By the time Lucy's nineteenth birthday rolled around, she was grateful for three things: One, that she had gotten her first college-level A on an analysis of disposable language in The Great Gatsby (Dally asked her if she was surprised she'd gotten an A; Soda asked her why anyone would throw their words in the garbage.); two, Dally was still around and hadn't hinted toward leaving; three, her pregnancy wasn't at all showing, and she could get away with wearing anything she wanted.
By the time Dally's nineteenth birthday (and their first anniversary, which amazed everyone, as they never thought they'd make it more than a month) rolled around two weeks later, she began to show just a little bit. But it was enough to drive Lucy out of her mind.
"Would you fuckin' relax, please?" Dally begged. He was watching her repeatedly lift her dress up and down; critically examining what she thought was some grotesque bulge. He could hardly see a thing, but if she insisted it was there, it was easier to play along. Lucy was too exhausting to fight with all the time. He'd learned to choose his battles.
"I look awful," Lucy said. "Just … awful."
"No, ya don't. And if you say that one more time, I'm gonna be mad."
Lucy bit her lip to keep from yelling at Dally. She was amazed that after a year of being married to her, he hadn't figured out that she felt rather like her own kind of Wolf Man. Of course, the Wolf Man was obsessed with the size and shape of his nose (which Freud, of course, made all about that stupid castration complex of his), and Lucy with the size and shape of her stomach, but it was relative. She pulled down her dress, took a deep breath, and tried to rationalize, though she felt rather far removed from rationality at the time.
"You don't get it," Lucy said. "I've never looked at myself right. This is just making it harder and harder."
"No, you liftin' up your skirt is makin' it harder and harder. Damn shame you gotta get to class in half an hour."
"You know, I hear that's more than enough time for most men."
"I ain't most men. I like doin' you 's much 's I like you doin' me."
"That seems like a lie."
"I'm serious. Skip that stupid little history class of yours an' I'll show ya."
Lucy turned around from her spot in front of the mirror and pulled out the chair from her desk, standing on it so that she could properly kiss her husband. She was about a foot shorter than Dally and could manage to kiss him without standing on a chair, but it was still too much fun to be taller than Dallas Winston.
"I'd love to miss class," Lucy said, "but you know I can't."
"Why not? History's not gonna change. Lincoln's still gonna get shot in the head. Ulysses is still gonna be a dumb name for a president."
"I'm … both impressed and disturbed that you only seem to know Civil War history."
Dally smirked. If Lucy was as smart as she thought she was, she'd know that the reason he knew all that was because she was the one taking a class on Civil War history, and she was the one leaving her books scattered around the apartment for anyone to read if they were bored enough. Lucy gave him a look, and he knew it meant she wanted a hand hopping off the chair. He gave it to her without question. Things had been pretty peaceful between them since that night Dally had run into Sylvia – that night he'd talked to Soda about whether or not he loved Lucy. He hadn't told Lucy he loved her (or even thought about it, really), but he didn't think it mattered. Lucy must have known what he meant. They were getting along. They were having great sex, especially since Lucy's morning-noon-and-night sickness had ended a couple weeks earlier. And he was offering her help off a chair when, not two years earlier, he would have left her to fall and yelled at her for having a stupid fear of heights, anyway. Now … well, now, her fear of any and all heights was almost cute. Cute. He hated to think the word, but it was the only one that seemed to fit.
"I'll be back before five," Lucy said. "I've got history and math today."
"I know that."
Lucy felt herself beginning to blush. It was strange, she thought, to still feel like she had a secret crush on the hood she'd been married to for 363 days. Maybe it was his job to know what her schedule was. Nevertheless, it was flattering that he remembered.
"Well, I'll be back before you know it," she said. "I'll see you then?"
"I ain't goin' nowhere."
Lucy felt her heart start to sink, but she recovered. It had been quite some time since Dally said anything about leaving. That didn't change the fact that she still worried that she'd key open the door one day to find everything of his just gone. Sadie told her it had been long enough already, and she didn't have to worry anymore. Lucy knew it was never that simple, particularly not when it was Dally.
"I'll see you tonight," Lucy said. She started to go out the door, but she turned around to look at Dally one more time. He drew his lips into a flat line and stared at her, immediately knowing what she was going to say next.
"Oh, and, Dally?"
"Yeah?"
"Happy birthday."
She didn't give him time to respond. She slammed the door behind her, and Dally could hear her pattering down the stairs like she knew she'd done something wrong. It was a shame she hadn't turned back around to see him. If she'd turned around, she would have seen that he was smiling like he meant it. After all, thanks to her stupid dare, this was the first birthday he could remember being grateful to see.
Lucy's math class finished at quarter to two, and on Wednesdays, she usually met up with Sadie and the others at the high school. Arguably, it was pathetic to hang out around her old high school months after she graduated, but if it meant seeing Sadie, then Lucy didn't care if it was pathetic. If Sadie were trapped in a kaleidoscope for eternity, Lucy would look into it every hour, on the hour. It was what they did.
The other girls quickly found Lucy on the front lawn. Jane gave her a quick hug and told her that she had to run and meet Soda at the DX, and Lilly stepped forward to make sure Lucy knew she was starting to show. Lucy turned beet red and thought that maybe dying sounded like a good idea.
"Lilly!" Carrie was almost screeching. "You can't just say that to somebody!"
"What?" Lilly asked. "I don't think she looks bad. She just looks pregnant."
"What's wrong with looking pregnant?" Sadie asked. "It's what she is."
"What's wrong is that people are gonna see her, and they're gonna talk about her."
"Lilly, people talked about me all year last year," Lucy said. "I think I can handle them talking about me now."
"Yeah, but can you bear to hear them say stuff like, 'I knew it was gonna happen sooner or later' or 'She was reading all the time. Didn't one of those books teach her about condoms?'"
Sadie smacked her palm against her face, and Lucy narrowed her eyes at Lilly. She loved her – really, she did – but Lilly's lack of tact was exhausting for anyone who knew her, even Lucy.
"Those things are awful specific to be hypothetical," Lucy said. "Who knows I'm pregnant?"
"Everyone. This ain't a big neighborhood, Lucy. People hear things. They talk about 'em. I never told anybody to their faces … unless they asked."
"Lilly!"
"Oh, can it, Carrie."
Lucy sighed. She supposed she should have known that it didn't matter where she went to school now or how many hours she spent locked up in her apartment, trying to hide her pregnancy from the public. People had a way of suspecting things, and Lilly had a way of never learning how to keep her mouth shut. Lucy tried not to be upset with her. After all, Lilly was still young, and as Sadie and Soda pointed out to her before, she needed gossip. It was how she coped. Lucy had to support it, she figured, even if it was at her expense.
"It doesn't matter," Lucy said. "I'm gonna be strolling a baby around these parts by myself sooner or later. Won't be able to claim Immaculate Conception, either."
"No, you won't," Carrie said. "I still can't believe you didn't think this through."
Lucy didn't say anything. It would have been easy to throw out some sort of snarky remark – like if Carrie were ever in the position to have sex with someone without obsessing over the grave moral implications, maybe she wouldn't spend much time thinking it through, either. But she didn't say a word. It would have just hurt Carrie even more. Just like Lilly needed her gossip rags, Carrie needed her moral philosophy books.
"I don't think it's a bad thing you're startin' to show, Lucy," Katie said.
"Well, thanks, Kate," Lucy said. "I'm horrified, but I'm glad to know you're not. Of course, I'm the one whose body it's happening to, so …"
"Aww, c'mon. Gimme a break. I was just gonna say I'm excited to hear what you're gonna name it."
Lucy's skin alternated between hot and cold. She was about five months along, and she still hadn't thought very much about what she might name the kid. It would have to be Jack if it was a boy – that wasn't negotiable, and she had already promised her father. Her friends knew that. Her friends also insisted that she was going to have a girl, so they didn't care very much. Lilly was still rooting for her own name, despite Lucy's insistence that she would never do that. In truth, she just didn't want to think about names. It made the baby real. It made Dally's inevitable departure even more real. Even though he told her everyday that he wasn't going anywhere (and he'd stopped adding in that part about using the baby as a way to dodge the draft), she didn't believe him. She knew how to sell a lie just as well as he did. From her point of view, he had to be lying. He may have gotten into less trouble over the past year, but that didn't mean he stopped being Dallas Winston. He could never.
"I'm gonna name it something when it's born," Lucy said. "I haven't thought about it."
"That's a lie," Katie said. "Remember your Coke bottle? What was its name? Flo?"
Lucy sighed. She had a name in mind. She'd had it in mind since the day after she found out she was pregnant. But she wasn't about to tell anyone (especially not in front of Lilly Cade) because she didn't want Dally to know. Even if he wasn't going to leave, she didn't want him to have any idea that secretly, when he wasn't looking (and sometimes when he was), she thought about what it might be like if they could ever manage to be a happy family of three. Of course, how could you make a happy family with someone who could barely stand to hear the word happy?
"What about Josephine?" Katie asked. "Ya like that Little Women book, don't ya?"
"I've read that Little Women book," Lucy said. "I hate it. If I were going to marry a professor, I'd make sure it wasn't a German professor. Plus, all that death."
"OK, so, nothing German," Katie said. "Scout?"
"Yeah, I don't need my kid to be recruited for some bullshit organization, even if they do sell cookies."
"Anne?" Katie asked.
"Lilly!" Lilly said.
"Emma?" Carrie.
"Stradlater!" Sadie.
Lucy tried her best to conceal a smile, but she couldn't. There were too many reasons why Sadie was her best friend. Her ability to always know when Lucy needed a laugh was one of them.
"For a boy or a girl, Sadie?"
"Either. Both."
Lucy was met with another wave of love for Sadie. If everything fell apart in a day, she was sure Sadie and the Curtis house would still be standing. Lucy never liked being an only child. Initially (before the court mandate), she'd chosen books to imagine brothers, sisters, and friends where she didn't have any. But as soon as she met Sadie … it was like they were all real.
"I can hardly believe you don't have any names in mind," Katie said. "You sure do read enough of 'em."
"If you insist, I do know what I'd name my daughter," Lucy said. "But I'm not gonna tell you. Some things are better kept secret."
"Like … the fact that you want your husband to love you?" Lilly asked.
Lucy turned red and didn't say anything. It occurred to her, suddenly, why she insisted on hanging around her friends at her old high school. Where it was all too easy to push down her truths when she was all alone at the store and all alone in the apartment, it was all too easy to shed light on them when she was with her friends. Her friends were her enablers – her scapegoats. That way, if she finally had the gall to remind Dally, out loud, that she loved him and wanted him to stay around, and he rejected her, she could blame it on her friends for encouraging her. It felt like the perfect plan, even though Lucy knew it wasn't.
"Yeah, Lil," Lucy said. "Like that."
"I knew it."
"Your impulsivity's having a birthday on Friday, isn't it?" Sadie asked. "A year since you and Dally interpreted my dare the way you wanted."
"Hard to believe one of us hasn't killed the other, isn't it?"
"Mmm, that you haven't killed him, specifically."
"You got plans, Lucy?" Katie asked.
"Usually, no," Lucy said. "That's kind of why I'm pregnant."
"You know what I mean."
Lucy laughed. A couple of weeks earlier, Soda had taken Jane out to mark a year since they'd started going together, but Dally wasn't Soda. Dally might have remembered the day they got married, but it was just a Friday for him. He couldn't let it be anything else. He didn't know how. On their first anniversary, Lucy figured she would sit at home with Hamlet (which she was exhausted to read for what felt like the three hundredth time) while Dally did whatever it was he needed to do – maybe to cope with the fact that he was still married, and Lucy was still pregnant.
Except it really hadn't been like that for quite a long time. Dally was staying in more and more often. Last time Lucy had gone to a rodeo with him, he took her hand in front of people. He'd never done a thing like that before, unless Lucy counted the time he stuck his tongue down her throat in front of the judge at their (legal) wedding, which she didn't. He was even making offhand remarks about the baby. On their way back from the Slash J, he murmured something about needing to get a steadier job in a few months. He didn't say it was about the baby, but what else could it have been about? Lucy let it go, but she hadn't been able to stop thinking about it since he said it. She wasn't sure where it was coming from. She knew better, however, than to question it.
"No plans," Lucy said. "We've been married a year, and I don't think we've ever been on a date."
"How very Jane Austen of you," Sadie said.
"Actually, it was really more of a harlequin."
"So, the unwritten Austen epilogues, then."
Lucy laughed again. Inexplicably, she thought of Jane, and how if Jane had been standing there, she would have found a way to liken Lucy and Dally to Romeo and Juliet despite the fact that they had nothing in common. Jane would have said that it was a pity that Lucy had never been on a proper date. Of course she would have. The only reason she wasn't standing there with the other girls was because she was busy on a date with Soda … except …
"Sadie?" Lucy asked.
"Yeah?"
"Isn't Soda working really late tonight? I could've sworn he said something when I was at your house yesterday."
"He is. Why?"
"Nothing. Just wondering why Jane lied to me."
In not two hours' time, Lucy would find out why Jane lied to her and what happened while she was there. In not two hours' time, that peace she felt in her apartment above Great Books would begin to shake. But there was no way she could have known. The girls brushed Jane's deception off as just "Jane being Jane," and that was, they figured, the end of it.
Not two hours after discovering Jane's fib, Lucy unlocked the door at Great Books to find someone sitting at the counter, hiding behind a copy of Crime and Punishment. She recognized the legs and shoes immediately. She didn't see them all the time, but each time she did, they were the same.
"Violet?"
"Ya know, I said I wouldn't bother readin' this book, seein' as I can't pronounce this fucker's name," Violet said, still hiding her face behind the book. "But the more I get into it, the more I get it. Crime and Punishment. Don't sound half bad to me."
Instantly, Lucy sensed that something was wrong. Violet typically only dropped by to deliver bad news, and from what she could tell, Dally wasn't upstairs. Her heart slowly dropped into her knees as she gradually made her way over to the counter where Violet sat.
"I never figured you for Dostoevsky," Lucy said, trying to keep the tone as light as she could, even though she knew it would piss Violet right off.
"If you're tryin' to say the guy's name out loud so I learn how to pronounce it, better stop now. I'm not fallin' for that bullshit."
Lucy bit her lip in embarrassment. That was exactly what she was trying to do.
"Violet," Lucy said. "What're you doin' here?"
"Came to see Dally. Knew he wouldn't be home yet. Thought I'd wait for him."
"Yeah, but why did you need to see Dally?"
In what felt like a flash, Violet slammed the book pages-down on the counter and looked Lucy square in the eye. If Lucy had been more squeamish, she would have gasped.
"Needed to tell him that split lips are fashionable this fall," Violet said. "I'm real in."
If it had only been a split lip, Lucy wouldn't have felt all that pain surging through her body. Violet's lip was certainly bloodied, but so was her nose. It may have been broken, what with all the bruising around it and around her eyes. Her cheeks had red streaks on them, and Lucy couldn't tell if it was her blood or someone else's. The longer she looked, the more she wanted to vomit. A year ago, she wouldn't have felt sick to look at Violet like that. It was all part of living in the neighborhood. Now, she wanted to faint. Maybe what her mother kept saying was true: having kids makes you tougher and softer at the same time.
"Violet!" Lucy said in one of those motherly whisper-shouts she used to hate so much. "What happened to you?"
"'F I told you I walked into a door, would you believe me?"
"I would if you told me that the door led to a garbage disposal."
"That's funny. I'd laugh if it didn't hurt so fuckin' bad."
"Violet, what happened? Did your father do this to you?"
Violet snorted, as though Lucy's question had been childishly stupid. Lucy bristled. It no longer seemed appropriate to use childish and stupid as synonyms.
"Course not," Violet said. "I don't even remember the last time I saw him. Plus, I could take him."
Lucy nodded, but there was pain in her heart, too. Maybe Dally was right. Maybe Violet really didn't remember that night in the kitchen when Violet was eight years old. Of course, Lucy knew it wasn't her place to remind her. She looked around for anything to put on her face … anything to stop the swelling and the bleeding. She must have looked for two whole minutes before realizing they were in the store, not the apartment, and they should probably go up there to take care of things.
As Lucy helped Violet up the stairs, Violet mentioned something about bleeding all over that book and how nobody was going to want to buy it now.
"Unless they're out for my blood," she added. "In that case, it'd be a pretty good trick."
"I'll pay for the book," Lucy said as she unlocked the apartment door. Violet sat right down on the shoddy armchair Dally had lifted from a junkyard a few months earlier, and Lucy went straight for the bathroom to get a wet washcloth. It was something, she thought. As she handed the rag to Violet, she asked her again what happened.
"I got into a fight," Violet said.
"You know what I mean," Lucy pressed. "What were the circumstances?"
"Well, ya know what they say. Girls can be cruel."
"Another girl did this to you?"
"Don't look so surprised, Betty Friedan. Broads can get college educated and beat up by each other all on the same day. Look at us."
"Where were you when it happened? How did it happen?"
Violet was going to say something, but just like on cue, Dally turned his key in the door and walked into the room. Initially, he didn't even see Violet in the armchair. He just started talking and asking questions.
"Why's there a bloody book downstairs?" he asked. "Did ya think it'd make a good shield or somethin'?"
"A book that thick probably could," Violet said.
The sound of his sister's voice was jarring. The blood on his sister's face was even more jarring. Blood was usually a welcome sight for Dally. It reminded him that he was still alive, but at any moment, he could still die. Both thoughts had always been comforting, at best. But he never had learned to tolerate the sight of blood on or anywhere near Violet. It was too familiar.
"What the fuck happened to you?"
"What comforting words," Violet said. "At least your wife got me this washcloth. By the way, it'd be real nice if the two of you stopped treatin' me like I can't fight my own battles."
"Ya can't fight 'em if ya get beat up like that. Thought you were a better fighter than that."
"I'm fine. You should see the other broad."
"A broad did this to you?"
"You been hangin' around Little Miss too long. You used to know a girl can deck ya just as good as a guy."
"I ain't … look, I wanna know who did this to you, OK?"
"Why does it matter to you? You never hit girls."
"I don't." His eyes flickered over to Lucy, who was wondering how in the world she ended up in a situation like this. "But she can."
"Me?" It wasn't that Lucy was unwilling. Violet was family now, and it seemed only right to beat the piss out of people for family. The problem was that the baby inside of her was family, too, and she didn't want to do anything that might hurt it. Of course, she'd have to keep quiet about that. Before Lucy could say anything, Violet hissed with painful laughter. It sounded like she had a broken rib. Lucy flinched.
"She ain't gonna want to fight the broad when she finds out who she was," Violet said.
"You can't pawn this off on Sadie," Lucy said. "I was with her until I got home."
"I ain't gonna pawn it off on Sadie Curtis. Never would have been Sadie Curtis to begin with. She's one of them no-bull girls."
"Stop draggin' us along, V," Dally said.
"Right. Well, you know. I never was able to solve my differences with Jane Randle. Guess she wasn't able to solve her differences with me, either."
Lucy's eyes nearly bugged out of her head. She knew Jane wasn't an innocent – not completely, anyway. She'd gotten into quite the brawl in the high-school parking lot when she was only in the eighth grade. She also knew that Violet and Jane had never managed to get along, but she never figured Jane would jump Violet.
Then again, it would explain why Jane had lied to her earlier that day.
Lucy and Dally told Violet to stay in the apartment while they went to the Curtis place – figure out what was really going on with Jane. When she asked what the hell she was supposed to do in there, Dally threw a Robert Browning anthology at her, straight from the pile on the floor.
"Learn somethin'," he said. "If you can't fight with your fists, maybe you can start poisoning people."
They were out the door, and Lucy asked Dally how he knew that Browning wrote a lot about women who poisoned people.
"C'mon, Bennet," he said. "Ya can't just leave books around for a guy to trip on in the middle of the night and not expect him to start readin' a few pages here an' there. Can ya?"
If the guy was Dallas Winston, she figured it was a safe bet he'd never crack one of her books. Then, of course, she thought back to that stunt he pulled with Villette the night after she first told him she loved him. She really ought to stop underestimating him.
On their way to the Curtis place, Lucy wondered how she'd manage not to lunge for Jane's throat the minute she saw her. She'd lied to her about going out with Soda after school. She'd lied to all of them. Was she always planning to go jump Violet? How did she even know where to find her? Lucy didn't even know where Violet worked, and she was her sister-in-law. If Lucy didn't know, it seemed hard to believe Jane could have figured it out. And what use did Jane have to jump Violet, anyway? Jane could be as violent as Steve when she wanted to be, but it was never without cause. Violet must have …
Lucy caught a glimpse of Dally in her periphery, and she shut off those thoughts. She knew Dally wouldn't like it if she accused Violet of asking for a fight. Plus, she didn't really believe that anyone ever asked for a fight. Notoriously, of course, Violet Winston was a provocateur, but that didn't mean she deserved to bleed in her own land of counterpane – particularly when the counterpane was Lucy's.
Ponyboy let them into the house. Darry was working late, Sadie was out with Johnny, and Soda had left the DX early to take care of Jane. Pony told them that Soda and Jane were in the bathroom, but he hadn't needed to specify. Anyone could have heard Jane whimpering and hissing in pain from there. She took off down the hall and stopped at the bathroom door. This time, she really did gasp.
When Violet said that they ought to see the other broad, she wasn't just making a cute joke. Jane was almost unrecognizable. Where Violet's eyes were purple, Jane's were just plain black. Lucy could tell that Violet had managed to yank out a few clumps of Jane's hair. Her lip was split deeper than Violet's, and there was a gash on Jane's forehead that Lucy thought she'd never see outside of a rubber Halloween mask. It could have been the hormones—it had to be, as Lucy was usually much sturdier than this—but she felt like she could pass out. Dally must have sensed it, since from behind her, she felt his arms reach under her arms and hold her up. That was something she'd have to think about later. In the moment, she could only think about Jane. She was no longer angry that Jane had lied to her. All she cared about was that Jane would be OK.
"Jane?"
Slowly (Her neck was in quite a lot of pain, of course), she turned to look at Lucy. She winced, like she anticipated that age-old Bennet wrath.
"Hey, Lucy," she said. "What's new with you?"
Lucy, Dally, Soda, and Jane took their places in the living room, trying to put some sort of rhyme or reason to what had happened between Jane and Violet. Ponyboy dismissed himself to go read the book that Carrie had recently let him borrow, which saved Soda a lot of trouble. He was going to have to tell Pony to beat it, and he wasn't up for being the bad cop that night. Jane was already pissed at him for stinging her with the rubbing alcohol. He didn't need his kid brother mad at him, too. When he and Jane sat on the couch to face Lucy and Dally (both of whom insisted on standing the entire time), he grabbed her hand for support, but it wasn't any use. Every part of Jane's body hurt too much.
"I don't even know where to start," Lucy said.
"What makes you think you're the one who's gotta start it?" Dally asked.
"Well, Jane's my friend, and Violet's my sister-in-law. I feel sort of caught in the middle."
"Wait a minute," Soda said. "Jane. You didn't tell me the other girl was Violet Winston." He turned to Dally.
"How is your sister, Dally?"
The worst part was that he was being genuine.
"Pleasantries can be dispensed later," Lucy said.
"Or never at all," Jane added. "I think I'd like that."
Lucy sighed. She didn't know why she'd placed herself in the middle of this one, but she felt the need to fight for someone – to protect whomever she could. It didn't make sense; yet it coursed through her veins like it had always been there.
"Jane," Lucy tried again. "What happened? Starting with why you lied to all of us after school today. We knew you weren't going out with Soda. Where were you going?"
Jane sighed. She pointed behind Lucy to a corner in the living room. Lucy furrowed her brow in confusion, but Dally, who understood Jane's cue immediately, walked over to a paper bag in the corner and picked it up.
"Open it," Jane said.
Dally reached into the bag and pulled out a pale pink onesie. He frowned at it and then frowned at Jane. While he frowned, Soda nearly had a laugh. The frown was so pronounced; it felt like Dally was fighting some kind of smile.
"The fuck is this?"
"It's for the baby," Jane said. "I've been savin' money to get you something nice to put her in when she comes home from the hospital. I know you don't know if she's gonna be a girl. I just gotta feeling."
"Savin' money or stealin' it?"
"They're kinda one and the same for me."
Lucy closed her eyes and tried not to look annoyed. She also tried not to look relieved. Even if Jane had instigated the fight, at least it wasn't what she set out to do. That onesie, annoying as it was, was evidence enough.
"I knew it'd bug you if you knew I was buyin' something for the baby," Jane said. "So I said I was goin' out with Soda. Figured you'd believe me."
"It doesn't matter what you were trying to do," Lucy said. "What matters is why you look like you knocked like hell on death's door, and he almost let you in before changing his mind at the last second."
Jane tipped her head back on the couch, wincing in pain. It sounded like she had a broken rib, too. Soda got up, mumbling something about ice, as though it would help. Lucy thought Jane ought to go to a hospital, but she could hear Steve complaining about the bills (not to mention the trouble they could get in with the cops) even when he wasn't there. Either way, Lucy still didn't know whether or not she should be angry with Jane. It seemed like she had to hate anyone who'd beat the tar out of her husband's sister, especially when her husband's sister grew up the way she did (and Jane wasn't ignorant to that). Then again, Jane had been her friend for much longer than she'd even known Violet, and it had to be her responsibility to hate anyone who beat up her friend. And then again, life was unfair, and anyone could get jumped anywhere, any time. It didn't matter how you grew up or how you were connected to Lucy Bennet, as much as Lucy wished that were the case.
"I ran into Violet on the way out of the store," Jane said. "We never got along. I was gonna ignore her."
"Then what?" Dally asked, surprising everyone in the room. "You thought it'd be a good idea to jump her just 'cause she don't like you?"
"Of course not. I'd never go after somebody unless they went after me first."
"You ain't worth V's time."
"Well, looks like you're wrong about that. I walked past her. I said hello, since I know how to be a little bit polite. Then she called me a bottle blonde …"
"Y'are a bottle blonde. You can't tell me ya threw the first punch at my sister for statin' the facts."
It was the strangest and most inappropriate timing, but as Lucy watched Dally push all these questions on Jane, she felt her heart begin to flutter. She hated that he was interrogating one of her best friends like she was a murderer, of course. Nonetheless, the way he was trying to defend his sister … maybe he had it in him to be a decent father, after all, and not just because he was dodging the draft. Later, she'd come to realize that was probably the first time she felt the baby move.
"There's no way you only said hello," Lucy said. "I know you, Jane."
Jane grumbled something that Lucy couldn't quite hear. Then, she admitted that she'd called Violet a number of names before finally throwing the first punch. Lucy almost vomited when she heard some of the words Jane said the two had exchanged.
"It was like she was lettin' go of years' worth of shit between us," Jane said. "Kept swearin' at me, like the sight of me was too much for her to handle. It didn't make any sense."
Dally didn't say anything, mostly because it made a lot of sense to him. He knew Violet fairly well (not as well as he would have liked, considering he was her brother), and she was like him. It wasn't that the Winston kids couldn't feel. It was that they felt everything. They felt everything as deeply as bawl babies like Soda and poets like Pony. But where guys like Sodapop and Ponyboy were taught that it was OK to feel whatever they needed to, the Winston kids learned how to get tough and shut up. Nobody cared how they felt. They could be tough and quiet until they had no choice but to blow up. The sight of Jane's face was enough to do it for Violet. It made perfect sense to Dally. Unfortunately, he was the only person in the world who saw where she must have been coming from.
"She said enough shit about me, so I felt it was within my rights to just fuckin' deck her," Jane said. "She decked me back. Harder. But you can see that."
"You started the fight?" Lucy asked. She wasn't necessarily surprised. She just wanted to be sure before she did what she knew was bound to piss off her husband.
"I threw the first punch," Jane said. "But Violet started the fight."
"Ya could've walked away," Dally said.
"And that's what you would have done?"
Dally made no reply. He didn't need to. Despite the fact that he hadn't been hauled into the station since his (legal) wedding day, he still hadn't turned down a good chance to hit a guy who really deserved it. And he was sure that Violet had deserved Jane's fists in her face. That didn't mean he needed to hear about it. He was quickly returning to the way it felt to get his head slammed into the kitchen counter when he was ten years old … returning to the way Violet had screamed, paralyzed, and unaware of what to do to help him.
Happy fuckin' birthday to me, he thought.
"Tell ya what," Jane said. "I might've started that fight, but your sister fuckin' finished it."
Lucy felt her heart sink. On the one hand, she wanted to support Violet. Though she didn't know the whole story, she knew that Jane could be a little snippy and a little gossipy, which was bound to bother somebody like Violet Winston, whose privacy was all too important to her. Jane had probably been pretty awful to Violet when they were little kids, and Violet probably had no healthy way of dealing with those memories. She wanted to help Violet if she could, although something told her Violet wouldn't be so gracious to that offer.
But then, there was Jane. She was much worse off than Violet, and Violet looked terrible when Lucy found her in the store. According to Sadie, Jane wasn't the same girl now that she was when they were young kids. She was much sweeter and considerate now – the kind of girl who snuck out to buy your unborn baby a onesie out of the goodness of her heart. There was certain darkness in Jane, which Lucy had spotted from the beginning. Regardless, she didn't deserve to be Violet Winston's punching bag, no matter how much trauma Violet had gone through and blamed Jane for instigating. After gazing upon her black eyes one more time, Lucy rushed to the couch and took her seat next to Jane. She put her hand on her knee and whispered something kind right to her.
Dally felt a month's worth of bottled-up rage begin to flood through his body. Maybe he should have been more understanding. Jane and Lucy had been friends since Lucy moved to Tulsa back in '62. She was inclined to sympathize with her friend. At the time, of course, that wasn't how Dally saw it. When he looked at Lucy sit next to Jane on that couch, as though Jane was completely blameless, he could only think of one thing: His wife had chosen her loyalty, and it wasn't to his – to their – family.
"Are you fuckin' kidding me?" he asked.
"What are you talking about?"
"You're takin' Jane's side. V's up in our apartment with bloody rags all around her after she came to us lookin' for help, and you're takin' Jane's side."
Jane tried to make herself smaller on the couch. It didn't work. She hadn't even thought about what it would mean for the gang if she fought with Violet Winston. Just as it had been taboo for Jane to start dating Sodapop, it was even more taboo for one of the gang's sisters to beat the hell out of another one of their sisters. She was just so in the moment … so filled with anger. It was hard to curb something like that. Jane would have apologized right to Dally, but it didn't make a difference. A rift was coming, and she had caused it when she threw the first punch. She felt kind of like that guy who shot the Archduke whatever – the one she'd recently learned about in her history class for the fourth time.
"I'm not taking anybody's side," Lucy tried to explain. "I just don't know why I'd be angry with Jane, since she's not the one who started to go after Violet."
"It doesn't fuckin' matter who goes after V or who goes after Jane. It matters that you'd take your friend's side when the other chick layin' in bed and suffering is my sister. Ya pick some girl over your own family."
"Family doesn't have anything to do with it," Lucy said. "If Violet was egging Jane on, then she was egging Jane on. It's plain. It's simple. It's almost a bagel."
"That don't mean Jane gets to beat the shit out of her."
"And you would have done something different?"
Dally could hardly even see Lucy. A reddish hue was coloring his entire field of vision. The feeling was confusing. He'd been angry in front of Lucy before. She'd stood by and waited for him to come out of it – well, as much out of it as he could, after years of learning to turn everything into anger. Yet, he'd never been precisely angry with Lucy before.
"It doesn't fuckin' matter what I would've done!" He was yelling now, and it would have scared Lucy if she weren't in a fighting mood herself. "My sister is upstairs in our apartment, bleedin' and dealin' with broken ribs because of her!"
"And if you couldn't tell, Jane is much worse off. Violet provoked her. What was she supposed to do?"
"She could've walked away."
"You never would have done that. You would have beaten the shit out of the person who egged you on, and you know it. It's exactly what you would have told Violet to do, too."
Dally wanted to say that it made a difference when the one getting beat up was Violet. She'd been through enough beating up in her life, and every time he tried to protect her … every time he tried to teach her to fight … he failed. Violet's bleeding lip and broken ribs were a long time coming, and he couldn't stand to look at them. The more he looked at her like that, the more he remembered being ten years old and hopping a Greyhound he didn't even know how to hop.
"My sister can't move!" he yelled. "She don't know how to take care of herself. She thinks she do, but she don't. She never fuckin' told me she … And I wasn't …"
Lucy took a deep breath. Suddenly, she understood why Dally was so upset, but she also understood that he was never going to own up to it. For his sake, she'd have to sit there and endure it until he was ready to come around. Perhaps it wasn't the boldest choice, but she was nineteen, she'd never loved anyone before him, and it felt like the only choice.
"You ain't gotta be a bitch about it," he said. "Half an hour ago, you were sick to death about her, an' now, it's like she don't even exist. It's like she ain't even my …"
His voice trailed off again. Why was the word sister getting more and more difficult to use?
"You ain't gotta stop feelin' bad for V just 'cause you an' your bitch friends think it's fun to beat up on her," Dally said. There. That was it. That was the kill, and he'd gone it for it, all right.
Lucy didn't say anything. It wasn't worth it. She knew he wasn't talking to her – not precisely. She merely blinked, thinking that if she blinked enough or in the right pattern, Dally would recognize her. He was still in a fog … still seeing red in the midst of all the violet. She was going to call him back to her, but she wasn't quick enough.
Soda ran back out into the living room from the kitchen. He was carrying one of those ice packs, initially for Jane, but as he slammed Dally against the front door, he used the ice on him. Dally didn't flinch. He was still stuck on the kitchen floor.
"Get the hell out of my house," Soda said. "If you're gonna talk like that, you're gonna get the hell out of my house. I don't care if you beat the shit out of me. You're gonna get the hell out of my house."
Lucy tried to stand up to defend her husband – to tell Soda that he wasn't really in the moment – but Soda's words quickly forced back into her seat.
"You don't talk to my sister that way."
At the time, Sodapop hadn't actually heard what he said. It felt as natural as talking about Sadie.
Finally, Lucy stood up and put her hand on Soda's shoulder, pulling him away so that she could get to Dally.
"Take that ice over to Jane," Lucy said, surprised by the calmness in her voice. "She needs it more over there than we do over here."
Soda stepped away from Dally and looked at Lucy, confused as to why she didn't seem more upset. He knew Lucy, and she never tolerated the word bitch. Why would she let her own husband get away with using that word, let alone use it against her?
"Are you sure you're OK?" he asked.
"No," Lucy said. "But I do know I can take it from here."
She looked at Dally, who was beginning to frown. He must have been standing up and making his way for the door in that moment. Lucy held her breath and waited for him to come to. He usually came to once he remembered how he stumbled past Violet and went for the door.
"Hey, Bennet?" he asked.
"We're leaving," she said. Before she could head out the door, she turned to Jane. She wasn't sure what to say – she didn't know how she could manage to sympathize with both Jane and Violet – so she just nodded at her and said, "Take care of yourself, Jane."
Jane shot Lucy a sad smile, and out the door she went.
They let Violet stay the night. She'd managed to take care of her own injuries and insisted she'd be better, though not pretty, by the morning. She took the bed, and Lucy and Dally took the shop downstairs. In the haze of the moon outside and the one dimming light bulb swinging from a rope in the middle of the shop, they fought.
Of course, they weren't really fighting. Lucy was insisting that he start to talk more about that night in the kitchen when he was ten years old, considering the flashbacks were getting longer, more intense, and more frequent recently. Dally was insisting right back that he didn't need to talk about it. Talking about it, he was sure, would only make it worse.
"Dally," Lucy said. "If you're really gonna stick around … if you're really gonna try to be a father …"
"Then what? I'm gonna have to think about my old man?"
"Of course. We've talked about projection before. I know you remember."
He frowned. Of course he remembered. He remembered everything Bennet ever said to him, both because he almost loved the sound of her voice and because he almost thought everything she had to say was real fascinating. It would have been easier not to remember. It would have been easier not to remember anything. He thought of Violet, sleeping in his bed upstairs, and envied her ability to repress.
"You think I'm gonna treat my kid the way my old man treated me? 'S that what you think, Bennet?"
"No, not exactly."
"Then what is it?"
Lucy took a deep breath. She hated being honest with him. It wasn't that she feared what he would say or do in the face of her honesty. No matter what he did or said, she still wasn't afraid of Dallas Winston. She was afraid of feeling vulnerable. She didn't like to be soft because once you were soft in front of somebody, there was no recovery. They'd always know you as the girl who went soft and, therefore, could get weak – could get hurt. She looked right at Dally and said what she needed to. For as much as she hated to be vulnerable, she really hated to be chicken.
"I don't want you to ignore my baby because you're afraid of turning into your father," Lucy said. "I know you wouldn't … I know you wouldn't hurt it."
"How do you know that? Huh?"
She knew it because of the way he'd jump to defend Violet and Johnny, or even Pony and Lilly if they really needed it. She knew it because of how gentle his kisses on her lips had become since they learned that she was pregnant. She knew it because she knew him. She knew him better than anyone ever had; though at times, she worried she was only well acquainted with half of him. But she didn't give any of those answers. They were saccharine, and Dally didn't do saccharine.
"You gotta wake up and figure it out for yourself," Lucy said.
"Figure what out?"
"That you're not a bad guy, but you're not a good guy, either. You're really not much of a guy."
"Well, I know I ain't a broad."
"That's not what I mean."
"Then what do you mean?"
"I mean you're not a guy. You're a man."
They stopped. Dally thought back to a conversation he'd had with Lucy in the spring, when she said that the world wasn't made up of good guys and bad guys – just guys and maybe a few men. He never quite figured out what she meant by that, but he never assumed he was one of the men. Never once.
"Don't ask me what makes a man," Lucy said. "I don't know if I can put it into words."
"You could put fuckin' classical music into words."
"That's different. People use words to describe classical music all the time. I don't think there's any one way to describe, you know, being a man. I just know you're one of them. Only …"
Her voice trailed off. It didn't matter how long she'd been married to him or that he'd never done anything to hurt her – not really. Being vulnerable was still damn near impossible. She'd spent her whole life building walls around her. She couldn't be expecting to tear them all down overnight. It was a miracle that Sadie Curtis had found her way over one of those walls. It was an even bigger miracle that Dallas Winston was scaling another one.
"What?" Dally asked.
Lucy didn't overthink it. She just spat it all out … everything she had been thinking and feeling since the first night they spent together over a year earlier.
"Only a man kisses his wife after she's been hurling her guts out," she said. "Only a man takes the fall and goes to jail for his buddy and his kid sister. Only a man sticks around to try to raise a baby he's not ready for."
Dally almost winced at the sound of that one. For a moment or two, he'd managed to forget that Lucy was about four months out from pushing out a baby that was half Winston. He'd managed to forget that he would, inevitably, be a terrible father, even if he did stick around. After the way he'd yelled at Violet for not defending herself well enough in the fight with Jane, when even he knew that wasn't how you were supposed to play it, he knew he wasn't capable of looking after something as small as a baby. What example did he have to follow, anyway?
"Only a man leaves his wife's book open to a very specific page the morning after she tells him she loves him," Lucy said, careful not to make eye contact.
For the first time in, perhaps, his entire laugh, Dally could feel himself start to get embarrassed. It had been months since that night he came home drunk and that early morning he rifled through that book, trying to find the quote that Dr. Bennet had told him about back when they were still living with Lucy's folks. He figured she'd never bring it up – not after it had been this long. Part of him wanted to run out of the shop and never come back. Part of him was thrilled she was finally saying something. At the time, he wasn't sure which part of him was bigger and louder.
"Yeah," she said. "I saw that."
"It was kinda the point," Dally said. "Left it there for you to find. Thought I was bein' clever."
"You were being clever. I'm just clever, too."
"No shit."
"I'm still not gonna make you say it."
"I'm still not gonna say it."
"But … I know you mean it."
He exhaled loudly, not quite annoyed with Lucy but not quite happy with her, either. Wasn't it enough for him to know, privately, that he loved her? If he said something, she'd have expectations. Worse, they'd be expectations he could never meet. Yes, he knew he loved her. Maybe he'd always known. But if she was expecting him to show her that he loved her the way that Sodapop Curtis showed Jane Randle that he loved her, she would have to dream on.
"Yeah," Lucy said. "We've been over this."
They were quiet for both what felt like and what was a very long time. After a while, Lucy stepped closer to Dally. She didn't try to touch him, as she knew he wasn't ready for that. But, she thought, there was no harm in trying. There was no harm in trying to teach him to get used to it.
"'M sorry I said that, by the way," Dally said.
Lucy raised her eyebrows. How could he…?
Off her look, Dally shook his head once and corrected himself.
"Not that. I never even said that. I mean I'm sorry I called you a bitch. You ain't."
"I know what I am," Lucy said. "And you didn't call me a bitch. You told me I didn't have to act like a bitch. It's different."
"Whadda they call that? What you just did?"
"What did I do?"
"Picked apart the words. Made 'em say what you wanted to say."
"Semantics."
"Fuck it. You said it before. I ain't ever gonna remember."
Lucy almost smiled. She knew he hadn't been talking to her back at the Curtis place – not really. Admittedly, she was still afraid he was never going to learn how to move on. She was still afraid he was never going to learn how not to project his parents onto her and onto their kid. Maybe he'd work things out (as much as a guy like Dally could work things out). That would be all right. Maybe he'd get fed up trying to work things out and leave them without a word. That would be all right, too (eventually). Anything was better than the image of finding her own kid on the kitchen floor.
But if she wasn't being impartial (and she didn't want to be impartial – not when it was Dally, not when it was her baby), she knew she wanted him figure it out while he stayed. She didn't even think he was incapable. Unlike everybody in the world before her, Lucy Bennet saw Dallas Winston for the mess he was and, without question, knew he was smart enough to figure himself out. She'd be there to help him if he asked, but he could figure it out on his own.
"Either way," he said. "I'm sorry, Bennet. I wasn't … I wasn't talkin' to you. I was lookin' at you, but …"
"I know," Lucy said. "I'm not happy about it, and I don't blame Soda for sicking himself on you like that."
Dally looked down at the ground. He wasn't sure why, but he had anticipated that Lucy wouldn't bring up what happened with Soda. Why had he let the kid pin him to the wall like that? He could have sent him through the plaster if he'd been trying, but he just stood there and let himself get pummeled – by Sodapop Curtis. He knew the kid could play tough every now and then, but never with him. Why did he keep letting Soda get the best of him? Why, out of all the guys he knew, was he letting Soda push him around?
He put a stop to those thoughts. Perhaps he'd have them on another day, though he doubted it.
"You shouldn't have said what you said," Lucy continued. "Doesn't really matter how you said it. And if you talk to me like that again, for real, I'm not going to be half as graceful about it as I am now."
Dally just stood there, wondering how in the world he was processing Bennet's words like they were a real threat. Somewhere in the back of his mind (and not too far back), he knew that she really meant it. And he couldn't deal with the thought of Lucy packing up and leaving him. He couldn't deal with the thought of losing her because he loved her. He knew it now. Hell, he'd always known it.
"I know," he said. "Y'always mean business."
"But you gotta stop trying to forget you've been through the ringer. You gotta figure out why you blame yourself for Violet going through the ringer. I want you around as long as you want to be around. But I don't want it to be bullshit. You understand?"
Dally didn't say anything. He understood, but he wasn't sure he was in the position to make a promise. He'd never quite done that before, and he didn't think he knew how. Then again, a year ago, he'd vowed to stand by Lucy Bennet in sickness and in health, and he'd done that. Hadn't he?
"Well," Lucy said. "Happy birthday, I guess."
And because Dally didn't know what else to do, he laughed. When you're exhausted, hysterical, and trying to come to terms with the night you let your eight-year-old sister down, sometimes, laughing is all you can manage.
UGH, none of that was easy. It was one of those, "Eh, the recipe doesn't call for cinnamon, but I guess I'll throw some in, anyway" kind of chapters. Chapter eleven will be better (and more genuinely eventful/more in character). Hoping to have it posted by April 24 for reasons.
I'm beginning the plans for the next multi-chap fic in the 'A&A' universe. It's a tonal departure, largely, but my style won't shift too dramatically. I'm not revealing the title, but I'll drop it in the future of this particular story.
Hinton owns The Outsiders. Sadie's joke about naming the baby "Stradlater" is a reference to The Catcher in the Rye, which (as revealed in "I'll Be Your Mirror") is the first book Lucy and Sadie bond over. I don't own that book, but it was the first book I ever received as a Christmas gift when I was ten months old. I also allude to Robert Louis Stevenson's poem, "The Land of Counterpane," which … occasionally, I'm amazed that the same guy who wrote this poem also wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. That, of course, is in the public domain.