Kitchens of the Great Midwest (8 page)

“Who gives a shit?” Braque said. She held the white plastic stick under the light. “I’m gonna get pee all over my hand. Can I just pee in a cup and put it in the cup?”

“You ever been to a lesbian wedding?”

“Nope. I hate all weddings.”

“I like the dancing part. Even the Chicken Dance. I will totally dance the Chicken Dance.”

“Ugh. Get the gun.” Braque was down on her hands and knees, looking through the white cabinet under the sink, which was cluttered with waterlogged rolls of single-ply toilet paper and cheap, non-organic cleaning supplies. “I wonder if there’s like a paper cup somewhere in this bathroom I can pee in.”

Patricia gently kicked the back of her friend’s shoe. “You’ll touch a bathroom floor, but you won’t pee on your hands? Urine is sterile, you know.”

“OK, fuck it,” Braque said, pulling her underwear to her ankles and sitting on the toilet. “Hand me the goddamn stick.”

 • • • 

There was a knock on the door. It was the only private bathroom in the entire building, so it had its regulars.

“It’ll be a little while!” Braque called out.

“It’s OK, I’ll wait,” the tiny female voice answered. It was Braque’s roommate Katelyn Pickett. She only ever used this bathroom.

“Wouldn’t if I were you,” Braque said, but she could see from the shadow in the opaque door glass that Katelyn hadn’t moved.

Braque thought she heard a burst of music from the pocket of her balled-up sports pants just as she began to pee.

“I think it’s my phone,” she said.

Patricia looked surprised. “Is it that French guy?”

“Tuna Can? I doubt it.”

“Let me pick it up,” Patricia said, reaching for Braque’s pants at her feet.

“No, don’t,” Braque said. She stood up and leaned forward as she was peeing, getting urine all over her hand, the stick, and the toilet seat. “Goddamn it! I told you not to touch that,” she shouted as she stood, set the stick down on the sink, pulled up her underwear, and grabbed the phone from Patricia.

The phone buzzed in Braque’s hand. It read
INCOMING CALL: AMY JO DRAGELSKI
.

“Not a good time, Mom,” Braque said as she answered.

“Your niece is missing,” her mom said.

“Sure she is.”

Braque was used to this kind of crap; her mom had been a master choreographer of anxious micromanagement since Braque could remember. When Braque and her brother Randy were kids, their mom used to wake them up at 5:30 in the morning for family road trips, to avoid traffic; there were safety latches around the house until she was eleven; there was no TV and sure as shit no candy, pop, alcohol, or smoking; she ironed bedsheets and bleached underwear and cleaned the bathrooms at least twice a day. The menace of her manic perfection made it impossible to relax—and fucking forget having friends over, unless they enjoyed being bum-rushed by a Sears vacuum. Braque was sure that was why their art professor dad Wojtek cheated on their mom once when they were little (who wouldn’t!) and ultimately went on an indefinite sabbatical to Malta, why Randy escaped into music and drugs, and maybe even why Braque signed up for every sport and pointedly excelled at the dirtiest one. Braque was, by careful design, nothing like her mom.

But with her mom’s own family out of her grasp, she now meddled with her relatives instead, and the struggling little Thorvald clan was less than two miles away, helpless against the force of her help.

“Eva ran away last night. Nobody knows where she is. Fiona and Jarl are losing their shit.”

“How do you know she ran away?”

“Because Fiona threw away all of her habanero plants.”

“Holy Christ.”

“I guess she made some kind of oil out of them that she was using as a weapon at school. She sent two boys to the hospital.”

“Do you know what happens to her at that school, Mom? Those little shits probably had it coming.”

“She got suspended by the principal. Well anyway, Randy thinks
that there’s a chance that she might be coming out your way, so maybe you should go out and put some signs up or something.”

“I kinda got my hands full right now.”

“But your cousin is missing!”

“Kids do this kinda shit all the time, I’m sure she’s fine.”

A small fist pounded on the bathroom door. “Are you just talking on the phone in there?”

“
Ahh, shaddup!
” Braque said. Patricia got up from the floor and returned a volley of slaps on their side of the door.

Braque returned the phone to her ear. “Sorry, not you, Mom.”

“I think you’re being selfish and lazy,” Braque’s mom said. “When I get a hold of your dad in Malta I’ll tell him that you’re not helping the family.”

“Look, I’ll help as soon as finals week is over. OK? I can’t fail spring quarter and lose my scholarship because my cousin ran away from home for a couple hours.”

“I can’t believe I raised such a selfish daughter.”

“Keep me posted, Mom. Love you.” Braque pressed her phone’s keypad, ending the call, and shook her head. “Christ. Neediest goddamn chick in the world.”

She looked at Patricia, who was standing by the sink with a sad, scared look on her face.

“What is it?”

Patricia handed Braque the pregnancy test. Braque stared at the two pink lines in the result window.

“Well, fuckin’ A, Patty.”

Patricia put her hand on Braque’s shoulder. Braque leaned against her friend’s waist and let her friend cradle her head.

“Holy fucking shit,” she repeated, as Patricia held her and squeezed her shoulder.

A limp, tiny hand slapped the bathroom door. The small shadow at the foot of the doorframe was now joined by a larger one. “I got the RA with me!” Katelyn said.

10:01
A
.
M
.

Goddamn cataclysmic devastation, pretty much.

 • • • 

Braque threw the pregnancy kit and the box it came in into the trash of the dorm across the street from Chapin. Her head was absolute pudding; she could hardly remember where her Micro class was, or what day the final was on, or anything else imminent and relevant. She tried to recall her schedule and where she was supposed to be at that moment, but her thoughts separated and vanished like April snowflakes.

She would terminate her pregnancy. No question. She didn’t have time for this. She was a scholarship Division I athlete and a 4.0 student. Her job was to lead Northwestern to the Big Ten title, qualify for the 2004 Olympic team in four years, and then go to the Kellogg School of Management for a business degree. That was the plan. No time for serious boyfriends, and no interest.

Which didn’t mean that she didn’t have the scorching desire for a halfway decent fuck every once in a while. But for starters, she couldn’t even remember which of her two spring quarter sex partners could’ve been the father. Luc-Richard, the French tennis player whose junk was wider than it was long? He went back to France and who cares. Or was it Yuniesky Cespedes, the shortstop for the Kane County Cougars, who just got promoted to Daytona in the Florida State League? It’s not like she wanted to call either of these dudes and be like, hey, are you sitting down? They didn’t sign up for this. And neither did she.

Did a condom break? She couldn’t be on the pill because it messed with her system too much, so she compensated in other ways. Once she made a guy wear two condoms. Of course he hated it, but give a male animal a choice between wearing two condoms and going home with blue balls, and imagine what they do. Could a guy not notice when a condom breaks? Could she? There were times she took the Plan B pill
just because she thought one might have broken. That Yuniesky dude always flushed his condoms afterward. Was it him?

 • • • 

As she entered the lobby of Chapin, where some lame-ass freshman boys were setting up a beer pong table, her phone buzzed.

It was a text message.

SWET PEPER JELY
, the screen seemed to read.

Braque stopped walking and took a deep breath. She glanced away from her phone and looked back. The words were gone.

Some oaf in a
Star Wars
shirt was trying to get past her with stacks of blue plastic cups. “Excuse me,” he said.

“No,” she replied, not getting out of his way. She looked at her phone again. A brand-new Nokia 3210. Almost everyone on the team had one; text messaging was way easier than calling. It couldn’t be busted already.

She looked through the message history. No
SWET PEPER JELY
. Whatever that was about. As the big nerd with the plastic cups finally tried to squeeze past her, she put away her phone and shoved past him toward her dorm room.

10:10
A
.
M
.

To Braque, the Humanities dorm was like an icicle up the glory hole. She’d put it down as her fifth choice of five. Only after getting to school did she learn that anyone who’d put it down as
any
choice got stuck there. Some had it as their first choice. Every one of those dorks was as big a rube as Katelyn, who was wearing a stupid combo of a pink Chicago Bears T-shirt (she probably couldn’t name even one player on the Bears) and white high-waisted shorts. She was lying on her bed reading some dumb piece of Victorian literature.

“Just to give you a heads-up,” Katelyn said, not looking up from her
book. “My sister Elodie’s coming here in two days, and I told her she could have your bed.”

“Fuck that,” Braque said, tossing her Micro notes into her old JanSport bag. “Your sister’s not staying in our room, and sure as hell not in my bed, end of discussion.”

“The RA said it’s OK, after you locked me out of my bathroom.”

Braque dropped her bag on the floor. “I have so many problems with that statement, I don’t know where to begin. For starters, Katelyn, you’re rich. Put her in a hotel.” This was true; her dad was a corporate lawyer in Minnesota and they lived on a lake in Orono, which were facts Katelyn seemed proud of when boys were around.

“I’m not rich. My family is relatively successful, but I am not personally financially capable of buying hotel rooms for my guests.”

“Well, maybe she can spring for it herself. It’s what adults do.”

“You’re just being selfish because you’re being inconvenienced. You can’t stand one tiny little inconvenience in your life, ever.”

“This isn’t tiny,” Braque said, standing in the open doorway. She was running late, which meant that she was not going to get to class as early as she usually did. “You’re trying to kick me out of my bed during finals week. How about I kick you out of your bed?”

“You already owe me four nights in here alone for the four nights I had to sleep outside in the hall because you were boning some dude in here.”

“To be continued,” Braque said, stepping out of the room and closing the door behind her. The entitled little twat kind of had a point. But whatever her past grievances, however, there was absolutely no reason Katelyn’s sister couldn’t stay in a hotel during finals week. And who visits during finals week anyway? The sisters of rich girls who don’t give a shit about their grades, because they’ll never have to worry about money in their entire lives.

Northwestern’s roommate assignment policy was sadistic: Incoming first-year students on financial aid were always paired with someone not
on financial aid, and it only served to teach Braque how cheap rich people were. Katelyn went to Vail over spring break and she didn’t even ski, but then she came back a week later and used all of Braque’s Seventh Generation detergent without asking. And now she was giving away Braque’s bed like it was hers to give. Fuck these rich kids in the face.

12:50
P
.
M
.

To Braque, both the Micro 1 and U.S. History discussion groups were an ambient fog of vaguely familiar nouns. She could concentrate on only about every fifth word. Walking out of Kresge Hall, she felt even worse than before.

Braque sort of didn’t want to turn her damn phone back on after the weird thing that happened earlier. But if her cousin Eva had actually run away from home, which seemed likely, Braque knew she might get a call from her—especially if she wasn’t with Randy.

She had one text message and two missed calls. The voice mails were from Mom; she’d endure them while walking to the Stucco Palace to have lunch with her teammates.

The text was from Patricia:
hey BD, every1 here supports & luvs u. C U soon <3

She thought about texting back something smart-ass like
tell everyone to think of me when they rub one out
, or something equally profane and Braque-ish, like she normally would when confronted with sincere sentiment, but this time, she just went with:
thx
.

12:59
P
.
M
.

After missing both her morning workout and her first lunch, Braque felt her blood sugar falling off a goddamn cliff, and she could smell the turkey grilling even half a block from the Stucco Palace. Ann Richards—their six-foot-three starting pitcher from Texas, no relation to the former
governor—opened the door. “Pony” by Ginuwine was playing on their stereo, and Ann instantly started dancing alone on the hardwood floor as Braque followed her inside.

“Come on, B.D.!” Ann said, as Maya Cromartie, their junior center fielder, joined Ann in the living room. The best players on the team lived in the Palace, and it had been that way as long as anyone could remember. Braque would be living there now if Northwestern didn’t have that dumb rule that first-years had to live on campus.

“I can’t, I’ve been sick all day,” Braque said. She waved at first baseman Tangela Bass, who was typing on her laptop with headphones on, and walked into the kitchen to put her arm around Patricia, who was standing over the stovetop, sprinkling a tiny pinch of pungent diced garlic onto the almost-done turkey patties.

“So, what’s the latest?” Patricia asked.

“I don’t even know where to start,” Braque said. “But I made up my mind. I wanna get rid of this thing.”

Patricia put her arm around her younger friend. “You’re a hundred percent sure?”

Braque nodded.

“Eat something,” Patricia said, and handed Braque a plate and lifted the lid over a steamer basket full of broccoli and carrots. The fresh garlic on the turkey burger smelled to Braque like the most amazing garlic in world history, and at the table, Maya Cromartie was pouring habanero sauce over all of it as if it were gravy on mashed potatoes.