When Maddie Tells Me She’s Pregnant

Sage Tyrtle

 I eat her. I take the fork out of my mac and cheese and spear her arm and pop her into my mouth. I have to drink some of my Pepsi to wash her down but I manage it. I mean. Jesus. I can't be a, a, teen dad or whatever. Maddie’s not even my girlfriend and I have an Algebra test on Monday. And me and Helen are going to the Prom tonight.

By the time I hear Mom coming down the hall I have my feet up on the coffee table and The Krofft Supershow is almost over. Mom picks up my bowl and fork. I chug the rest of my Pepsi and hand her the glass. "Did your friend head home?" she asks.

I burp the word, "Yuuup," and on TV Dr. Shrinker titters and rubs his hands together.

"Zach," she says, and tsks her way out of the room.

I'm not thinking about Maddie. Or I am a goldfish swimming in everything Maddie and even the kid drinking Dr. Pepper on TV looks like her. One or the other.

In the bathroom I take off my T-shirt and stand sideways in front of the mirror. You can't tell Maddie's in there at all, my stomach looks exactly the same. "Uh, hello?" I whisper.

Maddie is pissed. I know because when she realizes I can hear her she just starts screaming, and then I find out what a migraine feels like. It’s like my head’s a wasp’s nest on fire. I turn around and try to get to the toilet but I throw up all over the floor and my T-shirt instead. "Mooom," I croak, on all fours heaving again, and she bustles in with a bunch of paper towels. For a second I'm afraid I thew Maddie up but when I open my eyes it's just regular old puke.

"Oh Zach," she says, "Honey." She turns on the shower and says something, but my head hurts too bad to hear. Maddie won't stop screaming and no wonder Mom’s freaked out, she can’t hear it.

I try to stand up but I slip in my puke instead and now I'm lying on the tile floor and if one of those French Revolution guys Mrs. Barton is always talking about came by all, "Veux-tu que je te décapite​?" I would be like "Oui, OUI!" but then Maddie stops screaming and starts laughing. I guess me all curled up in a fetal ball while Mom is asking me questions I can't hear is funny. My head stops hurting all at once.

When I can hear Mom again she's saying, "— talk to me, Zach, are you okay, oh god, wait here, I'm going to call an ambulance —" the shower's still running and the bathroom smells like macaroni and cheese and Pepsi and if the ambulance comes they'll do an X-Ray and find Maddie and that can't happen.

"Mom. Mom. I'm okay." I manage to sit up. I pat her on the arm and she bursts into tears. "Geez, Mom. Seriously I'm fine. For real." She takes a big breath and I can tell she's gonna ask me about ten thousand questions and I'm like, "Mom. I think maybe the milk in the macaroni and cheese was too old. C'mon. Let me have a shower, okay? I feel fine now."

She finishes cleaning up the floor and grabs my gross T-shirt and leaves. I get in the shower and take off the rest of my clothes. "Please don't scream," I whisper. "Please. Can we just talk?"

There's a long silence and I sit down real fast, just in case there's more hell-brain coming. The hot water feels good on my back.

"I'm curious," Maddie says after forever, but she doesn't sound curious, she sounds like she's imagining how she's gonna to cut off my balls and make me eat them, too. "I'm curious," she says again, "About your plans."

I stand back up and squeeze Prell into my hand, then work it into my wet hair. When she says plans, all I can think of is I forgot to call the rental place to reserve a tux and Helen's gonna be pissed. "I'm sorry! I just... I didn't know what to do, you know? We can't, like, have a... you know..."

"Lucky for you, I'd rather tell the baby its dad is a fucking rattlesnake," Maddie says. "So let me go, and you can get back to your perfect life."

I rinse my hair, thinking. Because that's the thing. I mean, I just threw up and Maddie's still in there. Even if I was willing to be a, you know, teen father, I'm not some expert on how to get someone you ate out of you. I didn't even know I could eat anybody. We were in the den and Maddie was like, "Zach, I missed my period," and there was this commercial for Welcome Back, Kotter and I was like, "Do you think I look a little like Vinnie Barbarino? I think I look a little like Vinnie Barbarino," and Maddie was like, "Are you listening to me?" and I was all, "Sure, babe," and she straddled me and touched her forehead to mine and was like, "The rabbit died, Zach," and I didn't even think about it, I just ate her.

"ZACH," says Maddie, and I hurry up and finish my shower.

"Sorry! Sorry. I'm just thinking. Give me a second." I wrap a towel around my waist and go into my bedroom. I lie on my bed and look up at my Ferrari poster. I try to think of what to do but it's so nice lying there on my bed not thinking about Maddie or the, you know, I just sort of start drifting, and I'm pushing my foot on the accelerator to get my Ferrari up this steep hill when Maddie takes this big breath like she's gonna scream again and I jerk awake and say, "Wait! Wait wait wait! Wait."

"There are so many things I want to explain to you right now," says Maddie, like she's talking to a little kid, "mostly how I have learned that screwing a boy because he looks kind of like Vinnie Barbarino —"

"I knew it!" I say, and pump the air.

"—  is a terrible idea, but this is really simple. Try and understand. Let. Me. Go. And your problems are over."

I mean, my problems wouldn't be over, they'd just be different, also Helen would stuff me in her trunk and drive me out to the forest and bury me alive, but I'm scared to say that to Maddie. "I don't know how, though."

"What?" says Maddie, and her voice shakes a little. "What do you mean, you don't know?"

And it's like time slows down, kinda, and I'm thinking about when I met Maddie. Susie Orcutt was giving this Halloween party but she didn't invite me because I guess Dana and Tracy were saying I made "weird passes at them" which, okay, maybe a pass, not a weird one, but so what? I mean, Gary Wagner wrote an epic poem on the wall of the boy's room about having a threesome with Dana and Callie, which I know for a fact never happened because Gary's never even talked to a girl, and he got invited to the party. So I decided to go to the party anyway. I was gonna wear a Michael Myers mask but in the end I put it off so long that when I went to K-Mart all they had left in my size was this eagle costume.

Helen was at her Grandma's so I hitched a ride with some of the guys on the football team. When we got to Susie's, Gary was lying on his back on the lawn, dressed like Squiggy, hollering the words to Dancing Queen along with the blaring music coming from the house. Threesome my ass. I put on the eagle head and went inside. Dana and Tracy both came as Cher and were dancing in the living room so I went into the kitchen. This tall guy was trying to eat a piece of orange cake using a spatula as a fork. He was dressed like a soldier, with camouflage pants and a helmet. The guy turned around and I realized it was a girl. Her cheeks were all covered in icing and she laughed. "Hey eagle," she said, "Want some cake?"

Maddie wasn't exactly the first girl I, you know, dated, behind Helen's back. C'mon! Me and Helen were twelve when we started going together. I didn't even know what it meant when she told me we were going out. I was like, okay, sure, can I have the rest of your Hershey bar? By the time I understood we were boyfriend-girlfriend I didn't know how to get out of it. 

And, I mean, at first I didn't want to. Helen got boobs before any of the other girls for one thing, but also she just... has it together, you know? She's got her whole life planned out already. She's gonna have a big wedding and be a marriage counsellor and have five girls and two boys. She's even got the house she's gonna buy picked out, up in the foothills. 

She's so sure of everything, all the time and I just did whatever she said. It was easy. But then she got really sure about how I'm not allowed to to hang out with other girls. Or talk to other girls in class. Or look at other girls in the hallway. Or have a look on my face that seemed like maybe I was thinking about other girls. And then I’d spend three hours after school on the phone in the kitchen because Helen called me sobbing her head off.

Meanwhile I got pretty tall and some girl in my French class was like, "You should grow your hair long," and boom, the phone in the kitchen never stopped ringing. And it just seemed, you know, easier. To not tell Helen. 'Cause the one time I was like hey, it's been five years, maybe we could cool it on the going steady thing Helen was like, sure, we could do that, and then she brought me a heart-shaped cookie at lunch the next day and after I ate it I spent the whole afternoon in the nurse's office shitting and throwing up at the same time and the next day when she came over and told me I was loaning her my varsity jacket I was like yes. Yes, that is a great idea, and yes, since you asked, here is my class ring, and yes, let's go to Hilltop Steak House for Valentine's Day and now we're going to the Prom and all I actually wanted was a Hershey bar, you know?

"My belly looks like I swallowed a cantaloupe," Megan says.

I sit up. “What? You didn’t look like that before, did you?” I try to picture her body when she was sitting next to me on the couch and all I can think of is how there was a happy face on her big toe that Maddie said her little sister drew.

"Yeah. Time is — is — I don't know. Different here, I guess." Her breath hitches.

Oh fuck. Is she gonna get bigger and bigger until the baby gets born inside me? I have to go to the Prom tonight! I don't know what to say so I blurt out, "What's it like? In... where you are?"

After a long pause she says, "It looks just like your den. The couch with the flowers on it, the TV, the fireplace. Except if I pull back the curtains there's just wall behind them. And there's no door. But hey! On TV there's this great show, it's called What Zach Sees And Hears and it's on all the time! They don't even play the national anthem or anything, it just never ends!" Her voice is shaking a lot now.

The phone starts ringing in the kitchen and I talk fast and low. "Maddie, I didn't mean to. Honest. I didn't. You scared me so bad and I just — I'm seventeen! What would we do, get married? You think USC would let me on their football team? It would ruin my —"

There's a knock on my bedroom door and Mom says, "Helen's on the phone, sweetie."

"I'll be there in a sec," I say and my voice breaks. Mom walks away and I wait but Maddie doesn't say anything.

In the kitchen I pick up the receiver and say hi and Helen launches into this thing about the Prom Queen election, that she's been calling her friends all morning to remind them to vote for her and even though technically we're running separately of course people elect couples and I'm saying uh-huh a lot and Helen's telling me to call all the guys on the football team and tell them to vote for me and I'm pretending like that will ever happen and Helen's like did you make sure to reserve the sky blue tux, not the ocean blue but the sky blue so it matches my dress and I remember again that I forgot to call the tux store but I just say uh-huh and she says when is the limo coming, and I did remember to reserve the limo because, duh, it's a limo and I say at seven and she says see you then.

I hang up muttering, "Damn damn damn," and grab the yellow pages. 

Maddie's like, "Wow. So that's what True Love looks like. I guess I can stop being jealous of her."

Ignoring her I flip quick to the suit section and I'm dialing the number but Maddie's saying, "Sorry, are you going to the Prom?" and I have to start dialing all over again.

If I concentrate really hard I can tune out Maddie's pissed off questions and listen to the tux guy who is saying that they're out of sky blue and ocean blue and for that matter, raspberry and mint, and maybe my girl would like me in the peach because it would be like sunset clouds on her sky blue and I'm trying to pay attention and Maddie stops talking and says, "Oh!" really loud and without thinking I say, "Are you okay?" and the tux guy is like, son, listen, do you want the peach or not because the only other option is the yellow plaid and I have customers waiting and I'm like yes, yes, the peach and give him my name and promise I'll be by to pick it up.

I hang up and run back to my room. I look down at my stomach but it looks just the same. "Maddie? What happened?"

"I think... I think the baby kicked. I remember it from when Mom was pregnant with my little sister. It's like it's, I don't know, bumping me from the inside." Her voice is soft. 

I don't want to ask but I'm pretty sure I know the answer anyway. "Are you bigger? Than you were?"

"Yeah. It's like a basketball now." She's quiet for a little while. "I'm scared," she says.

Fuck. I feel like I just got tackled by the biggest quarterback at school. "I swear to God, Maddie, I'd let you out right now if I knew how. I swear."

"Well, if only you had time to try to figure it out instead of going to the Prom," she says through her teeth.

"You don't understand, if I don't go Helen will, like, set me on fire —"

"You think Helen's scary? Wait until I'm out and watch what I do," Maddie says. Then she stops talking to me. 

I think about trying to get her to climb out herself, if there’s no doors maybe break the wall in the den somehow? But I'm gonna be late to the tux place. Mom says I can take the station wagon and in the car I'm thinking, what the hell does Maddie expect me to do? Just be, like, totally smarter than God or whatever, and figure out how to fix a thing that should have been impossible in the first place? I turn the radio dial and the O'Jays are singing about how she used to be my girl so I turn it again but it's about an imaginary lover and then on the third try it's George Benson singing about Broadway and I don't even like George Benson but at least there aren't any girls in his song.

There's this part of me that doesn't actually want to figure out how to free Maddie. There's this part of me that's saying in this slimy whisper that if Maddie never gets out then there's no baby and if there's no baby then I could just go to USC and —

"You missed the turn for the tux store," says Maddie. Her voice goes thin and high, like Helen's. "Oh my god, the Prom King of Mount Olmstead High can't show up in a T-shirt and Levis! The student body is, like, depending on you. How will the girls know who to throw their underwear at?"

I make a u-turn on Kepler, thinking about this time Maddie and I went to Des Moines for the day. We were on the bus on the way home. Maddie had her head on my shoulder and I liked it. I liked the weight of her. And I was ignoring the part of me that was wondering why I didn't just break up with Helen. Because we never did stuff like this.

 Me and Maddie were touching our fingertips together, one-two-three-four, and I was explaining how after I hopefully got scouted from USC I'd play for the NFL and then come back home, maybe coach at the high school, and she sat up. She said, "God, that's so boring."

I laughed. "Yeah, totally boring, playing for the NFL and making, like, twenty thousand dollars a month."

Maddie said, "I mean it. Do you actually want to play football until you break your knee or whatever and then coach teenagers for the rest of your life?"

I didn't say anything. No one ever asked me that before.

"And why would you come back to Mount Olmstead to live? When I'm eighteen I'm gonna go see the world. Just hitch my way west. And never ever know what tomorrow will be like. Maybe I'll be a, a, nuclear physicist! Or a forest ranger! Or an extra on Happy Days! Once I get out of here I can do anything." I felt so bad I wanted her to stop talking so I tickled her and she tickled me back and we ended up playing I Spy for the rest of the bus ride.

I park at the tux store and get out. Maddie says, "You're like a fucking wind-up robot. Wind Zach up and watch him rent a tux! Watch Zach make a touchdown! Watch Zach win Prom King!"

"You're so funny I forgot to laugh," I whisper, and go into the tux store. 

Aaron Booth, the fullback, is standing by the counter paying for a plaid yellow tux. He sees me and holds it up. He says, "Should I wear this to Prom tonight, or fake my own death?"

"Just start driving," I say, "You can make Arkansas by tomorrow."

Aaron mutters, "I'm considering it," and heads out.

I pay for the pink tux and when I get home Mom says that Helen called to remind me to pick up the corsage and make sure it's got "blue elements" whatever that means and Jesus Christ. I go into my room and slam the door and sit on my bed. "Um... how are you?"

"The baby got hiccups," says Maddie. Her voice is flat.

"What? Babies can get hiccups? No way."

Maddie’s quiet for awhile and then says, "Yeah. I was lying on the couch watching The Endless Zach Show and my belly just started jumping a little every few seconds. My little sister used to have hiccups when Mom was pregnant with her."

"You sound so sad," I say, then wish so bad that I could take it back. Of course Maddie's sad, how the hell do I expect her to feel?

"Well, I'm in this windowless, doorless room, and I'm pretty sure I'm, like, eight months pregnant now, and what happens when the baby is born, Zach, what happens then? DO ME AND THE BABY LIVE HERE FOREVER, YOU FUCKING USELESS PRICK?"

My head feels like it's on fire again, like it did the last time she was screaming. I can't even ask her to stop because I can't talk. I'm rolling around and I fall off the bed. There are tears streaming down my face from the pain and when she stops yelling I just lie on the floor trying to catch my breath.

Maddie starts to cry in big whooping sobs and I don't know what to do. Maddie doesn't cry. She made me go to Kramer vs. Kramer and who was crying so hard they had to wait until the theatre was empty to leave? Yeah. Not her. She says, "You — you have it so easy. Me and my sister share the sofa bed and Mom sleeps on the floor, but your house has so many bedrooms one of them belongs to the TV set and you want — you want to, to, just strut through your life! Like there's no consequences!" She takes a shuddering breath that turns into a wail. "Except I'm a consequence, Zach, and what's going to happen to me?"

I throw up my hands. "You have all the answers? Great. You tell me how to fix this."

She shouts, "Check the yellow pages for a lumberjack! It worked for Little Red Riding Hood!"

If I'm going to make it to the corsage place before picking Helen up I have to start getting ready now. So... I do. I do start getting ready. Maddie says I'm a wind-up robot? Fine. I'll be a fucking wind-up robot. Watch Zach put on a pink tux. Watch Zach pose for photos at Helen's house. Watch Zach dance with Helen to Le Freak.

There are sparkly streamers everywhere in the gym. Chaperones are running around with rulers to make sure no one’s dancing too close and I'm swinging my hips and Helen's running her hands over her hair and Maddie's been quiet for so long, for so very long that I start to think that I made it all up. Maybe I did. Maybe Maddie really did leave during The Krofft Supershow. And I... I fell asleep. Maybe. And dreamed it, all of it. I pull Helen close to me for a quick second while Mr. Garrido is looking the other way and whisper in her ear that she looks —

That's when Maddie yells and it's so unexpected that I holler too, right in Helen's ear, and then I fall over. Le Freak keeps playing but everyone around us stops dancing. Helen's holding her ear and saying that it really hurts, and Mr. Garrido comes running over and asks if I'm okay. Everybody’s whispering to each other.

Now that Maddie's stopped yelling I can think. Mr. Garrido helps me stand up. "I gotta... go outside for a minute. It's too hot, that’s all." Aaron in his plaid yellow tux starts to walk with me but I wave him away. Dana and Tracy are huddled around Helen who’s pointing at her ear and I make it out of the gym alone and stumble down the hall, making sure I'm right up against the lockers because if Maddie yells again I don't know if I can stand up on my own. I push open the restroom door and stand over the sink, breathing in cigarette smoke and bleach. I look at myself in the mirror. My face is really pale. I'm scared to say anything but I make myself ask because that sounded like... that was not a good sound. "Are you... is the baby... uh, are you having the baby?"

Maddie yells again. And again. About every minute. I thought it was bad before, when I threw up, but now my head hurts so much the only thing I’m sure of is my own name. I'm gripping the edges of the sink to stand up and praying no one comes into the bathroom. And her yells are turning into howls. Into screams. She won't talk to me. Or — can't talk to me. Waves of agony move through my head like the ocean and I try to think of what I would be doing if this were happening in real life, I mean it is happening in real life but, you know, and that slimy whisper says I'd probably be playing football with my buddies and Maddie keeps screaming, and screaming, and her screams are so close together now that they’re almost one never-ending scream and I want so bad for her to stop but she won't and I try to say something nice so she knows she's not going through this by herself but I can't make my voice work and then she makes a sound so loud the pain pushes me over and I don’t understand how the football team made it in here to tackle me and my head hits the sink on my way down, it hurts, it hurts, and then I can't hear anything at all.

The old Mount Olmstead High School sits at the end of a dead-end road. Two metal poles hold a glossy sign that reads, “Mount Olmstead Townhouses, Coming Soon!” The parking lot that was once home to Dusters and Pintos is now full of young elms and oaks. The pavement rises above new roots. The cement stairs leading to the main door are crumbling. In the distance the new high school gleams, an edifice of stone and glass.

A Subaru station wagon pulls up. Two women get out. The taller one stretches her arms into the air and grins. “Welcome to Haunted High, Nikki.”

Nikki frowns at the boarded-up windows. “I don’t know. Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”

“But I am Prom Baby! And you must do as Prom Baby commands!”

“I hate when you call yourself Prom Baby.”

“Miracle Newborn! Beloved Teen Father Succumbs to Injuries! Mystery Mother! News at Six!” she laughs, and disappears around the back of the school.

“Athena, for crying out loud,” Nikki calls. But she follows.

Behind the school, Athena is squatting next to a piece of plywood with a ragged hole in it. “Here’s how we get in,” she points.

“Here’s how we die horribly,” says Nikki, then puts her hands over her mouth. “Oh hell. Sorry.”

Athena looks up. “You dork.”

“Isn’t this close enough, though? I mean, why go inside?”

“Because,” Athena starts pulling at the hole to make it bigger. “This is my last chance to see my, you know, birthplace.” Her voice goes spooky.

Nikki shivers.

Athena pulls away a piece of rotting plywood and the two women step through the hole. On the other side they find a hallway filled with lockers. Athena walks along the hall, running her fingers over the lockers. “One of these was his,” she says. “And one of them was my Mystery Mother’s.” She stops and fingers a combination padlock. “Can you imagine?” she twirls the lock left and right. “Just open it up and it’s hers? ‘Dear Diary, I’m soooo totally like preggers, and I’m going to the Prom just like a normal about-to-give-birth girl! And no one will ever know who I am! Even though I must be the size of a cruise ship!’”

“Oh, babe.” Nikki squeezes Athena’s shoulder. “C’mon. Let’s find the bathroom before the roof collapses.”

Athena nods, her forehead pressed against the locker. “Yeah. Okay.” As they walk Athena says, “I never told anybody this. But I met Helen once.”

“Your dad’s girlfriend?” Nikki’s eyes are wide.

“Yeah. I was with Gran in the Hy-Vee. I was about seven. I’d wandered off into the cereal aisle and this woman came swooping up to me. She looked like Alexis Carrington from Dynasty, all red lipstick and black eyeliner. She was like, ‘You’re Athena, aren’t you.’”

Nikki says, “Oh my god.”

“I know, right? And I was just so happy that she wasn’t calling me Prom Baby that I said hi back, and she goes, ‘I was your father’s true love, you know.’”

“She did not.”

“Swear to God. And I’m seven, right, I have no idea what to say, and Helen gets up close and whispers, ‘You want to know who your mother was?’ And I’m nodding my head like crazy, of course I want to know, and Helen says, ‘She was nobody.’”

Nikki says, “Jesus.”

“Yeah.” Athena stops by a door with BOYS painted on it. “Yeah. It was pretty bad.”

Nikki says, “Want me to come in with you?”

“Nah,” says Athena. “I’m okay.” She pushes the door open. The few remaining green tiles on the walls are dusty. Athena looks in the mirror. After a long time she says, “It’s me. Prom Baby.” She reaches out and touches the mirror, runs her fingertips along the line of her cheek in her reflection. She leans on the sink, touches her nose to the mirror. Closes her eyes. “Hi Dad,” she says. “You won, by the way. You would have been crowned Prom King if you weren’t in here busy being dead.” She clears her throat. “And Mom... I just wanted to say... I think about you. All the time.” Athena opens her eyes and watches the blur of her reflection. “All the time.”