He’s not home at a quarter to one. He’s out…partying? Vivi thinks about what she knows of Los Angeles: Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Mulholland Drive, Malibu. He’s at a party with record-company people, which means models with teased hair and sparkly purple eyeshadow wearing tight leather skirts and high heels. Vivi has watched thousands of hours of MTV; she knows about life backstage.
She sits in the dark kitchen and realizes why Brett didn’t say he loved her on the postcard. He’s outgrown her; he’s moving on.
She calls the hotel again. No answer. Her mother is going to hyperventilate when she gets the phone bill. Every time someone answers in California, there will be a separate charge.
Things were better when Vivi didn’t have Brett’s number because then she didn’t know for sure that he wasn’t home at one in the morning.
She falls asleep at the kitchen table and wakes up with the pearly-pink light of dawn and the neighbor’s dog barking. It’s twenty past five, two twenty in California. Vivi looks at the phone.
Don’t call, she thinks. It’s better not to know. She should wait until right before she leaves for work at eleven thirty. She might wake Brett up but at least he’ll be home. If she calls now and he’s not home, her world will collapse. She’s delirious from lack of sleep as it is.
Don’t call, she tells herself. Maybe she should wait until tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. He can wonder what she’s up to.
Yes, this is what Vivi should do. Wait.
But…she’s consumed with love and rage and panic. She feels like Brett has dropped down into a hole. What if something happened to him? What if he’s in the hospital or in jail?
Her father has been dead for exactly six months but Vivi can’t mention this to her mother. Vivi doesn’t ask if there will be a Mass said in her father’s name. She knows the answer is no—because killing yourself is a sin. Vivi has lost her father’s love; it vanished when he died. Brett tried to make up for that loss. He tried to love Vivi enough for two people. She can’t lose him.
She picks up the phone and dials; she has the number memorized by now.
Two rings in, Brett answers. “Hello?”
Vivi is so overcome by hearing his voice that she starts to cry.
“Vivi?” he says. “Vivi, is that you? Why are you crying?”
“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.