Me and Luke

ONE

I WAS DREAMING I was in a real professional boxing fight, and I was getting clobbered. The other guy was a good head taller than I was, and his arms pumped steadily like the machines in the shop where I worked. Or at least where I had worked before I got laid off. Anyhow, this dream guy’s arms moved like pistons. One swung out to smash me on the head, and when that one pulled back, the other one came out to punch me in the stomach.

The place where we were fighting was boiling hot, and mean-looking people crowded around the ring, yelling and booing. At first I hit back, but the guy was too big, and I seemed to be smaller than I really am. I took great gulps of air that was full of sweat and dirt. The other fighter’s face was shadowy, but I could tell that he was older than I was, and that he smiled every time he hit me.

I put my hands up to cover my face, but he punched me in the ribs, hard enough to knock me off my feet. I lay on the floor with my eyes closed, listening to the bell ring for the end of the round. It kept on ringing and ringing. It wouldn’t stop ...

My arms thrashed inside my blanket and I fought to pull the covers away from my head as I woke up. The bell was still ringing.

It’s only the phone in the hall outside, I told myself. I breathed hard for a minute and then picked my watch out of the inside of my shoe by the side of the bed.

One o’clock in the morning.

The phone didn’t ring very often in that fleabag of a rooming house. The men who lived there didn’t have friends who called them up to chat. It was probably a drunk with the wrong number.

The ringing finally stopped. Somebody pounded on my door and a voice called, It’s for you, Matt. I pulled my jeans on over my shorts and stumbled to the door.

It’s some chick. The old guy from the next room was standing in the hall holding the receiver out to me. I’d said hi to him a couple of times, but this was the first time I’d heard his voice. It was hoarse, as if he didn’t use it very often. Wish they were still calling me in the middle of the night, he said and shut one baggy eyelid before he shuffled back to his room. He closed the door. Privacy was a big deal in this rooming house.

The receiver dangled where he’d dropped it. A light bulb glared close to the ceiling, so I could make out the phone numbers penciled on the dirty wall. I thought, some day when I can’t think of anything to do, I’ll dial every one of those numbers.

I already knew who was on the other end of the phone, but I wiped the mouth of the receiver against my jeans, putting off the time I had to say something.

Yeah?

It’s me, Matt. Lorene, a whispery voice said. It’s time. I’m going to the hospital in a few minutes. The taxi’s waiting outside. Mom just went to get my coat, so I took the chance to phone you. Will you come? I’m scared.

Yeah, yeah, sure. I tried to keep my voice from shaking. Be cool, man. What was that stuff they handed us in Family Studies? Babies get born every minute. Thousands of them.

But not mine. Not mine and Lorene’s.

I’ll be there as soon as I can, I told her. Will your mom let me see you?

She’ll have to. I’ll tell them when I go in the hospital that you’re the father. Lorene always surprised me when she took control like that.

I hung up then and went back to my room. It was just a room, painted green, with a bed, a dresser, an overhead light bulb that I flicked on now, ripped-up curtains and an old kitchen chair. The only things that made it my room were the two pictures on the dresser, one of my mom and one of my gram, and my knapsack under the window with some dirty socks and underwear spilling out of it.

I pulled on my shoes and socks, a T-shirt and my jacket, took my wallet from under my pillow and put it in my jeans pocket. Then I went out, closing the door behind me. There weren’t any locks. I thought about taking a leak first, but I figured I might make too much noise. I could wait until I got to the hospital.

Lorene lived out in Scarborough, and she was going to a hospital out there, so I headed for the subway when I got outside, praying that it would still be running. It was cool out, which was nice because the summer had been hot. It must have rained earlier in the night. The cardboard takeout cartons littering the sidewalk near the burger joint had turned to wet mush. The stink of stale grease and exhaust fumes in the dampness almost made me gag.

It seemed colder down on the subway platform. The people around weren’t the types to make me feel comfortable, either. Lots of rockers in black leather.

I hunched down into my jacket and moved over to the newspaper stand where I pretended I was interested in the headlines. I checked the date at the top of the page. September 17th. Weird, that was my age, too, seventeen. I’d be seventeen years older than my kid and his birthday would be the seventeenth.

When the subway finally came barreling out of the tunnel, I was glad to step inside. The car was empty except for one man sitting at the end, almost asleep. My mind kept rolling nonstop all the way out to the end of the line. I tried for the hundredth time to figure out exactly which time Lorene and I had made the baby. And then I tried to think about something else because I felt embarrassed, as if the man could know what I was thinking about.

I left the subway station and started walking up to the hospital. I was only a couple of blocks from the apartment where I’d lived all my life until I moved downtown. I knew kids who lived in those neat little houses I was walking past.

There wasn’t much traffic this late at night, mostly taxis and police cruisers. I didn’t bother looking out for a bus, just stepped along real fast. The cops hassle you if you take your time at night. And I didn’t want to be stopped. A transient, I guess that was what I was. No job, too proud to ask for welfare, or too stupid, I didn’t know which.

What the heck, you’ve almost got a kid, I remembered when I pulled open the heavy glass doors marked EMERGENCY. How many guys do you know who can say that?

Lorene Mitchell? I asked the old lady at the desk. She’s going to have a baby.

Maternity’s on the fourth floor, elevators down the hall to your right. She didn’t even look up from the morning paper she was reading.

But it was a different story when I stepped off the elevator onto the fourth floor. A real dragon of a nurse with that steely gray hair and eyeglasses to match was sitting behind a desk so you couldn’t get off the elevator without her seeing you.

Can I help you? she asked. Her cold voice told me that a seventeen-year-old guy in jeans and runners had no business being anywhere near this place.

I’m looking for Lorene Mitchell, I told her, trying my best to sound mature. I hoped she would think I was Lorene’s brother or something. She’s going to have a baby, I added when all I got from her was a fish-eyed stare. She just came in, I tried again.

Then a young nurse came out some swinging doors marked DELIVERY and walked over to the desk. We should get Lorene Mitchell’s doctor up here, she said. Is he in the building?

Is she okay? I butted right in. Can I see her? I’m her ... boyfriend. I wanted to say I was her baby’s father, but the dragon looked as if she might call the cops if I said that.

Oh, you must be Matt, the young nurse said real quick. She’s been asking for you. Sure, you go along and say hello, but don’t stay too long. It’s the room marked 402 just inside those doors.

Well, I zipped inside before they could change their minds, but when I got outside 402, I stopped up short. First, there were some weird noises coming from behind the closed doors along the hallway. Second, the door to 402 was open and I could hear Lorene’s mother going on and on.

Just be brave a little longer, dear, and then it’ll all be over, she was saying. A month from now, the whole thing will seem like a bad dream. You’ll be back at school and you’ll get your year. You’ll just have to study harder.

I knew all this garbage must be driving Lorene crazy, and that was what gave me the courage to walk right in and up to her bed. Hi, Lorene, I said, as cool as I could.

She looked so different. Her mother had made sure I hadn’t seen her during the past five months, and to tell the truth, I’d felt almost relieved about that. I couldn’t imagine Lorene looking like a pregnant woman, and I didn’t want to see her looking like that. I had this picture in my head of a cute, pretty girl who danced every dance and played on the grade eleven girls’ volleyball team. Whenever I thought of Lorene, that was who I saw.

I’d talked to her on the phone, but that didn’t prepare me for seeing her all swollen up in front. Even under the sheet they had over her, she looked awful — different. Her face was pale and shiny and her long black hair was twisted up off her neck. In spite of being almost a mother, she looked younger than she had when we were going together, like some scared little kid, her face all taken up with her big eyes that were the exact same color as some violets my mother used to have.

I’m glad you got here, Matt, she said softly.

Who let you in here? her mother yelled at the same time. But even she could see that this wasn’t the time or the place to start giving me a hard time.

She wasn’t about to leave the room so we could be alone, I could see that, so I had to be content with hanging onto Lorene’s hand. I’m staying right here.

Well, then all heck broke loose. Lorene’s face pinched up and she yelled. Real loud. Old lady Mitchell ran to the doorway and screamed, Nurse! Nurse! and the young nurse came pounding into the room.

After one look at Lorene, the nurse said to me, You’d better go.

I’ll stay if you want, I said to Lorene, but really it was the last thing I wanted to do.

Nobody took me up on it, and the nurse shooed me down the hall and around a corner to a little waiting room off by itself. It was fixed up really neat, with thick carpet and pictures of sailboats and even a fireplace all set up with one of those electric heaters in the shape of fake logs.

There was a full pot of coffee with paper cups and the morning paper on a glass table, but I just sank into a chair and thought for a while. I didn’t know how to feel. The last minute in Lorene’s room sure made me see how guilty I was for getting her into this mess where she was having all the pain for something we’d done together.

I steered myself off that track and started thinking about the kid and what was going to happen to it. Lorene had her mind made up to put it out for adoption. I knew her mother was behind that idea; sort of get rid of the