Cherry Money Baby

by John M. Cusick

  “You learned that from Arrested Development,” Cherry said.

  “Yeah, but it’s true, I think.”

  Cherry hugged her best friend, realizing mid-squeeze she didn’t want to let her go.

  “I’m gonna miss you.” Vi’s voice was thick with tears.

  “It’s just a week,” said Cherry, surprised at the lump in her throat.

  “Yeah,” said Vi. “Sort of.”

  “Keep an eye on her,” Pop was telling Lucas. “Anything goes wrong, I’m holding you personally responsible, DuBois.”

  “I know,” said Lucas.

  “I mean it. I’ve talked it over with your dad, and he’s okay with me killing you.”

  “O-okay,” said Lucas, trying and entirely failing to smile.

  “Send me a postcard,” said Stew. “I can’t believe how fucking lucky you are.”

  “This is for all of us,” said Cherry. She leaned in close and said low in his ear, “And no smoking while I’m gone, or you won’t see a penny of this cash.”

  Stew laughed. “Wait, seriously?”

  “Seriously. Straight edge, or you’re living off your garage salary.”

  She left Stew blinking over his future. Cherry hugged her father.

  “Remember how you used to cry at the end of The Wizard of Oz?” he said.

  “That was you, you pansy.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” He held her shoulders. “You have everything? Passport? Got your rape whistle?”

  “I’m fine, Pop.”

  “Good, because I feel like I’m gonna have a heart attack.”

  She kissed his cheek.

  In the limo, she held Lucas’s hand and watched Sugar Village slip away.

  “Where to?” the driver asked.

  “Logan Airport,” said Cherry. “British Airways. Private flights gate.”

  The driver glanced in the mirror. “You kids win some kind of contest?”

  “Yeah,” they said together, and left it at that.

  Ardelia met them at the gate. She was in full Ardelia mode, kissing their cheeks, squeezing their hands, fluttering on about Jolly Old England and how they were just going to love it. Spanner was there as well, dressed for comfort in black track pants and flats.

  “You’re short without heels,” said Cherry.

  “You’re freakishly tall with them.”

  Cherry smiled.

  “What’s funny?”

  At this point Spanner’s bitchiness was just kind of comforting. Like a favorite scratchy blanket. “Nothing,” said Cherry.

  Ardelia motioned for them to follow. “Come along, my little chicks. Time to check our bags.”

  Instead of passing through security with the rest of the beleaguered masses, they were led to a private line with men in suits and women in expensive casual wear. Pearls, diamonds, and gold watches were dropped into a plastic pan, and a female security guard asked Cherry if she had anything metal on her person.

  “Like piercings?”

  The security guard looked exhausted. Her name tag read joan. “Step this way, please.”

  Joan passed a wand over Cherry’s entire body, which was humiliating, especially when it whistled at her crotch. After removing her belt and shoes, Cherry was allowed through. The guards gave Lucas a weird look, due to his shit-kicker boots and Thug Life sweatshirt. She wished he hadn’t worn it. The guards asked if they could open his bag.

  “Sure,” said Lucas.

  “What’s all this?” Joan the guard held up his pencil case. “You got any razors in here, son?”

  “They’re pencils,” said Lucas.

  “He’s an artist,” Cherry said from the end of the line. The black guard closest to her smiled.

  “Brother,” he said to Lucas, “I don’t know what you’re up to, but keep it up.”

  Their chartered jet waited on the tarmac, all alone, its tail emblazoned with a British flag.

  “It’s like an Austin Powers plane,” Lucas said.

  Cherry was terrified. She’d never been terrified before. All the other times she might have used the word, she’d been wrong. She’d been afraid of dying, like the time she and Vi saw a rabid dog in the woods behind Vi’s house. Now she was certain. Her knees started to wobble as they approached the mobile stairs leading to the hatch. She made sure to step across the threshold with her right foot first, for luck.

  Once she was inside, Cherry’s terror was momentarily muffled. She’d never been on a jet, but this looked nothing like the cramped, baby-squalling coaches she’d seen in the movies. The cabin was tiny with plush seats turned toward the center, a little like a limo and a little like someone’s living room. The windows were curtained. A screen set into the far wall played an undersea documentary.

  “Fish are calming,” Ardelia explained.

  Lucas dug his toe into the plush carpeting. “This must be a bitch to clean.”

  Ardelia nodded, frowning. “It must. I wonder do they take the carpet out or . . . ?”

  “Don’t pretend to be interested,” said Spanner. She moved past them into the cabin and took the farthest seat. She extracted a magazine from a basket and hid behind it. SkyMall. “Oh, look: air-conditioned golf clubs.”

  A flight attendant with a Union Jack uniform appeared. “If you’d like to take your seats, we’re nearly ready for departure.”

  Ardelia ordered food and drink as if she’d just been handed a menu. “Cucumber sandwiches, please. And Perrier. And does anyone want something stronger?” She leaned on Cherry’s elbow confidentially. “I like a little champagne on a long flight. Makes it go faster.”

  “Champagne? Really?” Lucas checked with Cherry and shrugged. “Sounds pretty sweet.”

  “Open the Veuve Clicquot,” Ardelia told the flight attendant. “Four glasses.”

  They took their seats. Cherry made sure that Lucas sat closer to the window, though no matter where she looked, blue ovals of sky stared blindly back at her. Knowing the tarmac was only a few feet below didn’t make her feel any safer.

  “Will there be . . . ? Is it going to be bumpy?” she asked the flight attendant.

  “We’re expecting a little weather, but nothing to worry about.” She smiled. “First time flying?”

  “It’s that obvious?”

  “I personally guarantee a smooth ride,” she said. “My name’s Maleficent, if you need anything.”

  She turned to Lucas when the flight attendant had gone. “She’s the witch from Sleeping Beauty!”

  “What?”

  “Maleficent! That’s the witch from Sleeping Beauty!”

  “You’ve gone totally nuts.”

  “Yes. Yes, I have.”

  “I’m right here.” He squeezed her hand. “Dad and I used to fly to New Orleans to see Uncle Joe, remember? Flying’s easy.”

  Cherry glared in the direction of the kitchenette. “She’s gonna turn into a dragon. I just know it.”

  As the plane taxied, Maleficent came around with flutes of champagne. Cherry didn’t touch hers.

  “I don’t always do this, you know,” Ardelia said. “I usually fly public, to save. But I thought this would be more fun.”

  “Fun,” Cherry murmured. She spied another plane through the window. Its enormous bulk floated into the air, just coming loose from the ground, as if by accident. It looked like CGI. She couldn’t believe it.

  “Of course, flying will be a no-no once you’re pregnant,” Ardelia continued. “Bad for the fetus, I’ve read. But once you see the house, you won’t want to leave, trust me.”

  Spanner peered over her magazine. “Are you all right, Cherry? You look a little under-ripe.”

  “I’ve never flown before,” said Cherry.

  She was experiencing a kind of cosmic claustrophobia. On the map, England seemed impossibly far away. Now the planet felt so small. “The farthest I’ve ever been from home is Boston, and my first time was with you.”

  “Well, this is doubly exciting,” Ardelia grinned.

  Cherry
wanted to smack her. “I think my head’s going to explode.”

  “Are your ears popping already?” Ardelia said. “Try going like this. Muh-muh-muh . . . ”

  The pilot announced that they were clear for takeoff. Cherry checked that her seat belt was safely fastened, then rechecked, then triple-checked. Jesus, what was the point of seat belts on airplanes? If they went down, seat belts sure as shit weren’t going to save them.

  The engines roared, a whistling, pissed-off howl.

  “Are they supposed to make that noise?”

  Lucas was grinning like an idiot. Why was everyone smiling? They were going to burn alive.

  Cherry was pressed into her chair. Then suddenly they were airborne. The ground peeled away, and Cherry shut her eyes. She pressed her feet into the carpet, trying to push them back to earth, trying not to think of all the mechanical parts, all the little fixable, breakable, fallible things working together to keep them aloft. She felt the world wobble. Her tummy wobbled, too, like a washing machine off its casters. She tasted burritos and bile.

  “Cherry, you have to see this,” Lucas was saying. “You can see the whole city!”

  She shook her head, phosphenes dancing on the backs of her eyelids. She felt someone touch her hand. She peeked just enough to see Ardelia looking worried. The girl had no setting between Thrilled and Concerned.

  “Do you want a Somnol?” She rattled a bottle of pills like a cat toy.

  “No!” said Cherry. “No pills.”

  “She doesn’t like pills,” said Spanner, flipping a page. “I wonder why.”

  Cherry jerked around to meet Spanner’s gaze, then shut her eyes again as the jet banked right, threatening to slide them off their cushion of air into the ocean. Through the cloud of her terror, a new worry began to flash and crackle. Spanner couldn’t have meant what Cherry thought she meant. She couldn’t know about Maxwell. Could she?

  The floor seemed to roll, undulating like a wave. Again her lunch visited the back of her throat. She couldn’t take it anymore. She clawed off her seat belt and somehow fell to her feet. Her insides were doing barrel rolls.

  “Cherry?” Lucas said.

  She yanked back the little curtain separating the cabin from the kitchenette, surprising Maleficent, who was strapped into a little jumper seat.

  “I’ll need you to return —”

  She made it to the bathroom just in time. The toilet was a metal salad bowl with blue Kool-Aid at the bottom. Up came her burrito. Could you get sucked out an airplane toilet? A headline leaped to mind: “teen falls to death over atlantic, barfing.”

  Soon it was over, but the wibble-wobble of the plane ensured there’d be more to come. Better to stay close to the toilet, forearms on the cool metal. She hadn’t felt this bad since junior prom, when Vi’d spiked the Mountain Dew with Everclear.

  A shadow fell over her shoulder. Not the Grim Reaper, unfortunately, but one of the other passengers. She’d forgotten to close the bathroom door behind her.

  “Occupied,” Cherry managed.

  She felt someone’s knees press against her back and heard the little door close. A light went on overhead.

  “We need to talk,” said Spanner.

  Cherry swallowed. “You really wanna see this?”

  “Now.”

  She struggled to her feet, ignoring Spanner’s offered hand. She pressed the spigot and splashed water on her face. Her hands were shaking.

  “If you want to join the mile-high club, you’re barking up the wrong —”

  Another lurch. Cherry steadied herself against the sink. Spanner handed her a box of green Tic Tacs. She took one.

  “Okay,” Cherry said finally. “What is it?”

  Spanner folded her arms. “When we met, I thought you were stupid. I don’t think you’re stupid anymore.”

  “I thought you were a stuck-up bitch.” Cherry let that line linger.

  “I was willing to tolerate and maybe even respect you back in Shitpot, U.S.A., but this has gone too far.” She pressed a pencil-thin finger into Cherry’s sternum. “I should be carrying the baby. Not you.”

  “I don’t even know if I’m going to say yes. Besides,” Cherry said, “Ardelia asked you, and you said no.”

  “Is that what she told you?” The plane dipped, and the girls fell into each other. Both girls stiffened, backing as far from the other as the tiny space allowed. “You’ll say yes. Of course you will. You have to. What else are you going to do with your life?”

  Cherry felt vomit rising again and swallowed.

  “Why do you want to do it, anyway?” Cherry asked. “You’re already rich.”

  For the first time, Spanner’s gaze broke from Cherry’s. She studied the inch of space between them. “It’s not about the money.”

  “What, then? Are you that much of a control freak?”

  The Death Mask snapped back on.

  “You’re so bloody ignorant,” Spanner growled. “You don’t know half of what’s going on here.”

  “I know she doesn’t trust you.” Because you sleep with her exes, she almost finished.

  “Oh? And should she trust you?”

  For an instant, she really thought the floor had given out beneath her.

  “What are you inferring?”

  “Implying,” said Spanner. She smiled, Grinch-like.

  “Look,” Cherry started, “I don’t know what you think you know . . .”

  “I think there’s something you’re not telling Ardelia,” Spanner said. “And you and I both know what it is.”

  “You don’t know shit,” Cherry said.

  “Maybe I do; maybe I don’t.” The smirk carbonized into a sneer. “All I’m saying is, watch your back, Daisy Duke. I could make things very uncomfortable for you.” Spanner opened the door and stepped out into the kitchenette. “You’ve got sick on your shirt.”

  Cherry waited a moment, until she felt steady enough to make her way back to her seat.

  “You feeling any better?” Lucas asked.

  She buckled in, hands trembling. Her eyes met Spanner’s across the cabin. She swallowed.

  “No,” she said. “Much worse.”

  Thanks to Ardelia’s eye mask and earphones, Cherry was finally able to sleep. She woke to the last track on Ardelia’s iPod, some Joni Mitchell tune. Lucas was asleep beside her. She risked a glance out the window. Something was odd. The view appeared upside down, and as she blinked sleep from her eyes she saw why. They were flying above the clouds, where, Cherry realized, the sky was always clear. The sun was low in the window, turning everything below into a rippling sea of pink. It all looked so still and so large. It was always like this up here, whether there were people below or not, whether those people were happy or not, whether they were good or bad, loyal or not. It made sense that people thought of heaven like this.

  The cabin was dark and quiet. Everyone was asleep. Spanner snored softly. The engines seemed to snore themselves, like giant cats. Only Ardelia was awake, watching her.

  “I’m glad you’re awake for this,” she said. “We’re making the sun rise.”

  Cherry wondered how this could be, then understood: they were traveling east, into the daylight. It was an early sunrise on the other side of the clouds. Cherry felt like saying something that even in her head sounded silly. But they were alone, and everything was so quiet, she didn’t mind saying it.

  “I feel like I won’t be the same now.”

  “That’s why I travel. It changes you.”

  Lucas smacked his lips and turned toward the window, and Cherry felt wobbly again. She looked around the opulent cabin. Her champagne had gone flat.

  “Listen, Ardelia —”

  “You look cold.”

  She offered Cherry her tiny blanket. It was cold. Cherry tucked it around her shoulders. Ardelia hugged herself. There was gooseflesh on her arms.

  Lucas’s chest rose and fell in the steady rhythm of sleep. He looked perfect. She wanted to seal him in a steel box and bury him
under the ocean, where nothing could get to him and nothing could hurt him, not even her mistakes.

  “I really have to tell you something.”

  “I have to tell you something, too,” Ardelia said. Cherry turned to her, surprised. The other girl’s face was pinched, her eyes searching the cloud cover. She shook her head, a tiny, decisive, almost imperceptible movement. “Though not yet.”

  “But —”

  “And whatever it is,” Ardelia said, “we’ll forgive each other, won’t we?”

  Cherry didn’t know what to say. Ardelia held her hand across the aisle, and she took it. The sun had climbed a little higher. It was just the two of them, awake in the sky. Far away.

  Somewhere, underneath the clouds, was everything.

  The hilltop town of Orchard — with its view, remote location, and sterling local cuisine — had turned a sleepy village into a retreat for the super-rich. Beyond the small main street with its antiques, farmers’ markets, and other shops flourishing on the easy dollars of movie stars, the town was mostly scattered manor houses lurking behind old-growth firs, some new and stylish, but mostly rambling mansions older than the advent of the automobile. Cherry glimpsed a few as they drove down a quiet back road. Some appeared to be crumbling, as if struck by falling rocks.

  Ardelia Deen was not rich because she was a movie star. Her family had money going back generations, which, much to Cherry’s confusion, didn’t seem to come from anywhere. Rich people in America worked for big companies or had parents who worked for big companies. But in England you were just rich, the way some people were just tall or agoraphobic.

  Cherry felt relieved. She was in a storybook world, or at least some movie based on a Jane Austen novel. The thrill of the new place, plus the joy at being on solid ground again, made her giddy, almost drunk.

  The Deens’ house, Liddell Manor (that was the other odd thing about England: houses had names), was at the highest point of the hill, near a cherry grove in full bloom. The upper stories were scalloped with cloud-like balconies, and rooftop garrets formed a mini–mountain range. The long road they’d been riding on turned out to be a private drive, Liddell Way, with a gate at the end.

  Cherry whistled as they pulled onto the property.