impervious now. And as for Ardelia, she felt only affection. The movie stars glimmered distantly like details from a dream. Ardelia was where she belonged, onstage, and Cherry belonged here, in the back row, with the troublemakers, the trailer trash.
“Can you believe we partied with him?” said Vi.
“Look at that suit,” said Cherry. “He’s so cheesy.”
Vi thought, then chuckled. “Yeah, he is kind of cheesy.”
Cherry felt a tap on her shoulder. Spanner stood in the aisle. She looked like an overdressed usher, holding a clipboard and wearing a headset with an orange stripe across the earpiece.
“Do you ever get a night off?” Cherry said.
“Ardelia wants to see you.”
She glanced at the others. She didn’t want to leave the protective halo of their company. “Now?”
Spanner scowled. “Of course not now. They’re about to play a clip. You can meet her backstage while it’s rolling.”
“Where?”
“There’s a stage door there.” She pointed to a small black panel in the corner.
“How will I . . . ?” started Cherry, but Spanner swept back up the aisle, as if escaping a horrible smell.
The lights dimmed, and the crowd clapped. Cherry glanced up the gloomy aisle toward the back of the theater. She looked to Lucas, squeezing his hand.
“Go!” he said. “Maybe she wants to give you a good-bye present.”
“Yeah, and try not to crash this one,” said Vi.
“All right, all right. I’m going.”
Cherry made h
er way down the red carpet toward the tiny black door. There was no knob, only a round hole where it had once been. She pushed against the black panel, into the dark. Her eyes adjusted. She heard the scrape of feet, the zip and shuffle of curtains. Someone rushed past her. She saw what looked like a chintzy replica of Aubrey. These were sets from a recent production, pasteboard housefronts and a phony train station, a length of white picket fence made of Styrofoam. A sign read:
UTILITY ACCESS ONLY
NO ADMITTANCE
“Cherry!” a voice called.
“Where are you?”
“Over here.”
Ardelia stood against a wall lined with pulleys and ropes for controlling the curtains. More phony fencing was stacked on the scaffolding above her, reminding Cherry of railroad struts. They were cramped together in the tiny cave of scaffolding and rigging. Ardelia spoke in a whisper. “Listen, I’ve got something I need to say to you.”
“Okay.”
A bright panel began to flicker above. They were starting the clip. Ardelia’s breath was warm on her cheek.
“I’ve been thinking it over.”
An enormous, flip-side Ardelia spoke on-screen in a bogus southern accent. “Stewart, my dear. It is not for love of Robert that I hesitate. But what shall become of you, should I . . . should we . . . ?”
“This may be a bit surprising, what I’m about to say,” the real Ardelia went on, “but I want you to think about it, and don’t answer now.”
“Okay . . .”
“I cannot begin to comprehend the consequences, my love. For the angle of the moon is but a trifle in a treetop, but when that silvery orb is reached, hundreds of miles make the difference . . .”
“Cherry,” said Ardelia, cupping her hand around the other girl’s ear. Cherry smelled lavender and saw the white flash of teeth in the reverse movie light.
“Yes?” she said, breathless.
“I want you . . .”
“What shall we do?”
“I want you to have my baby.”
The lights cracked off. The house erupted in applause.
The Batman T-shirt was stretched to its limit, Robin looking all bloated. Cherry ran her hands over the bulge, studying her reflection in the door mirror. She cast a big-bellied shadow on the wall. Her eyes were killing her. She was exhausted from several nights of fitful sleep brought on by constant sugar crashes. She’d been eating chocolate like crazy, the good bitter stuff.
Her cell rang for the nth time. Cherry sighed, tugged the basketball from under her T-shirt, and dropped it in the open suitcase on Lucas’s bed. Vi’s number flashed on-screen.
“I’m just calling to say I’m not speaking to you.”
“Vi.”
“You won’t come to Cape Cod with me, but you’ll go to England with Ardelia?”
“It’s different and you know it. This is like . . .” Cherry tried to think of what it was like. It wasn’t like anything. “We need the money.”
“So you’re definitely going to have the baby?”
Cherry tugged off the Batman tee, folded it, and dropped it in the suitcase. What did you pack for a week in the English countryside? Sweaters? A pith helmet? It was supposed to rain a lot in England, so she’d bring her new boots from the Salvation Army and the 7-Eleven mini-umbrella.
Lucas popped his head in. “Will I need a bathing suit?”
Cherry covered the receiver with her hand. “I don’t know. Yes. Ardelia said there’s a pool.”
“She has a pool!” Vi bellowed on the other end of the line.
“I’ll leave you two alone.” Lucas made a face and disappeared.
She put the phone to her ear. “He’s excited.”
“Of course he’s excited. It’s insanely exciting.” Vi’s shouts crackled through the tiny speaker. “I don’t see why he gets to go and I don’t.”
“Because he’s my fiancé, and at the moment my womb is . . . well, not like his property, but he’s got a say in what I do with it. And Ardelia said I could bring Lucas and one family member, but Pop won’t go and I’m sure as shit not bringing Stew. He’d probably get busted at customs for having weed sewn into the waistband of his boxers.”
“I’m family,” Vi whined. “Or are you forgetting eighth grade when we did blood sisters?”
Cherry ignored this, staring down at her near-empty suitcase. Everything she owned fit inside, with enough room left over for a small person. “Maybe I could smuggle you in my luggage.”
“You know what really hurts?” Vi said.
“No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“You care more about what she thinks than what I think. I’m your best friend, you know, in case you’ve forgotten.”
Cherry sighed and sat on the bed. She rubbed the temple that didn’t have a phone pressed to it. “Vi, this isn’t about friendship. It’s about money. And if I say yes, I get a lot.” Vi was quiet. Cherry said it again for emphasis. “A lot.”
“I know,” Vi mumbled. “How much is it again?”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” She’d said it so often to herself that the rhythm was like a nursery rhyme. Two HUNdred and FIFty THOUsand DOLlars. No matter how many times she said it or wrote it out, the number had no real meaning. She’d tried breaking it down into fathomable terms. Two hundred and fifty-thousand cell phone minutes. Eight thousand gallons of gas. Three thousand Mel’s Lumberjack Specials. Five top-of-the-line mobile homes. It was more than enough to resettle Pop, get Stew an apartment when he graduated, and put a down payment on a place for her and Lucas.
“Well, buy me a pool when you get back,” said Vi. “Wait, you are coming back, right? You aren’t just going to stay there and get preggers?”
“If I decide yes, I’ll live with Ardelia in England,” Cherry said, reciting the terms she’d conveyed to dozens of young hopefuls on Ardelia’s raspberry love seat. “But either way, I’ll come home for graduation.”
“Like school even matters with that kind of scratch. Are you freaked out about . . . you know . . . having a baby?”
“Jesus, Vi. I haven’t decided yet.”
“Yeah, but if you do . . .”
Lucas passed by in the hall, whistling. They’d been up every night, talking about the decision. He refused to weigh in on whether she should carry the baby, but he definitely thought she should take Ardelia’s offer to think it over for a week at her estate outside London. And that was before he knew he was invited. As to what happened next, her swelling belly, some other man’s baby stuff (and another woman’s, in fact) inside her, the nine months and change she’d be away from home . . . Lucas was too good a guy to mention the downsides. He knew they already loomed large in Cherry’s mind.
What he didn’t know was that one could worry without really thinking. You could freak out without actually weighing the options. You could panic, blindly, without coming anywhere near a decision.
“I’m not thinking about that yet,” said Cherry. “This is just a vacation.”
As far as freaking out was concerned, no small part of her recent sleeplessness and worry-eating had to do with the six-hour flight she’d be taking from Logan Airport to London. Six hours of airborne travel, miles and miles above the ground . . . or, actually, the ocean. Cherry didn’t like climbing to the top of the bleachers. She spread the DuBoises’ world atlas on the kitchen counter and calculated the distance with a ruler. Pop was under the sink, fixing their congested garbage disposal.
“Three thousand three hundred miles,” she said aloud. “That’s like ten times farther from home than I’ve ever been.”
“Not sure about your math,” said Pop. “But it’s far, all right.”
She took a long breath, letting her ruler clatter on the tabletop. “Is this insane? Should I not go?”
Pop grunted and leaned against the cabinet. He wore a red handkerchief around his neck, and his hands were spotty with grease. Her father never looked so at home as when he was under something, fixing it.
“I don’t know what to say, Snack Pack. Of course, I want you to go. Little nest egg like that handled right? You’d be set for years. Maybe life.” He wiped his forehead, leaving a brown-and-black smudge. “But I don’t know if I could do it. Carry someone else’s baby, I mean.”
Cherry chuckled. “You couldn’t do it, Poppa. You don’t have the parts.”
“You know what I mean. . . .” He rummaged through Mr. DuBois’s toolbox. There were girlie pictures taped inside. “Goddamn it, Leroy, what self-respecting janitor doesn’t have a Phillips head?” He sighed. “Listen, kiddo, I always wanted you to get out of this town, see the world, meet fascinating people. This wasn’t exactly how I pictured it, but beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Is that what we are? Beggars?”
It was a rare moment alone, just the two of them. Lucas and his father were at work, and Stew was off with a new girlfriend. Pop thought. What he said next, he said slowly, like the words were fine mechanical parts he was carefully reassembling.
“I know you don’t want to be like your mother. But you’re not running off. If you do this, it’ll be for the right reasons. The truth is”— he stared at his hands —“I envy her, getting to pick up and go. I couldn’t last a minute away from you kids, but if I could have taken you with me, shown you something other than the inside of a goddamned auto garage, I would have.”
Cherry said nothing. She’d never thought her pop’s life might not be entirely his first choice. He was a grumpy guy, but not unhappy.
“Do you wish you never had kids?”
He didn’t answer immediately. He was thinking about it.
“No,” he said. “If I didn’t have you two, I might be okay. But I’d have no idea what I was missing.” His eyes drifted to the toolbox. “Fucking thank Christ. There it is.” He brandished the screwdriver. “This thing looks like it’s never been used. No wonder that school of yours is falling apart.”
Sunday afternoon, a town car arrived to carry Lucas and Cherry to the airport. Mr. DuBois, Stewart, and Pop saw them off. Vi was there, too. She’d recovered from her disappointment.
“Remember,” she said. “Over there, poofter is a gay guy, and banger is a sausage.”
Cherry Money Baby Page 18
