Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
TALLY
I glare at Mom when she cracks open my bedroom door. "Don't even."
She steps in anyway, her eyes knowing. Of course she heard me hang up on Cam. His whole "let me rescue you" bullshit had me seeing red. That's exactly why I'm keeping this baby situation to myself—I don't need him swooping in like some knight in shining armor.
My gaze drifts around my cramped bedroom. Baby gear will never fit in here. And with Mom staying until her meds stabilize, we're practically sardines. But whatever. My mess, my problem.
"Tallulah," Mom plants herself at the foot of my bed. "He deserves to know about his child."
"Nunya," I mutter, picking at my chipped nail polish.
"Excuse me?"
"None. Of. Your. Business."
Mom's arms fold across her chest. "Like hell it isn't. This affects me too.
" She ticks off on her fingers. "First, it's wrong and karma's a bitch.
Second, that man seems decent—unlike the parade of losers you usually drag home.
Third, have you looked around this shoebox lately?
You need help." She gestures at the mess surrounding us.
"I know you want me here, and honestly, I need to be here.
Someone has to make sure I stay on my meds until I'm back on solid ground.
" Her voice softens. "I can't go back to that dark place, Tally.
I just can't. So I need you—and I'm woman enough to admit it. "
I know what she's getting at. At the very least, I need to figure out a way to get a bigger place.
Because this shoebox with its cracked plaster ceiling and temperamental radiator won't work.
And her calculating mind is thinking that Cameron will just buy me a bigger place.
Maybe in the suburbs where I don't have to hear ambulances and police cars 24/7.
I mean, this neighborhood, the Arts District of Los Angeles, is generally safe and I love it - it's walkable, full of galleries with their stark white walls and exposed beams, craft breweries serving hazy IPAs in Edison-bulb-lit spaces, vibrant murals splashed across brick buildings like a rainbow explosion. It's just my vibe.
But any time you get thousands of people crammed into these converted warehouses and lofts, sirens are gonna happen at all hours, their wailing echoing between buildings like trapped ghosts.
It just is. So, I'll have to think of a sleeping infant who won't be asleep for long once he or she hears those ear-splitting sirens blaring through our paper-thin windows.
But live in the suburbs? The baby will sleep, well, like a baby.
Which is another thing I'll be giving up for this kid - my apartment where the sirens and street noise blend with Jamal from upstair’s Ziggy Marley blasting through my ceiling at 2 AM.
Last Tuesday he banged on my door with a paper bag that left grease stains on my fingers, and I ate still-warm scones while he showed me his latest canvas - all violent reds and cosmic purples that matched the yarn wrapped around his dreads.
Yesterday, Bettina from downstairs buzzed me down to borrow tequila for margaritas, her septum ring catching the light as she talked about some French body horror flick, gesturing wildly with hands heavy with her own metal creations.
And tonight the bass from the punks' apartment down the hall is making my coffee mug inch across the counter, their party spilling into the hallway where some guy with a green mohawk just offered me a joint through my cracked door.
These are my people, and I'll be trading all of that in for a cookie-cutter house on a tree-lined street where sirens are never heard, where there will be awkward block parties and men in pressed khaki shorts and pastel golf shirts with baseball caps covering their sunburned balding heads and wives with highlighted bobs who will be selling tacky costume jewelry through some multi-level marketing company or maybe be selling Pampered Chef stuff at wine-soaked home parties.
But I'll have to do it for her. Or him. Because this cramped third-floor walkup with its peeling paint and the constant wail of sirens outside isn't a place to raise a kid.
And my mother, with her knowing looks and barely concealed I-told-you-so's, knows the only way I can afford some cookie-cutter split-level in Oakridge Estates or some other boring suburban neighborhood is if Cam gets involved.
It'll have to be a house, too, not some beige-carpeted apartment with paper-thin walls.
I want this kid to have a backyard with actual grass, maybe a maple tree they can climb, not just concrete and cigarette butts.
I want them to hear birds in the morning, not the thudding bass from 2B or the screaming matches from 4A.
Moving to the suburbs seems cringe to me, but it won’t to the kid. And the kid, and my mother to a certain extent, will have to come before me.
I sigh. "Mom, I'll just have to figure it out.
On my own. I know I need a bigger place and I know that this neighborhood isn't a place to raise a kid.
Not if I want a kid who doesn't want to wake up at 2 AM when the sirens rush through because somebody got their face smashed in with a beer bottle or some junkie is foaming at the mouth on the sidewalk.
I know this kid will be better off in the suburbs.
" And, at that, I bolt to the bathroom, barely making it before violently heaving into the toilet.
Christ, I've been puking my guts out for weeks now, can't even keep down fucking saltines, but somehow, just the thought of moving to the suburbs makes me want to rip my own stomach out through my throat.
But maybe I could psyche myself up for it.
Maybe I'll watch one of those shows on HGTV where some perky couple with daddy's credit card looks at three different cookie-cutter houses that are all on streets named after trees but with "character" and just enough edge to convince themselves they're not becoming their parents.
Oh, who am I kidding? How would I ever afford that? My tattoo place does pretty decent business, but this is Los Angeles - houses start at a mil. I’ll have to come up with two-hundred grand just for the fucking down payment, two hundred grand I don’t really have right now.
But I’m still not telling Cam the truth about the baby. I’ll see a financial advisor who can help me figure this thing out. Maybe take out a loan - my tattoo studio has been in business for seven years, since I was 22, and it’s been pretty solid the whole time. I’m a decent credit risk.
Mom gives me that look—the one that sees right through my bullshit. "Tally, you need to tell me what's really going on. What's the real reason you won't tell Cameron about the baby?"
"What do you mean? I told you. I don't want him to interfere with my life. With the baby's life. I don't want him to become like a ball and chain to me and you know he will."
Do I really know that though? Celeste has a kid with Max—Violet.
They both work long hours, though Celeste works from home now.
After Violet was born, she left Dreamscape Studios to focus on screenwriting and has crushed it career-wise.
She's never once complained about Max trying to control their parenting.
When issues come up with Violet, they figure shit out together. As it should be.
But aren't they unicorns? In my mind, I see two parents, faces twisted with rage, squaring off across a gleaming granite kitchen island like boxers in a ring. The mother wants the kid to go to art school because that’s what the kid wants, the father wants the kid to go to some soul-crushing prep school where rich kids learn to become even bigger assholes.
Then the kid grows up and still wants to be an artist, so the Mom wants the kid in art school, but the asshole father wants the kid to become a lawyer, and won’t pay for schooling unless the kid agrees to his vision of the kid’s future.
Then I see the mother dragging herself out of bed at 2 AM, panic clawing at her throat, pressing trembling fingers against a burning forehead, while the father buries his useless head under a pillow, snarling about how he survived childhood without being "coddled.
" Then the kid, white as death, convulsing on the ice-cold tile, appendix already ruptured and spewing poison, and the mother's scream ripping through the house like a chainsaw, pure hatred blazing in her eyes as she lunges at the father. "FUCK YOU, THOMAS, YOU GODDAMN WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT!" Yeah. That's the reality - it wasn’t my reality because Dad wasn’t around, but it’s the reality in most of my friends’ homes growing up.
I can't help thinking about my friend Sonya from fifth grade.
Her stomach was killing her, but her dad wouldn't let her mom drive her to the hospital.
"It's just a stomachache," he kept saying, even yanking the car keys away while Sonya's mom was sobbing, begging to take her in.
By the time they finally got her to the ER, her appendix had ruptured.
Three weeks in the hospital instead of a simple overnight stay.
I know Cameron would never pull that shit—he's a doctor, for Christ's sake—but it's just one more example of how things go sideways when parents can't get on the same page about their kid.
Hard fucking pass on that nightmare.
Mom narrows her eyes at me. "Tallulah. I wasn't exactly Mother of the Year, and I'll own that. But I know when you're holding back. What's really going on?"
I exhale so hard my bangs flutter. Fuck. There is more to it. Another reason I'm keeping Cam at arm's length. And it circles right back to the woman sitting across from me.