Questions bubbled up in Olivia’s throat. Where was this girl’s mother? Why didn’t she get an abortion, get married, get help?
The girl was giggling again. “Of course I didn’t go to a doctor. What’s he going to say that I don’t already know? And about Ben …”
Her eyes got dreamy, the way Olivia’s own used to when she looked at pictures of rock stars in teen magazines, or when the older boy up the street would stop his white VW bug and talk to her on a summer evening.
The girl sighed. “If you’ve got a million years, I’ll tell you all about him and me. But I have to warn you—it’s a sad sad story. Honest to God.”
Olivia decided it must be a Romeo and Juliet story. A girl from the wrong side of the tracks in love with a college boy—a fraternity boy, Olivia reminded herself. He was richer, and smarter, and older than she, and he made her all kinds of promises that he couldn’t keep. Maybe he even really loved her, but his family had swept him away, to a camp in upstate New York, on a beautiful lake surrounded by pine trees and girls like him, rich girls who played tennis and sailed and were not pregnant, would not get pregnant. They were tanned and lovely in their white shorts and clean Keds. And now this girl, his girl, was alone and confused and still carrying in her, somewhere, the hope that he would come for her.
“Your parents—”
“Kicked me out,” the girl said.
“But surely you could call them and—”
“I’d rather die!” she blurted, ferocious. “I’d rather get run over by like a tank or something. He’s not even my real father,” she muttered.
Olivia could hear her own father, his voice stern. “Olivia, we are so disappointed in you.” He’d said those words over and over when she was a teenager, when she went to art school instead of a “real college,” when she’d called to tell them she and David had gotten married. “Olivia, you simply aren’t using your head.”
“Stay here,” Olivia blurted.
The girl, surprised, took a few steps back, away from Olivia, closer to the door.
Olivia laughed, a nervous, embarrassed laugh. “I mean,” she said, “until you can go back to the fraternity house.”
Again, the girl studied Olivia, sizing her up.
“Look,” Olivia said, “I cannot send you out into the streets, scrounging around fraternity basements for a place to sleep.” Olivia remembered her own college days, the damp, dark basements in those houses, the sour smell of old beer. “For God’s sake,” she continued, “you need to eat properly and get rest and take care of yourself.”
The girl said, “What about your husband?”
Olivia had forgotten her lie. She considered what to say, but the girl didn’t wait for an answer.
“I mean, what’s he going to think when he walks in that door”—and here she pointed dramatically to the gaping door—“and finds a knocked-up fifteen-year-old girl eating your food and wearing your clothes and sleeping in your bed? I mean, what will he do?”
The girl’s words were a tornado in Olivia’s head. Fifteen! And who said anything about wearing Olivia’s clothes? There were assumptions and wrong conclusions everywhere, and still Olivia stood there, tongue-tied.
“I mean,” the girl said, “I could be a crazy person. Or worse. A killer. Like Drew Barrymore in that movie where she goes on a killing spree with her boyfriend.”
She leaned so close to Olivia now that Olivia smelled her breath—salt and vinegar potato chips, just like the ones Olivia had eaten on the ride up here.
“Like Ted Bundy,” the girl added, giggling wickedly.
David had grown up in Berkeley—Oh! She could almost hear him say it: the Bay Area—in the 1960s. He once told her he’d dropped acid when he was only twelve. He used to go to see Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix live. A wayward teenager would not frighten him.
“My husband wouldn’t mind,” Olivia said finally.
The girl grinned. She stretched out her hand for Olivia to shake.
“Well then,” she said, all teenager again. “I’m Ruby.”
Olivia’s mind had cleared. She managed to break all this down to the simplest of terms. She took the girl’s small hand in hers, felt the delicate bones, the cheap silver rings, the swollen fingers. Olivia didn’t shake Ruby’s hand, but she didn’t let go, either. She just stood there pressing it into her own and thought, Home. Baby. Ruby.
chapter three
Wouldn’t a Person Be Surprised?