Margarette (Violet) (15 page)

Tommy is a boy. A cute boy that has gotten her
into a stitch. She welcomes his arms around her now as he kisses her temple. She’s
isn’t prepared to go into life alone and pregnant. It wouldn’t be her that
causes her chance at a normal life to wither.

They put some clothes on and return to the living
room. Tommy brings her a glass of water then they sit outside as the sun goes
down. She is in only his boxers and bare bra so he wraps her in a blue blanket.
They sit on an ice chest propped against a wall. The night creeps in behind
them.

“I love you,” Tommy says.

“I love this too.” She brushes the hair from her
face.

It feels wrong to say that she loves the sunset,
the time with him, but can’t say she loves
him
, not even in her head. It’s
not the right thing to bring up. Nor can she neglect a response for long. But
she will at least be honest with him.

***

When Tommy drops off Margarette home that night
it’s already dark, and neither of them see Paulie leaning against one of the
magnolia trees in the front yard. Tommy’s car red lights can still be seen in
the distance as he drives off when Paulie rings her doorbell.

“
What the frick, Paulie
?” Margarette
mutters under her breath as she spies him through the peephole. She opens the
door with a raised eyebrow, but other than that she doesn’t give him a hard
time about coming by so late. Paulie has been nothing but nice to her. “Hey,
Paulie. What’s up?”

Paulie’s eyes widen and he can’t help but look at
her up and down. “Margarette… you look great.” To himself he adds,
from up
close in the light
. He had already seen her wearing the dress when she
stepped out of Tommy’s car, but it was dark.

“Thanks.” She steps to the side to let him in with
a wordless invitation. As she walks to the living room she adds, “Not my usual
style, huh? I started working today.” She sits on the couch.

“Really? Where?”

“The bank.”

“Oh.”

Paulie knows she’s been seeing Tommy, but if she’s
working at the bank that means that it’s more than just a casual thing. He
closes the door slowly, taking a deep breath to steady himself. She sees
nothing. “Tommy got you a job there?”

“Yep.”

“So are you two going out now?” he adds casually.

She almost snorts. “You could say that.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, good luck. He’s a nice guy…” he
says unconvincingly.

“Uh huh. But…?”

“But he doesn’t deserve you.”

“You already said that once.”

Paulie sighs and walks over to her, sitting on the
opposite end of the couch. “It’s still true.”

“I know that, Paulie,” she says through gritted
teeth. “But I can’t do anything about it now.”

“What do you mean? It’s your life. You can do
whatever you want.”

She doesn’t meet his eyes. “I meant, I’m giving
him a chance. I know he’s not perfect but I can’t do anything about it
now
…
I just started working at his father’s bank.”

Paulie reaches out a hand to touch her shoulder,
but he stops halfway through and leaves it hanging awkwardly on the back of the
couch. “Sorry. Just don’t believe you have to be with him because… because you
owe him something.”

Margarette knows he’s thinking about the sex part.
If he only knew. “Let’s talk about something else, shall we? Actually, it’s a
little late, and I have work tomorrow.” She surprises him by smiling. “That
sounds so grown up, right? ‘
I have to work tomorrow
.’”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you this late—”

“Nah, it’s not your fault. You didn’t know I was
working. Anyway, you didn’t tell me what you came here for.”

But Paulie had. He came by to tell her that Tommy
was no good for her, but she had dismissed his words. The truth is that these
past two weeks Paulie had come by almost every day, and either she was not home,
or she was home with Tommy. His vivid imagination told him exactly what
happened inside her house when Tommy visited and Margarette’s mother was away.

Quickly he comes up with an excuse. “I just… I
never saw you after your graduation day and I wanted to do something nice—like
a present? Do you think sometime we could get together, maybe go out for some
ice cream or something? I don’t know,” he stammers.

Margarette is uncomfortable. “That’s sweet,
Paulie, but… I’ll be working until the evenings, and… you know.”

“Right, of course. I was thinking more like
Friday, maybe?”

“Well… I’m actually moving out this Friday.”

“Moving out? Where?”

She takes a second to answer. “I’m moving in with
Tommy. He got his own place.” She stares right ahead and avoids looking at him,
so she doesn’t see the blood drain from his face.

It takes him two seconds to recover. “Wow, that’s…
that’s kind of fast, right?”

“Paulie, don’t fricking judge me.”

“I’m not. I’m just saying—”

“I don’t need to hear this from you.”

“You’re right, I shouldn’t have said—”

She gets up and crosses her arms. “Thank you for
the offer for ice cream, but I’m going to be busy this week. I’ll call you
sometime, okay?”

Paulie gets up and his knees shake ever so
slightly. “Okay. Sorry if I said the wrong thing.”

“Good night, Paulie.”

“Good night, Margarette.”

After she closes the door behind him she presses
her back against it and slides down to the floor. She sees her new designer
shoes next to her where she placed them carefully when she came in. She looks
at them with disgust now as the tears roll down her face.

By Friday Tommy and Margarette have moved in
together to the tiny blue house. Following Mr. Gallager’s plan, at work no one
knows that she and Tommy are living together.

The gossipy old ladies only suspect that there’s
something going on between the two, because they have nothing better to do than
observe, make assumptions and talk amongst themselves. Just old ladies clucking.
Like hens
, Margarette thinks. They talk shit all day, always interested
in the Rooster, and henpecking the new girls.

Mr. Gallager doesn’t help with the rumors when
he’s at work, treating Margarette with a subtle favoritism that shrewd
observers can clearly detect. He calls her into his office and asks her to type
letters that don’t get sent anywhere, and gives her other meager tasks rewarded
by heavy praise. Luckily, he comes in very little, and when he does he’s
usually busy most of the day. But he always finds time to smile at the pretty
new girl.

Margarette does what she can to avoid rumors. She
acts professional around Mr. Gallager—it’s easy because she hates him, so she
never treats him casually. She never even glances at Tommy. But somehow the
hens know—probably it’s because the old ladies refuse to believe that a young
pair of single, good-looking coworkers could be so distant towards each other,
unless of course they were hiding something.

To delay the inevitable, Margarette asks Tommy to
drop her off at the corner store near the bank in the mornings. Both buildings
are on the same block, but not in direct sight of each other, so it works well
to hide their coupling. Tommy’s new house is on the same road, but unfortunately
it is about a mile down. If Margarette wants to walk she could, but it’s not a
fun walk. Past the few blocks of businesses and to the outskirts of town, the road
turns narrow and there is no pavement or sidewalk. So due to these perils she
rides with Tommy, but like a pair having a scandalous affair, they meet away
from prying eyes only where feasible.

Paulie goes to see Margarette one day at the bank.
He looks like he’s trying really hard to be happy for her, but it sounds a
little forced. She’s not going to question him, though. He asks her if she’s happy,
and she can’t answer except for a shrug. She can’t explain it to him. Even if
she
could
explain, it would sound awful and he would start again with
the unsolicited advice and suggestions that she can do nothing with. He offers
to come visit her at her new place which is his best pretense for asking her
new address.

***

Time slides by without waiting for her to make up
her mind about whether she’s happy or not. Life kind of did that for her; she
didn’t have much of a choice. But she refuses to keep personal stuff at Tommy’s
house, except the book she has already read. She starts reading it again and
feels a deeper appeal due to her situation, now more familiar with the plot.
She curls up in a chair and occasionally Tommy looks at her from the other
room. She quickly returns to reading to avoid having to meet his eyes.

Margarette is either at work or at Tommy’s, and
when she’s at his house she’s either having sex with him or reading. That is
her life now. She feels out of touch with everything she has ever wanted. The
world moves faster than before, and she starts to want for something better,
something she has never known.

The book is about a boy in love with a girl and
how he fights to keep her in love with him. Margarette really likes his
character, Simon.
Simon and Grace
…. Or more than just the character, but
the idea that someone could be so devoted. Margarette sometimes reads a chapter
by itself, the one where Simon and Grace finally get together. The guy really
loves the girl, enough to die for her. She starts wishing Paulie would visit
her like he said he would; she wants to discuss the book with someone who could
extrapolate upon the plot. But he doesn’t show up. That’s the problem with
nerds; you never want them to call until they stop.

Margarette reads a lot now: during the day, at
work, at home, and even at night. But she only reads the
one
book. Tommy
says it’s an obsession. She says he’s jealous. What the frick would he know? He
doesn’t read anything, except maybe tabloids at the checkout aisle. It bothers
her that he’s so dismissive of her new favorite book, instead of asking her
more about it, like why does she like it? What’s it about?

She doesn’t feel part owner of the house that
Tommy’s father clearly paid for, so she never cleans it. She only picks up after
herself. Every now and then she’ll load his dirty dishes in the dishwasher
along with hers, but mostly to fill up the dishwasher. As she walks around the
house waiting for Tommy to arrive and have sex with her, which is all they
really do together, all she can think of is how dirty the house is. He is just
enough to keep her going, but never make her feel complete. Tommy is always a
little off the mark. When his father got him a new car he complained about
having to pay for the expensive gas.

Come on
, she thinks. He uses his father’s
card to fill up the car. She can’t stop thinking these things even when she
knows she shouldn’t. Tommy is her life now, and she can’t go around filling her
head with complaints about him, when they haven’t even been together for a
month.

Every day is filled with little quirks that she would
discover. What he would do when he is home is nothing like what she would do.
All he does is watch television. She is fine with watching television some of
the time, but Tommy has four in one room.

I don’t care how rich you are, that doesn’t
make sense
, she thinks. Nothing rich people do makes sense to her. Even his
toaster talks. It has like a golden oldies radio voice, only to burn bread.
Technically it was her inability to operate said toaster that always blackened
the bread at the edges, but she knows the confusion was caused by her talking
back to an inanimate object and not taking the time to adjust the settings.

One night she sits in the living room after they
finish having sex. She enjoys the sex, but in her mind, sex is something that
Tommy does to her, not something they both do. It’s not making love.

“Tommy, toasters, televisions… totally driving me
crazy,” Margarette mutters.

Tommy sits up and puts his shirt on. “You’re so
cute. How many colors are you wearing? Blue, purple, gray and pink….”

“So?”

“I’m going to have to get all of the same colors.”

She shrinks away from him.

“That way we’ll always match,” he says with a
silly grin.

She can’t help smiling back at him. His manner is
just cute enough that she couldn’t kill him, only plan for it. Besides, she’s
sure that digging a ditch big enough for him would be a difficult task.

***

On her second Friday at work Margarette sits at
her desk with a bad stomachache, which she chalks up to being her truly first
painful pregnancy symptom. She blames Tommy, thinking the sickness is caused by
her body rejecting his entitled DNA. She has been lucky so far; she has been
pregnant for over six weeks yet she has had no morning sickness. But this pain
is kicking her butt. She considers leaving work early, but she doesn’t want to
tell Tommy.

She sits at her desk for an hour before admitting
to herself that she can’t function through the pain. She never takes pills
unless she is in dire need. Her only cousin who still calls her was born with a
resistance to meds. Margarette, on the other hand, is overly sensitive to
drugs; she normally swallows a quarter of the normal dose of pain medicine.

She finally goes to Tommy and says she’s not
feeling well. He offers to take her home but says he needs a minute to finish
something for his father. His minute turns into ten and then twenty. The front
door shuts angrily after her, and Tommy doesn’t even realize she’s gone until long
after he hears the noise.

Why did I ever let that knucklehead knock me
up?
She laments inwardly as walks the long way back. She cuts around the
school to avoid him in case he ever tries to go after her. If he finally
figures out she left, that is. The building is locked up but she walks through
the grounds in front of it. The covered entrance reminds her of waiting for her
mom after school before all of this happened. No one cared about her then. How
nice that used to be.

Walking actually helps with the cramps but not
with her troubled mind. She pauses in front of a statue of the Holy Mary
holding out her palms. The gold is flaking and her blue shawl has turned into a
soft, faded turquoise in the sunlight. One hand holds a rosary and the other a
cross, and the Virgin looks down on her. Margarette looks up with a smile.

“Liar,” she whispers to the statue with a hand
pressed against her belly.

She feels guilty, but in an inside joke kind of
way. For a moment she wants to run away and it drives her insane that she can’t.

***

That Saturday Tommy takes Margarette to the movies
to make up for not taking her home the day before when she was in pain. After
the movie they go to the mall looking for random things that Margarette could
use in their house. She detours to the bookstore and sees a poster of
Comeunion
and almost faints. It features a painting of what someone conceived to be the
main characters. She likes the artist’s vision of the guy who’s supposed to be
Simon—just like she imagined him. Sexy, dangerous and smitten, just like her. She
gets Tommy to purchase it despite his warning that it will never be hung up in
their bedroom because there’s a guy in it. She doesn’t mind, and kisses Tommy’s
cheek in happiness.

Afterward Tommy takes her to the video game
machines on the way out of the mall. She likes the way the room is slightly
dimmer than the rest of the mall. She stands under a UV light as Tommy plays a
shooting game for what seems like hours. She looks up and Paulie enters the
arcade with a grin.

He walks up and nudges her on the shoulder like a
soft tap. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Margarette says. Clearly she saw him walk
up, but he made an excuse to touch her shoulder.

“What are you doing here?” they both ask at the
same time, then laugh together.

“You first,” Paulie says, and hands her a piece of
candy, a sucker. He smiles a toothy grin.

“Oh… we went to the movies.”

“So you are
we
now?”

Margarette smiles with a shrug. Paulie looks down
awkwardly for a second and Tommy looks over with a plastic gun in his hands. Paulie
nods at him without a word as if a silent guy agreement thing just happened.

“So is that a poster for
Comeunion
?” Paulie
asks. A sticker in the tube containing the poster reveals what’s inside.

“Yeah,” Margarette says.

“Neat. I haven’t seen that one…. I got you hooked,
huh?”

“I like the story.”

“They do have a lot of sex.”

“Kind of like what we do,” Margarette says. She
smiles thinking about the
we
comment, and Paulie thinks about something
else.

“You said you liked the story?” Paulie asks, wishing
he hadn’t brought up the sex part.

“Yeah. I never read anything like it. And it’s so
strange, too. Why does it look like that? Like a Bible?”

“It’s weird. The author had a religious group try
to ban his work, so he did this to market it directly to them. He said it
should be more familiar to them now when they read it in secret.”

“I bet that really jazzed them on.”

“Yes, it did,” Paulie says with a smile. Then he
looks around. “So how do you like the new job?”

“It’s alright, I guess. It’s a job. At least I’m
saving the money I make.”

“He pays for everything?”

She scoffs. “His father does. Only in exchange for
my firstborn son.”

Paulie’s eyes widen in surprise. “What?”

Margarette shrugs casually, inwardly kicking
herself for the slip. “Just kidding.”

“Hey,” Paulie says softly, giving her a puppy dog
smile. “Anytime you need someone to talk to, just let me know. I’m here for you.”

She touches his arm and smiles. “Thank you.”

Tommy walks over and the conversation ends. He
looks like he wants to hit Paulie. Paulie’s survival instinct kicks in, and he
excuses himself and leaves after politely saying hello to Tommy.

Tommy frowns and Margarette gives him a soothing
smile, silently enjoying his little green-eyed monster fit. He returns her
smile but still looks pissed as he goes back to shooting more undead monsters.

She looks at him while he keeps playing his game
with an
I’m-jealous-of-your-nerdy-friend
frown. So she grabs his wallet
from his back pocket and steals a few bills. Zombies take advantage of his
confusion and attack him as he distractedly watches her change the bills into
coins. She pops the sucker in her mouth and drops a few tokens in his machine.
Leaning seductively forward she grabs a gun and starts shooting monsters while
sucking on her candy.

Tommy puts his gun on the rack and walks up to her,
takes her gun and puts it back as well, then puts a hand on her waist. Neither
of them says a word. She grabs his arm and takes him into the only game that
has a booth with a bench seat and a cover. He sits in there with her and the
feel of a date returns.

Paulie watches them from afar. The thought that they’re
now living together consumes him, but seeing her flirt with Tommy aches a
little more.

Inside their booth Margarette puts her hand in
Tommy’s lap as the game boots up and she squeezes his inner thigh. Ever since
Paulie left they haven’t said a word to each other. She sees a pair of pliers
enter the neck of the first victim. Hardly the romantic background, but nobody’s
paying attention anyway. Her legs cross and she bumps him with her foot.