Margarette (Violet) (11 page)

Paulie leans in and whispers in Margarette’s ear,
making it worse. “Let’s just get out of here.” He is reluctant to tell her
anything else about that night, and he doesn’t know that the football guy
doesn’t recognize Margarette. He wants to leave quickly before the guy mentions
anything.

Incensed, Margarette stays put despite Paulie’s advice.
“Look… I’m not fricking anybody.”

“I bet you’d frick like a rocket,” the football
guy says. “I’ll fill in for him if he ain’t doing it.”

Julie puckers her shapeless lips. “Ugh… you’ll get
a virus or something.”

Paulie bobs forward as if he’s going to say
something, but backs off when the guy looks up at him.

Margarette ignores Julie and looks at the guy in
the eye. “Where the hell did you learn your etiquette from, you shit kicker, a
dirty book store or something?”

She tries to storm off but the guy steps away from
his truck, onto the sidewalk in front of Margarette.

“What did you call me?” He sounds angry.

“She called you a shit kicker,” Julie says. She knows
the guy has a temper and wants to exacerbate things for her own personal gain.

Margarette keeps going. “Are you ears filled with
shit too?”

“No whore like you is going to mouth off to me
like that,” the football guy says in a heavy twang, towering close to her.

Margarette’s hand reaches inside her front pocket,
her fingers curling around the folded switchblade while she grips the paper bag
with the other hand. She looks up at the guy defiantly. “What, are you going to
hit me? You would do that, you fricking coward.”

“What did you call me?” the guy asks a second
time.

She pulls out the blade and snaps it open between
their two bodies. Then she whispers, “If you try I’ll cut your fricking balls
off.”

She presses the open blade into his pant leg just
below the crotch. A black sports car pulls up, but adrenaline keeps her from
looking up. All she hears is the gravel shifting under tires. She sees a spark
of fear in the guy’s eyes and knows he is thinking about grabbing her. The
blade slides forward without her control as if moving on its own, and makes
contact.

Rip
.

The fabric begins to tear and the guy freezes with
the threat of pain. Julie and Paulie are unable to see her hand, but realize
something else is happening because of the gap in the conversation.

“I don’t give a shit who you think you are, but no
one gets in my way,” she says with a deathly seriousness. “You got that?”

“Uh….”

Margarette hears a familiar voice.

“What’s going on here?” Tommy calls. He knows who
the guy is. “Hey Bobby, what the hell are you doing?”

She takes a step back as the guy turns and swings
for her. She shuffles back out of range knocking over Paulie, elbowing his chest.
The guy goes to grab her again and Tommy steps in, pushing the larger guy back and
lays him out flat. Julie screams. The scuffle continues until Tommy gets a
punch in. The other guy is huge, but bad in a ground fight. Tommy gets up as
the guy tends to his bleeding nose.

“Quick, get in the car,” Tommy calls.

Margarette pushes Julie and the brown bag slips
from her hand and falls to the ground. Panic grips her as she sees Julie look
down at it and up at her with a confused look. She tries to go back for the bag
but Tommy grabs her, forcing her inside his car and shutting the door. She
rolls down the window.

“Paulie, grab the bag!” she yells.

To her surprise she sees Paulie gets it and passes
it to her, then opens the door to the back seat, but Tommy starts to speed off
before he can get into the car.

“No no no… stop, he’s with me,” she cries.

Tommy brakes and they all look back to see the
football player steps out with a tire iron quickly closing the distance behind
the car.

“Oh frick!” Tommy and Margarette say in unison.

Paulie looks behind him. “Oh shit!” He quickly
gets in and shouts before even closing the door. “Go, go, go!”

Tommy puts the car in reverse, gunning it, and the
football guy has to jump out of the way. Tommy cuts back into the park to make
an illegal U-turn.

“Oh shit, oh shit!” All shout as the car hops the
curb. But Tommy peels the car out back to the street and finally they speed
away.

Tommy starts laughing after a few blocks. “Holy
shit, that was cool.”

Margarette turns around and inspects Paulie. “Are
you okay?”

Tommy looks at Paulie in the rearview mirror, confused
as to why she’s concerned. “Is he your boyfriend?”

“Why the hell does everyone keep asking that?”
Margarette asks, annoyed.

“Well I mean… wait, why what?” Tommy is at a loss
for words.

“No, he’s
not
my boyfriend. I mean he is,
but not like that. Damn it. You know what I mean. Just fricking get us out of
here.”

Tommy turns off the main road and drives until he
gets to the Snappy Snack Shack convenience store adjacent to the police station,
not far from her house.

Tommy shouts, “Alright, out!”

Paulie and Margarette both open their doors and
start to get out, but Tommy grabs Margarette’s arm.

“No, not you,” Tommy says. “You and I have to
talk.”

“What the hell for?”

“I’m not done talking.”

But Margarette keeps going until she hears Tommy
add, “Please.”

She stops with one leg in and the other out. She
looks down and sees the torn bag on the floor.

“Okay, just wait,” she tells Tommy. She gets out
and walks to Paulie. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Paulie says. “You?”

“I don’t know. Can you go inside for a bit? If
that nut comes by we’ll get a cop or something.”

“We?” Paulie repeats faintly.

She puts her arms around him slowly and hangs on
him until it becomes a hug.

“Thank you,” she says softly.

Paulie smiles.

She sits back down into the car and her shorts
start riding up. Tommy starts talking, but she ignores his intro to why they
should be dating and lifts her hips so she can fix her shorts. Tommy explains
that he misses her and that he wanted to be at her graduation. None of what he says
matters much to her when she thinks about the larger problems at hand. Yet as
she collects the package from the floor, she recalls that her largest problem
is completely tied to
him
.

She turns the package so he can’t see through the tear.
As Tommy explains how Sharon was at the graduation and it was her that kept him
away, Margarette sits nervously fidgeting with the box, thinking about the
uneasy task at hand. He is still talking, but his words are muted by her
thoughts.

Tommy pauses and she looks up at him. He has the
look of someone who just asked a question, but she could certainly talk her way
out of that even if she wasn’t listening.

“I don’t know what to think.” Margarette says.

“You don’t have to,” Tommy says.

“Why not? Why shouldn’t I be thinking? It’s my
future.”

“I uh… I guess.”

“I’m not sure what you want from me. I never get
what I want, so why should you?”

Tommy’s face is tender. “You can have whatever you
want.”

“That is so not true.”

“I can change. I can fix this.”

“Prove it.”

“Well, if you want to ride with me to the store we
can make groceries.”

“What?”

“The store,” Tommy repeats. “We can go get stuff.”

“You said
make
groceries.” She remembers
May saying it at the disaster dinner.

“Yeah, my parents say that.”

Her father used to say that too. It reminds her of
him, and strangely it connects a few dots in mind. She recognizes the familiar
twang in his voice that her father used to have when he spoke. “Are they from
Knowledge?” she asks.

“I grew up there. We moved when I was six. We went
to the same grade school before we switched to Public High remember?”

She is shocked. He was right. He did know of her
from before. It gives her a strange happiness that he remembered her.

Her lip twitches as she almost smiles. She thinks
about everything. Life, her mother, her situation; and there he is still
staring at her with a faint longing in his eyes. She does smile then, realizing
she likes him. But her thoughts digress into reality. What if Julie saw the box
when the bag fell? How long does she have before everyone in the town knows? Days?
Hours?

“Do you want to go to dinner instead of making
groceries?” Margarette asks.

His face brightens. “Of course! I’ll take you
anywhere you want. It’ll be your graduation dinner.”

“As long as it’s not at your house.”

“Wherever you want,” he repeats. “But… I promise,
next time I take you to my house it will be different.”

“You promised you wouldn’t do that again.”

“Not unless you asked me to. If and when you do,
I’ll make sure my dad is there. He keeps them in check.”

The thought is ridiculous. She doesn’t ever want
to meet any other Gallager. But then she remembers she may very well be talking
to the father of her child, and if so, her future would be tied to Tommy’s no
matter what.
Ugh
. The words sound stupid in her head.

“That… may work,” she concedes. “But why don’t you
and I go alone somewhere first? I just think we should be by ourselves for a
bit before we try a new round of introductions.”

“Of course. It’s your graduation dinner. I’ll take
you somewhere nice. How about Panucci’s?”

Panucci’s is one of the two Italian restaurants in
Coyote Falls. It was a place where many first dates took place over
candlelight.

“Panucci’s sounds great.”

“Do you want to go now?”

“
Now
? Uh….”

She scrambles for a way to take her test before
she commits to dinner. It irks her that she still has to take a test on the
last official day of school.

“I need to change. How about I call you when I’m
ready? Should be around six or seven.”

“How do I know you’ll call and not abandon me?”

“You don’t, but that’s what makes it interesting.”

“Margarette, you don’t have my number.”

“Oh, I was going to look it up in the book. But
you can just give it to me now and save me the trouble.”

He looks at her dubiously. “I don’t have anywhere
to write it.”

“Just tell me; I have amazing memory.”

He tells her, and she memorizes the numbers
easily. But he still thinks that she’s going to ditch him. “I could wait while
you change. I promise not to be in the way.”

No! No, no, no no no….

“What about Paulie?” Margarette asks in a burst of
inspiration.

“What? Do you want him to go with us?” he asks,
confused. “I guess he can go.”

“No… What? Not to dinner, but we can’t leave him
here. If that hick comes back, he’s toast. Can you go get him? We have to take
him home.”

“Come with me, then. What if Bobby does come back?
I don’t want him to harass you,” Tommy says.

Margarette lifts the blade still clenched in her
hand. Tommy can see the tip smeared with a drop of blood.

“I’ll finish what I started,” she says.

“You’re incredible.”

“Sometimes.”

The car dings as he gets out. He turns and leaves
her with a final thought.

“The longer I’m around you, the more you surprise
me,” Tommy says.

She smiles.

Then she slams her head into the dash as soon as
she’s sure no one was watching. The keys jingle in the ignition.

Slowly, but with steadily increasing speed, she
mutters, “Frick frick frick frick frickin
frickfrickfrick
.” She shuts
her eyes. “Damn it! Please please… this is the only test I’ve ever wanted to
fail. Please don’t let this happen. I swear I’ll be a better person. I swear
it.”

Tommy returns with Paulie and agrees to take him
home, intending to drop him off on the way to Margarette’s house. But Margarette
insists she has to go home first, and besides, her house is around the corner.
Tommy uncomfortably taxies Paulie home after dropping her off. But he reasons
that it’s not a bad exchange if it makes Margarette happy enough to agree to
dinner.

When Margarette gets inside the house is empty.
Still, she locks herself in the bathroom. Her hands shake as she rips open the
box and then the pink foil that covers the stick. She reads the instructions in
a neatly-folded separate piece of paper and gets to work. It says to wait three
minutes, but twenty plus seconds later she knows she is pregnant. She is also
convinced that the whole town is spreading the news behind her back.

She didn’t need to worry about the town, but
pregnant girls worry all the time. The evil villain Julie had actually been
more interested in Tommy fighting for Margarette even though they had not been
seen together in two weeks; and she had not, in fact, read the box at all
because it was upside down.

But Margarette now thinks she has a deadline. She
wonders how to tell Tommy, because she’s convinced he is going to find out soon
enough from other sources, and he should hear it first from her. How will he
react? She shouldn’t worry so much about what he will do when he finds out, but
that’s all she can think about.

Margarette strips down in her room and holds her
belly. It doesn’t feel different, but she does. She rips through her closet and
looks for something nice to wear to the restaurant. The cutoff jeans she’s
wearing will not do. She rolls her eyes at Tommy. How would he offer to take
her to a nice dinner wearing shorts? He doesn’t seem to think certain things
through, and it bothers her a little. Why is she even going out to dinner with
him? Can’t he just not know about the child? Oh, that’s right, he has to know,
being the father and all. She grunts and keeps looking in her closet. Then she
finds it—a black dress she wore to a funeral. It matches exactly the way she
feels.

She showers quickly and gets dressed. What usually
takes an hour or more to finish when she’s in a hurry takes only ten minutes
today, when she has all the time in the world. Her leggings have runs but she
doesn’t care. The dress is tight and at least makes her look better than she
feels. She sits on an old retro chair and her leg ticks nervously as she tries
to remain still. She reaches down grasping her knees to hold them still and
watches the clock slowly tick by. Her hands clench as her life unravels in her
head. She can’t stop torturing herself with guilt and the dinner is hours away.
She looks around for something to distract herself with.

On the ground she finds the book that Paulie gave
her. She opens the package and sees it for the first time.
Comeunion
. It
is a black book with gold-edged pages like a Bible. A twisted cross with a
curving blade for each arm covers the leather-like front. It has a silky red
ribbon for a page mark. It kind of looks like her Bible, but it’s filled with
unholy words like sex. It is the perfect distraction. For a second Margarette can
pretend to be someone else in order to keep her hands from shaking as she flips
to the first page. Someone who doesn’t have to deal with the things she is
stuck with. She starts to read.

The story is about a boy who was more broken than even
she is. His life spun out of control. Torment drove him to madness; the insane
words of this psychotic dreamer provide enough of a distraction to Margarette that
she loses track of time. It makes her think about Paulie as she reads on. He isn’t
that bad of a guy. He is sweet, but far from what she would ever compromise for
in a man.

She snaps back into reality when she hears a
grinding noise out front that she recognizes well. Holding black shoes in one
hand and a purse on the other, she dashes down the stairs almost losing her
footing. She opens the back door and times it perfectly so her mother enters
simultaneously with Margarette’s exit. Her mind is blank, as empty as her
purse. She carries only her wits, the knife, a few coins, and an emergency
twenty dollar bill she doesn’t intend on breaking. Her back tenses as a cold
breeze penetrates her sheer dress. She considers going back for a jacket but immediately
desists. There’s no doubt in her mind that she’d get in a fight with her mother.
But in some ways her news is so new that she just wants to share it with
someone. She walks the few blocks to the same store from before and uses a few
quarters to call her house from the pay phone inside the building.

Margarette’s voice is a soft hiss of breath.
“Mom.” There is a pause as she cries without making a sound. “No, I left a
little while ago.”

It’s a one-sided phone call.

She sits in the booth and continues as if talking
to herself.

“You know how you….” Pause. “No, I need to talk to
you now.” Margarette is fighting tears. “No, just listen. Say I had to take a
test. You know how you always want me to pass them….” That is her bad attempt
at a joke. “No, I know school is over.” She sighs. “I know, Mom. No, I’m not being
held back.” Eye roll. “You went to my graduation today. Just listen. I took a pregnancy
test today. Well, it’s positive.”

There, she said it. There’s a long pause.

“No, Mom. I can’t go home.” Her eyes shut. “No,
no. I don’t know.”

The phone crackles and her mother’s words trail
off as Margarette turns the phone away from her face.

A truck driver looks at her as he waits for the
phone. She hangs up and drops another few quarters into the phone. She punches
the numbers with shaking fingers. As the phone rings she closes her eyes.

“Is Tommy home? Sure… I’ll wait.”

She can hear May talking about her.
Girls aren’t
supposed to call boys
, May says. Margarette rolls her eyes and continues to
wait.
That bitch
, she thinks. She wonders what May would say when she
finds out.

What the hell do I care
? She thinks. The
world is ending and she is worried about second impressions. She moves on to
her next thought. Tommy must already know, and her mother knows, and it’s hard
to run away from home in heels.

Tommy picks up. “Hello?”

His voice sounds like he doesn’t know who it is on
the phone. Of course, May wouldn’t have told him.

“Hey, Tommy.”

“Margarette!” He actually sounds a little excited
to hear her. If he knows about her test, he is good at hiding it.

After some misdirection Margarette convinces him
how convenient it would be to pick her up at the convenience store. Her voice
breaks and he almost hears her cry. Fortunately Tommy doesn’t pick up on things
like context or tone. “Yeah, the place we were at earlier,” she finishes and
hangs up.

The truck driver hears what Tommy didn’t pick up
on. He shakes his head as he makes his phone call.

The only place to sit inside the store is a picnic
table covered in grease and mustard stains. She feels strange and out of place
as each patron passes by giving her odd looks, a lonely girl shivering in a
black dress. She should be used to people staring at her by now, but this time she
feels unusually indifferent about it. Because she is
pregnant
. Accepting
her situation takes her to a very new low.

Tommy is on his way. Seeing his eyes when she
tells him will be horrible. Maybe. She doesn’t know him well enough to expect
anything. But then again, why should she care about his feelings? It is her who
will suffer. If he wants nothing to do with it he’ll just start seeing someone
else or go back to Sharon and move on. Pregnant and crying, Margarette would
have to watch. Maybe she should just leave and go back home. Her mother will
put her in a convent. Nine months in a room with locked doors and no sunlight
doesn’t sound so bad. She doesn’t know if she wants to cry or cry harder, but
she holds back her tears afraid all it would do is smear her makeup. So she
sits with a fierce look ready for anyone who would dare to catch her glimpse.

Softly, she mutters, “I’ve got to get out of
here.”

She thinks about skipping the country and heading
south. Hop buses until they start speaking Spanish. Live her life unknown
drinking margaritas; that was an American dream. She sighs. Running away never
made anything better, and they don’t drink margaritas there anyway. Americans
made that up. She can’t run unless she has something to run to. All she has is
a desert.

“Hey, I’ve got a date with my girlfriend, but I’m
open to cancelling if I could take
you
out instead.”

She looks up to see Tommy smiling at her, blue
eyes sparkling; his blond hair is combed up and sideways, and he changed into
nice clothes for their date. All in all he looks terribly cute. She doesn’t
know whether to smile back at him or to punch him for his silly comment. She settles
for a little bit of both and gets up from the chair and pushes him, playfully.
“I’m not your girlfriend.”

“Oh, it’s you, Margarette! Sorry, damn, I didn’t
recognize you in that dress.”

“Let’s go, shall we?”

“As the lady wishes.”

Tommy’s car is up front. He even pops open the
door for her. She’s impressed that he did it, which is a bad sign because it
means her expectations of him are so low.

“Thanks, Tommy.”

The second she says it she feels like an idiot.
She slips and sounds like every other girl hitting on him.

“I didn’t think you were going to call,” Tommy
says as he settles in beside her.

“You have no faith in me.”

“I have no faith in
me
. A girl like you
wouldn’t go out with a guy like me.”

She’s not sure if he’s giving her a compliment or
if he just thinks poorly of himself.

“I’m glad you did, though,” he adds.

She still isn’t sure if he knows. She leans down
so she can’t see his eyes. “I’m kind of glad, too. I have something to tell
you.”

“What is it?”

“First I have a question for you.”

“Ask.”

“Are you seeing her?”

“Who, Sharon?”

She gives him a cold stare. “
Anyone
?”

“Only you. Or trying to, anyway.”

“What do you want me for?”

“I like girls with black fingernail polish.” He
looks at her appreciatively. “It matches the dress.”

He smiles and all she can see is his bright white
grin. Margarette shakes her head and looks up at the sky for answers, but it is
a cloudy night through the moon roof.

“Oh—shit,” he says suddenly.

“What?” She looks left to see him patting his
pockets.

“My wallet. I left it at my house.”

She thinks about her twenty dollar bill and
relieves herself of the promise to not break it, if it means not going to his
house. She quickly scans her mental database for places where twenty dollars
can afford dinner for two, but he’s still talking.

“I’ll be in and out. I swear. You don’t even have
to leave the car.”

She hides her face in her hands in exasperation.
“Tommy, you promised not to take me there again.”

“And I won’t. I’ll leave the car running outside
the gates, even.”

She considers leaving him right then and there,
but she really does need to tell him about the situation. And she’d rather do
it over a fancy dinner, not a submarine sandwich. And she’d rather him pay and
not have to break her twenty, thank you very much.

And… it’s her child’s family, too. She doesn’t
want Tommy to think that she can’t get along with them. She’s willing to give
them another chance. When she tells Tommy tonight, at least he won’t hold that
against her, that she hates his family.

“It’s okay,” she says. “You can even bring the car
up. As long as we keep it short and we go to dinner afterwards.”

He grins like she’s the most perfect woman in the
world and they drive off.

***

They reach Tommy’s house and he parks outside. Before
he turns off the ignition he turns to her.

“I have a question for
you
,” he says,
almost embarrassed.

“Ask,” she says, mimicking him.

“Before I take you to dinner… I was wondering if
you’d like to meet my father.”

“What?” She just stares at him, unable to believe
he’s asking her to meet another member of his dysfunctional family. The plan
was for him to go in and out, grab his wallet and go.

“I’m sorry it was so awkward last time with my
mother and May, but really, they’re not so bad when he’s around. And I want you
to meet him. Or rather, I want him to meet
you
.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s not always around, and I’m skipping
dinner with him to take you out, and I want to show him why. That I’m not just blowing
him off being a punk; I’m really taking a beautiful girl out to dinner instead.
Especially when you look so gorgeous.”

“Tommy, I….” she mumbles. His words flatter her, and
she pauses before instantly refusing his request. Again she considers that Tommy’s
family is her unborn child’s family, and that the more open she is to them, the
more likely it is that Tommy will stick around. “I’ll meet your father.”

“Really?” His face brightens like she just gave
him the best news. And he looks so terribly cute she can’t help but smile at
him. She commits the face to memory, afraid she won’t see it again after tonight.

“Really.”

He leans in and kisses her on the cheek before she
can even react. He cuts off the ignition and exits without another word, goes
around to her side and opens the door for her. His actions give her hope, but
she crushes them immediately. She refuses to raise her expectations, afraid of
his reaction when he finds out.

Inside, Tommy introduces her to the new cook and
some guy that cleans on weekends. She scoffs internally at having someone clean
the house. No matter how well-dusted the air, it is still somehow stale to her
like unvarnished antiques.

Tommy calls for his father but the cook announces
that he went out to pick up Mrs. Gallager and should be back in ten minutes.
Tommy apologizes to Margarette for the wait, but at this point she’s already
committed to meeting Mr. Gallager and only rolls her eyes when Tommy is not
looking.