* * *

By the time Larry dropped her off in front of her house she was starting to feel nauseated but he didn’t seem to care because he just said something about how he didn’t know if he should apologize or not because he didn’t mean for it to happen like that sure he wanted to KISS her and STUFF and it was really great but ah hell I don’t know what to say maybe you should’ve said NO and not LET ME and then he drove away, leaving her by the curb, and she almost made it onto the porch before she vomited on the steps, then Mom was there, holding her up and asking what was the matter and all Lucy could say was Aren’t you GOING to MISS something ON the TELEVISION that YOU LIKE TO WATCH? then the world started spinning like a top and she felt dizzy as Mom put her into bed and she wondered if maybe she’d been a bad girl, and after her father had thanked God for a daughter like her.

* * *

Five weeks later she discovered she was pregnant.

* * *

Later, after the Bad Time ended in a protracted series of sputtering little agonies, she indulged in one instance of genuine self-pity, and—following the advice in one of the countless self-help books she’d accumulated—put the ugliness on paper:

Dear Larry,

I don’t know whether or not I’ll have the nerve to mail this once it’s finished, but according to most of these self-help books I’ve been reading (I’ve been reading a lot them lately), it’s supposed to be therapeutic to get your feelings down on paper. I feel like one of those characters in some corny play or movie who go to the grave of a loved one and talk to the headstone. I don’t much like it.

I don’t know how to react to your card. I’d like to know who told you about it and why, after all this time, you felt you needed to contact me. I probably shouldn’t be writing to you at all, but—impetuous, impulsive, spontaneous.

You ask how I’m feeling. I feel angry, hurt, very misunderstood, and not close to apologizing to anyone in this world except myself for the mess I have made of my life. I need love and very much resent that I do. I can’t find it in myself to trust anyone. I feel like a wounded animal in a cage. That’s a bad simile, I know. I’ve been trying to figure out how to say the things I want to say to you—the things I should have said to you a long time ago—but I can’t bring myself to write them down, it seems too cowardly. Mom understands, or seems to. It’s kind of creepy at times, the way she knows what I’m thinking or feeling without me having to say anything to her.

I saw you a few days ago. You were coming out of the Sparta with some woman with red hair. The two of you seemed to be very close. Is it serious? Does the cook at the Sparta still make those wickedly delicious cheeseburgers? Do you ever think about what happened? I do. It was kind of weird, seeing you the other day. The moment I laid eyes on you, I felt grief. I looked at lost youth, innocence—mine! That evening on the hill for me was like a pleasant dream, an escape. But later—I suffered for it. Knowing the life I was in, the life I once had. Seeing you reminded me that I’ve lost the dearest thing in the world, the most precious thing I ever had.