Where Love Goes (31 page)

She has not mentioned this possibility to Travis. She doesn’t talk about gross stuff like periods with him. She hasn’t mentioned this to anybody, as a matter of fact. She is just going to take this dumb test home and pee in the stupid little glass tube and find out, for sure, that everything’s okay. Tomorrow morning she will probably wake up with blood on her underpants and feel like a total dipshit for wasting her money this way. Still.

What cool person can she think of that’s pregnant? Edie Brickell and Paul Simon had a baby a while ago. That model that’s married to Rod Stewart. There must be others, but Sally can’t think of them. All she can think about is the horrible-looking pregnant women she sees at the supermarket and Vanessa Jenkins in her global issues class. Her global issue is sticking out so far now she can hardly even reach her desk when Mr. Pyle gives them a pop quiz.

One thing’s for sure. Once she manages to get this mess behind her, Sally is never going to let something like this happen again. Travis can get down on his knees and beg her, but if he doesn’t have a rubber, forget it. And maybe even if he does.

She makes a bargain.
Just let it say I’m okay and I’ll be nice to my brother. I’ll always put my dishes in the dishwasher. I’ll be nice to my mother’s wimp boyfriend’s weird kid. I’ll just practice ballet all the time and hang out with my girlfriends, and I won’t do it again until I’m tons older
.

C
laire has told Ursula that if nobody’s home when she comes over to walk Jenny, she should just go on in the house, get Jenny’s leash, and take her. So this is what she was going to do today. Only she has to go upstairs to get Jenny, because the dog likes to lie on the window seat when she’s not there.

She walks into Claire’s room, with its scarves and beaded gowns and flowers hanging all around. She picks up a hand mirror and holds it up, like she was a rich woman or a queen. “Which ball gown shall I wear tonight?” she says, in her Loni Anderson voice.

She unscrews the top to a perfume bottle and splashes some on herself, more than she’d bargained for. She tries on a hat that Claire keeps on one of her bedposts. She opens the jewelry box, with its rows of mysterious compartments and drawers. That’s when she sees the purple jewel ring. After all the trouble her dad went to getting it for her, Claire doesn’t even wear it.

Pete’s room isn’t nearly as interesting as Claire’s—just a whole lot of baseball cards and trolls. But Sally’s room is amazing.

Ursula has always wanted to see this room. Up until now she has only gotten to peek in from the hallway. It’s even neater than she expected. Not neat like her dad would mean, of course—clothes off the floor; Barbies on the shelf. It’s just so beautiful. Like in a Disney movie. Like a magical world.

There are Christmas lights on the ceiling. There are pictures of all Sally’s friends taped on the wall, and she has so many of them. There are pictures of rock ’n’ roll singers Ursula doesn’t recognize and people she figures must be movie stars. There are pictures of clothes cut out of magazines and sayings cut out of newspaper headlines. There’s a note to Sally from her boyfriend with hearts all over the place, and a peace sign necklace and a candle in the shape of a flamingo and a pair of ballet slippers. There’s a lava lamp and a pair of purple suede boots. Ursula has to touch them, they look so soft.

Of course the best would have been if Sally had invited Ursula to come into her room when she was there, not because her mother told her to, just because she wanted. The best would be if she said, “Hey, you want to come up to my room and try on clothes? I have some things that would look really cute on you.”

She puts an arm around Ursula. “I always wanted a little sister,” she says. “I have this great idea for what we can do with your hair.” She takes Ursula into her closet then, which is like a whole other room. A very tiny room, but the best of all
.

Ursula has never seen so many different pairs of shoes. High-top sneakers and bright blue lace-up boots and gold sandals and these amazing shoes that are totally clear plastic, so whatever kind of socks you were wearing would show. Ursula picks up one of Sally’s bras that’s lying on the floor. It’s white and lacy. Small, with a little pink rosebud in the front. Ursula doesn’t think she will ever have a bra like this. Ursula wears ribbed undershirts that never come out white in the wash. Someday she knows she will need a bra (the horrible truth is, she can almost see it beginning now), but never a tiny, delicate bra like this one. She holds it up and smells it. Lavender.

Ursula slips her feet out of her rubber Little Mermaid flip-flops and puts them into a pair of green platforms. She fingers a velvet dress and a pair of fishnet stockings draped over a hook. There is this other dress she loves: purple, made out of a shiny fabric that would change color depending on where you were standing. She has never seen such a beautiful dress in her whole life.

She pulls her corduroy jumper over her head. She stands there for a moment, in her grayish undershirt and her panties. Still wearing the platforms, she steps into the purple dress. She notices a necklace she has seen Sally wearing—a silver ball on a piece of silk cord. It makes this magic jingle sound when she moves. Ursula puts it on.

“I haven’t decided if I’ll let him take me to the prom,” she says. She makes this accent that sounds just like Julie Andrews in
The Sound of Music
. “I don’t want to hurt his feelings, but I think I may love Quinton more.” She got the name from Loni Anderson’s son that has Burt Reynolds for a dad, only he’s fighting for custody.

She is holding a pretend telephone. “No,” she is saying, “I can’t make it today, Roberto. I’m getting my hair done. It’s such a wreck.”

She emerges from the closet, out into Sally’s room again. She wants to see herself in the full-length mirror. She spots the boom box and decides to turn it on. A woman with a scratchy voice is singing, “Didn’t I make you feel like you were the only man?”

Imagine having all these friends. Imagine lying in this bed at night, in the red glow of the lava lamp, watching the globs of whatever it is inside slowly swirling inside the glass. Listening to rock ’n’ roll music and breathing in the smell of scented candles. She would have a girlfriend sleeping over. They would tell each other secrets. “He kissed me,” the girlfriend says. “He touched the rose on my bra.”

She picks up Sally’s hairbrush. She pretends it’s a microphone.

“Take it,” she sings in front of the mirror. “Take another little piece of my heart now, baby.” She twirls the jingle necklace. She’s actually dancing, and the surprising thing is she looks good.

She shakes her hair. She strokes the microphone the way she has seen them do on MTV. She makes this face singers make, as if they’re having a baby. “Break it,” she sings to Jenny, who is sitting there watching with her head tilted to the side in that way she has. “Break another little piece of my heart.”

This is where Sally walks in, holding her CVS bag.

W
hen
Snow White
comes to town, Claire asks Ursula if she’d like to see it with her. Ursula does.

Claire buys them the biggest size of popcorn, with butter this time. “I like to sit right near the front. How about you?” Claire asks Ursula.

“Me too,” Ursula says.

“You know, this was the first movie I ever saw when I was little,” Claire tells her as they settle into their seats. It’s that delicious moment she has never gotten over, when you have a full box of popcorn and a whole movie still ahead of you. Just as the lights go out.

“I got so scared my mom tried to take me out of the theater, but I didn’t want to go. There’s this part where the stepmother turns into a witch that gave me nightmares. So if you get scared you can just close your eyes.”

“I don’t get scared,” Ursula says. “My dad let me see
Dr. Giggles.”

Snow White is in the courtyard singing. A bluebird lands on her shoulder. Claire puts her arm around Ursula. “She’s so pretty,” Ursula whispers.

“Who’s the fairest in the land?” the stepmother asks her mirror. She doesn’t like the answer, of course. Who would?

“Take her into the forest and cut out her heart,” the stepmother tells the woodsman.

“Remember it’s only a movie,” Claire tells Ursula. She can feel Ursula’s shoulders tightening when the stepmother says that.

“I know,” Ursula tells her. “I’ve seen tons of these movies on video.”

“Hi ho, hi ho,” the dwarfs sing. Very softly, under her breath, Ursula is humming.

Snow White finds the cottage. She cleans it up. She lies down on one of the little beds upstairs. That’s where she is when the dwarfs find her.

The queen discovers she is still not the fairest. She makes the poison apple and disguises herself as an old apple seller. “Don’t eat it!” Ursula calls out to the face of Snow White on the movie screen. “Don’tdon’tdon’t!”

•   •   •

“I knew that was going to happen,” Ursula whispers to Claire. “She should have listened to the dwarfs.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Claire tells her. But Ursula isn’t scared.

“They always marry the prince in the end,” Ursula says as they file out of the theater. “In real life they’d probably get a divorce.”

A
lthough she tells him she will marry him at some point, Claire has still not put Tim’s ring on her finger. “Maybe we’ll get married sometime around April vacation,” she tells him. “Or next summer. So we won’t have to deal with Christmas for a long time.” She doesn’t say, “So we won’t ruin my children’s Christmas,” but that’s what she means.

“It would just be such a shock for them right now if you and Ursula were to move in with us,” she says. “We all need a little more time.”

Tim says he could bring Ursula to her grandparents’ for a few days until they got her new room set up. Claire’s office.

“I get to sleep with you every night. Not just till dawn, either,” he says. “I can make you breakfast. I’ll make breakfast for the whole family.”

“We’d have to be quieter,” she says. “Pete’s room is right next to mine.” She doesn’t say “ours.” She still thinks of this as her room, her house.

If she marries Tim, she will never be able to send Ursula home anymore. Ursula will be home already
.

T
he Bumblebees are playing the Puffballs this afternoon. Ursula is a Puffball. Claire got off work early to come watch her play.

So she and Tim are sitting together like a regular couple, if you didn’t know. Claire, who knows the soccer routine well, has her coffee thermos and the stadium blanket she puts over her knees days like this when there’s a nip in the air. She has also brought it today with the thought that this will allow him to place his hand on her leg, or higher.

Tim was on the bench already when she got here. Approaching him from behind, she was startled for a moment by the size of his bald spot. Mostly she knows his head from the feel of it in the dark, when her hands are in his hair. She knew his hair was thinning there. She just didn’t realize how little was left.

Even though Claire doesn’t have a third grader anymore herself, she knows many of these parents from the children’s museum. Some have older children in Pete’s class. Sally used to babysit for one of these sets of parents, now divorced. She worked on a fund-raiser with another, one of the dads.

“It must get lonely for you, on your own and all, in a town like this,” he said as they were leaving the school one night, where they had been washing dishes for the Playground Committee Ice Cream Social. “Good-looking woman like you.”

“I’m a lesbian!” she thought of saying
.

“Not so lonely really. I’ve got this incredible vibrator.”

“Not as lonely as it must be for your wife.”

“I’m very busy with the museum,” she said. “That, and all these committees.”

Ursula’s coach is a guy named Mike who sold Claire a washing machine a couple of years back. He must be forty, at least, but he’s still in very good shape. As he jogs out onto the field in his shorts holding his clipboard, his legs look good.

“Will you take a look at the butt on that man?” her friend Cassie pointed out to her one time, during a game their sons were playing when Mike was the ref.

Mike’s wife, Janet, is a very pretty woman who is always chasing one or another of their twins during games. She looks tired.

“What are you doing here?” says Theresa, another mother she knows from the Parents’ Advisory Council. “You don’t have anyone on the Puffballs.”

“It’s my friend Tim’s daughter,” she says, reaching for his arm. She asks him if he’s met Theresa.

“Ursula’s dad, right?” she says. “She took it really well about that penalty kick.”

Playing goalie in the last quarter, evidently, Ursula had allowed the opposing team to sail one right past her. Some kids get upset when they let a goal in, but Ursula had just stood there.

“Truthfully,” says Tim, “I don’t think she pays all that much attention. She hasn’t got the fine points of the game down yet.”

Now Theresa’s asking him something about how Ursula’s candy bar sales have gone. Tim bought all the candy. Ursula was too shy to knock on doors.

“Maybe our kids could get together and play sometime,” Tim says. He has heard Claire say about a hundred times by now how important that is. He’s trying.

Theresa looks startled. Her son, Alex, is one of the most popular kids in third grade. Alex plays with a few of the girls, but it would be hard to imagine what he would do with somebody like Ursula. Eat her for breakfast, probably.

They settle in their seats. “You look so beautiful,” Tim tells her. Every time he sees her he says this.

She kisses his cheek and puts her hand in his pocket. Mike is sending Ursula onto the field now. You couldn’t exactly say she’s running out to her position. Drifting, more like it.

Alex makes his foul kick. A solid clump of Puffballs surrounds the ball. Every Bumblebee but the goalie does, too. Claire had forgotten how it is in soccer for this age group. Swarm play. For Pete, who has always been a cagey, strategic player, this was always infuriating. “It’s sickening, Mom,” he would say in the car on the way home from one of his games. “They play like little kids.”