When Life Turned Purple (22 page)

“Well,” said Russ, trying not to squirm, “I love you, but I’m not sure that I’m—well, you know—”

Lia grinned and looped her arms around his neck, ruffling his hair with one hand. “I
know
. And it’s the same with me, really. We’re all on a journey of sorts. We can’t get there in one day—nor are we supposed to, else we wouldn’t be here for an entire lifetime—but if we can at least know
where
we’re supposed to end up, then we can at least be spelunking in the right direction.”

“Whatever you say,” said Russ.

Now that they seemed to be on the same page as far as all that went, and she was in his arms anyway, and Mrs. King was gone, Russ wondered whether they could finally—

“Now,” said Lia with a knowing smile, “I have something to tell you.”

He hugged her closer and lowered his voice. “We’ve already done a
lot
of talking, baby.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “But this is on a different topic.”

Russ felt sure she was hinting at what he wanted to hint to her. “Can I guess?” he whispered back.

“You’ll never guess,” she said. “I’m
pregnant
!”

His head jerked up and he thrust her back by her shoulders. “You’re
what
?” he shrieked. Or as much of a shriek as he could muster, being an incontestable baritone.

She just nodded her head excitedly, grinning ear to ear.

But Russ stared at her. He’d always dreaded those words with girlfriends. And that dread was finally realized with Emma—and look at how that turned out.

And what if Lia would need to give birth while trapped in the safe room? What if something happened to her or the baby—a
baby
, for crying out loud!—during the pregnancy or birth? And a thousand more what-ifs ricocheted around his mind, crashing into each other so that he could hardly rein them in.

Lia’s grin slid into a flinch.

“This isn’t the right time, baby,” Russ said, still holding her away from him, his voice sounding to his own ears like the final rhythmic thumps of a hammer against a nail in a coffin lid.

Now Lia’s mouth shrunk and her eyes became large, purple ponds brimming over.

Russ wanted to punch himself in the head for making her cry like that, but he also wanted to shake her until she came to her senses. But of course, he did neither.

They stood frozen like that for several moments until Russ dropped his hands and slammed a fist on the counter top as he turned away from her.

“Dammit, Lia! It’s not the time! Can’t you see that?”

Lia blinked and said, “Omigosh, Russ. Are we now going to have one of those retarded conversations in which I need to explain to you the basics of conception, in that you are as much a cause of this as I am?”

He spun around to face her, his fist shaking in the air, and bellowed, “Oh, come
on
! Of course, I just assumed that you—”

But he stopped as he looked at Lia. In contrast to her cool wit, tears were smeared all over her face and more welled up in her eyes. Her body trembled and her breaths came in twitches.

His eyes widened and his mouth shut as his hands dropped to his sides.

Then he said, “Oh, for—” And he turned his back on her again, grabbing his face with his hands.

Then he turned back to Lia. Crossing his arms, he leaned hard back against the countertop, contemplating her.

She gazed right back at him, fidgeting with the hem of her dark green sweater.

“What do you want from me, baby?” he asked her softly. “I can’t handle this.”

She just stared at him, then blinked.

“I mean, I told you about the hospital waiting room, the ER. We don’t have any way of taking care of you. If you miscarry, hemorrhage, give birth—or anything that can go wrong between now and then—we have absolutely no way of getting any kind of help.”

The tears had stopped falling and now Lia wiped her face with her sleeve, taking deep shuddering breaths.

“Okay,” he continued. “Maybe we could get some kind of help
now
—but what about in another month? What’s the world going to be like then? We don’t even know what can happen in the next, say, twelve hours, or tomorrow or next week.” His shoulders sagged. “And even if I could learn how to deliver a baby, we’re just not set up for this. I couldn’t
really
help you if anything went the slightest bit wrong.”

Lia stood there, hugging herself forlornly, and stared off to the side.

“Look, I don’t deny my part in this. I know it takes two—okay? But you
see
things are getting more unstable all the time! The pods and their intentions or whatever—who knows? I mean, I just honestly didn’t think I needed to talk with you about this. Like, did you want
me
to deal with that end of things? Like, I was supposed to go out and buy condoms when we both know that other methods are a lot nicer for both of us?”

Lia looked so vulnerable and unhappy that Russ wanted to gather her up in his arms—but he was still kind of mad at her.

“Talk to me, baby. What’s going on in your head?”

She slowly turned her head to look at him and said, “What did you mean ‘get some kind of help now’?”

Russ opened his mouth to answer, then closed it and ran his hand back and forth over the back of his head as he turned away.

What
did
he mean?

If he’d thought that Emma’s abortion was the only choice back then—and that’s when life was going good, and he really could’ve afforded to marry her and raise the child together, and all the necessary services were available to facilitate the whole process, then what was he supposed to think now?

He straightened up and shoved his hands in his pockets and turned back to look at Lia.

He knew her tummy was still flat. It would be so easy to pretend this pregnancy away, to justify an abortion. Were there still people doing abortions? Was that considered an emergency service in times like this? Russ was sure that for the right price—or item—they could still get an abortion, especially since it was still so early.

“How far along are you?” he asked.

“I’m not sure exactly,” she said. “A couple of months?”

Russ rolled his lips between his teeth. Eight weeks. Again.

He imagined Lia going—under the best circumstances—to the same kind of sterile efficient clinic that Emma had gone. He frowned at the image of her exquisite body hoisting itself onto an examining table and fitting her ivory feet with their glossy rose-painted toenails into high metal stirrups as a sober doctor comes and inserts a slender tube between her legs and turns on the suction. Then with a gentle whirring sound, steadily dismembers that little kidney bean-sized body floating inside of Lia, with its tiny ankles and its tiny wrists and a little nose you could have seen on an ultrasound.

He held out his arms. “C’mere, baby,” he muttered.

Her eyes grew large and luminous as she looked at him and then she propelled herself toward him, sinking against his chest as he wrapped his arms around her.

Her body quaked against him, but he didn’t hear any sobs.

Finally, he cupped his hands around her jawline, his thumbs on her cheekbones, and raised her face to look at him. He felt like sinking into her dark eyes.

“I’m sorry, baby. I can’t ask you to do it. And I’m sorry that I even wanted to.”

Now Lia fell against him harder and crammed her face against his chest, her fingers digging into the back of his shirt.

“I don’t know what we’ll do,” he whispered. “But I know that it can’t be that.”

They held each other like that forever, then Lia raised her head and said, “Russ, it’s an impossible situation. And in times like that, you need to talk to God.”

“No,” he said.

“Yes,” said Lia.

Russ sighed and shook his head.

“Russ,” said Lia, “haven’t you noticed that people who are trying to really connect to the Source aren’t as frightened?”

“You mean
you
aren’t frightened.”

“And Cody. Cody read the books too, and also started following their advice.”

“Well,” said Russ, then stopped. Honestly? He suspected that Lia and Cody both might be a little off. He’d thought that Lia was a bit crazy for a while, but that all her other attributes made up for it. And anyway, no one was perfect. If it’s not being a bit loony-tunes, that it would be something else.

But Lia darted out of his arms and to the bookcase.

“Hey,” Russ said, “if you’re pregnant, then aren’t you supposed to be craving pickles and puking all the time?”

Lia glanced over her shoulder at him. “I crave ice-cold water all the time. And I don’t need to throw up, but my mouth is always filling up with saliva, making me need to spit all of the sudden.” She bent her head toward the open book in her hands.

Russ blinked. “Pregnancy affects saliva production?”

“Apparently so,” said Lia without looking up.

Russ suddenly understood why women seemed so crazy sometimes. I mean, their very bodies were a bit crazy. Why should a tiny thing growing in their stomach affect their mouth? Russ realized that at the biological level—within their very bodies—women were full of contradictions. For some reason, this insight made him feel better.

“Here,” said Lia, opening
Talk to God and Fix Your Health
. “How would you describe your emotional state?”

“Good,” he said.

Lia raised an eyebrow. “That’s not the kind of emotional state discussed here. I mean, do you feel depressed? Despairing? Angry? Anxious? Guilty?”

It was so sweet how earnest and serious she looked about “fixing” him, he decided to humor her.

“Angry,” he said. But really, he felt anxious. Only he couldn’t tell her that because it made him sound like such a pansy.

“Okay,” Lia said, her eyes scanning the page. “Great.”

Taking his arm, she led him over to sit with her on the sofa.

“Okay,” she said, taking his hand between two of his as if to reassure him. “Why are you angry?”

“Because those friggin’ pods keep doing weird stuff that totally freaks me out.”

“Okay,” said Lia. “Is there anything good about that anger?”

Russ pondered the question, then said, “Yeah. It’s got you over here with me, holding my hand, and giving me hope that this hand-holding will lead to something more pretty soon.”

Lia pursed and rolled her lips together like girls do when they’re trying not to smile. She pursed her lips, then said, “Okay. Now ask God, ‘What do You want me to change or understand in order for the anger to disappear?’ ”

“I want to take a nuclear RPG and blast those friggin’ pods back to wherever the hell they came from.”

“Yes, of course you do,” said Lia. “But the point is to ask
God
what
He
wants you to do.”

He looked at her.

“You can do it in your head too,” she said. “I don’t need to hear it.”

Russ thought about it. He felt corny, but Lia was sitting there looking at him with such solemn affection, he felt he should stop clowning around and at least try it.

What do you want from me, God?
he thought, his eyes closed.
What do you want me to do?

Just keep moving forward.

“Just keep moving forward?” Russ said aloud.

You’re going in the right direction. Just keep moving forward and don’t give up. Don’t despair.

Russ opened his eyes and stared without seeing. It wasn’t a voice that he heard nor was it a sentence that he saw in his head. It was a thought. A thought with a comforting yet inaudible tone—if a tone could somehow be inaudible.

He turned to Lia. “How do I know this is real? Like, what if the message is just my subconscious? Or schizophrenia?” He smirked and waggled his eyebrows. “Or demonic possession?”

“I think you’re too macho to ever be schizophrenic. And if it starts telling you to do things against the Ten Commandments, then we’ll check out demonic possession.” Then her forehead crinkled. “Did it tell you to do something like that?”

“Yes,” he said. “I got a sudden urge to covet.”

Lia’s shoulders dropped and she lowered her head like a bull in front of a red cape, her eyes boring into Russ’s. She opened her mouth, but Russ intercepted whatever was going to come out by saying, “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. No more joking around, I promise. It’s just that this is so weird. It feels kind of corny.”

Lia lifted her chin and nodded. “Yes,” she said. “The book says that a lot of people feel like that when they first try talking to God.”

“Huh. Okay, so—seriously? I got a message that basically said I’m going in the right direction. That I just need to keep moving forward and not give up.”

Lia’s eyes brightened. “That sounds really good, Russ,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I feel like—” Then he stopped. He felt like he understood more than what the message literally said. Maybe he was just twisting it into something he wanted to hear?