He nodded. “How are you feeling?”
“Horrible.”
What was the name for it? It came to him. “From the morning sickness?” he said.
She smiled at him again, almost as sweetly as before. “Not that,” she said. “I feel great. My body feels great. Inside is where I’m so messed up.” Patti started crying, first just a silent tear or two, then, maybe catching some expression in his eyes, many more, and far from silent. “And now I’m messing you up too. The best thing that ever happened to me.” Or something like that. Nat couldn’t really tell because of the sobbing. He sat down on Wags’s couch and held her, awkwardly, sitting on the edge.
She leaned against him, leaned with all her weight, holding nothing back. “Oh, Nat,” she said.
He hugged her. If he’d been at all drunk before, physically or psychologically, he wasn’t now.
Her lips moved against his chest. “I can feel you thinking,” she said. Her voice vibrated through his skin. “What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know,” he said. But he did: he was remembering what had happened when they got to Julie’s party. Julie’s family had money, at least what he’d used to think of as having money. Julie’s father, brother of Mr. Beaman, Nat’s mother’s boss, was a pharmacist. They could afford to keep two or three horses in a barn behind their house. The loft had been turned into a guest bedroom. He and Patti had ended up there, in the bed where the vomiting incident happened. But before that, they’d been asleep. He’d awakened with Patti on top of him. She’d rolled off a moment or two later, saying she didn’t feel well. Had he been inside her? Had it happened then? He didn’t know. It was all vague, half remembered, half aware in the first place, the horses stirring uneasily beneath them the only sure thing.
“Are you mad at me?” Patti said.
“No.”
“Something, then.”
“No.”
“You’re thinking.”
“I’m not.”
But she was right. Thoughts like: Are you sure you’re pregnant? How do you know? Those remained unspoken: Patti wouldn’t have been here if she wasn’t sure. And: abortion. He didn’t even know where Patti stood on abortion. He assumed she was for it-he assumed he was for it-but they’d never discussed abortion, not the right and wrong of it. And then there was Patti’s uncle in Denver, a big red-faced Broncos fan who’d taken them to a game, bought them beer and hot dogs, screamed like a maniac at the ref; Patti’s uncle, the priest.
“Nat?”
“Yes.”
“What are we going-what should I do?”
He looked down at her: curly hair, pale face, blue-lit from the computer screen, against his chest, his shirt dampening with her tears. Her gaze shifted up to his, like a baby watching its mother. That was the image that came to mind, and he hated it.
“Do you love me,” she said, “just a little bit?”
He was silent.
“You don’t have to answer,” she said. “I’m sorry, sorry for everything.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” he said.
She clung to him. “You’re such a good person.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is.”
He didn’t love her. There had been times last summer when he’d thought maybe he did; now, because of the contrast with what he felt for Izzie, he knew for certain he never had. He also knew she was wrong: he had to answer the question. “I don’t love you, Patti,” he said. He said it as plainly as he could, deliberately closing the door to interpretation, but at the same time he held her tight, as tightly as he ever had. Completely crazy, but he couldn’t help it.
Patti sobbed. Half a sob, really, cut off sharply through an effort of will he could feel in the muscles lining her spine. After that, they were silent for what seemed like a long time. Blue-lit snow piled up on the window ledge; his shirt got damper. Then it got no damper, and later less and less, almost dry again.
The chapel bell tolled. Patti yawned, the kind of big yawn impossible to stifle.
“You’re tired,” he said.
“A little.” So quiet, both their voices, but very clear.
“Then sleep,” he said. “It can wait till tomorrow.”
“You’re sure?”
“We’ll think better in the morning.”
“All right.”
He made her sleep in his bed. She lay on her back, under the covers, curly hair spread on the pillow. “You can come in, if you want.”
“That wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“Why not?” Patti said. “What could happen now?”
She laughed. That was Patti. He laughed too. At that moment, and just for that moment, he came close to something like love: more craziness.
Patti took his hand. “Nat?”
“Yes.”
“What’s gone wrong?” She wasn’t crying anymore; her face was puffy but somehow peaceful too.
“How do you mean?”
“People used to get married at our age. Settle down, have… kids, and everything was all right.”
“Not in my family,” he said.
She let go.
Nat took his sleeping bag into Wags’s room, lay down on Wags’s bed. Wags hadn’t showered enough, especially toward the end, Nat realized now, but he’d compensated with spray-on deodorant, some brand that smelled like evergreens and coconut. Nat closed his eyes; the evergreen-and-coconut smell, rising off the mattress every time he moved, grew stronger and stronger,
You want me to flunk out, don’t you?
Right. And then all this will be mine.
Nat rose, went to the couch in the outer room, tried to sleep where Patti had been sleeping.
At dawn he stopped trying, got up, shaved, showered, put on fresh clothes, tried to look fresh. Patti was still asleep, her face still peaceful, her breathing almost unnoticeable. He left a note on the bedside crate, laying a granola bar on top of it: Gone to class. Back by noon. N.
Nat went to the bio lab, made up the work he’d missed. Problem three, from the old set of problems, taken care of; the precious pre-med option preserved. Problems one and two were now buried under the new ones.
English 104. Izzie wasn’t there. The professor, handing back the Young Goodman Brown essays, said, “I’m a little disappointed with these. Only two of you-” She glanced around the table. “-one of whom is absent, identified the pathos at its core.”
“Which is?” someone asked.
“Page ninety-five,” said the professor, opening her book: “Referring to Goodman Brown: ‘But he himself was the chief horror of the scene.’ ”. Nat stuffed the paper in his backpack without checking the grade and hurried back to Plessey, taking shortcuts through the snow.
Izzie was at his desk in the outer room, playing solitaire on the computer. She turned as Nat came in. He went into the bedroom. The note and granola bar were where he’d left them, but Patti was gone, the bed neatly made.
Izzie was watching him through the doorway. “They went out,” she said.
“They?”
“Grace and… Patti.”
“Where did they go?”
