“Are they sending me to Shannondale?” Charlie asked again.
“Nope,” she said. “I threw a fit. I told them I’m taking you home with me.”
“Where’s that?”
“Your trailer,” she said. “I don’t have anyplace, so it kinda balances out.”
* * *
Everything Charlie liked about Amy was right there leaning against the doorframe: long legs, cutoff jeans, worn-out flip-flops, the way she would tie a shoelace around her ankle and wear it like a bracelet. What he didn’t like was what she had just told him.
“We ain’t havin’ no baby,” Charlie said. He stubbed his cigarette out on the side of his coffee cup, hitched his chair around as best he could with his partially paralyzed right arm and his guitar on his lap. He liked to hold it, even though he couldn’t strum anymore.
Amy’s blonde hair dangled over her left eye. It made her squint like Charlie was a reflection too painful to face. “Well, I am, and you’re the only one I’ve been with.” She brushed the lock of hair back.
It was at least three months after Charlie came home from the hospital that she had first shared his bed. The trailer was hard to keep warm anyway, but that night the power was off and snow was swirling. She had carried as many blankets as she could find, then both their coats, then all their clothes, and piled them on Charlie. She shivered and looked at the bed for a minute, as if examining her work.
“I reckon you’d let me stand out here and freeze,” she said as she pulled the covers back and slipped in with him. The power came on sometime during the night, but they stayed in the bed past noon. Amy came back the next night and the next, through the winter, and now into spring.
“We ain’t got a baby, honey,” he said again with a lot more conviction than he felt. One morning last week she had gagged while scrambling his eggs, and he asked if she was expecting. He meant it as a joke, but she ran to the bathroom and slammed the door shut. He listened to her blow her nose and sniffle for the next half-hour. “You might, but we sure ain’t.”
“I ain’t done it with nobody else.” She glared at him for a second, then her features melted in a “What’s the use?” attitude that Charlie had never seen.
He leaned over and one-handed his guitar into its flimsy case. He scraped ashes off the Formica tabletop and opened a new pack of cigarettes. He looked over her shoulder, out the door. Was she after something? He had as close to nothing as you can have…a rusted-out trailer, a couple of pairs of jeans, and a bunch of T-shirts.
“This ain’t no trick, Charlie,” she said, like she’d read his mind.
He sucked hard on his cigarette and held the smoke deep in his lungs.
“I’m starting my third month. Doc done told me. I know it’s yours, because you’re the only one it could be.”
“What if I take a test and prove it ain’t mine?”
“What kind of test is that?”
“One where they examine my piss, count the tadpoles in it or something. They’s tests they can do.”
“This baby ain’t no tadpole, Charlie. An it wouldn’t prove nuthin,” she said, “except I still got me a baby to raise.”
“Well, I still ain’t ready to marry,” he said.
“Then you got a decision to make, ’cause I won’t raise my baby where it ain’t wanted.”
* * *
Charlie never had to wait long in Doc Corless’s crowded waiting room. The receptionist always moved him to the front of the line. Charlie sat on the end of the exam table and wondered if Doc let him keep coming to break the monotony of all those old people with smelly breath waiting in the lobby.
Doc Corless burst into the room. His necktie was over his shoulder, and his white coat billowed behind him like a parachute as he floated down to his stool. He held Charlie’s medical folder in one hand while he searched for an ink pen with the other.
“Howareya?” Doc said before his bottom hit the stainless-steel seat.
“All right, I reckon,” Charlie said. Doc studied him as if deciding whether he accepted “all right” as the correct answer.
When he couldn’t stand the silence any longer, Charlie said, “I got me a little job at the high school.” At their last appointment, Doc had encouraged Charlie to find some light work to keep him occupied until he got stronger. “It ain’t official. The night janitor gives me a little money to mop for him so he can watch dirty movies in the teachers’ lounge.” Charlie looked to see if Doc thought that was funny.
Doc ignored him. “Amy still taking good care of you?” he asked.
Charlie hesitated and studied the floor. “She claims she’s pregnant.” Charlie squirmed in his chair. “Claims it’s mine.”
Doc Corless just looked at Charlie over the top of his glasses and waited. The man was not afraid of silence.
“But it can’t be. I had the mumps when I was a kid, and they fell on me.”
“That doesn’t always mean you’re sterile,” Doc said.
“I want one of them tests…”
More silence.
“That’s not really the point, is it? Up until a few weeks ago, Amy cleaned your bottom. She carried you food. When has she been out of your sight?”