Pop Rocks and Marigolds

The doctor exited the room, leaving the young couple alone. It was hot that day, and Eddie McCormick, a pockmarked boy with a tuft of greasy orange hair, slouched in his chair and wiped sweat from his forehead. He reached for the girl on the bed, his hand landing softly on the small bump of her stomach. She exhaled, her wet eyes falling to the vase of marigolds on the bedside table, their petals the color of the sunrise just as it crests above the horizon.

“Lacey,” Eddie began, but his throat tightened. He searched his mind for the words that would comfort her, ease her pain, but none came. Eddie McCormick was a young man of many thoughts but few words, so instead of speaking he waited quietly as tears fell down Lacey’s freckled cheeks and splashed onto the pale hospital gown. He had never seen her cry, and her quiet lamentations now were foreign to his ears.

“Why?” she asked between sobs. Eddie closed his eyes and shrugged, his hand still caressing her stomach. “It’s not fair.” He nodded his agreement, wiped sweat from his forehead once more, and said nothing.

Five months earlier, Eddie had been sitting alone in the corner of a local Starbucks unaware that his life was about to change drastically. It was hot that day too, August, the sun unrelenting in its fury, and the air-conditioned coffee shop provided a brief reprieve from the heat. The black coffee he’d bought sat on the table in front of him, untouched, growing luke-warm and oily.

Every time the door to the coffee shop opened, he felt a thick gust of heat waft into the room. Every time but one. When Lacey Pendleton entered, Eddie glanced up and didn’t feel the heat. Instead, a shiver ran down his spine. He took it as a good omen, a sign of fate. She smiled at him before he could avert his eyes and then made her way to the counter.

Eddie’s ears perked as she placed her order and made small talk with the barista, her silvery voice echoing in the nearly-empty coffee shop. Her sentences flowed so smoothly it was almost as if she had chosen the words specifically for their harmony. If silk had a voice, he thought, this would be it.

She thanked the man behind the counter as he handed her an iced coffee and turned to leave. But Eddie wanted desperately to hear her speak again, hear the honeyed words flow from her pale lips just once more before she left. One word and he would be content. Pleading his desire in silence, he watched her without shame as she approached the exit. When she realized she was being watched she glanced over at him, narrowed her eyes, and paused, hand resting on the door handle.

“Have we met before?” she asked before Eddie could look away. He shook his head. “Are you sure? Because you look familiar.”

“I would have remembered you,” he said, then flushed flame-red and turned his eyes to the coffee in front of him.

“Have you ever lived in Florida?” she asked.

“No.”

“Yeah, me neither.” He chuckled hesitantly, unsure if she was trying to be funny or quirky or both. She reached into the back pocket of her shorts to pull out a small black pouch. “You like Pop Rocks?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Good,” she said and then sat down without giving Eddie a chance to speak. She handed him the green crystal candies and began talking, quickly and without reserve, as if they were childhood friends meeting up for the first time in years. As the candy rocks exploded in tiny bursts on his tongue, Lacey fired questions at him and told long-winded stories and laughed at her own jokes. And each sugary word enthralled him.

For hours, Eddie spoke little and smiled some, but most often he simply listened. And learned. Learned trivial things, like the fact that she only eats the watermelon-flavored Pop Rocks, that she prefers ukuleles to guitars, that marigolds are her favorite flower. He learned that one-hundred cups of coffee in four hours can kill the average human being, and he learned that she was not, in any regard, an average human being.

He learned that she was studying journalism at the university in town and that she dreamed of one day being a news anchor. He learned that she donned an ironic crooked smile whenever she talked about serious issues, that she hoped there was a God more than she believed there was, and that she never broke eye contact. But most of all, he learned about love. Not the fairytale, “knight-in-shining-armor-meets-damsel-in-distress” kind of love. Not the reality TV, “I’m-a-man-you’re-a-woman-let’s-have-sex” kind of love. But genuine love. The kind of love that had eluded him for the twenty years of his existence, the kind of love that talked about Pop Rocks and marigolds in a Starbucks on a hot August day.

Their conversation lasted late into the afternoon, Eddie hanging on each word that spilled from Lacey’s mouth. When she stood up as abruptly as she had sat down, Eddie’s heart plummeted to the soles of his feet, but she winked and grabbed his hand.

“Grab your coffee,” she said.

“I don’t even drink coffee,” he said. She smirked as if he had told her a grand secret, then pulled him up from his seat. She walked with him down the street beneath the shade of the trees to her apartment, a wood-paneled upper of a Townhouse with peeling paint and a crooked porch. She pulled him onto the mattress lying frameless on the floor of her bedroom, and he believed her when she swore she never did this. She poured watermelon Pop Rocks in her mouth and the young couple passed them between the tips of their tongues. Eddie listened to the crackling of the candies and knew of love.

Two months after that hot day, Lacey peed on a stick and saw a little pink plus sign. Eddie stayed. Three months after that, she started bleeding and her abdomen seared with pain. Eddie drove her to the hospital.

Lacey’s crying lessened with time, and for that Eddie was thankful. Hearing her soft whimpers of distress stabbed at him more than he thought possible. Finally, she broke the silence.

“How do we tell our parents?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Your dad might actually be happy.” His thoughts flashed back to the unbridled rage of Mr. Pendleton when they had first told him the news, his stern voice and bulging veins.

“Your mom won’t be,” Lacey responded. His mother’s reaction had been the polar opposite of her father’s: she had cried out of joy at the news and immediately began calling her closest friends to inform them she would soon be a Grandma.

Eddie nodded and the silence resumed. He placed his hand on her stomach once again, and she covered it with her own. By the look of deep concentration on her face, Eddie knew what Lacey was thinking. She was contemplating the realness of God and the possibility of life after death. She was thinking about what His plan was, if there was any plan at all. She was thinking about how He’d stolen something from her far too soon. Eddie, though, thought only about Lacey. He thought about when she’d whispered the words, “I’m pregnant” in his ear, how her words were glossed in fear and happiness, but not regret.

The door to the hospital room inched open, then, and Mr. Pendleton peered inside. A shadow of gray stubble covered his chin and dark rings hung under his darker eyes. A brown Bible was clutched between white-knuckled fingers. Eddie gave Lacey’s hand a reassuring squeeze before standing and leaving the room, brushing past Mr. Pendleton without a word. Outside the room, he took a seat on the linoleum floor of the hallway and eavesdropped on Lacey and her father.

Whispered Bible verses and soft crying made their way to the hallway, and Eddie put his head in his hands. The words echoed in the empty corridor and resonated in his ears like a song, but a song of the deepest sorrow or the greatest joy Eddie was not sure. An overwhelming sense of peace overtook him as he listened to the words spoken in the deep, melodic voice of Lacey’s father. Only when he heard the soft thump of the Bible closing did he lift his head and stand.

Mr. Pendleton emerged from the room and looked Eddie in the eye for the first time that day. Only then did Eddie notice the redness of the man’s eyes and the distress creased into his face. He held out a burly hand and Eddie grasped it in return.

“I’m sorry, son,” he said. And it was all he needed to say. With that, he turned and slowly retreated down the hallway.

Eddie stood motionless and silent for a moment before reentering the room. When he returned he saw tranquility in Lacey’s dry, green eyes. Between her fingers, she twirled a small silver crucifix her father had brought.

“Did you ever think about what he’d look like?” she asked.

“Always,” he said. A flutter of a smile quivered on Lacey’s lips.

“He’d have your hair,” she said.

“And your eyes,” he concluded.

Eddie McCormick reached in his back pocket and pulled out a pouch of green crystal candies. He poured the contents in his mouth, leaned over and kissed her deeply. Small explosions of love filled their mouths, and when they broke, a crooked smile adorned Lacey’s face.

“So what do we do now?” she asked, her fingers reaching over to caress the leaves of the marigolds at her side.

“We remember.”