AFTER BONNIE LEFT THE HOUSE, Addison and Mason sat together in the living room. It was Long Sunday, which is what they called the Sunday right before the school year started again. This would be the last Long Sunday and beyond that they could not even begin to think about what came after high school.
“I love her,” Addison said after a moment. “I know that now. I love her and I know things are going to work out with us.”
“You got things cleared up with Becky?”
“Yes,” Addison said.
“And Seth?”
“I don’t think there’s anything to clear up with Seth. But... There was a lot to clear up with Becky. I feel bad about everything that happened. I wish you could just take an eraser and erase all the stupid stuff. Why can’t you do that? Why can’t you just erase the stuff that makes no sense.
“They talk about sin, you know? And I think we act like we know what it means. But... I think that it doesn’t mean anything,” Addison told Mason. “I can’t really identify with it. With feeling bad all the time about doing things that God doesn’t want you to do. I mean I believe in God. Enough I guess, and I think I even believe in something, Some Power that can forgive me, that can take all the crap I’m sorry for. I need someone to take the crap away. And I need to be able to move on. But... I don’t think it’s that way.”
When Addison stopped talking, Mason didn’t say anything right away. He waited a while. He felt light and tired, and didn’t know why. Everything was decent, for the most part, except for Mr. Balliol dying. Well, that was exhausting. It was exhausting all of them. Mason never knew how much strength and energy Balliol brought until most of it was being drained away from him and from their circle.
“I don’t know anymore,” Mason said. “I used to know. It was good to know. I used to know almost like Tommy knows and now I’m not sure he knows anymore. It’s good to be able to go to your church or your whatever and say your creed and put so much faith in what someone else told you. There’s no good reason to believe what you hear in church except that you want to, but when you want to it’s so good.
“And suddenly I don’t know. I don’t know right from wrong except what’s right and wrong for me, and maybe not even then. And maybe that’s enough.” Mason shrugged.
“From now to last year there’s so much I don’t know.”
Addison was about to say that he’d fucked Becky when Mason said,
“Sometimes it feels like... what you say is right. I mean, when we go to school they act as if you can stop sinning, and do everything just the right way, follow the right rules. But… I don’t think they know what they’re talking about. I think they mean you can stop making mistakes, stop screwing up, stop making miscalculations. We hurt people, but we don’t mean to. Sometimes we even break the law without meaning too. It seems sometimes you get fined just for living. You’re forgetful or neglectful or even horny just because you’re breathing. It seems to like just breathing is enough to cause you to make a mistake, and just putting one foot in front of the other can make you fall on your face. It doesn’t matter who you are...
“I think forgiveness isn’t about going into boxes, and it can’t be about feeling bad all the time. Forgiveness sucks. I don’t even like the idea. I like Grace. I even like the name. It reminds me of grape juice. Sometimes you can’t find out whose fault it is or how much of the fault is yours. You keep going, goddamn, if I hadn’t been so stupid, or so jealous or so…”
“Horny?”
“That too. Then it wouldn’t have happened. But it did happen. It and all the other stuff strung up behind it. So I think grace must be the ability to put regret away. To spit it out and shake it off. I think Grace is the power to move on.”
Seth was twisting Becky’s hand, but not ungently, and she kept looking at him as they waited for the door to open.
“You’re so nervous,” she said.
“You’ve never really met each other,” Seth told her. And then he kissed her on the head and said, “I love you.”
“I love you too,” she said. And meant it.
Joel opened the door and said, surprised, “Why didn’t you just walk in?”
He looked from Becky to Seth.
“This is Becky, Dad,” Seth said, pushing her a little ahead of him.
“Hello,” Becky was surprised when he hugged her. People didn’t hug her, “Dinner’s almost ready and Shelley’s not here tonight. They had something at the library, but she would have liked to meet you guys.”
“Are you all moved in yet?”
“You mean living together?” Joel said, trying to sound like the idea didn’t bother him.
“Dad, that’s what you’ve been doing anyway?”
“Ah,” Joel opened his mouth, shrugged and said, “I guess. Yes. Well, it’s not official.”
Becky felt so bad looking at Joel McKenna, going from the father to his taller son. She didn’t get on with her parents that well.
“Come on, Becky, I’ll show you the place,” Joel said, catching her hand, and Seth, smirking, followed his father and his girlfriend.
“It’s not much, but I think it’s nice, and the best thing is you think the place would be so much more expensive than it is.”
Becky told him: “It almost looks just like Seth’s downstairs.”
“Well,” Joel stopped. “Of course it would, I guess. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Dad’s right though,” Seth added. “I guess no one thinks about what these places look like on the inside. They just see a ghetto on the outside.”
“This isn’t a ghetto,” Becky said.
“Well,” Seth considered, “it’s not not a ghetto.”
Becky shrugged.
“Which reminds me,” Seth was saying as his father stirred the chili and asked Becky to hand him the kidney beans, “I want to get you home before it’s really dark.”
“You never cared about that before.”
“It wasn’t a school night before.”
“What?” Joel and Becky both turned to him.
“Well, you do have school tomorrow,” Seth continued.
“I guess you’re all grown up now that you’ve graduated.”
“I am.”
“Are you going to school?” Joel asked him.
At the look on Seth’s face, Joel said, “I wasn’t saying you had to. I was just wondering if you were.”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” Seth said. “I was just going to keep working at the department store.”
“For the rest of your life?” popped out of Becky’s mouth. She covered her lips with her hand, but Joel turned back to the chili hiding a smile of vindication. He was glad she had said it so that he didn’t have to.
“I didn’t say that,” Seth told her. “I need to do what’s good for me. Do I have your permission to do that, Ms. Angstrom?”
“Angstrom?” said Joel.
“Yes,” Becky said.
“I like that name. Is it German?”
“I think so,” Becky said, though she’d never thought of it before and now though that it might be Scandinavian.
“Well, at any rate,” Becky said, looking back at Seth, “you do have my permission to do what you want to do. And I’m glad you realized it was important to ask.”
It was the best night Becky could remember. The last few days were so strange for her. When Addison had come over she’d been afraid, wondering what it could possibly mean, and then she’d been terrified of his rage and more terrified of the rage coming out of her, and of the bad memories. The aloneness, the terror and wonder of the pregnancy. She was going to be a mother. She was going to be a mother! She was a mother! She couldn’t be a mother. She would not let herself become a mother. Maybe someone would help to change her mind. Maybe it would be okay to be a mother.
It would be ridiculous to be a mother.
I was a mother.
And all that this meant. What did it mean? The trip to Ogden. In the blinding black gray snow the Tuesday after Christmas. The Place. It should have been nicer than this. It wasn’t a back alley; this was legal. Wasn’t it? Well then it should have been nicer than this. She should have been less terrified. It should have been homelier than this. She shouldn’t have been embarrassed when she looked at other women. They were here for the same thing, Weren’t they? Only all of them weren’t. There were other reasons for being here. She’d come with a friend, so she wasn’t alone. But in the end she was alone. And Becky had spent along time shutting those memories out.
Bodies had memories. There were things inside of her that should have never been inside her. Wasn’t there—? Christ! Wasn’t there a better way to do this? What about that pill? Didn’t they have a pill to do this for you? Why didn’t they have a pill? Why did it feel like...?
Sometimes her gorge rose when she thought about it. Sometimes she went a little dizzy. She wasn’t the first girl to do this. Didn’t girls do it all the time? There wasn’t anything wrong with it? There...
There was no thinking about it. Sometimes she was just exhausted thinking about it.
She was exhausted with hating Addison.
All of that screaming had come out of her. All of that rage. She really felt like something was being done to her. And it was. She felt dirty and defected and the defect was being taken out. And even though, of course, these people were not nuns or anything near priests they were the doctors and the nurses and the whatever. They weren’t having it done to them, and so it felt as if maybe they were condemning her. It hurt. And when it didn’t hurt it was just uncomfortable and terrifying. Only half of her was present for it. She felt less. No, someone told her. Everyone doesn’t feel like you when it’s done. Everyone doesn’t think like that.
But she did.
She was so strong. And had been strong and when Addison came he wasn’t ready for her rage.
He didn’t leave though. They were both in an unreal place. They left through the second exit of the backyard, into the alley. They went to Addison’s house and no one was there. He started crying. She’d known him a long time She forgot that he was her friend. She didn’t sound like a friend that day she had called and simply said, “I’m not having it.”
He cried about the whole relationship the way he hadn’t when they were together, when they were breaking up. She made him feel ugly. She made him feel like she didn’t want to be with him, like she was tainted whenever he was in her. He’d gone off into a depression. He didn’t think anything he said mattered. Well of course he had. Of course he did. Now that she thought about it. This was long overdue. They had fucked each other up so badly they should have been crying and bawling a long time ago.
In movies they made it make sense. But Becky could make no real sense of what had happened. They’d been crying and hugging, but there’s no reason that crying and hugging should really turn into kissing. Things hadn’t just happened. They had sex on purpose. Becky turned this over and over again. It made no sense. She’d wanted him so much. She’d wanted him as much as she’d run from him. She needed him. It hadn’t just happened. They’d gone up to Addison’s room and it had been slow and good and completely unprotected.
This time if something happens I’ll keep it she thought. And that didn’t make any sense.
It had just been so good. It had been the way it never was. The only thing she could say was Addison was her friend. He always had been and in the end she’d been so starved for him she had to have him every way she could. When it was over the first time Addison looked at her and said, “My family won’t be home for the rest of the night.”
So she stayed.
The phone rang while she was climaxing. Thighs squeezed tight around Addison, legs up in the air, her body sweating against his wet body and it must have been nine-thirty.
It’s Bonnie!
She knew it was. Addison probably knew too. He kept fucking her anyway.
She thought, she thinks, that the whole last several months, and the day she had gone to the clinic were about thinking about the future. She had been overwhelmed by the future. The future nearly drowned her. And there was no one to help her into it so she had done what she did.
That night with Addison she’d done what she did again but for the very opposite reason. She needed the moment. She needed the rich now. She needed Addison with it and let’s not think about what comes next. That night it was how she needed to handle it. All of their sex had been bad. It had been eight o’clock in the morning and Addison had been pushing into her, her hands had been gripping his shoulders. They’d been moaning and shouting, swearing.
“I love Bonnie,” Addison told her. “I know that now.”
Becky hadn’t said it, but she knew she loved Seth.
Seth, who was so incredibly sexy to her, still, turned to her at the McKenna table and said, kissing her lightly:
“It’s time to get you home.”
Seth was in the bathroom when Becky told Joel:
“I… when you all weren’t talking I told him he should talk to you. But, I didn’t understand,” she confessed.
“Understand?”
“Well,” Becky continued. “I hadn’t met you, Mr. McKenna. I didn’t know what you were like, and I didn’t know what you and Seth are like together. He loves you, and you love him. You all shouldn’t have ever been parted.”
To her surprise, Joel looked like he was about to tear up. He was what her parents would have called an old dear. She saw more of Seth in him than was at first apparent.
“I’m sure you and your parents are like that too.”
“No,” Becky said, certainly. “I love my parents, but... I don’t need them. They aren’t part of me. It’s not like it is with you and Seth.”
“Well,” Joel said ducking his head, “Seth is what I have and vice versa. His mom, you know. She left. It’s good that you’re in his life now. All we’ve had is each other and.… it’s nice to love someone strongly. But you need more than one person.”
Then he said, “You’re a good girl, Becky.”
She wanted to blurt out: “I had an abortion last Christmas.”
Seth came back rubbing his hands together. Becky didn’t know how to explain it but he just made more sense next to his father.
“We’re going now, Dad.” he hugged his father and then Joel hugged Becky and kissed her on the cheek and told her to come back and she said:
“My parents would say you’re a dear. I always thought that was a stupid phrase. But I know what it means now.”
“Well,” Joel said smiling, “you really will have to bring her back.”
They had only gone down two blocks and were on Milligan Street when the thing that had been awakening in Becky made her say, “Seth, turn the car around.”
“Did you forget something?” he said.
“No, honey. Turn the car around.”
“What?”
“Don’t be stupid. I’m staying with you tonight.”
“You got... school,” Seth’s voice faltered. There was a red light. He wasn’t looking at her. His fingertips danced on the wheel.
It was so funny. Addison was warm to her again. She got warm around him. She loved him There was this energy about him, that must have been sexual. Their friendship had healed. But she didn’t want to be his girlfriend. They didn’t work like that. And though she wasn’t going to tell anybody about what happened and she knew it wouldn’t work she didn’t feel ashamed of it. What she felt was a deep longing to be with Seth. Whatever morality said her body had made her want to be with him more and more. She wanted him right now. There was something about seeing him with Joel, light and happy, the dutiful son, that made her want to sleep with him tonight.
“This is what we’re going to do,” Becky said, as the light turned green, but Seth didn’t move.
“We’re going to go to my house and get my clothes. I’m going to tell my parents I’m going to Gloria’s. They won’t see your truck cause you’ll be on the corner. And then we’re going to go back out your place and do whatever we want to. We’re going to make the walls blush, and then tomorrow you’ll drop me off at school in my uniform. That’s what we’re going to do. All right?”
Seth’s face was hot. He’d never felt like this in his life. He couldn’t even move he was so hot.
And then a car honked behind him reminding him the light was green, and his car shot out across Bancroft Street.
“That’s a yes?” she said.
Seth only nodded as his truck sped toward her house.