Chapter Twenty-Nine
No one ever knocked on my door first thing in the morning. Moth was a late sleeper. Maisie was an early napper. Roger wouldn’t dare. And Dot was dead.
On the other side, I found Lola. In tears.
“Grandma.” A statement, and not the beginning of one. That one word, a world entire.
“What’s wrong, baby?”
She came in. Looked around. Sat on the sofa. Got up again right away. Looked around a little more wildly.
“Want to take a gentle stroll around the apartment with me?” I offered.
It felt like we only barely both fit in the apartment anymore.
It made sense that Vista View did not design its living areas to be negotiated by pregnant bellies, but we did require walkers, wheelchairs, space for furniture we’d bought for much larger homes, so there should have been room enough for even very-pregnant me and my teenage granddaughter.
She didn’t want to walk, though. She wanted to talk. “Lucas broke up with me.”
“Oh, baby.” I opened my arms, and Lola folded into them.
I stroked her back as she sobbed. I had never had this myself, a lost first love.
Or I had, but first I’d kept him for thirty-five years, one marriage, two careers, two homes, three children.
Breaking up with your high school sweetheart at that point is different.
But I’d raised three kids, so I knew this one.
You didn’t suggest he had never been worthy, nor anything about lots of fish, nor that Lola would be over him so much sooner than she imagined.
They were never ready in the early days to hear ill of their beloved.
“I hate him,” Lola said.
Or maybe my intel on this one was out-of-date.
“He didn’t even tell me in person. I should have known when he called instead of texting. It’s because of France.”
“France?”
“I joined Model UN. It’s like the one activity Sari doesn’t do.”
“Lucas … hates the French?” There was so much I didn’t understand anymore.
“It’s one lunch period a week, every Wednesday after school, and a few weekends, like for conventions or whatever.”
“Sounds fun.”
“Yeah, but he said what about him? When would we hang out?”
“The rest of the time?” I suggested.
“He said I wasn’t making him a priority. He said I was being …”
I braced myself. “What?”
“Selfish.”
“Lola.”
“I know.”
“Sweetheart.”
“I know.”
“Okay. But just in case.” I knew it was too soon, but I also knew it was never too soon. “You deserve someone who’s proud of you for being France, who’s impressed by how smart you are, who wants you to enjoy your weekend trips and be the best you you can be.”
Lola looked at me. “He’s fifteen.”
“Still.”
“And I’m not that smart.”
“Of course you are.”
“I love a guy who doesn’t want those things for me.”
“Sometimes that happens, baby. It’s got nothing to do with smart. Believe me.”
“And also?” She stopped and took a deep breath. “I’m pregnant.”
I felt my own breath stop. I felt the whole world stop.
“And only stupid girls get pregnant.” Lola started crying again. “No offense.”
“Oh, Lola.” My tongue felt stiff and sticky. “Oh no.”
“And I can’t tell my parents. And I can’t tell Lucas since I hate him. And I can’t have a baby. And I can’t have an abortion. I can’t do anything. So what am I going to do?”
“It will be …” What would it be? “It will be okay. It will be fine.”
“How?”
“I … don’t know,” I admitted.
She looked at her phone. “I have to go to school.”
“Can’t you cut?” If ever there were a good reason to skip school.
“I can’t. They’ll call Mom.”
My head was spinning, but I made it nod up and down instead.
“And I don’t want Lucas to think I’m so upset I couldn’t get out of bed.”
Nodding, spinning, nodding. “Come back after school,” I finally managed. “Come back here when you’re done, and we’ll figure it out.”
“You don’t have to take care of me, Grandma. I’ll be …”
“Fine,” I finished for her, making my voice sound certain. “You’ll be fine. You will.” I hugged Lola to me tightly. Then I let her go to meet her eyes. “But come back after school anyway.”
I spent the day ruminating. Or maybe fretting. Or possibly full-on panicking.
Moth spent the day worried I wasn’t following conversations. Or eating anything. Or focusing my eyes or sitting still.
He wanted to call Dr. Kim.
“Do not call Dr. Kim,” I said.
“Then tell me what’s on your mind and let me help.”
I wanted to. I did. But I wasn’t sure I should because I wasn’t sure what was going to happen next.
And I didn’t want to incriminate him.
Lola arrived so quickly after school let out I didn’t have time to worry she wouldn’t come. She was calmer than she’d been that morning, but not a lot calmer.
“How was school?”
“Who can say?”
“Are you hungry?” I was too large at this point to wash a car, so I had done the only other useful thing I could think of.
I ushered her into the kitchen to the two dozen eggs I’d deviled, the ricotta I’d whipped, the vegetables I’d sliced to scoop the hummus I’d blended between breaks to sit down every fifteen minutes. “Eat something. It’ll help.”
“It won’t.”
“What would?”
“A time machine?” Lola guessed.
“What else?”
“Living in California?”
Like many New Yorkers, I distrusted Californians. Too sunbathed. “How would that help?”
“I hate it here,” Lola said. “I hate ribs. I hate cowboy hats and cowboy boots and those stupid cowboy buckles. We aren’t cowboys. We drive cars now.”
“It’s not Brooklyn, but I’ve come to love Texas.” For a long time, that hadn’t been true. But then, for a long time now, it had.
“Ugh. Why?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I like how big everything is.”
“I hate how big everything is.”
“Big hearts. All in. Brazen. Wide. I like to know where I stand. Texans are not coy.”
“I guess. Anyway, that’s not why.”
“What’s not why what?”
“Why being in California would help.” Then she whispered, “I could get an abortion.”
I knew that, of course. I had been down the road of this line of thought till my tires were bald.
Very carefully, neutral as hotel art, I said, “Is that what you want?”
“I just want everything to go away. I want my life back the way it was.”
“That’s fair.”
“Lucas doesn’t love me anymore. And even if he did, we’re fifteen. I haven’t finished school, so how am I supposed to get a job? And even if I did, how am I supposed to go to it if I have a baby to take care of? And even if I was super rich and didn’t need a job …”
I waited, let her talk, think it through. “Go on.”
“I haven’t done anything yet! I have to leave Austin, see the rest of the country, see the rest of the world, fall in love with someone who does love me, go to parties, have …
adventures? I don’t know, whatever you’re supposed to do before you have a baby and a dead-end job and no life and no future and you’re stuck in stupid Texas forever. ”
“That’s understandable.” Beige. Unfazed.
“Not according to the governor or the legislature or the Supreme Court. And don’t think I don’t know why either.”
“Why, baby?”
“Because they don’t want me to see the world and have adventures. They want me to be a little lady who knows her place. This place. They want me to be stuck here. They know we all hate Texas and can’t wait to leave, so they have to make sure we can’t.”
“You can leave,” I said.
“Not if I have to have a baby and stay with Lucas who doesn’t even love me anymore.”
So I said again, very quiet but very clear, “You can leave.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean if you want to have a baby, you don’t have to stay with Lucas. Your parents will help you—”
“My parents will kill me.”
“First, yes, but afterward, they’ll help you. Your aunt and uncle will help you. Your sister and cousins will help you. And your grandma will help you. You’ll finish school, and then you and the baby can move to California, you and the baby can have adventures and see the world.”
When Lola started crying again, I added, “Or you can have an abortion.”
Lola took her hands away from her eyes, but she didn’t stop crying. “I can’t.”
“You can’t in Texas,” I corrected.
“I can’t get out of Texas. I’m a minor. I can’t drive. I don’t have any money.”
“I have money. I am not a minor.” I paused. “I can drive.”
“No you can’t.”
“Of course I can. I’m a very good driver.”
“You got your license taken away.”
“By your mother.”
“Because you got in an accident.”
“Because I got in a minor fender bender. Because she saw an opportunity.”
“To control your life? Been there, trust me. But you still don’t have a license.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t drive,” I said.
Lola blinked. She blinked again. “Where would we go?”
“Colorado? New Mexico? Illinois? I don’t know where. Somewhere.”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s so far. You’re so …” She waved, as everyone did, at the middle of me.
“I can still drive. It’s just sitting and steering. We’ll have to stop a lot so I can pee and stretch, but it’s not that far.”
“What if we get caught?” Lola said.
“Oh we’d definitely get caught.” I hadn’t thought it all through yet, but I knew this part already, and it was important she know it too. “You’ve got choices, but as long as you’re with me, under-the-radar isn’t one of them.”
I thought maybe this would be a deal breaker for her. I thought maybe it should be. But she shook her head. “I don’t mean what if people find out. I mean what if people find out and we get in trouble.”
Which was a different sort of concern. “We won’t get in trouble.” I tried to sound confident. “Far zikher.”
“You’re … what?”
“Far zikher. It’s Yiddish. Something my mother used to say. It means for sure.”
“But what if you get fined? Or arrested? Or thrown in jail?”
“I’ll take my chances,” I said.
“You’d do that for me?”
“I’d do anything for you.”
“What about the baby?” She nodded at my middle again.
“What about the baby I already have?”
“Me?” said Lola.
“Yes you.”
“But.” She looked at the floor.
“What is it, Lols?”
Then she looked up to meet my eyes. “But I should. I should have the baby. I should, right?”
“Why?”
“You are.”
I felt this answer in my chest. “So?”
“You had so many good reasons to have an abortion. Your life and health. The pupacorn’s life and health.
You’re old—no offense—and tired and, like, so over it.
Like you already raised three children. Plus it’s not your fault you weren’t using birth control, because no one could have seen this coming.
You’re a smart adult who knows stuff and can do stuff and should get to decide.
I’m a dumbass who got pregnant, even though I really know better, so maybe I should just shut up and do what they tell me to do. ”
“Is that what you want?” I said.
“If you can do it, I can do it. We can do it together.”
This lesson. Again. “Can? Yes. You can. Should is my question. You should not do it because I’m doing it.
I didn’t have a choice. You do. You should not do it because some politicians want you to.
They’re the dumbasses. The reason to have a baby is because you want to have a baby and you’re ready to have a baby. ”
“I’m neither one,” Lola said. “Not wanting, not ready.”
“Are you sure?”
“Far zikher.” She had the accent wrong, but still I could hear my mother’s voice in hers. “I have never been so zikher of anything in my entire life.”
“Okay,” I said. “Then we better pack.”
Maisie was not the only person I knew with a driver’s license. But she was the only person I knew with a driver’s license of whom I could ask the favor I needed to ask.
When I did, she said no. Not as in no she wouldn’t do it. As in no it wasn’t a favor.
She waved away all my apologies and misgivings. “Hell’s bells, Pepper, I wish Lola didn’t need it, but of course I’m going to help.”
She also said, “I’m a little old lady. Who better to embroil in criminal enterprise than me?”