Remember

by Patricia Shanae Smith

  “Yeah, I just can’t wait to be done with school. I’m going to be up until three in the morning doing homework and then I have to up at seven thirty for work,” he said.

  “Do you want to come over? I can help you with homework,” I offered. I always helped him with homework. I was surprised he hadn’t already asked me to.

  “I don’t want to keep you up. Plus, my dad wants to make sure I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing.” He sighed.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Since when did he care so much about what his dad thought? I didn’t like this new dad Ethan. This adult Ethan. Ethan was so good at taking care of me. I didn’t know how to take care of him when he was feeling like this. Now, I was anxious.

  When we got back home, he didn’t come inside.

  “Let’s talk tomorrow. I love you.” He sounded stressed.

  I just stared at him as he crossed the street.

  This wouldn’t be happening if I’d decided to have an abortion.

  When I walked inside, I saw Dad was eating at the dining room table.

  “I made you a plate.” he said.

  I didn’t know what he made but the smell made me instantly want to throw up, so I ran straight to the bathroom. Dad came running after me.

  “You okay, sweetie?” He peeked his head into the bathroom.

  “I fucking hate being pregnant.” I took a deep breath and relaxed on the floor.

  My dad plopped down next to me and chuckled. “Ha, you sound just like your mother.” He shook his head. “She hated being pregnant so much.”

  I smiled. Hearing about things that my mom and I had in common warmed my heart— especially now that she wasn’t here. I didn’t feel so bad about not being her perfect daughter.

  “I had no idea it was going to be so rough. Not just physically, but mentally. Everything Ethan is going through just to be a father.”

  “Yeah…a baby changes things. You changed our lives. Not gonna lie, it wasn’t easy, but once we settled into the lifestyle, I never wanted to change it.”

  It got me thinking. Maybe we just needed to settle in.

  “Dad…” I really did miss seeing Ethan all the time. I didn’t want my dad to have to take care of me so much. That wasn’t his job. It was Ethan’s. I was starting to think Ethan should move in.

  “What?”

  “So, I’m having Ethan’s baby, right?”

  “Hope so.”

  “I think he should move in. He could help around the house. His dad has been really pushing him since I got pregnant.”

  “What does he think?”

  “Before I even mentioned it to him, I wanted to make sure you would be okay with it,” I said, stumbling to get off the bathroom floor. “You’re still my dad, Dad.” I hadn’t really thought much about it myself. I just thought it would be kind of a good idea. Ethan was already at the house a lot anyway. Ever since he met me, he’d done so much for us. Now I was having his baby, so the least I could do was offer my house. Right?

  “Why not? I like him. I can be myself with him. It’s not like Susan, with all those kids, or Grandma.”

  “Dad. Ew. Never…”

  “Yeah, make the offer. Let’s see what he says.”

  I was shocked. I thought for sure my dad wouldn’t be okay with it. Now, this could potentially be happening. I felt like throwing up again. I shouldn’t be scared of change.

  Change was happening whether I was ready or not, so I might as well start the motions.

  “Are you serious?” Ethan asked while he was cleaning my kitchen. It was perfect timing, actually.

  “Yeah, I mean, I’m not going to do your homework for you every night, but I would love to wake up to you every morning,” I said.

  He came over and kissed me. “You lost me at not doing my homework,” he said.

  I smiled.

  “Okay, fine, don’t move in,” I joked.

  He sat next to me and put his hand on my stomach. “I want more than anything for all of us to be under one roof.”

  I kissed him on his cheek. “Now…how do you think your dad is going to feel about it?” I raised my eyebrows.

  “I don’t think he’ll be too keen on the idea.”

  “He hasn’t looked at me in the last four months. This baby is going to be his first grandchild. Does he get that?”

  “Yeah, he’s more upset with me in general for…other things,” Ethan said.

  “Like what? I didn’t know you guys were still having problems.”

  “I didn’t want to stress you out.”

  ` “You already are. What the hell is going on?”

  He was hiding something.

  Early one morning, a few weeks after Ethan moved in, there was a knock at the door.

  “Who’s that?” I shook Ethan awake as he lay next to me. He had to be up in an hour for work, I knew he was going to be upset with me for waking him earlier.

  “What time is it?” he mumbled.

  “Fucking six in the morning and someone is knocking,” I complained.

  “No…you’re hearing things…go back to sleep.” He rolled back over.

  As tired as I was, I could have gone back to sleep, and I wanted to, but the knocking got louder and louder.

  We both hopped up.

  “It’s my dad.” Ethan rolled out of bed, struggling to put clothes on. I knew my dad was going to be pissed.

  “Portia…what the hell is going on? You know what time it is?” Dad asked, getting out of bed.

  I rushed over to him. “It’s Mr. Torke. Something’s wrong,” I said, worried.

  “I don’t care. No one knocks on my door like they’re the police at six in the morning,” Dad said. As he was getting dressed, I went to the top of the stairs, trying to listen to what Ethan and his dad were fighting about, but they were whispering. I didn’t like that at all. What could they possibly be whispering about?

  Dad came over and we hovered at the top of the stairs.

  “This is ridiculous. Why am I sneaking around in my own damn house?” he said.

  “Just wait. I want to hear what they are saying.” I couldn’t hear them to save my life.

  “Babe? Is everything okay?” I tiptoed down the stairs.

  Dad nodded at me to just go down. My dad was all talk, no play my entire life. He would always say, “Do as I say, not as I do.” He told Piper and me what he wanted of us but never did what we wanted of him. But at the end of the day, no one cared.

  “Portia,” Mr. Torke greeted me, “I was just leaving.” He left, slamming the front door.

  “What was that about?”

  “He wants me to come home,” Ethan said. He walked over to the kitchen to start the coffee, but he was irritated and so aggressive with the coffee maker it wasn’t working. “Did we upset you too much? How do you feel? You think you’re going to be sick? What do you feel like eating?”

  Ethan was talking so fast.

  “I’m fine. Not everything is about me and my pregnancy. What’s going on?”

  He went from mad to sulking in two seconds. Ethan never let himself look defeated in front of me. He was really good at always having his shit together even when he didn’t. He felt like he had to look like it. He sat down on the living room couch. He grabbed the remote and just started flipping through channels.

  Ethan hated watching TV.

  “Babe?” I sat down next to him.

  “What do you have planned for today? Shit. Is it your doctor’s appointment?” he asked. He was scaring me. He was so agitated but didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Stop.” I put my hand on his back and my other hand on his knee.

  “What? I’m fine. My dad is just being a dad. I can deal.” He threw the remote down. His face got red.

  “No, you can’t. You have to talk about it.”

  “Like you talk about your problems?” he yelled, getting up . There was sweat coming from every b
ody part—head, nose, neck. Who was in front of me right now?

  “I do,” I screamed. Now, I was fucking irritated.

  “No, you don’t. You expect me to just know how you feel. I know you, but I don’t know what you’re thinking constantly. We’re never on the same page, or I never feel like we’re the same page.”

  I didn’t know what the hell Ethan was going on about. I’d never seen him like this. I thought we were fine. I felt like we were happy. He’d moved in. We’d been reading these stupid books. We were getting ready to build our little family.

  “What the hell did your father say? And what the fuck else is going on between you two?” I said calmly. I didn’t want us screaming at each other anymore.

  “Nothing,” he stated sternly, sitting back down. “He wants me to move back home. He made some really good points. I’m an adult at twenty-one. I’m giving up my college years to have a family and work at an office. I’m doing things I’m supposed to be doing ten years from now.”

  He had to say that at six in the morning.

  “Fuck you. I am the one pregnant. I am giving up a lot here too, you know. You told me we could do this. I believed you. I trusted you. After everything I’ve been through, are you fucking kidding me, Ethan?” I broke down crying. I couldn’t believe this argument was happening. Not now.

  “Please don’t cry.” He stepped closer to me as he suddenly felt bad for everything he’d said.

  “You know what? Fine.” I backed up and stared directly into those icy blue eyes.

  “Fine what?”

  “Leave. Move back in with your dad. Go to college. Go back to fucking Florida for all I care. My dad and I got this,” I snapped.

  “You and your dad will kill this baby and you know it. It won’t last a day,” he yelled.

  “It?” He was calling the baby it. “Now I feel sick. Get the hell out of my house.” I stood up and he didn’t fight back. He left and slammed the door just as hard as his father did earlier. I really did start to feel sick. I bent over—I was going to throw up, but didn’t. I just needed to lie down.

  “We don’t need ’em,” Dad said as he came hopping down the stairs to grab a beer.

  “Where were you ten minutes ago?”

  “Letting you guys handle it.” He shrugged.

  “Well. It’s handled,” I said.

  “Can I tell you a story, sweetie?”

  “Can I lie down first?”

  He lifted my head, sat next to me on the couch, and placed my head on his legs. He played with my hair while he told me his story.

  “Seventeen years old. Betty Byers. Beautiful. Sexy…”

  “Dad, I already feel queasy, please…” I complained.

  “I got her pregnant. I didn’t want her to have it. Her mother, though—I wasn’t getting out of it. I was going to have a kid at seventeen years old. I never played it cool. I was never okay with it. I even threatened to leave her and leave the baby. I didn’t care. I wanted to be me. I was going to deny the kid was mine…”

  “Really?”

  “I know. I was an asshole,” he said. “Point is, I never once acted how Ethan is acting. Are you kidding me? He loves you and he loves this baby. The situation sucks. You guys are way too young. Your lives are ruined, if you ask me. This little fight over what you guys are going through is nothing. I know that boy will come back tonight. I know he’s going to apologize. I know he will always be there for you and this baby. You may be the one carrying the baby, but he has to go through the emotional upheaval of becoming a father—something I wouldn’t even consider at his age.”

  “How did you react when mom was pregnant with me?”

  “I was really happy it was your mother instead of Betty Byers,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Oh yeah. You wouldn’t want Betty as your mother anyway. I only wanted her because she was the most popular girl in school.”

  “I don’t know what to do. I accepted the fact that we’re having a family. I asked him to move in. I’ve done everything to make this easy for him,” I said.

  “There’s nothing you can do. This is all in his head. He needs time alone. He needs to think. He needs time to accept the entire situation.”

  “I thought he did that already,” I said.

  “You guys just switched—”

  “You think he switched to the point where we can still have the abortion?”

  “Portia, it’s way too late in the game for you to be saying things like that,” he said.

  I did feel some type of bond with this child inside me. It sounded terrible, but my dad was right—our lives were changing and neither of us wanted this, but here we were. I swore if Ethan and I got through this, we could get through anything.

  “Hey, Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What happened to Betty Byer’s baby?”

  “Oh, she had a miscarriage.”

  Chapter 16

  Susan’s kids were over and they were giving me a headache. She was smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone while I played with the little ones in the living room. Every other time I’d played with them, it was easy. I played dolls and cars and then they went home.

  This time, I noticed things I wouldn’t have before. I asked Susan if they needed to be changed, when was the last time they ate, could I give them a piece of candy? I wondered if my baby was going to be as cute as hers.

  It was different. Not going to lie, I didn’t like it.

  “Portia, give me all your friends’ phone numbers,” Susan yelled over at me.

  I didn’t respond. She should know that I didn’t have any friends.

  I missed Ethan. What if my dad was wrong? What if he didn’t come back? He told me he was staying at his dad’s tonight and he would be back tomorrow. I had been expecting to wake up to breakfast with him or something. Nope, just a bunch of kids in my living room. I waddled over to the dining room table where she was sitting. She hung up the phone but immediately started texting.

  “What are you doing?” I sat down at the table. Sitting down had never felt as amazing as it did every time I did it now.

  “Planning everything. The shower, your doctor. Your mom wouldn’t want her grandchild to be brought into this world by any hoo-haw,” she said.

  “How long until you started smoking again after you had your babies?” I asked.

  “You miss it, don’t you?”

  “My dad said I wouldn’t miss it after a week. It’s been six months…”

  Susan laughed. “Where is that guy?” She stopped looking at her phone and stared deeply into my eyes. I thought it was strange that she didn’t look around for him. Was I supposed to know something?

  “Sleeping.”

  She was being so weird.

  “Oh, okay.” She snapped out of whatever it was. “You want to know a secret?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “I smoked while I was pregnant.” She handed me a cigarette. I looked into the living room and saw Stefan banging on my DVD player because it wasn’t working. The twins still had food from this morning all over their clothes. They were a mess.

  “I’m good,” I said, pushing it away. I went to pick up the twins. I had to clean them up. I had never been worried about this stuff before. I had never realized how fucked Susan was as a mother.

  “Portia, honey?”

  “Yes…”

  “What would you rather do? Not go to UCLA for your last year and build your family in this house, or attend UCLA and get a part-time job while struggling to raise your child?”

  Where did that come from?

  “Huh? Is it really that tight?”

  “I have five kids myself, Portia. I know how expensive they are. I know how important UCLA is to you. You and Ethan really need to sit down, plan this out, and think about what each of you want to do,” she said.

  “All I ever wanted was to be happy. Ever. I never wanted friend
s, a boyfriend, or a great job. I didn’t care about any of that superficial shit. I just wanted to be happy. Ethan and my dad are the only two things that make me happy. Fuck UCLA. I want to build my family in this house with Ethan and my dad and our little girl,” I said.

  She looked up at me and smiled, brushing my cheek with her hand.

  “If only life was that much of a dream,” she said.

  Ethan came bursting through the door. He looked awful, but I didn’t care. I was just so happy to see that he was in my house and wanted to see me. I ran to him like I hadn’t seen him in years.

  “I missed you so much.” I hugged him so tight.

  He hugged me back and kissed my forehead, then pulled away from me. “I told you I was coming today.” His tone was lower than usual. I knew him so well. I could tell there were still issues we needed to sort out but right now, I didn’t care.

  “Is everything okay?” Susan asked.

  “Yeah, I hope so.” I didn’t want to let go of Ethan.

  “I’m sorry for scaring you. I love you,” he said, and kissed me.

  “Hey, so I’m throwing a baby shower. Would your sister or any girls in your family want to come?” Susan asked Ethan.

  “Uh, let me think about it, but definitely not my sister.”

  I thought this whole baby shower thing was hilarious. We didn’t know anyone. I didn’t know anyone. All Susan had so far was every coworker who worked for my mother, her kids, a couple of Piper’s friends, and their mothers.

  “We’re having it here. I need this place spotless, you guys. Spotless. You know everyone is talking about you guys? Wondering how you guys are doing living in this house? Make everyone shut the fuck up. Your dad cannot be at the baby shower. He has to go somewhere,” she said.

  “He’ll just stay upstairs. We already talked about it. I’m going to get him all set up so he doesn’t have to come downstairs.”

  “And no going to check on him…” Ethan put his arm around me. I really had a lot to talk about with him. I wanted Susan and her children out of my house, now.

  “So when is this going down?” I asked.