Cherry Money Baby (26 page)

“Yes?” she said, breathless.

“I want you . . .”

“What shall we do?”

“I want you to have my baby.”

The lights cracked off. The house erupted in applause.

The Batman T-shirt was stretched to its limit, Robin looking all bloated. Cherry ran her hands over the bulge, studying her reflection in the door mirror. She cast a big-bellied shadow on the wall. Her eyes were killing her. She was exhausted from several nights of fitful sleep brought on by constant sugar crashes. She’d been eating chocolate like crazy, the good bitter stuff.

Her cell rang for the
n
th time. Cherry sighed, tugged the basketball from under her T-shirt, and dropped it in the open suitcase on Lucas’s bed. Vi’s number flashed on-screen.

“I’m just calling to say I’m not speaking to you.”

“Vi.”

“You won’t come to Cape Cod with me, but you’ll go to
England
with Ardelia?”

“It’s different and you know it. This is like . . .” Cherry tried to think of what it was like. It wasn’t like anything. “We need the money.”

“So you’re definitely going to have the baby?”

Cherry tugged off the Batman tee, folded it, and dropped it in the suitcase. What did you pack for a week in the English countryside? Sweaters? A pith helmet? It was supposed to rain a lot in England, so she’d bring her new boots from the Salvation Army and the 7-Eleven mini-umbrella.

Lucas popped his head in. “Will I need a bathing suit?”

Cherry covered the receiver with her hand. “I don’t know. Yes. Ardelia said there’s a pool.”

“She has a pool!” Vi bellowed on the other end of the line.

“I’ll leave you two alone.” Lucas made a face and disappeared.

She put the phone to her ear. “He’s excited.”

“Of course he’s excited. It’s
insanely
exciting.” Vi’s shouts crackled through the tiny speaker. “I don’t see why he gets to go and I don’t.”

“Because he’s my fiancé, and at the moment my womb is . . . well, not like his
property,
but he’s got a say in what I do with it. And Ardelia said I could bring Lucas and one family member, but Pop won’t go and I’m sure as shit not bringing Stew. He’d probably get busted at customs for having weed sewn into the waistband of his boxers.”

“
I’m
family,” Vi whined. “Or are you forgetting eighth grade when we did blood sisters?”

Cherry ignored this, staring down at her near-empty suitcase. Everything she owned fit inside, with enough room left over for a small person. “Maybe I could smuggle you in my luggage.”

“You know what really hurts?” Vi said.

“No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

“You care more about what
she
thinks than what
I
think.
I’m
your best friend, you know, in case you’ve forgotten.”

Cherry sighed and sat on the bed. She rubbed the temple that didn’t have a phone pressed to it. “Vi, this isn’t about
friendship.
It’s about money. And if I say yes, I get a lot.” Vi was quiet. Cherry said it again for emphasis.
“A lot.”

“I know,” Vi mumbled. “How much is it again?”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” She’d said it so often to herself that the rhythm was like a nursery rhyme.
Two HUNdred and FIFty THOUsand DOLlars.
No matter how many times she said it or wrote it out, the number had no real meaning. She’d tried breaking it down into fathomable terms. Two hundred and fifty-thousand cell phone minutes. Eight thousand gallons of gas. Three thousand Mel’s Lumberjack Specials. Five top-of-the-line mobile homes. It was more than enough to resettle Pop, get Stew an apartment when he graduated, and put a down payment on a place for her and Lucas.

“Well, buy me a pool when you get back,” said Vi. “Wait, you are coming back, right? You aren’t just going to stay there and get preggers?”

“If I decide yes, I’ll live with Ardelia in England,” Cherry said, reciting the terms she’d conveyed to dozens of young hopefuls on Ardelia’s raspberry love seat. “But either way, I’ll come home for graduation.”

“Like school even matters with that kind of scratch. Are you freaked out about . . . you know . . . having a baby?”

“Jesus, Vi. I haven’t decided yet.”

“Yeah, but if you
do
. . .”

Lucas passed by in the hall, whistling. They’d been up every night, talking about the decision. He refused to weigh in on whether she should carry the baby, but he definitely thought she should take Ardelia’s offer to think it over for a week at her estate outside London. And that was
before
he knew he was invited. As to what happened next, her swelling belly, some other man’s baby stuff (and another woman’s, in fact) inside her, the nine months and change she’d be away from home . . . Lucas was too good a guy to mention the downsides. He knew they already loomed large in Cherry’s mind.

What he didn’t know was that one could worry without really
thinking.
You could freak out without actually weighing the options. You could panic, blindly, without coming anywhere near a decision.

“I’m not thinking about that yet,” said Cherry. “This is just a vacation.”

As far as freaking out was concerned, no small part of her recent sleeplessness and worry-eating had to do with the six-hour flight she’d be taking from Logan Airport to London. Six hours of airborne travel, miles and miles above the ground . . . or, actually, the
ocean.
Cherry didn’t like climbing to the top of the
bleachers.
She spread the DuBoises’ world atlas on the kitchen counter and calculated the distance with a ruler. Pop was under the sink, fixing their congested garbage disposal.

“Three thousand three hundred miles,” she said aloud. “That’s like ten times farther from home than I’ve ever been.”

“Not sure about your math,” said Pop. “But it’s far, all right.”

She took a long breath, letting her ruler clatter on the tabletop. “Is this insane? Should I not go?”

Pop grunted and leaned against the cabinet. He wore a red handkerchief around his neck, and his hands were spotty with grease. Her father never looked so at home as when he was under something, fixing it.

“I don’t know what to say, Snack Pack. Of course, I want you to go. Little nest egg like that handled right? You’d be set for years. Maybe life.” He wiped his forehead, leaving a brown-and-black smudge. “But I don’t know if I could do it. Carry someone else’s baby, I mean.”

Cherry chuckled. “You
couldn’t
do it, Poppa. You don’t have the parts.”

“You know what I mean. . . .” He rummaged through Mr. DuBois’s toolbox. There were girlie pictures taped inside. “Goddamn it, Leroy, what self-respecting janitor doesn’t have a Phillips head?” He sighed. “Listen, kiddo, I always wanted you to get out of this town, see the world, meet fascinating people. This wasn’t exactly how I pictured it, but beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Is that what we are? Beggars?”

It was a rare moment alone, just the two of them. Lucas and his father were at work, and Stew was off with a new girlfriend. Pop thought. What he said next, he said slowly, like the words were fine mechanical parts he was carefully reassembling.

“I know you don’t want to be like your mother. But you’re not running off. If you do this, it’ll be for the right reasons. The truth is”— he stared at his hands —“I envy her, getting to pick up and go. I couldn’t last a minute away from you kids, but if I could have taken you with me, shown you something other than the inside of a goddamned auto garage, I would have.”

Cherry said nothing. She’d never thought her pop’s life might not be entirely his first choice. He was a grumpy guy, but not unhappy.

“Do you wish you never had kids?”

He didn’t answer immediately. He was thinking about it.

“No,” he said. “If I didn’t have you two, I might be okay. But I’d have no idea what I was missing.” His eyes drifted to the toolbox. “Fucking thank Christ.
There
it is.” He brandished the screwdriver. “This thing looks like it’s never been used. No wonder that school of yours is falling apart.”

Sunday afternoon, a town car arrived to carry Lucas and Cherry to the airport. Mr. DuBois, Stewart, and Pop saw them off. Vi was there, too. She’d recovered from her disappointment.

“Remember,” she said. “Over there,
poofter
is a gay guy, and
banger
is a sausage.”

“You learned that from
Arrested Development,
” Cherry said.

“Yeah, but it’s true, I think.”

Cherry hugged her best friend, realizing mid-squeeze she didn’t want to let her go.

“I’m gonna miss you.” Vi’s voice was thick with tears.

“It’s just a week,” said Cherry, surprised at the lump in her throat.

“Yeah,” said Vi. “Sort of.”

“Keep an eye on her,” Pop was telling Lucas. “Anything goes wrong, I’m holding you personally responsible, DuBois.”

“I know,” said Lucas.

“I mean it. I’ve talked it over with your dad, and he’s okay with me killing you.”

“O-okay,” said Lucas, trying and entirely failing to smile.

“Send me a postcard,” said Stew. “I can’t believe how fucking lucky you are.”

“This is for all of us,” said Cherry. She leaned in close and said low in his ear, “And no smoking while I’m gone, or you won’t see a
penny
of this cash.”

Stew laughed. “Wait, seriously?”

“Seriously. Straight edge, or you’re living off your garage salary.”

She left Stew blinking over his future. Cherry hugged her father.

“Remember how you used to cry at the end of
The Wizard of Oz
?” he said.

“That was
you,
you pansy.”

“Oh, that’s right.” He held her shoulders. “You have everything? Passport? Got your rape whistle?”

“I’m
fine,
Pop.”

“Good, because I feel like I’m gonna have a heart attack.”

She kissed his cheek.

In the limo, she held Lucas’s hand and watched Sugar Village slip away.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

“Logan Airport,” said Cherry. “British Airways. Private flights gate.”

The driver glanced in the mirror. “You kids win some kind of contest?”

“Yeah,” they said together, and left it at that.

Ardelia met them at the gate. She was in full Ardelia mode, kissing their cheeks, squeezing their hands, fluttering on about
Jolly Old England
and how they were just going to
love
it. Spanner was there as well, dressed for comfort in black track pants and flats.

“You’re short without heels,” said Cherry.

“You’re freakishly tall
with
them.”

Cherry smiled.

“What’s funny?”

At this point Spanner’s bitchiness was just kind of comforting. Like a favorite scratchy blanket. “Nothing,” said Cherry.

Ardelia motioned for them to follow. “Come along, my little chicks. Time to check our bags.”

Instead of passing through security with the rest of the beleaguered masses, they were led to a private line with men in suits and women in expensive casual wear. Pearls, diamonds, and gold watches were dropped into a plastic pan, and a female security guard asked Cherry if she had anything metal on her person.