The Almost Sisters(2)

“That would be gratuitous. Much like this,” Margot said, standing and heading for the door. I sat up, clutching the sheet around me. “Get dressed and then come to my office, okay? Let’s talk. You’re not in this alone.”

I was so gobsmacked that for a second I thought she meant that I had Batman on my side. The real thing. Not a one-shot superhero in an Etsy cowl named Matt or Mark. Or Marcus. I couldn’t quite remember.

I did remember that he was from someplace that ended in an a. Florida? India? Maybe Canada, like the beer we’d drunk in between tequila shots. He was taller than me, but who wasn’t? He might have been genuinely funny; he’d certainly seemed funny at the time. He was black—I was pretty definite on that—and his smile, his jawline, had been absolutely beautiful. At some point he must have taken off his pointy-eared iconic mask, because I had a fuzzy memory of oversize brown eyes, slow-blinking and shy, with a thick fringe of lashes. They made his whole face sweeter than the cocky smile had led me to expect.

I also remembered that he loved Violence in Violet. He’d recognized me at the hotel bar and came over to describe all his favorite panels. He’d noticed the birds and little animals I’d hidden here and there in the artwork, disguised as shadows or curls of Violence’s hair. He’d asked when the prequel would be published, saying he couldn’t wait to get his hands on it. His admiration had been balm, and I had needed balm. Earlier that day I’d gotten so damn burned. Plus, tequila never was the handmaiden of good decisions. I’d asked him up to my room.

We’d started kissing in the elevator, where he’d grabbed fistfuls of my long hair to tip my face back in a way I liked so much. I remembered my hands working up under his chest piece, seeking warm and living skin. I remembered his naked body sprawled across my hotel carpet, me naked, too, hops and agave leaking out our very pores, rolling, me on top now with my head thrown back—had I put on his Batman cowl and cape?

Yes. Yes I had, I remembered with a whole-body shame flush. I’d worn them both, laughing like an Arkham-level maniac astride him.

In the morning I was dog-sick and alone. He’d left a note on the pillow—You’re amazing. Can’t wait for the prequel—and a phone number with an area code that for sure was not Virginia. It was probably fake, and anyway, I was flying home to Norfolk in a couple of hours. I couldn’t call and try to un-one-night-stand him with some legit dating. I’d thrown the note away, and with it any chance I had of finding him. Batman wasn’t going to be a factor.

I got dressed, but I didn’t go to Margot’s office. I sat staring at a wall covered with smiling rabbits and baby deer in cotton candy colors. The raccoons all looked so smug, like they were laughing at me.

And why not? Unplanned pregnancy is tragic when the mom is a kid herself, but at my age some elements of comedy crept in. Shouldn’t I by now know better than to drag an anonymous Batman back to my room by his utility belt? Shouldn’t I at the very least understand the proper workings of a condom? People might not say it to me, but they’d say it to each other. They would think it at me, really loud.

And my parents! I dropped my face into my hands, cringing at the thought of their reaction. They were suburban Methodists, both originally from very small towns, the poster couple for conventional. I could picture my mother tutting and hand-wringing, while my stepdad, Keith, stood awkwardly behind her, trying to give me money. Plus, telling Keith was tantamount to telling Rachel, and that would be the worst.

My stepsister had never had a fender bender, much less an accident involving reproduction. She had made herself a family in perfect order, as if it were as simple as a playground song: First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Rachel with a baby carriage. I couldn’t even get step one right.

The last thing I wanted was for Rachel to know that I had fetched up pregnant. She would be so irritatingly sorry for me. She would make excuses for me to our parents. We can’t blame Leia, I could hear her saying. She must be so lonely. Otherwise she’d never have engaged in such a desperate, tawdry incident with an unfindable Batman. And the worst part was, she would genuinely be trying to help me. Rachel always helped me, sometimes so relentlessly that I wished I had a safe word.

There was a quick tap at the door, and Margot stuck her head back in.

“Do you have your pants on? You’ve been in here a while,” she said.

Behind her, through the open doorway, I could hear children playing in the waiting room. Little piping voices. The bang of plastic toys and thumpy feet. I had barreled through that crowd of small, sniffling humans and their mothers on my way in. It was all mothers, though presumably each child had a father. Someplace. I had barely noticed the children, eager to get back here and let Margot correct the home kit’s obvious mistake. But I heard them now.

Through the thin wall, in the room next door, a baby burst into a noisy squalling, rich with outrage. My head tilted toward the sound.

“What’s wrong with the baby?” I asked.

Margot shrugged, tucking the ends of her jet-black bob behind her ears. “Poor little ’roo, he’s getting vaccinations.”

She came all the way in to close the door, but I could still hear him. He sounded so affronted. Thirty seconds ago he’d been as innocent as the pink rabbits on the wallpaper. He hadn’t even known that things could hurt. Someone should have warned him that the world had jabby things in it and that adults would stick them in his blameless thighs. On purpose.