Page 74 of Golden Girl
“I’m pregnant,” she says.
Brett flies home at the end of the week, and on Saturday night, they’re in the back seat of his Buick Skylark, making love. Vivi is simultaneously ecstatic and devastated. She has told a…monstrous lie, and now she has to deal with the consequences.
Brett wants to keep the baby. His parents had him when they were just out of high school and they’re still together, still happy.
Still in Parma,Vivi thinks.In a bowling league with Mr. Emery, the calculus teacher.Somehow the idea of staying in Parma, which she gladly would have accepted as her fate when she was dropping Brett off at the airport, has lost its luster.
“What about your big chance?” Vivi says. “The record deal?”
“It’s not a sure thing, Viv.” Brett has told Vivi what his time in LA was like. They recorded the song, they played for the owners of some clubs, they were told the next step was to write enough songs for an album. But, Brett says, the songs weren’t flowing. He squeezed her and said, “My inspiration was missing.”
Vivi says she doesn’t know what she wants to do about the baby. She needs time to think.
Vivi is caught in a vipers’ nest of lies. She pretends to feel sick; she pretends to feel dizzy. She rests her hand on her belly and agrees when Brett says they should call the baby “Bubby” for now.
They have sex often, without protection. Vivi can’t exactly ask Brett to wear a condom or even pull out when she’s already “pregnant.” The result, she’s sure, is that she will end up pregnant, which is the most devastating karma she can imagine.
She’ll pretend to lose the baby. She goes to Kmart in search of fake blood, but the salesclerk says they don’t put out the Halloween merchandise until after Labor Day. Vivi decides she’ll do it without fake blood. She has a sense that Brett—and maybe men in general—don’t understand how a woman’s body works.
She waits another week because she likes the way things are between them. Brett is extra-loving, gentle, solicitous. She has become his queen; she’s the mother of his unborn child.
During that week, two things happen. The first is that Wayne and Roy call and ask Brett when he’s coming back to LA.
“What did you tell them?” Vivi asks. She has tried to ignore that she is messing with more than just Brett’s fate. Wayne and Roy have been left to twist in the wind.
Brett grins. “I told them I was looking at rings.”
These words don’t produce the kind of elation Vivi would have predicted.
The second thing that happens is a packet from Duke arrives in the mail. Inside is Vivi’s class schedule, a timeline for freshman orientation, and her dorm assignment: Craven Quad on West Campus. Her move-in date is August 31. Suddenly, Vivi can see the future like a bright doorway in front of her. All she has to do is step through. But first, she has to fix things. She can’tbelievehow impetuous, how shortsighted, and, most of all, howselfishit was to lie. Her mother brought a self-help book home from the Cuyahoga Library calledWhen Good People Do Bad Things. Vivi knows her mother is still struggling with her father’s suicide, but the title of the book speaks to Vivi.Sheis the good person who has done a bad thing. It’sher.
The next morning at seven thirty, Vivi heads over to Brett’s house because she knows that Brett’s parents leave for work at a quarter to seven. She also knows Brett is asleep, so she sneaks inside the house, creeps up the stairs, climbs into bed with him, and presses her face between his shoulder blades. He’s so warm and he smells like himself. Vivi loves him in a way she knows she’ll never love anyone else.
“Brett,” she whispers.
He startles awake and flips over, and when he understands that it’s her, he gathers her up in his arms. “What are you doing here, Viv? Did my parents leave for work?”
“Yes,” she says, and she starts to cry. “I lost the baby.”
“What?” Brett says. He sits up and clutches his head. “What? No! No, Vivi, no!” His torso starts to shake; it’s awful to witness. He isreallyupset, as upset as she’s ever seen him, all because she was insecure and foolish and cruel. This makes Vivi cry harder. Her guilt is so overwhelming that she almost comes clean. But no, that will make things worse.
She says, “I’m sorry, Brett. I feel like I failed. I feel like this is all my fault.”
He asks if she’s sure the baby is gone; he thinks they should see a doctor. She says yes, she’s sure. She also says she can’t afford a doctor, and she can’t see a doctor using her family’s insurance. He asks if she should take a pregnancy test. With a deep sigh, she says yes.
They head out into the summer morning and buy a pregnancy test at a pharmacy in Middleburg Heights, not Parma, so they won’t see anyone they know. The pharmacy is near the Perkins, and Brett asks Vivi if she wants to go for breakfast.
Vivi is starving but she can’t bear to enter that Perkins or any other—she hasn’t been inside one since her father died—and she doesn’t want to risk seeing Cindy. She thinks about how disappointed her father and Cindy would be if they knew what she’d done. She was such a good kid, ordering French toast and hash browns and crispy bacon, drinking coffee, reading the movie reviews in thePlain Dealer,then checking her horoscope.
She remembers the hope with which she used to unfurl those tiny, tight scrolls and read what was in store for her as a Capricorn. Nothing in them ever led her to believe that she would create a tumultuous situation like this one.
“I just want to go home,” Vivi says. “Your home.”
Back at Brett’s, Vivi takes the test—negative.
Brett and Vivi climb back into Brett’s bed for a nap. Brett kisses the top of Vivi’s head and says, “We can still get married.”
The next few days are tense. Vivi wants Brett to fly back to LA—she even offers to pay for his ticket out of what she’s saved waiting tables—but Brett says he doesn’t want to leave until she’s “one hundred percent recovered.” She assures him she’s recovered.
