Torch: A Novel Part 22

"Yeah," blurted Lisa. "I mean, it wasn't planned, but now that I am pregnant we're happy."

"Good," said Karen.

Lisa looked at Joshua, her eyes flaring wide for a moment.

"Yeah," he said.

"Well then, congratulations are in order," Karen said, taking out a pen.

They had discussed abortion, but Lisa decided she shouldn't because she was Catholic. If you're so Catholic, you weren't supposed to be having s.e.x in the first place, Joshua had said, much to his later regret. They'd ended the argument by agreeing they'd get married after the baby was born, so they could have a real wedding to which Lisa could wear a real wedding dress. Now they were technically engaged, though they'd told no one and he hadn't given her a ring.

"So today you're seeing ..." She turned to the folder again.

"Dr. Evans."

"Yes," Karen said. "Sarah Evans. She's not a doctor, actually. She's a certified nurse-midwife. She works with the doctors in the practice here and does everything the doctors do pretty much. You'll like her a lot. She has a very hands-on approach."

Karen spun a little cardboard wheel and told them that the baby was due to be born in mid-March. The week his mother had died, Joshua thought instantly. He cleared his throat and shifted in his chair. The moment they walked into the clinic, he'd begun to feel her, his mother-and in particular the day he'd gone to the hospital where he'd never seen her alive and instead saw her dead-but now that they were back in this room, full of its smells of cotton b.a.l.l.s and rubbing alcohol and whatever they used to clean the floors, he felt her even more. He sat trying to let his mind go blank, trying to focus only on the long list of questions that Karen was asking Lisa, about her health and the health of her parents; most, it seemed, she'd already answered on the questionnaire.

"How many s.e.xual partners have you had?"

"Three," Lisa said, without looking at him. A little dagger of heat jabbed his heart and he forgot all about the smells in the room. As far as he knew, she'd only had two: him and Trent Fisher. He could see her pale face growing pink as she stared at Karen, intentionally not looking his way.

"Ever had any s.e.xually transmitted diseases?"

"No," she said, as if the question were absurd.

"What?" she asked when they were at last alone together in the examination room, left there by Karen to wait for Sarah Evans.

"Three?"

"Josh. It's not like you haven't slept with anyone else."

"Who?" he whispered angrily so no one in the hall would hear.

"It was this guy from Duluth," she whispered back. "It was before we were even together. Like, back in eleventh grade I went up there for that trip with ornithology for the science fair and we spent four days. I met this guy-Jeff-and I slept with him once, Josh. Once." She was sitting on the edge of the exam table, wearing nothing but her socks and the gown they'd given her that tied in a few places down the front. He could see intimate slices of her body through the gaps in the gown as she spoke.

"So you cheated on Trent?"

"Duh. I cheated on Trent with you."

"But you cheated on Trent with someone else too." It enraged him, though in some faraway place inside himself, he knew he was being irrational. For him, aside from Lisa, there had only been Tammy Horner.

"Yes," she said at last, miserably. "Once."

"I can see your ..." He gestured at her.

"What?"

"Your ... thing."

"It's just my pubic hair, Josh," she said too loudly, covering it up.

They sat in a tense silence for several moments. On the wall behind her hung a diagram of the female reproductive system, and then a smaller diagram of the male. There was a tap on the door, and before they answered, Sarah Evans came into the room and introduced herself, shaking first Lisa's hand, then his. She sat down on a little stool with wheels and smiled at them.

"Congratulations!" she boomed.

"Thank you," they both said in unison.

She told them they should call her Sarah and talked to them about what Lisa could do to help with her nausea; what vitamins she needed to take and which foods she should eat and not eat, about not drinking alcohol or smoking or being around others who smoked, then she scavenged through a drawer and found several brochures, which she handed to Joshua, about cystic fibrosis and exercise, miscarriage and nutrition, and then another one ent.i.tled "Special Circ.u.mstances: Teen Pregnancy" that featured a worried-looking Latino couple on the cover. Sarah's hair was cut short like a boy's, like Joshua's, like she didn't do a thing with it aside from keeping it clean; she wore no makeup or jewelry. She reminded him remotely of the women who used to come to the school to teach their special s.e.xual education courses or women who volunteered at the radio station with his mother, particularly the women who hosted a show called A Woman's Place, though she did not remind him, actually, of his mother. She was too athletic-looking and self-a.s.sured, too possibly a lesbian, like half the women who worked on A Woman's Place. When she was done talking to them about everything they needed to do now that Lisa was pregnant, Sarah asked if Lisa minded if a student came in to observe the exam. When Lisa said no, a man named Michael materialized immediately, as if he'd been standing outside the door listening in, or Sarah Evans had pressed a secret b.u.t.ton indicating that it was okay for him to enter. They each shook his hand and he retreated to the corner of the room to stand near Lisa's feet.

Lisa lay back on the table and Sarah untied the gown at the top, exposing her body from the waist up. Sarah pressed the flesh around one breast and then the other, working her way in toward her nipples in concentric circles, not looking down at Lisa, but past her as if trying to rely only on what she felt rather than saw. Joshua couldn't help but blush. Why he had to be here for this, he did not know. A dizzy, almost sick, feeling rose inside of him, like he could burst into hysterical laughter at any moment, though he urgently knew he must not do so. He looked at Michael, who was looking in the direction of Sarah and Lisa, but seemed to be thinking of something else entirely, something grim or incredibly boring, going by the expression on his face.

"Think we're going to get rain anytime soon?" he asked him.

Michael shifted his eyes to Joshua, uncomprehending for a moment. "Oh-yeah-I don't know. It's been awfully dry, hasn't it?"

"It sure has," he nodded, and stared at the floor, trying to think of what else to say, hoping that Michael would pick it up from here.

"Do you see these veins?" Sarah asked when she had finished prodding Lisa's b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Yeah," Lisa said hesitantly, looking down at herself.

"Here." Sarah pulled on a mirror that was attached to the wall on the end of an expandable accordion arm that could reach halfway across the room. "You can really see them from this angle," she said, and positioned the mirror beneath Lisa's b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "All these blue veins."

"Check this out, Josh," Lisa said.

He stood by her head and gazed impa.s.sively at her swollen b.r.e.a.s.t.s. A network of blue veins crisscrossed over them like the lines on a road map. "Is that a good thing?" he asked.

"Totally normal. It's the b.r.e.a.s.t.s preparing for lactation," said Sarah, and pushed the mirror away. "Can I get you to slide down here?"

Lisa pulled the gown over her chest and scooted down to the end of the table and put her feet up in the stirrups. The gown over her knees formed a tent behind which Sarah worked by the light of a very bright beam that pointed directly between Lisa's legs. Joshua stood near Lisa's head, not sure where he should be, as Sarah reached for a tube of lubricant and then for a metal device. Again he had the mad urge to laugh. He had to cough in order to stop himself.

"Now I'm going in," Sarah said. "You'll just feel a little pressure." He could hear the metal device click and then it made a horrible cranking sound like a miniature car jack. He stroked Lisa's hair, trying to comfort her, but her hands fluttered up to stop him and their eyes met and he knew that their argument about how many lovers she'd had was over. He squeezed her hand, feeling protective of her, like it was the two of them against Sarah Evans and Michael.

"It all looks good," Sarah said after a few minutes, peeking over the gown. Joshua glanced at Michael, who was staring directly at Lisa's exposed parts in the beam of light. He felt like going over and smacking him in the head.

"Have you ever seen your cervix?" asked Sarah.

"No," said Lisa. In that single word Joshua could hear all of her uncertainty-over whether she ever wanted to see her cervix and also over what, exactly, a cervix was in the first place-but Sarah pressed on.

"Everyone should see their cervix at least once." She pulled the mirror toward her again, flipping it over to the side that was magnified, and positioned it a few inches away from Lisa's v.a.g.i.n.a. Lisa pushed herself up onto her elbows and then leaned awkwardly forward, her feet still in the stirrups. "Wow," she said after several moments. She lay back down and looked up at him. "You want to see it, Josh?"

He didn't, but he knew it would cause trouble if he said so. Wordlessly, he stepped forward to look into the mirror. The metal contraption held Lisa's v.a.g.i.n.a open like a tunnel and at the end of it there was a round, wet-looking bulb, slightly blue, slightly pink, covered with a glaze of whitish goop. It reminded him of the faces of a litter of mice he'd seen once; they'd been born in the barn moments before he'd come across them, blind and translucent and wet and gaping and repulsive as creatures from a science-fiction film.

"Cool," he said, and returned to his station near Lisa's head.

"Just think, Josh, that's where our baby is."

"Well, almost," corrected Sarah, removing the metal device, and switching the lamp off. "Your baby is actually in your uterus." She tapped on Lisa's knee. "You can put your legs down. We're all done."

She flicked off her gloves and came to stand in front of the diagram on the wall, tracing over its laminated surface as she walked them through the reproductive system, first female, then male, like they were two kids.

By four they were back in Midden, in the parking lot of the Red Owl. Lisa had exchanged her day shift for a night shift so she could go to her appointment. Her mother worked at Red Owl too, so she'd had to concoct an excuse: that she and Joshua were driving to Brainerd to go out to lunch to celebrate their six-month anniversary, which was not completely a lie, since indeed today was that day.

"See you at nine," Lisa said, and kissed him before getting out of the truck. They'd had a good afternoon, having not fought since they were at the clinic.

After she left, he had to get to work too. He'd promised Vivian and Bender he'd do the day's deliveries that evening, just as he had the evening before. He'd taken yesterday off too, so he could drive to Minneapolis and help Claire move out of her apartment and into a house where she'd rented a room. When he'd gotten back to Midden he needed to make only a few deliveries, Sunday being his slowest night. As he drove out of the Red Owl parking lot, he clicked his cell phone on and listened to his messages. He had fourteen. Aside from one from Mardell, inviting him and Lisa to dinner, and another from Claire, thanking him for helping her the day before, they were all from Vivian or from people who had somehow gotten his cell phone number and had taken to calling him directly to get their drugs.

He dialed Claire's number and got her recorded voice. It struck him for the first time how much she sounded like their mother, not in person, but the way she had sounded on her radio show, smooth and cheerful. He missed her more than he guessed he would, now that she stayed in Minneapolis on the weekends. Since Bruce married Kathy, she'd come up to Midden only once, for the annual Fourth of July bash at Len's Lookout. Bruce and Kathy had been there too, though he and Claire had escaped them as soon as they could. One after the other, they'd shaken Kathy's hand, as if they were meeting her for the very first time, and in some way they were-they had not seen her since she had become Bruce's wife. With Bruce, they each exchanged a stiff hug and discussed how the animals were. They sauntered apart then, Bruce and Kathy going inside the bar, and Claire and Joshua heading to the tent, where there was a band and a keg, a shadow of grief settling over them. The rest of the afternoon he and Claire sat together on the bench behind the bar where they used to sit to watch the bears when they were kids, talking in the kind of open, lucid, sentimental way that they did when they were both slightly drunk-Joshua, being underage, had snuck sips of beer from Claire's cup. Together they remembered things that no one else would remember. The way, for a time, they'd had only one bicycle between them, and how, instead of taking turns with it, they would pile on together, one of them inevitably balanced painfully on the metal bar that ran between the seat and the handlebars. Or how they used to play Madam Bettina Von So and So with their mother. Or the time when they couldn't any longer resist the urge to see what would happen if they pulled the pin on the little fire extinguisher that hung near their wood stove.

"Hey. It's me. Just calling to say hi," Joshua said, after her machine beeped, and then he clicked his phone off and drove to Vivian and Bender's and picked up what he needed for his deliveries.

He did not so much think of himself as a drug dealer as a mailman who brought only good mail. Most people were happy to see him and aside from the few who were paranoid or tweaking on meth, they were nice to him, offering him coffee and cake, or on occasion an entire meal. He came to know their houses, their gardens, their dogs and kids. And then other times, a different, darker reality would come crashing in and he hated his job and the ugliness in which he had become an active partic.i.p.ant. He resented Vivian and Bender for sucking him in, for behaving like they owned him, for calling him night and day to order him around. Incrementally, over the months, he'd begun to put his foot down about whom he would sell to and whom he wouldn't, especially if the drug of choice was meth. It wasn't selling to the kids at the high school that bothered him. He did not think of them as kids, and even in the case of those he did-the ninth and tenth graders-he did not feel responsible for them. They were self-contained and powerless, incapable of truly ruining anyone's life but their own. It was the mothers and the fathers that disturbed him. His refusal to sell meth to certain people began with Marcy from the cafe. The last time he'd seen her she'd looked haggard and grossly thin. Her husband had left her by then and she didn't work at the cafe anymore-to everyone's astonishment, her own mother had fired her. She sat and made clove oranges at her kitchen table while her children ranged freely through the house, getting into things. He'd had to suggest that one be given a bath; he'd had to keep the youngest, a three-year-old, from eating Marcy's tube of lipstick, prying it from the tiny wet clench of her hand. In response, Marcy had laughed hysterically, cackling so hard she practically fell off her chair. From Marcy, he branched out, refusing to sell meth to anyone with kids under the age of fourteen, a decision that enraged Vivian, but about which she could do nothing. Joshua knew that his decision meant little in the end: everyone who wanted meth still got it. They came to Vivian and Bender, or Vivian and Bender went to them, or some of them stopped buying it and learned how to make it at home themselves. But it meant something to Joshua, to his idea of the world and what a mother should do and what a father should do: prevent, at the very least, their children from consuming cosmetics.

It was nearly eight when he finished his deliveries-too late to drive out to Lisa's only to turn around and be back in town by nine and too early to pick her up from work. He drove past the Midden Cafe and the bowling alley, past the closed-down bakery and the motel, past the Red Owl, where he could see Lisa sitting on a high stool behind her register in the fluorescent glow of lights. She didn't see him. He considered stopping and going in. He could stand in the magazine section, reading magazines he'd never dream of buying, until she got off work. He did that sometimes in the late afternoons, after he'd finished his deliveries, waiting for Lisa to finish her shift.

He drove to the Dairy Queen and parked. He'd started coming here lately on the nights that Lisa was so tired that she fell asleep immediately after dinner. He would have a slush and talk to the girls who worked there. He knew them all from school: Emily and Heidi and Caitlyn and Tara, any two of them, depending on the night.

He watched Heidi sweeping the floor, and then she walked into the back and the big red and white DQ sign outside went dark. She appeared again to lock the gla.s.s door, a thick ring of keys in her hand. When she saw Joshua sitting in his truck, she waved and he got out.

"Hey," she called. She held the door open for him and then locked it behind him.

He looked toward the back to see who would be there, making Dilly bars or stocking the flavorings.

"It's just me," Heidi explained. "Caitlyn went home early because we were so slow."

He sat on the counter and pushed a b.u.t.ton on the cash register so it sprang open with a ring.

"Don't!" yelled Heidi, though she was smiling. She slammed the money drawer shut and punched his arm.

"Where's your girlfriend?" she asked.

"I don't got one," he said. It had become a familiar refrain between him and the girls at the Dairy Queen. They teased him about Lisa, and he would deny his love for her so adamantly that, at least in those moments, it felt true. He became giddy and uncharacteristically boisterous while at the DQ, flirting and joking with these girls he only half knew. It was as if he'd been cut loose entirely and set free from the people and things that composed his actual life.

"Make me a slush," he ordered, tapping the top of Heidi's head. She was a year younger than him, just out of eleventh grade, short and blond.

"Go make yourself a slush," she said, but then she got a cup and asked what kind.

"Suicide," he said, and watched her as she put a bit of each flavor into the cup. She gave it to him without making him pay. Seldom did they ask him to pay. A rich guy from Duluth owned the Dairy Queen. He owned several, all across the state.

"So, how's Brad?" he asked in a mockingly sweet tone, as she mopped the floor. Brad was Heidi's boyfriend who lived in Montana. Joshua poked fun of the two of them the same way Heidi teased him about Lisa.

"We broke up," she answered. She stopped mopping and looked at him earnestly, hurt flashing across her face. Her eyes were brown and lined with black eyeliner that had melted and smudged.

"You'll get back together," said Joshua dismissively, not wanting to encourage her to confide in him. He leapt from the counter and walked into the back, where he'd never been before. There was an enormous freezer and a walk-in cooler and an industrial-sized sink and shelves piled high with boxes of DQ cones and napkins and toppings and giant unopened cans of liquid fudge.

"What are you doing?" Heidi asked, dragging the mop and bucket behind her.

"Checking things out."

She took off her brown DQ shirt and tossed it on top of the freezer. Underneath, she wore a white tank top, through which Joshua could see the whiter outline of her bra.

He leaned toward her urgently and kissed her with an open mouth. She pressed her tongue against his in an unpleasant, pulsing pattern.

"Do you have to work tomorrow?" Heidi whispered, pulling back from him.

"Yeah." For the benefit of Claire and Bruce and whoever else bothered to inquire, Joshua had concocted a part-time job logging with Jim Swanson-which in truth he'd done for three days last spring.

"Well, I have the day off, in case you want to hang out."

He didn't want to hang out. The idea that he would see Heidi tomorrow was preposterous to him, but he didn't have to pretend otherwise because his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and saw that it was Vivian and pressed a b.u.t.ton so it went silent.

"Was that your girlfriend?" Heidi asked, and laughed. She hopped up to sit on the freezer and swung her feet out to him and hooked his thigh between her sneakers. Desire rippled instantly through him and he allowed himself to be dragged in between her legs. He rested his hands on top of her thighs noncommittally, then moved them to her hips and held on. He could feel the points of her hipbones jutting through the brown pants of her uniform under his thumbs. She smelled like the DQ, like grease and slightly sour, slightly inviting milk.

"What are you doing?" he asked, though now he was the one doing the doing, running his hands up under her little shirt.

"What are you doing?" She smiled.

"What I'm not supposed to be doing," he replied, kissing her throat.

"I thought you didn't have a girlfriend." She giggled.

He took her face and brought it to his, brought her mouth to his mouth without a moment's hesitation, plunging in.

"Did you eat?" Lisa asked when she got into his truck. She'd been standing outside the Red Owl near the pop machines when he pulled up.

"What time is it?" he asked. "Were you waiting long?"

"Only a few minutes," she said agreeably. "Actually Deb just pulled away when you came up." She seemed more relaxed, more stable than she'd been in weeks. "It smells like weed in here," she said, waving her hands in front of her face, though the windows were already rolled down.

He'd gotten high after he said goodbye to Heidi at the DQ, sitting in his parked truck, gathering himself to face Lisa. He kept a personal stash of marijuana in a little tackle box under the seat, pinching a good bit for himself each day from Vivian and Bender.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

"Okay," she said, sliding in close to him, her legs straddling the clutch. "I did what Sarah said and ate every couple of hours so my stomach never got empty."

He set his hand on her thigh and she reached over and did the same. His leg trembled slightly, and he tried to will it to go still, his heart racing. He took a deep breath and let it out. Only minutes before he'd been f.u.c.king Heidi, her legs wrapped around him, her rump pressed up against the freezer, and then he'd pulled away from her for a moment and turned her around. A bolt of l.u.s.t and disgust quaked through him remembering it, and then a thought: he would never do it again.

"Were you busy tonight?" she asked. She put a hand in his sweaty hair.

"I had to drive all the way up to Norway and back and then I had to go all the way down to Sylvia Thorne's place."

"Sylvia Thorne?"

"Don't you know her? She lives in Gunn." He turned to her, loving her desperately, more than he'd ever loved her before, feeling crushed, almost panicked by the weight of his love. He wanted to take her home and make love to her without taking any pleasure for himself, to touch her with his fingers and mouth, to make her come the way he could from time to time, when he put all of his attention to the task and she was in the right state of mind.

"I know her," she said. "I just don't think of her as someone who'd be into drugs." She sighed. "It seems like meth is taking over the whole town."