Janice Johnson - No Matter What

Cait rolled her eyes. “Which you designed and sewed by the sweat of your brow. And yeah, I remember you had bandages on every finger by the time you were done creating the tail. How could I forget? You’ve only bragged about my purple horse costume nine million times.”

“I hadn’t even thought of it in years,” Molly said, as evenly as she could manage. “I apologize for mentioning it. Will you get the next trick-or-treaters?”

Cait yanked open the closet and grabbed a parka. “I have to go somewhere.”

Molly had started toward the kitchen, but now she turned back. “Have to?” When there was no answer, she asked, “Where and with whom?”

“‘With whom.’ God, Mom.”

She crossed her arms. “You didn’t mention a party.”

“I’m not going to a party, okay?” Cait exclaimed with that new ugliness. “It’s like six o’clock. It’s not even dark! What’s your problem?”

“I asked where you’re going. Is that so unreasonable?”

“Yes! You don’t trust me at all.” She flung open the door, startling a solitary Mutant Ninja Turtle who had been reaching for the doorbell. He scuttled back a few steps.

“Trick or treat?” he whispered.

“Here!” Cait grabbed a whole handful of candy bars and dumped them in his bag so hard it rattled. “I’m going,” she told her mother, and took off down the steps, yelling over her shoulder, “Deal with it.” The parent waiting on the sidewalk took a step onto the grass to let her tear by. The flashlight the woman held wobbled.

“Thank you,” the little one mumbled, and Molly pulled herself together enough to say, “Happy Halloween.”

Then she shut the door, all her pleasure in the evening gone. Boy, did Cait have a real talent for puncturing every happy moment these days, as if she sensed and resented her mother’s mood. Depressed? Has a headache? Good enough, I’ll give her a break. Cheerful, optimistic? Hell, no. I’ll flatten her.

She’s being a teenager, that’s all. You’re taking it ridiculously hard, Molly told herself. Cait had spoiled her up until now, that’s all. Good heavens, she wasn’t using drugs—at least that Molly could tell—she hadn’t reeled home drunk yet, she wasn’t being dropped off at all hours by boys who screeched up to the curb outside the house. Also, as far as Molly knew, Cait was even keeping her grades up. So she’d become snotty, sulky, secretive and all too frequently angry. Not that unusual.

Deal with it, Molly thought with near humor.

The doorbell rang again, and she found a smile for the next round of children.

By eight-thirty, she was tempted to blow out the candles and turn off the porch light. Any trick-or-treaters now would be teenagers, and she didn’t feel all that obligated to offer them candy. On the other hand—her gaze strayed to the bowl—she was bound to be tempted by the leftovers, and she struggled with her weight enough without ripping open Butterfinger or Snickers bars uncontrollably only because they were there.

She cleared the table in the long lull and began loading the dishwasher. Most of their dinner had to be scraped in the garbage. Molly had scraped quite a lot of food in the garbage lately. Cait seemed to enjoy throwing her scenes at mealtimes. Hey, Molly thought, maybe she should weigh herself. Could there be a silver lining to all this? It had seemed as if the waistband of her navy blue skirt was rather loose this morning.

Unlike her heels, which she still wore in her hurry to get dinner on the table. On the thought, she kicked them off. One flew halfway across the kitchen, the other only a few feet. She wiggled her toes, decided she’d ditch the panty hose as soon as she’d finished cleaning up the kitchen and reached for a dirty pan.

The doorbell rang. She jumped, remembered why it was ringing and turned, stepping automatically around the open dishwasher door. At which point, she planted a foot on the pump lying on its side and stumbled back into the kitchen trash container, which she’d pulled out from the cupboard to make cleanup easier. Even as she swore, it toppled over, spewing the uneaten food, crumpled wrappings, cans that should have gone in recycling, and…what was that?

She stared, disbelieving, at a little white stick with a bright blue dot at one end. Buried at the bottom of the garbage amidst carrot peels.

Suddenly frantic, she crouched and dumped out the rest on the kitchen floor. The doorbell rang again, more insistent. She ignored it, scrabbling through the trash. A brown paper bag held something, half-squashed. With shaking hands, she pulled it out. A home pregnancy test kit. Open. A second stick slid out and plopped onto a glob of leftover casserole. Molly turned it over and saw that it, too, had a blue dot. It only took her a minute to find the instructions. If no color appears, you are not pregnant, she was informed. If color appears, you are. Simple.

Dizzy, she dropped to her knees. All she could think was, My fifteen-year-old daughter is pregnant. Oh, dear God.

CHAPTER FOUR

MOLLY KNEW THAT she would never, so long as she lived, forget the expression on Caitlyn’s face when she finally arrived home at nine-thirty, dashed straight to her bedroom and found her mother sitting in her chair, the two sticks from the pregnancy test kit lying on the desktop in front of her. Her gaze flew to her mother, then the damning evidence and back to Molly.

“You searched the garbage?” she whispered.

“I knocked it over by accident.” Molly had become very nearly numb by now. “You should have disposed of them in the can.”

“I was going to, but there wasn’t anything in it. I thought you’d notice…” Cait swallowed. She still stood a foot or two inside the room, frozen in place.

“You didn’t think I’d notice your belly swelling?” How polite I sound.

“I…I…” Tears spurted and Cait’s face contorted. With a sob she threw herself across the room and facedown onto her bed. Her whole body shook with the force of her tears.

Molly’s eyes stung. On a rush of pity, she moved to sit on the bed and gently rub her daughter’s back. “Oh, sweetie. I know you were scared. I do know.”

She kept murmuring; Cait kept crying. It was a storm of misery and grief and fear. Molly would have given a lot to have joined her. But maybe strangely, she felt steadier now than she had at any time in the past six weeks.

“I love you,” she said, bending down to kiss Cait’s head. “I love you so much. We’ll figure out what we have to do. We will.”

“How can you love me?” her child wailed.

Through her own tears, Molly laughed. “I will always love you. Haven’t I told you that a million times? That no matter what happens, no matter what you do, I will love you because I’m your mother?”

Cait managed to roll over and look up through swollen eyes. Her skin was blotchy; tears dripped from her chin and snot from her upper lip. Molly reached for a dirty T-shirt on the top of the hamper and handed it over. “Wipe and blow.”

She did, and almost looked worse afterward. Molly sat back down and embraced Cait, who laid her head on Molly’s shoulder and clutched her, too. They sat like that for a long time—a couple of minutes, at least. Silent, breathing in and out. Molly soaked in the closeness and tried to shut her mind for this brief, peaceful interval to all the decisions to be made. To the fact that everything had changed for Cait, irrevocably.

At last a long breath shuddered out of her and she straightened. “Would you like a cup of tea? Or cocoa?”

“Cocoa, please.”

They went downstairs. Molly put water on to boil and Cait sat in the dining nook waiting. They had instant, thank goodness; Molly hadn’t been sure, since they didn’t drink it often. She set a spoon in each mug, poured in the boiling water and carried them to the table, where she sat across from Cait.