Maggie Corrigan showed up at my house before school on Tuesday, our first day back. I’d gotten off work at the hospital a few minutes early and had just arrived at the house myself. Maggie rang the bell and then entered without me opening the door. (I was in the bathroom reapplying deodorant when the bell rang.)
I met her in the living room. She wore the biggest Christmas sweater in the whole world and a scarf and a hat. She looked like some kind of bundled Santa elf who was probably pregnant but maybe just really thick and powerful through her midsection.
“Holy shit! What are you doing here?” I was so happy to see her, dingus.
“I had Mary drop me off for school at seven. I told her that I had a cheerleading meeting, but I lied. I had to see you. I thought about you the whole break.”
“Me too. I mean, I thought about a lot of stuff, including you,” I said.
“Oh?” Maggie’s face grew sad.
“All the good stuff was about you, all the productive and good… Wait. Wait here. I have to get something.”
“Okay,” Maggie said. She still looked sad.
I ran back into my room to get the envelope.
I’d spent the better part of a Christmas break morning crafting a letter of highest quality that I meant to give to Maggie at school, but with her standing right there, I couldn’t wait to hand it off. She opened it and read it.
January 3
To: Ms. Maggie Corrigan
From: Mr. William (Taco) Keller
Dear Lady,
I write this letter to make it fully known how much I adore you. When I see you cheer or dance, I am likely to fall over because your excellence and energy are the perfect complement to my own. There are many things I love about you—your sense of humor, that you call me “man” when you’re talking to me, your sheer speed when running, your righteous anger when placed in untenable situations, your knees (they look great), your eyes that communicate both love and hate like laser guns, your tenderness when I got hurt and my brother was arrested, your steadfast dedication to our love in the face of resistance from your parents. What could they know of our love? They are not part of this thing between us.
And now that you’re having our baby, I will love that kid with the same fierce loyalty I have for you. I will climb cliffs and dive into shark-infested oceans to show that kid I’m its dad for life. Because of my own home troubles, I value family more than most. I hope you are feeling well, and I hope you’ve been making regular doctor visits. And I can’t wait until the baby is born so we can live like the family we already are in my heart.
I have enclosed a check for $50 and will give you $50 every two weeks to help you take care of any hair- body- or spiritual-related expenses that you might have. I do this because I am yours and you are mine.
Love always,
William (Taco) Keller
Maggie read the letter, and she got really teary. She grabbed my ears with her hands and pulled my face into hers. She said, “I want to take you out for pizza with this check. That’s a spiritual-related expense, man, okay?”
“How about you and me get some pizza before we go to our first baby class next week?”
Maggie sighed. “I read your email. But do we really need to do that? My plan is to take a billion drugs and try not to remember I’m having a baby when the time comes.”
“No, we have to do it for…for ourselves. They’ll teach us how to clean and feed and take care of our baby. I don’t know how to do that.” I didn’t tell Maggie that I was also insisting we go to this class because it would keep us out of legal hot sauce with her parents. Maggie didn’t need that kind of stress while in her delicate state, dingus. That’s what I told myself.
“Okay,” Maggie said. “I’m in. I’ll do this for you, okay? We’re going to do this thing right.”
“Thanks, baby,” I whispered.
It was like old times, except new, dingus. We walked to school, holding hands through our mittens, showing our love to the whole world. It was super icy out, so we did some running and skeetch sliding on our shoes. Maggie Corrigan is one of the best shoe skiers I’ve ever seen. She slid all the way down the hill on Kase Street, probably like two hundred yards, and she was going easily forty or fifty miles per hour. By the time we got to school, we were in the best mood ever. We were having the time of our lives being who we were—Taco and Maggie, the best couple in the state of Wisconsin. We were riding the Good Times Express, a fantastic, luxury love train.
When we entered the commons, everybody stared at us. Everybody looked at Maggie’s giant reindeer sweater, which may or may not have been hiding the fact she’s pregnant. But who cared? “Let’s be pregnant,” I whispered.
“We are,” Maggie said. “But don’t tell anyone.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let them figure it out for themselves.”
“Yeah,” she said.
That day was awesome. Mags and I walked the halls, heads held high. People acted weird toward us. Like they were confused why we were back together. We walked hand in hand and made out between classes just like we had last spring and during the fall. But nobody shouted, “Get a room!” or, “More tongue!” like they used to. Instead they all stared at us, at that giant Santa reindeer sweater, which Maggie wore every day that week.
You know, in many ways it was a great week. There was a basketball game Tuesday night, and I played the bass drum in the pep band like I was a mountain gorilla on a bender. Due to my shift at the emergency room, I hadn’t had more than a ten-minute nap in, like, thirty-four hours, so I sort of was that gorilla. Maggie cheered in a sweater that stretched across her belly. We didn’t really talk at the game because we didn’t want adults to see us in action. Teachers saw us together during school, but whatever.
On Wednesday after I slept like a zombie, Maggie and I made out in the school foyer by the auto shop. Her belly pressed against me. It hadn’t before, so it was sort of weird. And I worked like a madman at Nussbaum’s that night because there was a lot of new filing. I worked so hard that I passed out on the floor of his office and only woke up at 3:00 a.m. Then I walked home, terrified through the ghost hour and feverish cold.
On Thursday, I slept in calc and in English, and Maggie and I made out while people stared at us. Our plan was working great! Except Emily Cook wouldn’t talk to me, and Mr. Lecroy pulled me into the choir office on Friday afternoon and begged me to come back to the musical.
“The munchkins are just so uninspired,” he said. “Please. All is forgiven. We just need you back.”
I walked out without saying a word because I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming. Just like I wasn’t sure if Mr. Edwards had screamed at me in calc or not, but probably he had.
All I knew was that Maggie and I were back together and that we were going for it. And wasn’t that great? Wasn’t that perfect? I’d written her a letter. I’d given her a check. I was being a man. So what if I was super dizzy and I fell down in the hall twice because my leg muscles were tired? Still…weren’t these the greatest days ever?
That’s what I thought, although I was very tired.