On April 24, 1967, Lucy Bennet turned her last final exam of her first year in college. She was shocked she managed to sit through a three-hour exam when she was nine months pregnant, but it was an exam in literary theory, the part of literature she recently found out she liked best. She refused to miss it, even if her professor had been willing to grant her an exemption.
"I won't do that, Dad," Lucy said a few nights before the exam. "People are mad enough already that the administration let your own daughter take your class. If they found out you were going to exempt your daughter on account of her being ready to give birth, they'd riot."
"Don't joke about riots," Dr. Bennet said. "And don't be a martyr."
"I'm not being a martyr. I'm saving your ass."
"You're right. You're not being a martyr. A martyr isn't that selfish."
Lucy rolled her eyes. If she hadn't been so heavily pregnant, she probably would have quipped back. For past month, she'd been too exhausted to do very much. She was just tired of being pregnant and wanted the thing out of her already. It wasn't that she was particularly anxious to start raising it (She was anxious, but anxious like terrified). It was that she couldn't stand to lug around her body and another body inside of it for much longer.
At least Dally had been a little help – more help than any of the others could have predicted eight months earlier. He cleaned up around the apartment when Lucy felt like she couldn't move. He was still working; still giving every penny he earned right to his wife. He wasn't particularly itching to be a father, but he hadn't even looked toward the door since the night they patched up Violet.
In fact, he'd been spending quite a bit of time with Violet since that night she and Jane Randle got into it. The old man was nowhere to be found, so it didn't matter whether or not Dally hung around the old house. At first, he didn't want to go anywhere near it, but Lucy told him it was probably good for him to really see and spend some time in that kitchen. When he did, he felt like he could be sick, and Violet noticed. She asked him what the fuck was wrong with him, and though he almost told her the truth, he figured it was better to keep it from her. If she didn't remember that night, it was a blessing. She was better off not knowing that when she was eight years old, her brother found out that their old man's friends were beating up on her, and her old man nearly killed her brother for saying something. Violet was already messed up enough. He didn't need to add to it. Later, he told Lucy about his decision to keep quiet, and she told him it was the right call to make. He never would have said anything to Lucy, of course, but he was almost happy she approved.
He wasn't working past that night yet, but he was working to accept the fact that it had happened. Most importantly, he was coming around to the notion that he hadn't failed to defend Violet. Tough and angry as he already was, he was only ten years old. There was nothing much more he could have done. He was ten years old, only about five feet tall, and he hadn't learned to pummel a guy yet. In New York, he learned how to pummel plenty of guys (He could do far worse than just pummel 'em by the time he was fourteen.), but he didn't think he could ever really confront the old man again. One night, he asked Lucy if she thought that was a chickenshit thing to think. She shook her head.
"There's a fine line between chickenshit and smart," she said. "Closer I get to having this baby, clearer it seems to me."
He didn't quite understand what Lucy was talking about, but maybe one day he would. In truth, he gave a few damns about working through his memories of that night. If he didn't, then Lucy would probably kick him out, and that was worse than leaving of his own accord. Not only would it mean he lost, but also, it would mean begging for his room at Buck's back, having to deal with Buck haranguing him about marrying broads who thought they were tough enough to punch him, and listening to country music every night. That was another good thing about living with Lucy. She was always listening to Motown (in honor of the place she liked to call home, though she wasn't from there at all). Motown stood for something. Hank Williams stood for less.
But on April 24, 1967, Dally was down at the Slash J while Lucy was sitting with Sadie in the Curtis family living room. In truth, Sadie was sitting, and Lucy was pacing up and down the floor, trying to shake the baby out. According to her doctor, she wasn't due for another two days (maybe even three). That didn't change her desperation to just not be pregnant anymore. She didn't care that once she stopped being pregnant, she had to start being a mother. It was too much to lug around all that extra weight without being able to take a break. The sooner it was over, the better.
"Who's allowed in the room with you when you have the baby?" Sadie asked. "I was awful little when Pony was born. I don't remember anything, 'cept how Soda cried for a day and a half 'cause he wanted another sister."
"Really?"
"Oh, yeah. We've never told Pony about it. Figure he'd get pissy. But I remember. He wanted another sister, and he wanted to call her, 'Sadie Two.'"
"That's adorable. I almost feel sorry he never got one."
"No. He did."
Lucy stopped her pacing just to smile at Sadie. A few days after Soda slipped up and referred to Lucy as his sister while yelling at Dally, he realized what he'd said. The strange part was that he apologized to Lucy for it, worried it had made her uncomfortable, somehow. She just laughed and said she was glad he said it.
"One thing's for sure," Lucy said. "Whatever comes out of me in the next few days is going to be an only child. I don't think I can do this pregnant thing again."
"Is it really as bad as it looks?" Sadie asked. "I don't really remember when Mom was pregnant. I remember when I turned fourteen, and she was real worried I was gonna start sneakin' out with boys, she told me that there was nothing worse than being pregnant in the summer. Said she stuck to any surface she sat on."
"I was brand new pregnant in the summer, so it still almost felt like my body back then. But look at me. I'm five-foot-three, I hate the way my body looks when there isn't a baby sticking out of it, and I don't think I have it in me to look after two babies at once."
"Hmm. Guess we should be glad twins don't run in your family, then."
"Your poor mother."
"No kiddin'."
Lucy started to walk faster and faster, which probably would have scared Sadie if she didn't know her so well. That was the thing about Lucy. She was always so desperate and extreme about everything. If she wanted to make that baby come out within the next five to ten minutes, she could. It was a little scary how well she could bend things to her will, but that was probably why she was the only person in the world who could have been married to Dally.
"It's amazing I can only walk this fast," Lucy said. "You know I can usually get from one end of this room to the next in about five seconds. I'm lucky if it takes me a minute both ways these days."
"So, let me get this straight. You'd rather be in the worst pain of your whole life than limp around with a baby inside you?"
"Yeah. Giving birth is a matter of hours."
"Sometimes days."
"Days are still shorter than nine months."
"You can break anything up into hours. Isn't nine months just a number of hours, too?"
"Don't argue semantics with me, Sadie. I can argue semantics, but you cannot argue them back. These are the rules."
"Created by whom?"
"Meem."
"Meem?"
"Yeah. I always thought we needed a different answer for whom when the answer is me."
"That's it. You ain't allowed to have doubts anymore. On that observation alone, you're gonna be a great mom."
Lucy narrowed her eyes at Sadie, and Sadie just laughed and laughed. If she were feeling up to a real conversation, she would have told Sadie that for as much as she wanted to get this baby out of her, she wasn't exactly thrilled to have to take it home and raise it. And it wasn't that she wasn't looking forward to meeting the baby, naming it, and being its mother. She was just afraid of how everything was going to change once there was a real baby in the mix. In that moment, it didn't matter to her whether Dally stayed or left them. The only thing that mattered was whether or not she could be a decent mother and a decent student at the same time. Dally kept saying that was why he wasn't going anywhere. He knew Lucy's schooling was just as important to her as any baby would be. She wasn't going to give that up. He wasn't going to let her. Part of Lucy believed him. Part of her knew it was probably a bad idea to believe Dallas Winston about anything.
Then again, he was asking her about what she wanted to name the baby more and more often, so perhaps he was more interested in being a father than Lucy initially thought.
"At this point, I don't even care about the kind of mother I'll be," Lucy tried to joke, even though she cared very deeply about the kind of mother she would turn out to be. "I'm sick of feeling like I've got a basketball and a half stuck under my shirt."
As soon as the sentence came out of her mouth, Lucy felt a prickling of something wet running down her thigh. Her heart stopped. For all the complaining she was doing seconds earlier, she suddenly would have done anything to force the baby back up inside of her. She wasn't ready to meet it yet. Darry wasn't even done building the crib he'd promised her. Where was it supposed to sleep? What was Lucy supposed to do now?
"Hmm," she mused so quietly that Sadie couldn't hear her. "How … narratively convenient."
"Lucy?"
"It wasn't supposed to happen this way. The doctor said only 10% of women's water actually break before they go into labor with contractions."
Sadie, who was pink with her own set of nerves, stood up and tried to help Lucy. Lucy wasn't having it. She batted Sadie's arms away and cradled her belly instead. She looked down at it and talked to it.
"What did I tell you?" she said. "You're your father's child. Only someone related to him would wanna come into the world breaking something."
"What happens now? Do I take you to a hospital?"
"Unless you want me to give birth unsupervised on your family's carpet here. Imagine how pissed Darry would be if he walked in, and the carpet was covered in blood and baby stuff."
"Do you have to make this sound so gross?"
"It is gross. Just count your blessings you don't have to see it. Nobody's allowed in the delivery room except for me. I can't even have my mom in there. Doctor says there are rules."
"What about Dally?"
"Men aren't allowed in the delivery room. Are you crazy?"
"No, I mean, what about … Pony!"
Lucy frowned, both because she was confused and because she was pretty sure she was about to know what contractions felt like.
"Pony's been here the whole time, and you're only just now saying something?"
"Well, yeah," Sadie said. "I didn't think it mattered. Pony!"
A few seconds later, Ponyboy came stumbling out of his bedroom, dropping his book on the carpet when he saw that Lucy was clearly going into labor. She was going into labor at his house, and he could picture it now. Darry would surely ask him to be the one to clean up all the blood and the baby stuff. He bit down on both of his lips to keep from hurling right then and there.
"Lucy's having the baby right now," Sadie said. "Darry must've sensed somethin', considerin' he got a ride to work and left us the car. I'm gonna take her to the hospital."
"What do ya need me for, then?" Ponyboy asked.
"I need you to go find Dally."
"No!" Lucy objected. She didn't know why, but it felt wrong to bother him for something like this, even if it was the birth of his child. They never talked about it, so Lucy took that to mean that he didn't want to be anywhere near the hospital when it happened. Sadie, however, knew that everyone would regret it if Dally missed the minute his baby was born, so she shook her head at Lucy and kept planning with Ponyboy.
"Lucy says he's down at the Slash J. Go find him and bring him to the hospital."
"Are you sure he wants to be there? You know he's Dally, don't ya?"
"I'm sure he wants to be there."
As Lucy gritted her teeth in pain and rubbed her belly as though it would make the pain stop, she wanted to object. Sadie had no way of knowing that Dally wanted to be there when Lucy had the baby. Maybe if he were there, he'd have more of a reason to eventually leave. It didn't make sense, but it felt possible.
"Fine," Ponyboy said, almost put out to be helping. "I'll find him."
"Ponyboy."
"What, Sadie?"
"You're gonna go straight to the Slash J and tell Dally what's goin' on with Lucy and the baby. You ain't gonna stop and grab Johnny on the way, wherever he is. You ain't gonna get lost while you imagine what it'd be like if you grabbed Excalibur out of the stone."
"It would be real tuff."
"Obviously. But you ain't gonna think about it. You ain't gonna think about anything 'cept for gettin' Dally to the hospital for Lucy. You dig?"
"I dig."
"Good. We'll see you soon. Come on, Lucy."
She grabbed Lucy's hand and helped her out the door. As Lucy awkwardly piled into the front seat of the Curtis family car, she couldn't help but fear that the baby would come too fast, and Dally wouldn't make it in time to hear it be born from the lobby. Of course, it only mattered to her. If he missed the birth itself, it gave him an easier reason to leave without much guilt. He could never bond with a kid he never heard cry out for the first time. He could never bond with a kid he never met.
Lucy winced again as Sadie inadvertently drove over a speed bump. When she cried out in pain, she blamed it on her body alone, but that wasn't it. She couldn't bear the thought of Dally not showing up while she was pushing the kid out, it seemed. She hoped to God that Ponyboy would get there in time. She hoped to God that Dally would follow him back to the hospital. She hoped to God that her baby would know its father. For an inexplicable reason, it seemed like the rest of their lives hinged on what would happen that day and into that night.
When Ponyboy told Dally that Lucy was in labor, Dally was all too quick to follow him to the hospital. At the time, he wasn't really thinking about what was going to happen once Lucy pushed the baby out. All he heard was Lucy and hospital and now, and it was enough to get him moving. He didn't think. He just moved. It was a strange thing. For over a year, he thought if he stopped thinking, then he'd stop carrying around this heavy piece of his heart for Lucy Bennet. Yet, the minute he stopped thinking about her was the minute she became part of his instinct. Even he had to laugh a little at the irony.
He wasn't alone in the hospital lobby while Lucy was having the baby. She was alone (which he still thought was shitty), but he wasn't. Dr. and Mrs. Bennet were sitting across from him, whispering anxiously to each other about how they could help after the baby was born. Dr. Bennet said he could watch the baby during Lucy's Tuesday and Thursday classes once she went back to school in the fall. Mrs. Bennet said something about being glad Lucy was married for months before she got pregnant because that way, they didn't have to send her away. That way, Mrs. Bennet could tell her friends that she was going to be a grandmother. Dally rolled his eyes, and Dr. Bennet caught him. He didn't say anything. It was in that moment Dally realized he had always kind of liked Dr. Bennet. The guy knew how to play.
Sadie, Soda, and Ponyboy were in and out. Ponyboy was uneasy in hospitals, and when he started to get lightheaded, the twins took him outside to get some air. Every fifteen minutes or so, they'd come back in, and Ponyboy would worry that he'd miss the baby being born. Every ten minutes after that, the siblings were outside again, helping the kid catch his breath. It was almost amusing. Soda took better care of his mostly competent fifteen-year-old brother than Dally could ever manage to take care of his own newborn baby, he assumed.
Mrs. Bennet said that Lucy was having a really quick labor. She'd been in labor for about six hours and wasn't too far away from pushing, according to the doctor. Dally was more darkly amused by that one. Of course Lucy's labor was a quick one. It gave him less time to sit there and think about his next move.
Before he knew it, he heard one very loud word escape from somewhere in the back.
"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"
Mrs. Bennet looked like she swallowed a raw potato. Dr. Bennet bit his lip to keep from laughing. He looked at his son-in-law and said, "Looks like Lucy's almost done in there."
As Mrs. Bennet muttered something about wishing her daughter could conjure up some decorum in the delivery room, Dally listened to Lucy continue to scream. Something pulsed through him … some strange kind of need to run in there and help her. He hated that she was in there yelling in pain, and there wasn't anything he could do to stop it. It reminded him too much of … he shut off those thoughts and listened for Lucy.
He wasn't sure how much time passed in between his last memory and the sound of a high-pitched cry. His skin turned hot and cold at the same time. The cry made it real. That thing they spent nearly a year worrying about was a real person now. His mind was so crowded with all these stupid thoughts that it may as well have been blank. Then, he heard the doctor.
"It's a girl!"
A girl.
So, he had a daughter. In a bizarre way, that was exactly what he'd been expecting. Maybe it was the pink onesie Jane had bought for the kid that day she and Violet got into it. Maybe it was Lucy's undying need to make everything about women's rights. Maybe it was just a secret hope that the kid would look like Lucy because Lucy was beautiful. But he'd never pictured having a son. From the minute they found out Lucy was knocked up, he knew it had to be a girl. It felt fitting, but he didn't know why … until, of course, he did.
Shortly after the doctor shouted, "It's a girl!" Dally thought back to what was almost undoubtedly his first memory. He was two years old, sitting on the floor in the house where he'd started to grow up, and the door opened. His mother walked through it, dazed and ignoring him. His old man walked in a few seconds later, carrying something in a blanket. He showed the thing in the blanket off to Dally. A baby. A girl.
"This is Violet, I guess," the old man said.
Violet had been a baby girl. Dally supposed he'd always known that, but it never really happened upon him like it did in that moment – in the moment he found out he had a daughter in the back of the hospital. He sat there and pieced it all together, not caring that it hurt to think. He welcomed the pain. It was better than being numb after all. Violet had been a baby girl. This baby in the back of the hospital was a baby girl. They both had him in common, and he'd failed to look after one. What made him think he could look after another? When he was a kid, there was no one he loved or liked better than Violet. She was the tuffest kid he'd ever met. He remembered when she was six years old and scared the piss out of some kids at Crutchfield Park so that they'd give up their unopened Cokes to her and her brother. She was real cool – cooler than he ever was, though he'd never own up to that. It would give her too big of a head. If any kid ever needed a hand out of where she was, it was Violet. And he hadn't offered it. He could have grabbed her on his way out the door … could have helped her hop that Greyhound to New York just as well as he hopped it by himself. But he wasn't thinking. He was so busy trying to save his own skin that he forgot about hers. What made him think he wouldn't do the same thing to his own kid?
He wasn't even fully cognizant of the fact that he was getting up out of his chair and walking down the stairs, out of the hospital, to be gone for good. And it really would be for good. Lucy wouldn't miss him, and that kid would never even know him. Good. She didn't need to know him. He wasn't worth knowing. Lucy knew it, too. He looked around to make sure Dr. and Mrs. Bennet couldn't see him. He didn't want them telling Lucy he'd run off. She'd figure it out on her own, of course, but he didn't want them to know before she did. After all, he did love her. Because he loved her, he thought it was better to leave her. It was better to leave her now and cause a little bit of pain in the moment than it was to slug out a marriage and a baby with her, disappointing her, throwing her into a life of pain that she never asked for.
Dally was outside and on his way to the apartment to grab his things when he heard someone run up from behind him, trying to catch up to him. He stopped. He didn't need to turn around. He knew who it was.
"Hey, Dally."
Dally rolled his eyes and then shut them tightly. He didn't know what he'd done to make this happen (and he really didn't know why he was allowing it to), but he turned around to face what Lucy would have called "the music."
"Why're you always followin' me?"
"I ain't," Soda said. "Just happen to be goin' a lot of the same places. Though I'm not really sure where you're headed right now."
Dally clenched his fists at his sides. He hated it when Soda pulled shit like this. He wondered if the kid knew he was smarter than he thought he was.
"Lucy had the baby," he said. "Just a minute ago. It's a girl."
Soda's smile was earnest, which part of him regretted. He wanted to stay tough, even though somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he wasn't the one scaring Dally into doing the right thing. He was just the mouthpiece.
"And you're headed toward home to grab her somethin', ain't ya?"
Dally didn't say anything, but he didn't start to walk away, either. Why wasn't he walking away? He told himself he wasn't going to let anyone see him … wasn't going to let anyone stop him. Why was Sodapop Curtis everywhere he tried to be?
Soda shook his head, finally letting his expression go from forced tough to crestfallen. Perhaps the strong-arm attempt wasn't the best to take with Dally. He knew from Sadie that Dally had been trying to deal with a lot shit since that night Violet and Jane got into it. When it came to family, even Dally knew you couldn't just be rough. You had to be more.
"Oh, Dally, don't," Soda begged, almost as though he hadn't seen this coming (which, of course, he had, and was exponentially prepared to handle). "Not after you stayed married to her for all that time. Not after you stayed with her the whole time she was pregnant."
"What else am I supposed to do, man? Stay?"
"I think that's what Lucy expects, yeah."
"Lucy expects a lot of things. She ain't gonna get 'em all."
"You told her you weren't goin' anywhere. You wanna lie to her?"
"I lie all the time. I just like to lie."
"That ain't even true."
"Ain't you just provin' my point, then?"
Soda stuffed his hands into his pockets. He had a lot of things in mind for what he could say next. He just wasn't sure which one to go with. Fortunately, he didn't have to choose because Dally couldn't stop talking.
"It's one thing for Lucy to have been knocked up," he said. "It's another thing for there to be a real baby. That's not fuckin' easy. You think I don't know that?"
"You're right. It ain't easy. And if you leave now, it's just gonna be harder for Lucy to do it on her own."
"She's smart. She'll figure it out."
"She knows how to read books and write good papers. She don't know anything about raising a baby. She needs your help."
"I don't know how to help. She'll be better off on her own."
"And me an' Darry and Pony, we were better off on our own after our folks died? You were better off on your own? Violet was better off on her own?"
Dally's hands clenched into fists again. You didn't just throw Violet's name out like that. Soda should have known better. He knew about what happened when Two-Bit tried to hit on her. Dally didn't take anything lightly, but he especially didn't take Violet lightly … and he didn't take Lucy lightly, either.
"If I stick around, it'll just be the same thing. Left V on her own. She ain't OK. This kid's better off without me."
"Don't you see how backward you're bein'? You feel all guilty 'cause you think you should've been there for Violet. The only way you can fuck up here is if you leave again."
Without recognizing it, Dally was moving closer to the hospital again. He thought about it, even though it still hurt to think. Everyday now, he thought back to the truth that he spent a lot of time in jail to avoid Violet – to avoid dealing with the embarrassment that he'd left her behind. She wasn't better off without him, nor was he better off without her. And he wouldn't have learned any of that if Lucy hadn't cared enough to make him start seeing all the things he spent his whole life trying to shove down and forget. Maybe Lucy wasn't the first or the only person who had ever cared about him. He was starting to know that now. She was, however, the first person to call him on his shit. And he kind of liked that. He liked it enough to want to go back into the hospital and see her. After all, he'd rather get called on his shit by his hot wife than by Sodapop Curtis.
Soda noticed that the look in Dally's eyes was changing. He tried not to smile for fear that it would send Dally packing all over again.
"Whaddya say, man?" he asked. "You wanna go back in there? Meet your daughter?"
His daughter. It was a terrifying phrase, but if he thought too much about it, he wasn't going to go inside. For the first time since he married Lucy, it was better to move than it was to think. He looked at Soda one more time.
"Well, you ain't meetin' the kid before I do," he said.
And he walked past the kid like he'd never planned on going anywhere.
Soda watched Dally walk away and finally let a smile grow across his face, still careful to make sure that Dally couldn't see. He knew he wasn't the one who forced him back inside. Dally only did what he wanted to do. It only gave him great joy to know that Dally wanted to go back inside. It only gave him great joy to know that Dally wanted to meet his daughter.
Lucy looked terrible. There was no way to dress it up. Talking about "the glory of motherhood" would have been bullshit. She just looked terrible – tired, sweaty, and terrible. Dally had seen her look like she was going to slice somebody open plenty of times, but nothing like this. She looked so terrible that it was the first thing Dally said to her when he saw her lying in that hospital bed.
"How romantic of you," Lucy said. Her eyes floated down to the tiny bundle of blanket on her chest, and his eyes followed. He couldn't see the kid's face, but she was there. She was there, and he didn't feel like he had to bolt. He was frozen. Why was he frozen? Later, he would realize that he was frozen because he needed to be.
"I'm glad you decided to come back," Lucy said.
"How'd you know…?"
"I know everything. It's why you stayed. My know-it-all-ness has grown on you. You finally respect its power. Right?"
He rolled his eyes, but for the first time in his life, it was more spirited than venomous. He looked back at the bundle of blanket – baby – attached to Lucy's chest. She noticed his eyes on the baby and looked right at him.
"You wanna see her?"
"'S why I came back, ain't it?"
"C'mere."
Dally stepped closer to the bed, and Lucy turned the baby away from her chest so that Dally could see her face. He wasn't looking anymore. The thought of that first eye contact was too much … until Lucy called him back down to reality.
"You said you wanted to see her," Lucy said.
"I didn't say that."
"Don't argue semantics with me."
He smiled. He remembered what semantics were after all.
"Do you know how to hold her?" Lucy asked.
"Think I can figure it out."
He bent forward a little bit as Lucy handed him the baby. The baby let out a small cry as she left her mother's arms, but she seemed to know she was being handed over to her father. It took a few seconds, but Dally finally looked down at her. The second he saw her face he hated his parents more than ever before. If he really did come from them, and they picked him up in the same way that he had just picked up his daughter, they must have been the worst people who ever lived. How could they not have felt what he did the first time he held his baby?
It was not overwhelming. It was not love – not immediately, anyway, and not like Lucy would describe the first time she held the baby to everyone who came through the hospital room that day. But when Dally first saw his daughter, he couldn't help but feel some type of fondness toward her. He looked at her face – scrunched up and pink, looking more like an alien than a person. He looked at her face, and although she didn't particularly look like him or Lucy or any person who had ever existed, he instinctively knew that she was his. They had an understanding from the minute the baby learned to open her eyes. It was kind of cool. It was enough to convince Dally that one night more with Lucy and the baby couldn't hurt.
"What's her name?" he asked.
"What?"
"Her name. Ya never told me when I asked."
Lucy sighed. She'd never told anyone the name – not even her father, and he had pestered her the entire time he was in the room. She insisted that Dally would come into the room eventually, and it seemed wrong not to tell the father first.
"Elinor," Lucy said. "Like Elinor Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility. She's my favorite Austen character, and …"
She motioned toward the baby in Dally's arms.
"She's my favorite girl," Lucy said. "Just don't tell Sadie, OK?"
"I think Sadie's gonna figure it out one of these days."
"You'd be surprised."
He kept looking down at the kid, trying to figure out how she might grow to look like him or like Lucy. It almost cracked him up that she was quiet and scowling the whole time he held her. She must have picked that up from him, somehow. Her nose looked a little like Lucy's the longer he stared at it – small and slender and cute. Cute. It wasn't the kind of word he liked to go around thinking about, but it was the only word that applied. The longer he held his daughter, the cooler she became. Mostly, that was because she was a part of him, and he was impressed with himself for making a person (with Lucy, as she would repeatedly point out later on). Still, that wasn't all. There was something strange and unidentifiable drawing him to her and convincing him not to take off running.
A little while later, a nurse came in and asked Lucy if she was ready to fill out the birth certificate. She looked at Dally, who still hadn't given the baby back to her, then back at the nurse.
"We haven't talked about her last name yet," she said.
Dally felt his heart rate spike, which surprised the hell out of him. He never figured he'd live to have a baby, and he really never figured it would matter to him that his baby shared his last name. Nonetheless, with the baby in his arms, he knew this was (for some reason) where he was at.
"What d'you mean?" he asked. "Ya give the kid her daddy's last name. I'm her daddy."
"You tried to leave us not one hour ago."
"That was before I met the kid. Things have changed, Bennet. Keep up."
"Mmm-hmm. You rip your genitals in half and see if you can keep up."
"Considerin' my own plumbin', I think, in that case, keepin' up would be pretty impossible."
"I just need somebody to fill out the birth certificate," the nurse awkwardly jumped in.
Dally looked at Lucy, willing her to let him write Winston on the kid's birth certificate. It wasn't like he wanted the kid to share the same name as his old man. He didn't have that weird "family line" thing that the Curtis kids had. Then again, just because he'd been born didn't mean he had a family line (until now, which he only thought in the back of his mind). Lucy rolled her eyes, relenting, and Dally turned back to the nurse to ask where he had to sign.
"Make sure her middle name is Bennet," Lucy said. "I want her to get used to hearing her name followed by Bennet."
Dally grumbled a half-hearted reply. Before he could write the baby's name down on the birth certificate, Lucy piped up with another one of her worries.
"Dally, are you sure you know how to spell her first name? You've never even opened a copy of Sense and Sensibility, and it's spelled differently than you usually see it."
"I know how to spell it."
These were, of course, famous last words. Dally turned to the nurse and filled out the birth certificate in exactly the way he thought he ought to. Later that night, when Lucy saw a copy of the birth certificate, her heart dropped to discover that her baby Elinor was now and forever named …
"E-L-E-N-O-R-E," she said.
"Yeah?" Dally asked. "Ain't that her name?"
"That's now how you spell it in Sense and Sensibility. Nor is it the traditional spelling. I'm impressed by how wrong this is."
"Sounds like it should be the only spelling to me. It sounds right. It looks right. Must be right. Am I right?"
"Don't be cute."
She turned the baby – Elenore – to face Dally. He almost smiled.
"Being cute is her job now," Lucy said. "How's she doing?"
"She's alright."
They were quiet for some time, trying to process what had happened that day. Lucy had a baby – a baby they would have to take home and raise and teach right from wrong, though it seemed impossible that Dallas Winston could manage that. They would have to feed her and clothe her and teach her to walk. They would have to teach her to speak and to read and to memorize her address in case she ever got lost on her way home from a friend's house. Lucy knew she was getting ahead of herself (as though any child she had in common with Dallas Winston would be sociable enough to have friends), but she was nothing if not impatient. This baby was the proof.
Lucy decided not to think about the future for too long. She would go out of her mind if she thought about the next hour too hard. In that moment, there were only three things that mattered: She and Elenore were safe and healthy, Dally was there with them, and when Lucy said that she needed to get some sleep after feeding Elenore, Dally asked if he could hold her. He was, to her shock, excellent at holding the baby. It felt out of character, but as she knew from years of court-mandated reading, characters weren't interesting unless they managed to change every now and then.
"I kind of like the way you spelled her name," Lucy said before she nodded off. "We can tell people it's like Austen mixed with Poe."
A pause. She figured Dally must not understand.
"Sorry," she said. "There's this poem by Edgar Allan Poe …"
"I know the one," Dally interrupted her. "The one with the raven and Lenore and that bullshit. Pony fuckin' loves it. He read it once on Halloween when I was a kid. Guess I remembered it."
"You've read Poe?"
"Sorta. I've read a lot of stuff. You just don't notice 'cause you're busy readin' more. Can you go to sleep, please? You ain't very fun when you're tired."
Lucy muttered some choice words for Dally, who joked about not cursing in front of the baby. He looked down at Elenore in his arms one more time. He couldn't stop looking at her. Maybe it wasn't love, but it was fascination. He'd been up close to a lot of people before – Elenore's mama included – yet he'd never been so aware of somebody else's heartbeat.
"Will you be her godfather?"
Soda looked up from Elenore in his arms. His look of love and adoration suddenly morphed into one of shock and awe. He stared at Lucy, who was now able to sit up straight in her hospital bed, wondering if she really meant what she said.
"Me?" he asked.
"Do you see anyone else around?"
He pointed to Sadie, who waved from the corner of the room. She'd already had a particularly long turn holding Elenore but was still noticeably jealous that it was Soda's turn now. Instantly as Lucy put baby Elenore in her arms, Sadie knew they had a connection. There was nothing sweeter than Sadie looking down at Elenore and saying, "We're gonna be best friends. Just don't tell your mama. I'm afraid she'll get jealous." That was, of course, until Soda couldn't believe that Lucy wanted him to be Elenore's godfather.
"She's already the godmother," Lucy said. She looked over at Sadie.
"Sorry I never formally asked you," she added.
"It's OK," Sadie said. "I assumed."
Lucy laughed, and Soda kept looking at her, still in denial that Lucy would want him to play a role that important in her baby's life. If she had doubts about involving Dally in Elenore's life, and Dally was her father, then why would she be so sure about the guy who'd been arrested for something as dumb as public handstands?
"But if Sadie's the godmother, shouldn't I not be the godfather?" he asked. "You usually pick godparents as a couple, don't ya?"
"I'm picking a couple of twins," Lucy said. "It's barely different."
"Still. Ain't Johnny gonna feel jealous if his girl's the godmother, but he ain't the godfather?"
"Pretty sure that'd be true if I had a baby by some other guy," Sadie said. "Not sure it works when your friend makes you and your brother a baby's godparents. I'm pretty sure there's something different about that."
Soda rolled his eyes at Sadie; then, he looked back down at Elenore. She was almost a full day old, and she could open her eyes with ease now. She locked eyes with Soda, and he was almost moved to tears when he saw how blue Elenore's eyes really were. He wanted to cry. Those eyes were the same as Lucy's. With Lucy's eyes, that girl would be set for life.
"What's a godfather do, anyway?" Soda asked.
"You look out for her," Lucy said. "If something happens to me, you take her in, at least, you know. Like a symbol. You're like her built-in first friend. You're somebody for her to play with when she's little, and when she's older, you're somebody she can talk to about boys … you know, if she discovers she likes them."
Soda nodded. He looked at Elenore one more time, and he could have sworn he saw her smile. Babies weren't supposed to smile when they were that tiny, but he was pretty sure Elenore did. It wouldn't surprise anyone. From the minute Lucy pushed her out, she was inundated with smiles and love, even from her father.
"Do you want to be Elenore's godfather?" Lucy asked. "Don't think about it. Just answer me."
"Course I do."
He looked back and forth between Lucy and Elenore, trying to figure out if they looked alike. Of course, newborn babies didn't look much like anything. The only identifiable feature he saw on Elenore was her scowl – Dally's. Soda laughed quietly. It was one thing to see that scowl on a hood. It was another to see the same one on a tiny baby. He wasn't sure if it made the baby tougher or if it made Dally softer, but it was sure funny.
"Well, then, it's settled," Lucy said.
"You talk to Dally about this?"
"I mentioned it. With respect to my husband, I don't think he has very strong opinions on things like godparents."
She paused. Before Soda could say anything, Lucy spoke again.
"He told me that he talked to you before he decided not to bail on us," Lucy was close to whispering. "He told me that you went to our place after he skipped my graduation. He told me about everything."
Now, Sadie looked up and wrinkled her nose at her twin, confused. She'd never heard anything about that, and yet, somehow she knew. Of course, she never told Soda that back when Lucy first realized how she felt about Dally, she went down to the Slash J and strong-armed him into coming to see her on her birthday, and somehow, he knew about that, too. She had a small smile to herself that Soda and Lucy were too busy to see. What a wonderful thing it was to be a twin.
"He didn't need me to tell him any of that," Soda said. "He came back 'cause he wanted to. I was just there."
"Doesn't matter," Lucy said. "You got him to talk. You listened to him. I never thought anybody could do that for him. Besides … you think I'm gonna let just anybody be my baby's godfather, or do you think I'm gonna pick my own brother?"
It was quite possible that Soda had never grinned that wide in his whole life. If she weren't so heavy and exhausted, Lucy would have smiled, too. Before Sadie, she'd pretended that she was the fourth Dashwood sister – pretended she was actually Elizabeth Bennet, and she was best friends with Charlotte Lucas. After Sadie, she had a sister and brothers and friends … and an Elenore. Scary as she was, Lucy had to admit it. She kind of liked Elenore a little bit.
"Yeah," Soda said. "Yeah, I'll be her godfather."
He held on tightly to Elenore, feeling almost like he didn't want to let her go – didn't want to give her back to her mom. Something told him he needed to make the most of his time with Elenore … like maybe he wouldn't see her for a long time. Eventually, he handed Elenore back to Lucy, who turned her around to face the twins at the foot of the bed.
"Elenore," she said, firmly stating her name to make sure that she would learn it. "Look."
None of them could confirm it later on, and it seemed impossible, but all three of the adults in that room were certain that Elenore knew how to listen to Lucy and looked straight at Sadie and Soda.
"See my friends," Lucy said. "See my friends. They're your friends, too."
They knew that was true, of course, but none of them could have predicted how true it would come to be.
Most everyone fell absolutely in love with Elenore Bennet Winston in that first week she was born. Lilly was a little bitter that Lucy hadn't decided to name the baby Lilly after all, and Ponyboy almost seemed jealous of her since she was getting so much of Soda's attention. Even Violet, who met Elenore in the middle of Great Books (Lucy and Sadie thought it was best not to invite her to the Curtis house because they still hadn't resolved what happened with Jane.), thought it was almost acceptable for something that was half Dally to roam free.
"She lives in a fuckin' bookstore," Violet said. "She's gonna be more like her old lady either way."
Violet never once asked to hold Elenore. It wasn't a surprise, but Lucy did notice that she was the only one. It was understandable.
The only person who didn't have much to say about Elenore was Dally. He didn't appear to like or dislike her, but he kept his distance. He'd hold her if Lucy asked, and one time, he'd even gotten up to check on her in the middle of the night because Lucy looked like she was about to faint. Lucy didn't bother asking him about it. By the time Elenore was two weeks old, it seemed like their normal.
Dally could tell that Lucy was worried about whether or not he liked the baby. He wouldn't ask her to talk about it. He never would have, anyway, but he was particularly aware that neither of them wanted to have that talk. Of course, he had that talk with himself everyday … every hour, really, was more like it.
It wasn't that he didn't like Elenore. He almost liked her – if for nothing else, because she was his, and it felt wrong not to like something he made. Learning to like his baby was his way of sticking it to his folks. If they couldn't manage to like him, fuck them. He'd manage to like his kid just to piss them off, wherever they'd gone. There was also something about Elenore's face, and anybody who was growing up to look that much like him and Lucy put together had to be worth getting to know. It was kind of funny, when he thought about it. Those might have been Lucy's eyes, he thought, but damn, if those weren't his eyebrows. And though he still woke up everyday and thought that Lucy and Elenore would both be better off if he just packed up without even leaving a note, he never left. He didn't have a particular reason for staying. He did love Lucy, but he never told her. Besides, he could go on loving her without waking up next to her every morning. Then again, if she were willing to crawl into bed with him at night, why would he give that up? If it meant getting to stay next to Lucy, who understood him better than anyone (even, sometimes, more than himself), he'd have to start doing things for the baby – for Elenore.
It still felt strange to say her name. It felt strange to say all girls' first names, when he thought about it. Sometimes, he could manage to refer to Lucy as Lucy, but it was still hard. He knew that Lilly Cade and Katie Mathews had first names, but he was more inclined to call them "Johnny's kid sister" and "Two-Bit's kid sister." Jane Randle was always Jane Randle – first name and last name. Even Violet became V. The only girl he could manage to call by her first name only was Sadie, and that had to be because when he was a kid – before he knew what a girl was – he'd met Sadie alongside her brothers. He didn't know why. It was just true. He had to practice saying Elenore's name over and over until it started to sound like a name. Elenore. Elenore. Elenore.
The more he said it, the easier it became to stick around. He didn't know why. It was just true.
One morning, three weeks after Elenore was born, Dally left the apartment with an agenda – an agenda that probably wouldn't lead to any jail time, a notable first. Lucy was back to work in the store, and Dr. and Mrs. Bennet were watching Elenore to cut her a bit of a break. When she asked Dally where he was going, he didn't tell her, but he told her that she'd be happy when he came back.
"So, you're coming back, then?" she asked.
"I wouldn't say so if I was lyin'."
"I'll believe you today. Check back with me tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?"
"Yeah. You said you'd be here."
Dally almost cracked a smile, waved some sort of goodbye at her, and walked out the door. Once he was gone, Lucy put the eraser end of her pencil in her mouth and bit down, still blushing like a little girl with a crush, not a wife and a mother. She didn't feel like any of those things. The past year and a half had been this strange, perpetual state of in-between-ness. She couldn't decide if she loved or hated it. She only knew that once, when she wasn't supposed to be awake or listening, she saw Dally standing over Elenore's crib, asking her if she wanted him to read Fahrenheit 451 or Giovanni's Room to her to get her to go back to sleep. Lucy did not care that these were not books you were supposed to read to a newborn baby. She only cared that he was talking to Elenore, and he had no idea Lucy was watching.
When Dally came into the grocery store and asked if he could work there, Two-Bit couldn't have been more confused if you plopped him down in front of In Search of Lost Time. Dally wasn't the kind of guy who worked a job with a schedule. He was barely the kind of guy who worked a job. He especially wasn't the kind of guy who worked a job where they had you put on a vest and a nametag. That was the furthest thing from cool, and if there was one word everybody could always agree on to describe Dallas Winston, it was cool. A job as a bagboy at a grocery store would ruin that forever.
"I don't get it, man," Two-Bit said. "Ain't you swiped from this store before?"
"Ain't you?"
Two-Bit shrugged. He couldn't fight him on that one.
"I just can't see you workin' the kind of job with a shift. Or the kind of job where they want ya to help people."
"Well, get used to it. I'm working with you now."
"But how come? You and Buck get in a fight? He steal your man, and now you ain't speakin' or somethin'?"
"What, like girls?"
"Yeah, like girls."
"Better watch it. I got a daughter now."
Two-Bit snapped his fingers as though he had forgotten about Elenore (because he had). He was real happy that Lucy seemed real happy and that Dally hadn't left her by her lonesome, but he was busy thinking about stuff he hadn't shared with the gang yet. He was thinking about Lilly, who was going into her last year of high school now, and how well he'd really gotten to know her since that night in October '65 that screwed with everybody's heads. She didn't look a thing like the blondes he usually went after, but it was starting not to matter very much. Lilly was quick on her feet – much funnier than he was, and he was ready and able to admit that to her face. She was sweet, too, and real pretty. She was prettier and prettier each time he looked at her. He might have even said something to one of the guys, but he knew it always took some getting used to when one of them was trying to make it with one of their sisters. It was strange, considering how many times it had happened now, but it was always true. Even Pony hadn't looked at Johnny in quite the same way since he started going with Sadie. Two-Bit might have liked Lilly a little bit, but he wasn't going to say anything, especially not when she was still in high school. And after all, it wasn't like it mattered. He couldn't tell Lilly that he thought he might like her for the same reason he couldn't tell Dally that the only reason they hired him down at the grocery store was because he was about to replace Two-Bit. He hadn't told anyone about that letter he'd gotten in the mail. Part of him blamed it on the baby business, though he knew that wasn't all. The truth was that he hadn't told anyone because he didn't know how to say it. He didn't know how to make it clever. Something had to have sense to be clever, and this didn't make any sense at all.
Two-Bit decided to focus on Dally's attempt at playing Mr. Domestic. That could be funny. He could work with that.
"That's it," he said. "You're gettin' a new job so you can afford to keep that baby of yours."
"Ya say that like I oughta be ashamed of it or somethin'," Dally said. "I know that voice by now. It's the parole-officer voice."
"Naw, you don't gotta be ashamed. I'm just about ready to die of shock. I can't believe you're still here. How come you're still here, anyway? Just 'cause you don't wanna get blown up?"
Dally didn't say anything. He had an answer. In fact, he had a few. Just because he had an answer, of course, didn't mean he was going to share it with Two-Bit. It had been almost three years since he caught him trying to mess with Violet, and it had been almost two years since Dally had gone to jail for him. Nonetheless, Dally still hadn't quite forgiven him for any of it. Two-Bit was his buddy, and there was also some sort of solidarity and support between buddies. That didn't mean they went around telling each other the truth about everything. That would be much too much. He didn't even share his whole truths with Lucy, and she was the only person who even really began to know him (including, for reasons that did not make him feel great, Violet).
He thought about what Soda said a little while after they found out Lucy was pregnant (with Elenore). You didn't need a reason for loving somebody. He didn't need a reason to love Lucy and didn't need a real reason to stay. It just felt like what he wanted to do. She never asked him to do it, which helped. That was the tuff thing about Lucy, among a number of tuff things. She knew him so well that she could play him to get what she wanted. That was one slick broad. He was impressed every time she managed to play him. It was so tuff he couldn't even really get mad about it.
"Ya know what's better than any money?" Dally finally asked.
"More money?"
"Women. 'F I work this job, I don't lose my woman. And I ain't dumb."
That was enough for that. It needed to be. Thinking about Elenore was still too much, though it was getting easier to refer to her by name even in his thoughts. He was there for her, but it was too hard to admit it to himself. There was something underneath it that he hadn't figured out, and for the first time in his life, he wanted to find out what it was.
The first time Lucy left Dally alone with Elenore was when she was almost two months old. She wanted to – needed to, really – have some time away from the apartment and be with Sadie. At first, she didn't think that was going to be possible, but Dally was pretty sure he could handle a few hours alone with the baby (Elenore). While Lucy mostly trusted him to look after his own daughter, it was still nearly impossible for her to walk out the door. She hadn't been away from Elenore for more than about forty-five minutes at a time since she was born, and the thought of being away from her for longer (Two hours at the most, which she promised both her husband and her daughter) was terrifying. As soon as she started her walk toward Sadie's, she had to hold in the waterworks. The only thing that comforted her was that upstairs in the apartment, Elenore was probably close to sobbing, too.
Surprisingly, Lucy was wrong about that. Elenore's feelings about her father were hit or miss. Some nights, she cried when he walked anywhere near her because he was tall and scary and didn't smell a thing like her mama. Other nights, she'd fuss and cry in Lucy's arms because she was hungry but didn't want to eat, and it was only the sight of her father that could calm her down. When that would happen, Lucy would look up to Dally with tired eyes and say something like, "Biology is king. Only Dallas Winston's daughter could find Dallas Winston soothing." He'd usually give her a smirk for that. Even when she was beat to hell, Bennet was still the smartest person he'd ever known, including himself.
That night, Elenore was pretty content to be with her daddy. Her mama had fed her before she went out, and she was feeling pretty good. Dally, on the other hand, wasn't feeling too great. He knew he could make it two hours with the kid since two hours wasn't that long. But he didn't realize how boring it would be. Elenore, compared to a lot of kids, as he would eventually learn, was pretty well behaved. As it turned out, well-behaved infants were boring. There wasn't even anything particularly intimidating about her. She just sat there and kind of messed with her own hands. Dally couldn't help but think that maybe the kid was bored, too.
He groaned and walked over to Lucy's pile of books near their bed. After scanning them, he moved them around and grabbed one from the middle.
"I don't really know what to do with you, kid," he said. "Elenore."
Saying it out loud was still too strange. He stuck out his tongue as though to erase the taste of her name on it. It wasn't an ugly name by any stretch. It was just one of his hang-ups he figured he'd never solve.
"I don't really know what to do with you, so I guess I'll read to ya. That's what your mama would do, ain't it?"
She looked at him blankly because as an infant, that was essentially all she could do. Still, Dally had a feeling that the look meant to say, "My mama would say you're not allowed to say ain't in front of me because that teaches me bad English." He sighed and opened the book. Like all Lucy's books, he knew it wasn't one that you were supposed to read to a little baby. It was too long, and he probably didn't even understand all the words and ideas in it himself. Lucy had to read it for one class or another during her second semester in college, so he'd heard a few things. Either way, he knew it didn't matter who was supposed to read the book he picked out for the kid. Lucy didn't necessarily believe that kids could only hear stuff that was made for kids. While she was still pregnant, she told him that she had resolved to speak to her child like a person, no matter how tiny she was. Because he (perhaps begrudgingly, but less so with time) respected Lucy, he knew he had to try his best to do what she would want if she were there.
"'Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show,'" he read.
Then, he groaned. Great. He was already lost.
That didn't seem to matter to Elenore. When he looked back up at her, she was smiling at him. In the past two weeks or so, she smiled at Lucy a couple times while she was feeding her, but she'd never smiled at Dally … until that night when they were alone together. The smile didn't quite melt his heart or take down any layers of scar tissue. He wasn't sure anyone could do that, regardless of how much they might love him (and Elenore, as a baby, had no choice but to love him). But it was enough to make him see that he could be loved. It was enough to make him know that it was just a fondness he had for his daughter because she was his daughter. No. He loved her, too. He wasn't ready to tell her, and he thought maybe he'd never be. But admitting it to himself … that was shockingly easy. Maybe Sodapop was right. Maybe you didn't need a reason to love somebody – you just did.
"Want me to keep going?" he asked.
Elenore smiled, and for the first time since he'd found out about her, Dally knew what to do.
And there you have it … Elenore! I know it wasn't much of a spoiler considering the one shots, but I hope the "how" of her birth was at least a little rewarding.
Indeed, Elenore was born on April 24, 1967 – the publication date of The Outsiders. Sometimes I'm clever.
Hinton owns The Outsiders, which, like my Elenore, turns fifty-two today. Dally reads from David Copperfield while he stays up with Elenore because any Charles Dickens narrative is appropriate for the context of The Outsiders. Dickens is, obviously, the public domain.