Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. I just like them.
Lucy and Snoopy, Backstage
Theresa Diaz sits on the thin, unwashed sheets of the creaking box-spring bed in her suite at the Mermaid Inn. She pulls on a bra from out of her suitcase, the cups wrinkled. It sticks to her recently showered skin. Exhausted physically from days' work on her feet, she wants to forget how to think. She wants to go to that place in her mind where everything is smooth, automatic, impersonal. "How can I help you?" "Would you like to try the organic pâté?" "Have a nice day." Where Theresa disappears and her problems disappear with her. She's the help, the brown girl who fades into the background. And maybe she could accept that, if only her problems actually did fade too.
But they won't. And she has to make a choice.
She tries to think about other things. The weather. The landscape. Neutral things. It's beautiful here, on Newport Beach: the warm sun reflected on a thousand mansions; the glistening, unpolluted sea dotted with distant yachts; the rich, white sand adorned with the rich, white people she caters to.
Theresa always imagined that the Upper Class must have it all together, must be impossibly intelligent and functional to have amassed that much wealth. But she's discovered the daytime soaps have it right: there are as many alcoholics, adulterers, and thieves here as in Chino. These people have done nothing special to deserve their lot. When she was little, she imagined if you only tried hard enough, if you only wanted hard enough, if you only worked hard enough, you could be the sort of American they advertise on a Tommy Hilfiger spread. The right sort. Now Theresa can't help but resent that sort, with their Egyptian cotton bedsheets and ocean-front views and endless days of vacation. Now that she knows it's a lie.
It angers her, how easy life comes to them. Because despite their supposed equality, money flows linear from generation to generation. Her own mother fights tooth and claw for every penny. And now that her mom is out of work, Theresa doesn't even have the privilege of attending her violence-ridden public school. If her mom can't pay the rent, they'll lose their home. Housecleaning under-the-table doesn't exactly qualify her mom for disability benefits, and someone must pay the piper. So there she is. A drop out. Working in her mother's place.
Theresa tries to comfort herself with the knowledge that this is where she'd be in a few years time, anyway: a dead-end job, a baby on the way, raising her daughter so that she could grow up to do the same. A high school diploma would not alter her fate.
A baby. God, she hates herself. How could she have let this happen? How could a slightly awry wisdom tooth determine the rest of her life? How was she supposed to know that antibiotics render the pill useless? She's just a girl; she's only in high school. Was. This can't be her life.
Three years ago she played Lucy and Ryan played Snoopy in their eighth grade production of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown." In her suitcase, hidden inside a trashy magazine, is a photograph of the two them hugging and laughing backstage after opening night. Their lips are coated with orange powder because they had just finished a whole bag of Cheese Curls, and they still have their stage makeup on. They look so happy. So impossibly happy and stupid. She wishes their whole lives could be like this moment: triumphant after a perfect show, months of hard work finally paying off, unable to imagine that anything could separate them. They were stars, with an incredible destiny ahead.
Ryan. Ryan. Ryan. She plays his name over in her head, hoping it will become a meaningless sound. But it never does. She loves him. She always has. When their moms were at work, and their older brothers went out to find trouble, Ryan and Theresa were left behind to spend their hours making up their own games, doodling on their homework, riding bikes on the streets, sitting side-by-side watching inappropriate television programs. They discovered everything together: the best way to cheat in history class, the secret entrance to Chino Hills Middle School school through the basement window, the prosaic revelations and uncontrollable laughter of a first marijuana high. Sex. They were never a couple. They were always a couple.
And now she's having a baby. That might be his. That might not be.
She thinks about Eddie, about his promises. About the ring he gave her that she doesn't wear. About the answer she never gave him. Eddie, the cool older boy who ran around with Arturo and Trey, the bad boy who got his life together but still had enough edge to be exciting. Eddie, who has a stable job and wants to make this work. Ryan left. Abandoned her without a word for the land of white people like him, and Eddie was there, smoking against the brick wall of the junk shop, smirking at her, whistling at her, making her feel like she was beautiful. "You're a prize," he'd said. He kissed her like he wasn't afraid of anything.
It had happened so quickly: a few months, a proposal, her flight to Newport with the excuse of a catering position. But she isn't in Newport Beach for catering. She could do that at home. She's in Newport to say hello or goodbye, she wasn't sure which when she arrived. She's still not.
She does know that Ryan was right to leave her when he had so much to gain. That is wasn't personal. He escaped from the special hell reserved for the neglected children of double-shift, impoverished single moms. He's too smart to end up as a factory hand, too kind to keep getting wrapped up in Trey's gang and their crimes. He deserves better.
She deserves better, too, but that's not how the world works.
Then again, that poor kid always had it worse than she did. At least her mom loved her, made her dinners, talked to her, tried for her. Ryan's mom drank her way out of jobs and brought home men who beat him. Theresa can't count the number of times she'd used her concealer to help Ryan cover his bruises on the bus ride to school. It happened so frequently that she stole makeup in a lighter color for him to use. Ryan spent an awful lot of time protecting a person who never bothered to return the favor. The bitch.
It is a little ironic, now, that Theresa is doing the same. If Ryan knew that Eddie got drunk and hit her, well...she couldn't ever tell him that. Ryan is on probation and he wouldn't be able to control himself, and Eddie's bigger and possibly a better fighter and she doesn't want either of them hurt. Besides, it was only twice. Not exactly a pattern, not yet. He probably won't do it again.
She should have said yes to Eddie. It is the inevitable end, she knows that. She was foolish to have come to Newport. What did she expect? That an impossibly rich family would adopt her and welcome her to live in their pool house, too? But maybe she just wanted closure. For Ryan to tell her he didn't love her anymore. That he had a new life and she wasn't a part of it. It would have been easier, being rejected. She would have had clear course.
But Ryan wanted her like she wanted him. He loved her and fucked her on this cheap, shitty motel bed. It was passionate and painful and perfect and she hadn't realized how terribly she missed this until he was thrusting inside her, his sweaty bangs pressed against her sweaty forehead, his teeth bitting her lower lip, her fingernails clawing into his hips, her toes curling in pleasure, his desperate gasps in her ear.
And they don't deserve a life of misery because they're stupid teenagers who made a mistake in a motel room. They don't deserve wailing in the night and diaper changes and work, work, work until they die.
She can't trap Ryan like this. She can't. Especially when he has a way out. When he has a family that loves him now, that can provide so much for him. Especially when the thing growing inside her and soaking up her life might not even be his. Maybe that's not the right way to think about a baby, but she can't force herself to feel differently.
And she can't go back to Eddie, either. She thinks about how different Eddie is when he's been drinking, how frightening. His slurred shouting, his baseless accusations, his frustration at things that Theresa cannot change. He hates the auto factory. He hates his life. He hates this fucking hellhole. So he hits and hits and hits until he calms down and cries and apologizes and tells her he loves her. That's she's the only thing keeping him sane.
She wishes she could talk to her mom. She needs her support, guidance, assurance, advice, anything. But it's pointless. Her mom is a devote Catholic. She wouldn't consider the nuances of the situation, wouldn't consider Theresa's struggles, no matter how much she loves her. The words of the Pope outweigh the needs of her teenage daughter.
Theresa knows that, if she doesn't make a choice soon, the choice will be made for her. And it won't be a good one. They never again will be Lucy and Snoopy, backstage. Trapped by the baby in a life they never wanted, she will become her mom, scrubbing the pubic hairs out of rich people's bathtubs, and Ryan will become his dad, locked in a prison cell for armed robbery or worse.
The business card in her hand has become as clammy as her palm. She picks up the hotel phone on the bedside table next to the Gideons Bible with the broken binding and begins to dial. A friendly receptionist picks up on the second ring.
Theresa clears her throat to keep her voice from shaking. "Yes, yes. I'm a reoccurring patient. Theresa Diaz.
"I'd like to schedule an abortion."