Good Luck, Fatty! (first draft, chapter 8)

Oh, the Places You’ll Go! All Hail, Napoleon Dynamite!

Good Luck, Fatty! (first draft, chapter 8)

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS MATURE YOUNG ADULT CONTENT. IF SUCH CONTENT MIGHT OFFEND YOU, PLEASE STOP READING HERE (or just read with your eyes closed)

As penance for a re-post earlier tonight (I couldn’t figure out how to edit my FB/Twitter update without posting a second time) I am offering another chapter of my WIP.

This story is slowly but surely working its way to the finish line (only roundabout 10,000 words to go! Rah-rah!). Thanks for coming along for the ride. Peace out.

Good Luck, Fatty!

Maggie Bloom

Chapter 8

Luckily Marie and Duncan decided they were above celebrating Christmas, despite their return to the motherland (too much commercialism, consumerism, and plain old American greed), which left me to enjoy a pleasant holiday with Orv, Denise, and Denise’s family.

By the time New Year’s Eve rolled around, I hadn’t laid eyes on my parents in nearly two weeks, and things had almost returned to normal. Then the phone rang.

“Hello?” Denise says in the kitchen.

It’s seven p.m., and Orv and I are settling in for a re-run marathon of Penal Code 911. Ever since I told Orv about Lex Arlington and the Yo-Yo race, he’s been obsessed with all things Lex-related. (I bet if I asked him Lex’s birth date or his favorite song, he’d know.)

I’m not paying strict attention to the conversation in the other room, but Denise’s tone has gone wildly animated. I slide off the couch and peek around the corner, just in case I’m missing something of consequence.

As soon as Denise spots me, she hangs up. “Get your coat,” she tells me, her voice tight and professional. “We’re going to the hospital.”

I wrinkle my brow. “Why?”

“Orv, come on!” she shouts into the living room. “Your Aunt Marie’s in labor!”

Something makes me stop breathing for a few seconds. Maybe it’s the realization that, as little as I’ve mattered to my parents thus far, their loyalties will now be even further divided. Or maybe it’s the fear that I may be walking in Marie’s shoes in another eight months, give or take.

Orv plods into the kitchen, his feet heavy even without those steel-toed boots he scuffs around in eight to twelve hours a day. “It’s New Year’s Eve,” he says, as if the stork should be getting snookered from the dregs of some hobo’s peach schnapps instead of ushering new life into the world.

“What do you want me to do about it?” Denise snaps. She hustles for the door, leaving Orv and me frozen and confused. Without looking back, she adds, “I’ll be in the car.”

When we get to the hospital, Denise wields the Royale into a fifteen-minute parking spot at the cusp of the emergency room and orders me and Orv out.

“Where are we going?” Orv asks with a disinterested yawn, the passenger door expectantly agape.

I slip out of the car and wait on the sidewalk for them to settle whatever nagging issue is ping-ponging between them. “Just head for the maternity ward,” Denise instructs with a flustered eye roll. “I’ll meet you there.”

Orv quits while he’s ahead, joins me on the sidewalk and hesitantly leads the way. At a second-floor nursing station, he stops and says, “Have you got a Marie…” He stares a second at my ear. “…Cotton here?”

The young lady behind the desk, a raven-haired beauty with a dash too much black eyeliner, consults an erasable white-board and tells us, “She just went into surgery. Y’all can wait in the visitors’ room, around the corner.” She waves a dagger-nailed hand to direct us.

I tug Orv by the shirt-sleeve and say, “Thanks.”

Duncan is perched on the edge of a boxy chair by the visitors’ room entrance, his elbows on his knees, his hands steepled in prayer. He fails to notice me and Orv as we approach.

Orv waltzes right past my father and plops down on an equally angular loveseat, but I figure it’d be just plain rude of me to do the same. “Duncan?” I say, stopping by an empty chair beside him. His eyes are closed, and they don’t look like they plan on opening any time soon. “Dad?”

He mouths the end of a prayer I should know by rote, the words escaping his lips as a solemn whistle. Finally his eyelids part. “Roberta!” he exclaims, then catches himself. “I mean, Bobbi, of course.” He rises and drapes his arm around me, gives my shoulder a squeeze.

Why does this feel so awkward? I think. Shouldn’t my father’s touch be more like home?

It isn’t. I wriggle away and take a seat, ask him, “How’s everything going?”

“Fine, fine,” he replies, pursing his lips and clasping his hands behind his back as he gears up for a round of pacing.

I glance ahead into the room and notice a gouge-my-eyes-out-adorable set of toddler twins with white-blond hair, checkered overalls (matching, obviously), and railroad conductors’ caps. I wonder what my brother, Roy, will look like. Or my baby.

“Mr. Cotton?” a shrill voice asks behind me. In the doorway is a chubby lady (maybe twenty pounds lighter than me), donning seafoam-green scrubs and a surgical mask pulled down around her neck.

“Yes?” my father says.

The lady (a doctor, I assume) tells Duncan that my brother weighs nine pounds, two ounces, possesses the expected ten fingers and ten toes, and, after a bit of scrubbing by the nurses, will be happy to receive visitors. Marie, she informs him, should rest–at least for an hour or two–before the swarm of company descends.

Duncan trails the doctor to the nursery, and Orv and I stay behind to catch Denise. Three or four minutes later, she bombs in, her eyes bloodshot and puffy. “What’s the matter?” I say.

She whacks what looks like a clump of snow off the shoulder of her denim jacket. “Nothing.”

“It’s snowing?” I say, unable to hide my awe.

“Yeah, I guess.”

Orv stands up, takes a sideways step toward the doorway. “Let’s get this show on the road, so we can get home before the bars let out.”

Bars? Plural? This is rural North Carolina, not downtown L.A. (Though I suppose Orv’s still right, since there isn’t much else to do around here but drink.)

Orv, Denise, and I form an orderly line and march to the nursery, where we peer through the glass at Duncan in his hospital gown-and-mask getup, rocking my swaddled baby brother to sleep.

My eyes begin to pulse with tears, but I can’t tell if they’re the kind of tears that make Yiddish grandmas clutch their chests with joy or the kind of tears that spring from a life of neglect and disillusionment.

Orv taps the glass, like patrons are warned against doing at the zoo. Then he lets out a high-pitched psst! sound, and Duncan looks up.

I wave him and the baby over. “Oh my God,” I murmur as he tips Roy’s perfect face our way. My brother is a dead ringer for Marie.

Denise forces a smile, conjures a few syllables of baby talk and a series of half-hearted cooing sounds before breaking out in a heaving sob. “I’m sorry,” she cries. She sucks a wad of snot down her throat (or at least that what it sounds like). “I…” (sob) “…just…” (sob) “…can’t…” (sob) She drags the arm of her jacket over her dripping nose and then turns and rushes down the hall.

And I run after her.

There is not a single chain drugstore in Unity, which makes shopping for a pregnancy test a pretty indiscreet affair when you’re a tubby teen who, one way or another, knows just about everyone in town.

I hoist the front tire of the Schwinn into a bike rack beside a restaurant called Big Daddy’s and around the corner from Marlowe’s Pharmacy and Sundries, the only place I can think of that might stock a First Response or an EPT. (What I wouldn’t give for a Walgreens or a Rite Aid right now.)

I never spent the twenty-five dollars I’ve had since before Christmas (Denise made me lump my items in with hers at Derby’s) so I’m hoping that, if I’m lucky enough to nail down a pregnancy test, the crinkly wad of ones and fives stuffed in my jeans will cover it.

As I slip in through the side door of Marlowe’s, which has a jingly bell over it, just like The Pit–Da-Ding! Da-Ding!–the pharmacist (Mr. Marlowe?), a crotchety-looking dude with an obvious toupee and wire-rimmed bifocals, glances up at me. Stupidly, I smile. Now there’s no way in hell I’ll have the guts to plop an EPT down on the counter, even if this place has one.

But I can’t leave yet (I just got here, for God’s sake), so I wander down the shampoo aisle, as if I’m searching for a new product to straighten, or volumize, or de-frizz my mane. Where in the world are the pregnancy tests anyway?

I pluck a giant bottle of Pantene off the shelf and spin it around, pretend I’m checking its label for pesticides or a cruelty-free logo. Meanwhile, two young mothers (former classmates of Denise) wrestle baby strollers through the aisle in tandem, one of the strollers rubbing my ankles as it goes by. I glance back and spot a cherubic little face smiling at me. Since when did infants get so gosh darn cute?

I refocus my efforts, case the joint so that, next time I show up (today is not my day, obviously), I’ll know exactly where the pregnancy tests are and will be able to grab one and run.

For the life of me, though, I can’t seem to find the damn things. After ten minutes of eyeballing shoe polish and denture cream and foot powder, I’m still at square one. “Can I help you?” Mr. Marlowe asks as I shuffle past his glassed-in pod.

I whip my head around, like he must be speaking to someone other than me.

Negative.

“Uh…” Quick! Grab anything! my brain squeals. I reach for a giant pack of watermelon-flavored gum. “I’ll take this,” I say as I slide it across the counter.

Mr. Marlowe floats down from his perch, rings up the gum and sends me on my way. A few steps past the cash register, I notice the condoms…and the pregnancy tests.

At least now I know.

“Have you seen Buttercup lately?” I ask Harvey between customers at The Pit. Sometimes my little buddy takes off for a few days at once, especially during what passes for winter around here, but this time it seems like he’s been gone a lot longer.

“Geez…” Harvey says, sounding concerned. “Now that you mention it, I don’t think the bugger’s been around for the better part of a month.”

I knew it. “Where do you think he went?” I ask absently as I thread a new seat onto a wrecked bike Harvey and I are restoring.

He clamps an air hose to the valve stem of the bike’s back tire and starts pumping the deflated thing up by hand. “He’s a stray, Bobbi,” Harvey reminds me gently. “He could be anywhere.”

Or nowhere. “I should look for him.”

Harvey shakes his head. “How’re you going to do that?”

“I don’t know,” I say with a shrug. I give the bike seat a tap into its ultimate position. “I can check the places he hangs out, see if he’s off hurt somewhere, or if anybody’s got a lead on him.”

“What about your training?” Harvey asks with an edge of disappointment. “The Yo-Yo’s only ten weeks away.”

I’ve been waiting for him to bring this up. Frankly, I’m surprised he’s held out this long. I twist a new rubber grip onto one of the bike’s handlebars and say, “I’ve been doing eight or ten miles a week with Tom.”

He stares at my stomach, as if he doubts I’m biking as many miles as I’ve claimed. “My offer still stands,” he tells me. “I’d be happy to take you on. And I’ve got quite a few tricks to jumpstart your progress. Don’t you want a shot at winning this thing?” He caps the valve stem of the back tire and moves on to filling the front. “The prize money for your age group is a thousand dollars.”

I wouldn’t mind a cool grand, but I’m also a realist. “I’m not trying to be a downer,” I say, “but I don’t think there’s much of a chance I’d win. Since Lex got involved, the Yo-Yo’s blown up.”

When the race consisted of thirty people, I’d assumed (probably erroneously) that I had as good of a chance as most folks. But at last count, we had twelve-hundred registered riders (the largest number for which the town would approve permits) and another thirty-five hundred cooling their jets on the waiting list. Near as I can tell, I’m dead in the water.

“I was hoping this would be a watershed moment for you,” Harvey says outright. “A challenge you could use as a springboard to bigger and better things. A pivot-point for charting your future.”

I try not to think about the future, mine or anyone else’s. But it’s comforting to know that Harvey does. “I’m not quitting,” I assure him, my hands going to my hips in protest. “I just have other things happening right now. With Marie having the baby, and…”

“Well, if you change your mind, let me know.”

“Will do,” I say, and leave it at that.