Carli
Carli put Band-Aids on her nipples before she put on her bra. Nobody had warned her about the leaking, and her first day home, two warm wet circles of milk had soaked through her shirt while she watched TV. It took her a while to find pants that fit. All the maternity clothes that Gail bought for her were too big, and her jeans from before were all too small. She finally settled on a pair of black sweatpants. Black, in case she bled.
When she came down the hall into the front room, she found her sister, Wendy, and her boyfriend, Randy, sprawled on the couch, their legs tangled on the coffee table. The curtains were closed against the sunlight to protect the hangover they were inevitably nursing. Randy was playing a video game—first-person shooter by the looks of it—while Wendy painted her fingernails. Randy was tall, quiet, his red hair buzzed short. Wendy looked a lot like Carli—the same dirty-blond hair, freckles, the blue eyes set just a little too far apart—but everyone had always called Wendy the pretty one. Carli knew it was Wendy’s confidence, her arrogance really, that made people say it.
“Marla just left,” Wendy said, her voice husky from lack of sleep. “Which is good for you, because something must have crawled up her ass.”
Randy chuckled, but maybe he just belched. His thumbs danced across the game controller, and his eyes never left the TV.
Wendy was ten when she first started calling their mom Marla. It was the day that Marla kicked Wendy out of the car for spilling a soda and made her walk the last mile home. Wendy never called her Mom again after that, and Carli, just eight at the time, followed Wendy’s lead. Marla never said anything about it—she pretended not to care—but Carli sometimes saw Marla stiffen a bit when she heard her first name like that.
“Where you goin’?” Wendy asked.
“Pickin’ up my check,” Carli said.
“Stop at Seven-Eleven on the way home. I need a pack of Camels.”
“And a Red Bull,” Randy said. He hacked up something solid and swallowed it back down. He never took his eyes off the screen.
Carli cranked the dead bolt and opened the door. Wendy looked up, squinted into the light. “And stay the hell away from Marla. She’s got that look.”
Carli gripped the black pipe railing and eased herself down the three concrete steps. Stairs made the stitches pull. When she lowered herself into her Corolla, she sucked her teeth. Eighteen years had taught Carli to expect little from Wendy, but they were sisters, and as she drove to Giamonti’s, she couldn’t stop thinking about everything that Wendy didn’t say, what she never asked. It was like she had done her best to ignore all the puking and the eating and Carli’s bulging belly. She never asked about the strange lady in the Subaru who picked her up and dropped her off. She didn’t say anything about the hospital or the baby or the leaking milk. For Carli, everything had changed, but I need a pack of Camels was the best Wendy could manage.
Carli turned into the strip mall and pulled up in front of Pay Day Loans so that nobody from work could watch her struggle out of the car. As she walked past the empty storefronts where Kinko’s and Blockbuster used to be, she tried to walk normal, but it was hard to remember what normal felt like.
When she looked through the tinted glass, past the row of empty booths, she saw red hair behind the counter and froze. Marissa. Andy was with Marissa before Carli, and she turned nasty after Carli and Andy hooked up. Carli’s hand rested on the door handle, and she thought about coming back the next day, but she needed that check. She pulled the door open, and the bell rang. Marissa looked up and saw Carli. Her dull blue eyes brightened. One corner of her mouth lifted a bit.
Carli avoided looking at the clowns as she made her way to the counter. Tommy Giamonti’s wife decorated the place back before she died of colon cancer, and Tommy wouldn’t let anybody change a thing. Nobody could explain why she chose the clown theme, but between all the beer mirrors hung pictures of clowns. Photos and drawings, color and black-and-white, large and small, all of them clowns.
“How you feelin’?” Marissa asked when Carli got to the counter.
“Fine,” Carli said. “Is Matt in today?”
“Nope. Rick’s the manager.”
Marissa and Rick. She should have called first. She walked past the counter, through the empty, greasy kitchen. She heard pans clattering in the dish room. She made her way to the tiny office in back near the time clock. Rick rattled the keys on the adding machine with one hand and traced a column of numbers on a sheet of paper with the other. He wore his red Giamonti’s polo shirt and black jeans. His wispy yellow hair strained to cover his bald spot. His face, as always, bloomed as red as his shirt, as if he was angry or had been holding his breath. When he finished with the numbers, he leaned back in his chair against the file cabinet and looked her up and down. “Well. If it isn’t the handmaid herself.”
Carli worked to keep her hands away from her belly where the empty place was beginning to stir. “I came for my check.”
“ ’Course you did,” Rick said, but made no move to get it. “Everything turn out all right? Ten fingers? Ten toes?”
“Can I please just have my check?” Carli said. She focused on the Corvette calendar above Rick’s head.
“Sure. Of course.” He started to work the small safe. “Just wanted to make sure everything went OK. You know me—always trying to make sure that the customers are satisfied.”
Carli looked away, toward the ovens, and then back to find an envelope in Rick’s hands.
“Should I put you back on the schedule?”
Carli thought about the stitches and the dull ache that coated everything, but she also thought about her tuition bill and credit card minimums and her car payment. “Yeah. Any day but Wednesday. I got class on Wednesday.”
“Right.” His lips twitched. “College girl.”
He tossed her the envelope, but she missed it, and it fell to the floor. Rick swiveled back to the adding machine and resumed pounding the keys. Carli eyed the check before bending awkwardly to get it. She stretched against the pain. Just as she picked up the envelope, she felt a sharp pull at the stitches, and she swallowed a breath. When she stood and walked toward the front, she felt blood trickle down her leg. She walked past the register, past Marissa, without a word.
“I saw Andy last night,” Marissa said to her back.
Carli said nothing and kept walking. The clowns leered.
“He asked me if you really gave away his baby.”
The leg of Carli’s sweatpants was warm and wet and sticky. She pushed through the door. Marissa said something else, but it was drowned out by the sound of cars rushing by on Division.