Chapter 56
THE SIXTH SUMMER, TEN YEARS AGO
“Okay, person, place, or animal, and … go.” Matt flipped over the hourglass and Sammie and Didion started to draw on their pads of paper.
Didion drew one sloping line and Austin guessed, “Paris—the Eiffel Tower!”
“Yes!” She threw down her pencil and screamed.
“What the— Are you guys being serious?” Sammie flipped around their paper. “This is one line!”
Austin shrugged. “It’s obviously the Eiffel Tower, Sam, come on.”
Didion could hardly catch her breath from laughing.
The next time it was just Sammie’s turn to draw, Austin and Didion leaned over the table and watched her drawing.
“Cow,” guessed Matt.
Sammie pointed furiously at the arches on the figure’s feet with the tip of the pencil.
“Running cow,” he guessed. “Cow roller coaster? Cow ice skates.”
Austin leaned over to Didion and pulled her chair closer. He whispered into her ear, “Rocking horse.”
She nodded, having figured it out a second before he said it.
Sammie set down her pencil briefly, staring at Matt. “You think the clue on the card is cow ice skates?”
“I don’t know!”
She scribbled out her drawing, eyes darting to the hourglass. This time she drew an even more perfect, obvious rocking horse.
“Cow … shoes.”
“Enough with the cow! It’s not a cow!”
“No talking!” Austin and Didion say together, an inside joke from the many, many times they’d played this game.
Sammie was purple with frustration now, and Austin and Didion were clutching each other, laughing so hard.
“Time’s up,” Didion announced.
Sammie rounded on Matt. “You think the people at Pictionary were like, okay, what’s some stuff that there is on earth? Hmm, palm trees, thermometers, running a marathon, cow roller coaster…”
“Snowshoes? Skis!”
“Are you still guessing?!”
“Wait.” Matt caught his breath. “What was it?”
“Rocking horse!” they all yelled at the same time.
Austin wiped tears of laughter away from under his eyes and then looked at his phone for the time. “Okay, okay, so if we’re going to this thing, we better head out.”
“Ah, okay, let me check my makeup one more time. I am never playing with you again, Matt!” Sammie called out, running into the powder room.
The four of them were all dressed up, with somewhere they didn’t want to go.
Johnny’s parents were renewing their vows.
They wouldn’t have even been going to the ceremony if it weren’t for the fact that Johnny’s mother, Racquel, was a beloved member of the community.
How she had spawned such an awful son, no one could be sure.
She was the only reason Dusty didn’t press charges when Johnny broke into his restaurant and stole all the money from the till when he was thirteen and, as everyone decided to put it, going through something.
Nevertheless, they were all cleaned up and ready to go endure it. Sammie was in a loose, pink floral dress, her blond hair curled. Didion was in a tube top dress in a pretty blue that reminded her of the dress from The Sound of Music. The guys were in button-downs and nice pants.
“Okay, should we do a shot before we go?” asked Didion. “I don’t know about you guys, but I could do with one.”
The guys agreed, and then Sammie hesitated before saying, “Um … sure.”
Didion gave her a questioning look. She never usually turned down a drink. Especially during the summers at Birdsong, when all rules were off.
“No, yeah. I’m just nervous.”
Didion poured four shots of rum for them and then called out, “Mom? You want one? A shot?”
“Sure, one sec.”
Babe had been doing her new favorite thing, which was watercolors on the side porch. They heard her set things down, and then she came in and accepted her glass.
Didion saw an exchanged look go between Sammie and Babe, a tiny shake of Sammie’s head.
What … was that?
They clinked glasses and then Didion watched as Sammie turned around, clearly trying to hide the fact that she hadn’t taken hers.
“All right, I’m gonna go call a car,” said Austin. Then, sensing a weird vibe, he elbowed Matt.
They both left, saying bye to Babe, to go wait on the front porch.
As soon as she heard the screen door clap shut, Didion asked, “Is something going on?”
Her sister and mother looked at each other, and Didion waved a hand between them and said, “This is what I’m talking about, what’s going on?”
Sammie took a deep breath, and then gave Didion the last answer in the world she expected. “I’m pregnant.”
At first Didion laughed. But then she saw the earnestness in her sister’s face and the floor fell out from beneath her. “You’re … I’m sorry, what?”
“I wasn’t going to tell you tonight. Not like this.”
Didion felt like all the organs in her body had evaporated. “This—you … with Johnny Hart?”
“Didion, stop it.”
This, from Babe.
“I’m sorry, are you going to be her mother, or does that fall to me again?” spat Didion. “Johnny is disgusting. He’s a pig and an asshole and … what, you’re going to start a family together like some kind of Normal Rockwell painting?”
“Mom wasn’t that much older than me when she had you,” said Sammie.
“Yeah, and how did that work out for you?” said Didion, seething at her mother. “Fifteen years in and you completely gave up.”
Babe’s eyes darkened. “That is not what happened.”
“Oh, yeah? Then what was it? What was it that made you go from full-time to part-time mom? Because most parents don’t get to do that, you know.”
Didion was so angry she was shaking. Her field of view had shrunk so that she had no peripheral vision. Years of staying quiet, dealing on her own, and now she was boiling over.
She couldn’t begin to communicate why this was as upsetting as it was. She didn’t understand it herself. Was it that they had a secret without her? Was it that Didion was afraid of her sister slipping away into some strange new life? Was it that she was making a mistake with an awful guy?
The only question was why on earth Sammie was with him.
She could never give a better answer than the simple I love him.
If this really happened, Sammie would be tethered to Johnny forever.
They all would be. Including this child, who would suffer one way or another, from either an absent father or from a present one.
“You give me shit about Austin,” said Didion, her voice much stronger than she thought it’d come out. “But not now? Isn’t this what you were afraid of? Me getting knocked up and ruining my—”
“Stop that, Didion!”
Babe’s sharp words were punctuated by a slap in the face.
Didion gasped and put a hand on her burning cheek.
All three women looked horrified.
“Honey—”
Didion shook her head and backed away.
Her mother had never laid a hand on her before, and she never would again. The mistake, the betrayal would ring through every conversation they had for the rest of Babe’s life. But that night, Didion was in too much shock to do more than numbly march forward.
Matt came in. “Car’s here.” Picking up on the tension, as he was well practiced at doing, he added, “Sorry.”
Didion should have been crying. Should have run to her room and collapsed from hurt. Instead, she learned what happens to her when the pain is big enough. She shuts down. She goes numb. She keeps moving.
“It’s fine,” said Didion. “Let’s go watch Johnny’s parents renew their stupid vows. Why not?”
When Didion walked outside, Austin saw her scarlet cheek in the glow of the porch light and he drew back, giving her an urgent, questioning look. She shook her head. Later.
He did not want to let it go, that much was obvious, and he held her close for the whole drive.
As anyone might have been able to guess, that night did not go well.
It ended with everyone drunk and screaming in a parking lot.
Well, Sammie and Didion were screaming. Austin was standing behind Didion, not stopping her, but there if things escalated further.
Matt looked like he was going to be sick.
Johnny was feeding the fire. And no one had ever heard Sammie so angry.
A spitting rain was coming down, the night muggy and full of mosquitos.
It was only when Johnny stepped up to Didion, looking like he might actually hit her, that Austin pushed him away from her.
Johnny had the audacity to laugh. “She loves me, Didion, I think you’re going to have to accept it and stop acting like such a cunt.” Then he threw his arm around Sammie, kissing her hard. Sammie pushed on him, but he only pressed harder.
Austin snapped.
He pulled Johnny off her now, the turbulence of which landed Sammie on the ground.
Johnny was hitting Austin, who didn’t hit back.
Didn’t hit back.
Just kept him away from the girls.
Until Johnny planted a hard kick right beneath Austin’s kneecap.
The loud crack that echoed in the night was as loud as any tennis ball Austin had ever hit. It sounded like wood splintering.
Didion didn’t stop yelling. She yelled until noise was hardly coming out. Austin punched Johnny once, hard in the face, right on his razor-sharp cheekbones, immediately splitting the skin.
Matt went to Austin and pulled him back.
It was a blur as Johnny handed Sammie her helmet. As he got onto his Triumph Bonneville, roared it to life.
Didion ran after her sister, screaming at her. “Do not get on that fucking bike. If you do, we’re so done.”
Sammie had hesitated, the rain starting to pelt harder on her happy pink dress. She looked small and frail and deeply confused. A hand quickly, compulsively going to her stomach before she pulled it away.
“I mean it, Sammie. Do not take me for granted. I can only help you if you help yourself.”
Then, without meeting her eyes, Sammie climbed up behind Johnny, and they took off into the night.
The rain came down harder and harder until it was enough to send the Triumph skidding on the bridge, crumpling beneath the wheels of an oncoming truck. The police would go on to say they were lucky to be alive. Well, the two of them were.
The baby was gone in a heartbeat.