#ch: colleen o'connor

[motownfiction]

bread

cw: discussion of christian traditions, specifically catholic sacraments

The two hottest topics in second grade are cursive and Communion.

For Will, the first one is pretty boring. He’s already known how to write cursive for a year. His sister, Sarah, exclusively writes in cursive now that she’s in fourth grade. Will has to know it if he wants to communicate with her. But he has to admit, it does make him feel special when Lucy needs his help forming those tricky handwritten Q’s.

Communion is a little more interesting. He’s not thrilled about the suit part, but he is thrilled that he might get to process into Mass with Lucy by his side. Unsurprisingly, though, Lucy has complaints, most of which are far too advanced for the other second graders to fully comprehend. She says it’s silly how she has to wear a white dress and a veil.

“If I wanted to practice getting married, I’d do it at recess like a public school kid,” she says, and everyone else groans. They’re all looking forward to the pretty white dresses, especially Sadie. Whenever they all get together and play at the Doyles’ house, Sadie grabs her white gloves and pretends to be a debutante (a word Will doesn’t understand and, at this point, is too afraid to ask about). Will and the other guys just humor them. All they have to do is show up in the suits their moms picked out a year ago.

Will’s a little more on board with Lucy’s second complaint: The bread isn’t bread enough.

“I heard that in Protestant churches, they give you full pieces of fluffy bread,” she says one day on their way back from Reconciliation. “Here, it’s just a wafer. That’s not as good.”

Will thinks about it for a minute. The wafers don’t look like much. Sarah says they don’t taste like much, either. Like air with a puff of yeast. Will always thought that description was pretty funny, but Mom always makes Sarah apologize for saying it.

“It’s the Lord, Sarah Grace,” Mom always says. “The Lord is more than enough for you to eat. And for crying out loud, we always go to McDonald’s after Mass.”

But Will thinks he knows what Sarah’s on about. He thinks he knows what Lucy’s worried about, too. She’s also worried about the wine.

“I know it’s supposed to be blood, but it’s still going to taste like wine,” she says. “My parents said wine doesn’t taste good. I heard that in Protestant churches, they use grape juice. Grape juice tastes good.”

Will takes notes. Fluffy bread. Grape juice. When he accompanies his mother to the grocery store the following Saturday, he asks for those specific items. To his surprise, Mom agrees with a knowing smile.

“Wanting to practice your First Communion,” she says. “Oh, Will. You’re too sweet.”

He lets her believe that. She’s not wrong, exactly. It’s just less about the practice and more about making Lucy happy.

So, that afternoon, less than a full day before Mass, Will pulls Lucy into his backyard and presents her with the fluffy bread and grape juice.

“I didn’t want you to miss out,” he says. “Your idea seems better, anyway.”

Lucy gives him a look that he won’t forget for the rest of his life. He has no real way of knowing it, but it’s a look he’ll see on her face a lot until the day he dies. For now, he just blinks it in. Beautiful.

“Will,” she says, “you’re too sweet.”

He’s not sure if that’s supposed to be a compliment, but he grins from ear to ear like it is, anyway.

(part of @nosebleedclub september challenge -- day iii! would you look at that? on time again)

[motownfiction]

house key

At the end of the night, Lucy blames her hormones for the way she cried at Colleen O’Connor’s kitchen table.

She’s about two months pregnant, and she’s been planning for her casual-not-quite-but-definitely-shotgun-somewhat-religious wedding with Will, scheduled for early November. Her parents have helped with some of it, but no one’s helped more than Will’s mother, Colleen.

Lucy wasn’t really expecting Colleen to be so happy about the whole thing. She was confused and nervous about the baby, but when Will insisted he and Lucy wanted to get married, Colleen was suddenly thrilled. She said it wasn’t like she was losing her only baby boy. It was like she got to plan a party.

And Colleen loves planning parties.

That’s going to be the best thing about having Colleen O’Connor for a mother-in-law, Lucy thinks. Out of all the moms in Lucy and Will’s class, she always threw the best birthday parties. She had the best food, the best games, and picked out the best outfits. Even Will always looked adorable on his birthday.

It’s never just birthday parties with Colleen, either. Last year, she and Pat celebrated a non-milestone anniversary with chicken piccata, lasagne al forno, and mascarpone cheesecake she made all by herself. Apparently, she’d been taking private cooking lessons in the kitchen at Giovanni’s, which the head chef just … gave to her, for free, because he liked her attitude. There’s just something very good about Colleen. Even when she’s nosy, you almost kind of appreciate her for it.

At least, that’s how Lucy feels, as the sixteen-year-old girl about to marry Colleen’s one and only sixteen-year-old son.

Ever since Lucy figured out how she felt about Will, she’s been worried about Colleen’s opinion of her. Intellectually, she’s always known that Colleen is a very kind person, but she knows how mothers can get about their only sons. That kindness could have been gone the minute Lucy was no longer just Will’s friend from next door. From the minute she and Will held hands outside the Our Father, Lucy was convinced Colleen would hate all the things she said she liked about her. She was convinced Colleen would call her names like dirty feminist and aspiring career woman, which to most mothers who look like Colleen, are the scariest things a woman can be.

But that’s not what happened. It’s not what happened, and now, they’re here.

Lucy’s sitting at the kitchen table, looking between her notes about The Picture of Dorian Gray and affordable wedding dresses for pregnant eleventh graders. Colleen comes back into the kitchen, spinning a ring of keys around her index finger.

“This wedding dress thing is too hard,” Lucy says and puts down the magazines. “You’d think I was marrying the fabric more than the man.”

Colleen smiles.

“I’m more than happy to help,” she says. “In the meantime, I got you something.”

Lucy furrows her brow as Colleen removes one key from the ring around her finger. It’s just a small silver key. It doesn’t look like much. But as Lucy runs her fingers up and down its grooves, she knows exactly what it is – exactly what it unlocks. Her face falls, but in the best way it could.

“Colleen,” Lucy says. “Is this a copy of your house key?”

Colleen nods.

“I figured since your folks had to give Will a copy of theirs, it was right to give you a copy of ours,” Colleen says. “You’re the kind of person we want sitting in our kitchen, Lucy.”

Lucy laughs a little.

“What?” she asks. “Short and unassuming?”

“Kind and hard-working,” Colleen says. “Smart, too. The perfect match for Will, no matter how quickly you ended up there.”

Lucy blushes. Before long, the blush turns to tears. Not long after that, her whole face is red again. She can’t tell Colleen why, but she can think about it to herself.

It hasn’t been long since Lucy Callaghan thought no one would ever like her and that no one would ever understand her. Just over ten years ago, she was the perennial misfit – too old to be a child, too young to sit through faculty meetings with Mom and Dad. But now … now Colleen O’Connor is looking her in the eye, and she approves. She doesn’t think Lucy is too weird or wrong or any of those other much words she’s spent too long attributing to herself.

It doesn’t seem like much, but for a brief moment in Lucy’s life, it’s grand.

She runs her fingers up and down the grooves of the key again.

Another home.

(part of @nosebleedclub september challenge -- day ii! let’s pretend like this is on time)

[motownfiction]

first photo

The very first photo of Lucy and Will is from Halloween in 1973. There are other pictures of them at school from before then, like their class composite, but those pictures are all with people from their small first-grade class. This is the very first photo of just the two of them. Will likes to look at it from time to time, even now, almost fifty years after his mother snapped it.

He still remembers that evening. It was a Wednesday, and Lucy was going trick-or-treating with Will, Sam, Sadie, and Daniel for the first time. She was dressed up like a black cat, which made Will’s mother a little nervous. For as devout a Catholic as Colleen O’Connor can be, she’s always put stock in some very old wives’ tales. Will remembers putting his arm around Lucy on the front porch (and how she didn’t flinch like his big sister Sarah always pretends to when he wants to give her a hug). He still remembers what he said when he looked up at his mom: Lucy’s not a real cat! She’s a real girl! Lucy seemed to like that because she retracted her earlier comment about his costume. Will was dressed like Superman, and even though she originally said the cape didn’t suit him, recent events had changed her mind. She actually said it like that, too. Recent events have changed my mind. Will cracks up just thinking about it. He should have known what he was getting himself into when he was falling in love with her. Maybe he always knew.

Eventually, Colleen relented and went inside to grab her camera. She wanted the kids to pose before they ran off with the others. So, they did. They were six years old and didn’t think much of it. They weren’t sure they’d ever actually see the picture. They had no way of knowing that picture would appear at their makeshift wedding reception just over ten years later. They had no way of knowing that they’d still have it when they moved to New York … when they’d been in New York for more than thirty years. Will takes another long look at it.

What a time, he thinks. And what a girl.

[motownfiction]

some days are rocks

As guests arrive to Elenore’s birthday party, Lucy wears the biggest, fakest smile on her face. The people she knows less well just accept it. Even the toughest mom in the world is probably thrilled to celebrate her little girl’s birthday. Sadie, of course, doesn’t buy it for a second. When the party is a little bit underway, she pulls Lucy aside and mutters a question.

“Did you just get terrible news?” Sadie asks through her teeth.

“What do you mean?” Lucy asks.

“Like did you just get a call from a doctor that says you’re dying?”

“What? God, no. Of course not. Why would you think that?”

“Because your smile says, ‘I’m overcompensating.’ You know it, too.”

Lucy sighs. She wraps one arm around Sadie and pulls her into the pantry for a quick word. As she shuts the door behind the two of them, she thinks about how funny life is. The pantry used to be the place where she’d make out with Will after getting good news, like another A on a major paper or … OK, maybe that’s the best non-Elenore related news Lucy usually receives. Now it’s the place where she needs to have swift heart-to-hearts with her best friend. Ain’t it funny how the night moves.

“Will says I’m not supposed to show it during the party,” Lucy says.

Sadie gasps and raises her fingers to her mouth like she’s auditioning for Wes Craven.

“You are dying, aren’t you?” she asks.

“No. I’m still not dying. I just got a bad grade on a paper.”

Another gasp.

“Oh my gosh, you got a B?”

“No!” Lucy says. “Why does everyone keep assuming that? I got an A minus.”

Sadie wrinkles her nose.

“But, like, the 90% kind?” she asks. “The kind where you’re not sure if you really should have gotten a B, but the teacher knew you wouldn’t like that, so they threw you an extra point?”

“No. If it had been one of those, I’m not sure I’d be standing up right now.”

Sadie nods as though that’s a normal thing for Lucy to say. And it is a normal thing for Lucy to say. She knows she’s always going on about how getting a B in a class would be the second worst thing to ever happen to her, behind anything bad happening to Elenore. But even Lucy knows her priorities are out of order. She’s not even sure if she means it anymore. Does she care about getting good grades? Or is her persona the only one who cares? What is Lucy Callaghan if not a reputation?

“I got a 93,” Lucy adds.

Sadie frowns.

“You’re this upset over a 93?” she asks. “That’s practically a solid A.”

“Yeah, OK, I know that, but it’s not one. It’s an A minus. It’s so close to a solid A that you’d really have to think about what it means to give it the A minus. And in that way, the spiteful 93 is worse than the pitiable 90. Think about that.”

“I think you need to calm down. Maybe talk to some people who don’t put their whole self-worth into what grades they’re getting.”

“Do you know any of those people, Sadie? I once saw you choke back tears because you got eight out of ten on a chemistry quiz.”

“An 80 was a solid C at St. Catherine’s. What was I supposed to do?”

Lucy sighs. And here, she thought she could expect Sadie to understand. Maybe that’s the problem. Sadie understands too well, but she wants to be better.

But is that better? Is it better to be one of those students who just turns in a paper and is happy enough when it doesn’t come back with an F written on the front? Lucy often wonders what it would be like to be a business student, one who’s just there because they don’t know there are other things you could be doing with your life. Do business students have more fun? Is English literature fun? Lucy doesn’t know the answer. She’s pretty sure that when you love something – really love it in the way she loves literature and history and theory – it can never be fun. It can never be a dream. It’s just something you have to do, or you’ll die. That’s what it means to love art. Compulsion.

Sadie steps closer to her and takes her hand like a sister.

“Look, I know how upset you can make yourself over things like this,” she says. “But today, I’m with Will. Don’t let it ruin Elenore’s birthday party.”

Lucy nods.

“Right,” she says. “Elenore doesn’t deserve that. She should enjoy her party.”

“You should enjoy it, too.”

Lucy furrows her brow.

“What?” she asks. “What do you mean?”

“Come on,” Sadie says. “You get it. Your daughter only turns three once. She only gets one party for her third birthday. When she’s four, it won’t be the same. Don’t let a good grade on a paper take you away from your daughter’s one and only third birthday party. Be here for it. Please.”

Lucy sighs. If Sadie weren’t so smart, perhaps it would be easier for Lucy to ignore her advice. But instead, she takes another deep breath and makes her way out of the pantry.

“Let’s go, then,” she says. “I think Colleen keeps trying to feed Mariam.”

“Didn’t you explain to her that it’s Ramadan, and she’s fasting?” Sadie says as she follows Lucy out of the pantry.

“Yeah, but Colleen’s knowledge of fasting is very limited to Lent. If it’s not the dead end of winter or the very start of spring, she doesn’t get it.”

Sure enough, as soon as Lucy walks out of the pantry, her mother-in-law is standing there, trying to fix a plate of food for Mariam. She looks like she’s stepping on shards of glass and trying very, very hard not to reveal this to anybody. Lucy shoots her a look like she’ll swoop in for the rescue … as soon as she figures out what the rescue should be.

“Do you like cheese?” Colleen asks. “It looks like my son put out those cheap cheddar cubes again. I told him to spring for the more expensive ones. Well, either way … must be better than nothing. Don’t you think, hon?”

“Usually, yes,” Mariam says. “But I’m fasting.”

“But why would you need to do that?”

Lucy claps her hands together, and Colleen looks up, almost like a scared little kid. She looks innocent and ignorant. For a second, Lucy almost doesn’t know what to do. So she sighs again.

“Colleen, I think you should tell Will about the kind of cheese he should have gotten,” Lucy says, wrapping her arm around Colleen and quickly guiding her away from the snacks. “We need to do something to make him remember, don’t we?”

“We really do,” Colleen says. “You know, when he was little, even before you moved in next door, I had to make up a little song for him to memorize his addition facts. We sang it to the tune of ‘Waltz of the Flowers’ from The Nutcracker. Did he ever tell you that?”

“No, and it’ll be incredible if I ever need to use something against him. Go tell him about the cheese right now. The sooner he knows, the better.”

Colleen nods and walks straight over to Will, who’s currently standing between Sam and Daniel and laughing. Lucy sighs again. Lucky Will, she thinks. Doesn’t have to deal with a stupid A minus.

Mariam steps forward and laughs a little.

“Thanks for that,” she says. “I was running out of ways to refuse her. If my mother knew I was at a little kid’s birthday party right now, where there’s cake, I’m pretty sure she’d stop helping me with my tuition.”

Lucy laughs a little.

“I’m sorry about my mother-in-law,” she says. “I know everybody says shit like this, but she really doesn’t mean to be mean. She’s just ignorant of her own ignorance.”

“Funny how ignorance always seems to work that way,” Mariam says. “Isn’t it?”

“Yeah, really is.”

They turn their eyes to look at Colleen now, as she stands in front of Will and dramatically demonstrates where he can find the right kind of cheese. Mariam covers her mouth with her hand, and Lucy really hopes she doesn’t regret coming to the party tonight.

“Shouldn’t we feel bad for pawning her off on your husband, though?” Mariam asks.

Lucy shakes her head.

“She’s his mother,” she says. “He grew up with her. He knows what to expect. Besides, Colleen has one point. Will keeps buying the worst cheese. Somebody needs to set him straight, and I’ve got too much going on for it to be me.”

Elenore runs up to her and hugs her around the leg. Perfect timing. Lucy grins as she claps her hands on Elenore’s shoulders. She’s getting taller, and Lucy hates that she almost bursts into tears because of it.

“Mommy!” Elenore says.

Lucy grins, picks up Elenore, and puts her on her hips. She’s getting stronger, too. That makes Lucy want to cry even more (and she hates crying).

“Hi, baby,” Lucy says. “Are you having a nice party?”

“Sam taught me a song,” Elenore says. “‘She wore a raaaaaaspberry beret!’”

Lucy grits her teeth together and looks over Elenore’s head to find Sam. Sure enough, there he is, sorting through Lucy and Will’s records as though he doesn’t know exactly what’s in there already. They make eye contact, and Sam salutes at her like he knows what he did. Of course he knows what he did.

“Mmm-hmm,” Lucy says. “Elenore, do you know any of the other words to that song?”

“Not really.”

Lucy exhales all the air in the world. She won’t have to look like the worst mom on the playground. Thank God. She puts Elenore back on the ground and gives her a kiss on top of her head.

“OK,” she says. “Why don’t you go help Sam pick out a record for you to play?”

“OK, Mommy!”

Elenore takes off running for Sam at the other end of the room. Lucy smiles while she does. She thinks about what Sadie said just a minute ago. This is the only third birthday party that Elenore will ever have. It would be wrong to waste it in a bad mood about a good grade. And a 93 is a good grade. How could she have been so silly before? She laughs at herself and picks up a tortilla chip.

“Oh, before I forget,” Mariam says. “I ran into Dr. Fine at the gas station on the way over here.”

“Really?” Lucy asks, trying to ensure that the name Dr. Fine doesn’t send her into feelings of anger and dread. Not here. Not at Elenore’s birthday party.

“Yeah. We talked about my paper some more, just for a little while. She said she really liked it.”

Lucy swallows the tortilla chip. Good. Dr. Fine should have liked Mariam’s paper. It was a good paper, and Mariam is a good writer. She has good ideas. It’s good to have a friend who has good ideas. It’s better than a friend with nothing to say. Lucy believes it, but she also has to repeat it like a mantra. She doesn't want to ruin Elenore’s birthday party.

“That’s good,” Lucy says, aware of how weak she must sound. “I’m glad.”

“Me, too,” Mariam says. “And she said she knows it’s early, but she knows I’m thinking about applying for graduate school next fall. She said she knows someone at Duke who could put in a good word for me. Duke! That’s where Eve Sedgwick works!”

Lucy feels every part of her body get numb. Duke. Where Eve Sedgwick works. Duke. A great school, for English literature, for cultural theory, for anything. Duke. A school Lucy could have gotten into with no problem before everything else, before now. Duke, where Mariam stands a chance of getting into. Duke, Duke, Duke.

If Dr. Fine thinks Mariam’s paper looks like the kind of paper that could get itself into Duke, then what must she think of Lucy? That she’s somebody’s mom with squandered talent? With fake talent that she’s only told herself she has? Where is she supposed to go when this is all over? PTA meetings? She shudders to think of phone trees, field trips, and cafeteria monitors. Not when she could have had another choice. Not when she could have been all sorts of things, all at once.

She thinks about saying something to Mariam. She thinks about feeling sorry for herself. But then she catches a glimpse of Elenore from the corner of her eye. Elenore, who is dancing around to “More Today Than Yesterday,” her song with Sam, a song that makes her feel as truly loved and as truly wonderful as she is. She is a miracle. And if Lucy has to give up conference presentations, articles, and long, theoretical seminars just to see her smile, she’ll do it.

So, then why does she feel so sick? Why does she feel so angry?

Will escapes his mother’s cheese wrath and makes a beeline for Lucy at the snack table. He lightly touches her on the arm and suggests that it might be time for Elenore to open up her presents. She smiles and shakes at Will’s touch. She clears her throat.

“OK,” she says. “Presents.”

[motownfiction]

these eyes

The rest of the Mass goes off without a hitch. Some awkward fourth graders give awkward readings with stilted vocabulary, they take Communion, they sing of Mary, meek and lowly, and then, it’s all over. Students begin to laugh and chat, almost certainly about whatever was happening in their lives before they had to come to church, but Will sees the look in Lucy’s eyes. She’s convinced they’re talking about her. He wants to reach out and tell her that everybody’s probably forgotten about her fall by now, but he doesn’t have time. She darts off to her parents at the back of the church, and his parents sweep him up into a hug.

“There he is!” Will’s father, Pat O’Connor, a tall, muscular man says as he embraces his son with no shame, no regard for the fact that Will is soon to be in high school. “My son, the hero of the day.”

Will wriggles out of his father’s hug and turns bright red.

“It’s not a big deal, Dad,” he says sheepishly. “I was just trying to help Lucy.”

“And you did it so well,” Colleen says, stepping in front of her husband to hug her son. “I thought I’d be able to brag to my friends that you won the essay contest, but you put the crown on Mary! I’ll be able to remind them of that for years. They’ll never be able to judge you or me or any of us again!”

Will laughs because he doesn’t know what else to do.

“Mom, why are they your friends if you’re always competing with each other?” he asks.

Colleen shrugs, almost like she’s embarrassed. Will is too young to realize that she is.

“When you’re older, you’ll understand,” she says. “Or maybe you won’t. Men aren’t like that with each other. Lucy. When she’s older, she’ll understand.”

At the sound of Lucy’s name, Will looks around the church for any sighting of her, any inkling that she was here, even just two minutes ago. But she’s gone. He smiles to himself. That’s Lucy. Fast to disappear to wherever she wants to go. Will kind of admires it.

“I don’t know, Mom,” Will says. “Lucy’s not really like that with anybody. I’ve only ever seen her try to outdo herself.”

Colleen smiles and runs her hand through Will’s hair. He tries to act embarrassed, but he isn’t. Not really. There’s something about being doted on by your parents. It doesn’t get old, even if you do.

“That was a wonderful thing you did for her, sweetheart,” Colleen says softly, a much different tone than she used in the basement this morning during Will’s MC5 solo. “Has she said thank you for it yet?”

Will shakes his head.

“I don’t know if she ever will,” he says. “Not because she’s not happy about it. But because … I know how much it means to her to look good at something.”

He inhales through his teeth, but he’s too young to know why. A long time from now, after about four years of weekly talk therapy, he’ll reflect on the answer he didn’t know how to phrase then: He knows how much it means to her to look good at something because the same thing means a lot to him.

“You’re a sweet boy,” Colleen says. “Are you ready to go home now? Do you have what you need before the weekend?”

“Um, no,” Will says. “We have to leave our backpacks and stuff in our lockers.”

“Go on and get it,” Pat says. “You want us to wait and take you home with the little girls? Or do you wanna ride with Sarah, like normal?”

A tiny smile curls up in the corner of Will’s mouth.

“I’ll ride home with Sarah,” he says.

Pat and Colleen nod at the same time. Colleen steps forward one more time and wraps Will up in a hug and a kiss. By now, he’s done pretending to be embarrassed. It’s too nice.

“You are a sweet, sweet boy,” she says again. “A wonderful, wonderful man.”

As Will walks out of the church and back toward the school doors, he holds his head up high in the bright blue May air. Today is the first day where anybody’s looked at him and called him a man.

About two minutes later, he walks down to his locker in Mr. Pelka’s math classroom, his homeroom for the year, where his locker is located. On his way out of there, he passes by Ms. Dupont’s English classroom. Lucy’s homeroom for the year. And he stops dead in his tracks.

Lucy’s in there, and she’s all alone.

Slowly, Will takes a deep breath and enters the classroom. He makes sure he’s not the one who will fall this time. As he creeps up on Lucy, he can hear her ragged breathing. And as he gets even closer, he realizes that her labored breaths aren’t just happening for no reason. He panics. He never thought this day would come.

Will O’Connor just walked in on Lucy Callaghan crying.

It’s funny, Will thinks, to remember that the person you love is mortal. In weaker folks, he’s pretty sure this would be a deterrent. Weaker folks like to pretend that their loved ones are angels. But not Will. When Lucy cries (something he didn’t even know Lucy could do), he loves her more than he fears her. He’ll love her forever, and it doesn’t scare him at all.

He taps on her shoulder, and she whirls around. When Will sees her bloodshot eyes, he loves her all over again. Loves her forever. She scares him, but not because there are moments when she’s anything less than gorgeous. Even when she’s not gorgeous, she is always beautiful.

“What?” she asks. “Are you gonna brag about saving me?”

“No,” Will says, stepping back, but only a tad, not enough for her to notice. “I just … I saw you alone in here, and I wanted to make sure you were OK.”

Lucy snorts contemptuously and throws her hands up and down, up and down.

“Do I look OK, Will?” she asks. “I fell on my ass in front of the entire school at the May Crowning Mass. I said I’d put the crown on Mary, and I failed. Do you hear that? I failed.”

“You didn’t fail,” Will says gently. “It might not have worked out how you planned, but you didn’t fail.”

“That’s really easy for you to say. You saved me. You covered for me. You got to win, and I got a bruise on my left knee that won’t go away until well into the summer season.”

Will folds his arms across his chest.

“I didn’t win anything by helping you,” he says. “I just wanted to help out my friend. Is that really so bad?”

Lucy sighs, catching tears on the way out. Before either of them know it, the waterworks are back. Will closes his eyes and tries to plot his next move, but it feels impossible. Lucy’s crying turns the floor into It’s a Small World, and Will can’t get out. Worse yet, he doesn’t want to get out. He doesn’t want it at all.

“Look at me,” she says, even though Will’s pretty sure she wants him to forget all about this. “I’m crying! I don’t cry! Why am I crying?”

Will steps forward like he can do anything to help, but he knows better than that.

“I don’t know,” he says. “But if there’s anything I know about you, it’s that you always have the answer.”

Through her tears, Lucy cracks a tiny smile. Will doesn’t know that he’s the only person who could get her to smile through the pain. Years later, he’ll understand, but only in whispers.

“I hate making mistakes,” she says. “I hate making mistakes in front of other people. I know they’re watching. I know they’re listening. I know they’re all just waiting to have something to mock about me, since it’s been so long since the time I scored a goal for the wrong team in gym class. They needed something else, and this was it. This was it! I’ve been trying for years to make sure I never make a big mistake in front of people again, and this was it.”

She begins to cry again, and Will isn’t sure what to do. He just knows he loves her. He just knows that if he could somehow transmit his love for her into her veins, make her see herself through his eyes, that she would stop crying, too. That she would stop trying to impress everyone she ever meets. That she would know that she’s whole – that she’s always been whole.

But he can’t do any of that.

Instead, Will steps closer and takes Lucy’s hand in his, just by the fingertips. She inhales a little too sharply, like the gesture means more than it does. And maybe she’s right. She’s the queen of knowing things other people don’t know. Will gives her a little smile.

“You didn’t make a mistake,” he says. “It was an accident. You just fell. You fell, and I caught you. I made sure you didn’t go down.”

Through her big, glassy tears, Lucy smiles at him. Surely, Will thinks, she can tell he’s been working hard on his metaphors.

He’s not sure which one of them steps closer first. Maybe they do it at the same time. But before long, they’re squeezing each other’s hands and staring at each other like they’re old friends reuniting after a very long time apart. Will takes a long breath and finds himself singing “These Eyes” in his mind. Lucy looks at him like she can hear the same tune. For half a moment, Will swears he can feel her lean in to kiss him (or maybe he leans in to kiss her), but half a moment later, it’s all gone. They snap back apart on opposite sides of the room like magnets who were never supposed to meet. Even through her tears, Lucy stares at him.

Some minutes go by before Lucy grabs her backpack and heads out the door. She doesn’t say anything else to Will, and he knows she doesn’t have to. He doesn’t have to say anything more, either. He knows what he saw. He knows what he felt.

And he’s pretty sure Lucy was right there with him.

Just like he was right there with her.

[motownfiction]

kick out the jams

On May 1, 1981, Will sets his alarm for half an hour earlier than usual. He needs to psych himself up. Today is going to be a big day.

He wakes up in his bed in the O’Connor family basement and immediately heads to the record player. He knows exactly which record he’s going to play to help himself get ready. He’s known for about two weeks (ever since he got the news about today). He drops the needle on the vinyl, and he’s ready to begin.

Alright now … right now it’s time to … KICK OUT THE JAMS, MOTHERFUCKER!

Immediately, it’s like Will can’t control himself. As he slips on his best pair of khakis (the ones that don’t have grease stains on them from all the secret after-school trips to McDonald’s he makes with his big sister, Sarah, who just got her driver’s license), Will begins to dance. He’s not a great dancer, but he moves. He moves and jumps and feels awake on a morning other than Saturday. He buttons up his best blue shirt, and he’s the king of the world … or at least the king of St. Catherine of Alexandria Junior High.

There’s yelling above him in the family room. He hears his sisters shouting his name, but he ignores it. Nothing can bring him down now. This is his song, this is his day, and nobody can take that away from him. He hears footsteps coming down the stairs (big, mean, angry footsteps), but in the midst of the music, it’s easy to ignore.

“PATRICK WILLIAM O’CONNOR!”

He jumps, sending his comb flying through the air. Full name. That much, he can’t ignore. He gulps and looks up to find his angry mother, Colleen, glowering down at him from the highest steps. And even then, he doesn’t turn down the music.

“Yes, Mom?” Will asks, his voice much smaller than usual.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Will shrugs.

“Getting ready for school,” he says. “Listening to music. It’s a big day. Thought I’d get myself really ready for it.”

“You’re damn right it’s a big day,” Colleen says. “Your father and I took off work for this May Crowning Mass. We never thought one of our kids would put the crown on Mary, and we really never thought it would be you.”

Will bows his head and turns red as can be.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” he says. “I didn’t mean to be so loud. I just wanted to get ready.”

“And this is the way?” Colleen asks. “Getting up half an hour earlier than you need to, just so you can blast … who is this?”

“MC5. They’re local.”

“Either way. If you’re gonna play it, turn it down.”

Will sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets, though he’d really like to sink below the floor, as far as he can go.

“Yes, Mom,” he mutters. “Sorry.”

Colleen smiles, gentler than before.

“I know, baby,” she says. “I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

And so, Will walks over to the stereo and turns the volume down, until Rob Tyner’s voice is just a whisper. He picks up his comb and sighs. He’s not the guy who blasts rock ‘n’ roll in the morning, not giving a damn what anybody else thinks. He’s one of six winners selected from an eighth-grade writing contest to put the crown on Mother Mary at Mass today – a contest he only tried to win so he could spend extra time with the girl he loves. He’s Will O’Connor.

Whatever that means.

[motownfiction]

very quick guide to character parents

might as well put this together while i’m thinking about it! the criterion for being included on this list is simple: they have to have made an actual appearance in one of the vignettes. just being named isn’t enough. at any rate, here it is.

mary callaghan: lucy’s mother. beautiful, kind, and eternally loving but with high expectations. generous but firm. can make even the most mundane things exciting. carries socks around in her purse in case she has the opportunity to go bowling. a professor of english who writes about contemporary american literature and gender performance.

john callaghan: lucy’s father. handsome, strong, and compassionate with a wicked sense of humor. stern but forgiving. will put others before himself, almost certainly to a fault. also a professor of english who writes about eighteenth-century england and socioeconomics.

colleen o’connor: will’s mother. cute, well-meaning, and traditional. religious, mostly by habit. high-strung but reasonable. strongly believes that pink and green is the best color combination in the universe, which you’ll know as soon as you walk into her kitchen. a nurse at the biggest hospital in the area.

pat o’connor: will’s father. lanky, pleasant, and exhausted from raising five daughters (and one son, of course). religious, mostly because of colleen’s habits. easygoing like saturday morning (not sunday morning -- not in his house). works for one of the big three. not clear what he does there.

maggie doyle: sadie, sam, and charlie’s mother. fashionable, funny, and charming. full of love and favoritism between her sons (charlie over sam). wished to be an actress when she was young. a true romantic at heart. knows even more music than sam. teaches english and drama at a local high school.

mike doyle: sadie, sam, and charlie’s father. cool, rebellious, and open-hearted. has no favorite child and prays that his wife will one day feel the same. wished to be a musician when he was young. an even bigger romantic than maggie. helpful almost to the point of meddling. works as the landscape hero.

linda deluca: daniel and lola’s mother. adorable, tiny, and outgoing. probably the strictest parent of the bunch. pushy without always realizing it. on the overprotective side but wants to do well by her children. general manager of a local restaurant and banquet hall.

frank deluca: daniel and lola’s father. slim, attractive, and sneaky. absent from his children’s lives even before his divorce from linda. in love with party stores and race tracks. unclear what frank does for a living. dies some time in the 2010s, but his children have been grieving him since the 70s (yes, frank actually appears in one vignette).

[motownfiction]

isn’t she lovely?

The grandparents are the first ones to hold Elenore after Lucy and Will. Colleen wanted to bust down the door and grab onto her granddaughter right away. She probably would have, too, if it hadn’t been for Mary.

“I told everybody we had to give you some space,” Mary says when the four of them finally enter the hospital room. “It’s important to get that private time as a family.”

“Mary, I love you to death,” Colleen says, “but every time you talk, it’s like you’re wearing a big sign that says, ‘I’m an only child!’”

Mary makes a face like she’s going to put her fist through the window. For the first time in a long time, Lucy realizes how much she looks like her mother.

“‘Scuse my mother, Mary,” Will says, giving Colleen a look. “She thinks having a big family is the same thing as having no boundaries.”

“You think I have no boundaries?” Colleen asks. “What about last summer, huh? When you’d go up to your room and put on ‘I Believe When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever?’ We all knew that meant you were making out with Lucy, but did we say anything?”

“No,” Will says, turning redder than ever. “You waited until the day my daughter was born to embarrass me in front of her.”

“She’s a baby, Will. She doesn’t know what we’re talking about. She doesn’t even know how to open her eyes.”

Instinctively, Lucy looks down at Elenore. Just like on cue, she opens her eyes. Blue, just like her mother’s.

“You might want to reconsider that,” Lucy says. “Look who’s looking back.”

Everyone gathers back around Lucy and the baby. Nothing to diffuse the tension like a beautiful baby girl in your arms.

“Do we ever get to know her name?” Mary asks.

“Yes,” John echoes. “Please. Your mother and I have a bet going about what you picked. If I’m right, she has to buy me a Milky Way from the vending machine.”

“What happens if Mom’s right?” Lucy asks.

“Then I have to buy her a Milky Way from the vending machine.”

Lucy rolls her eyes and laughs a little. She looks down at Elenore – the love of her life from here on out – and then back up at the grandparents.

“This is Elenore,” she says, and a chill runs up her spine. “Elenore Callaghan O’Connor.”

“The Callaghan is a middle name,” Will says, undoubtedly to combat the look on his mother’s face (the horror of hyphenating!). “Her last name’s O’Connor. Just the one name.”

“Elenore,” Mary says. “I like it.”

She holds her hand out in front of John, who drops a couple of coins in her palm.

“What name did you think I’d pick, Dad?” Lucy asks.

“I thought you’d go with Emma,” John says. “That’s the last book you were reading.”

“Last isn’t the same as dearest,” Mary says. “I know my daughter, and I know the names she likes best.”

“Thank you, Mom,” Lucy says. “Emma’s not bad, though. I hadn’t considered it before.”

Then, Pat O’Connor claps a proud hand on his son’s shoulders.

“Whadda you think, Will?” he asks. “You still want ninety-nine more of these?”

Will laughs awkwardly.

“I, uh, I dunno, Dad,” he says. “I’ve only had this one for a couple of hours, and I already managed to screw it up.”

“What did you do?” Colleen asks.

Will turns from red to purple and looks down at the floor. Lucy sighs a little too loudly.

“He misspelled our daughter’s name,” she says. “Don’t worry. I think he made it better.”

The relief on Will’s face is incredible.

“Really, though,” Pat says. “How many more of these do you two want?”

Colleen smacks her husband in the arm.

“Patrick O’Connor!” she says. “They’re in high school!”

“Exactly. The damage is done.”

Before they can start to bicker, Will steps in between them. For a kid who used to settle the score with his fists, he’s a surprisingly good diplomat.

“Hey, calm down, alright?” he says. “It’s gonna be a little while before we even think about having another baby.”

“Like a real little while,” Lucy says. “You know we have plenty of other responsibilities. College applications. Jobs. We still have finals next month.”

“I told you,” Will says. “They’re all gonna exempt us. They already said so.”

“And I think, at this stage in our education, that’s a mistake.”

Will sighs. He knows better than to fight with someone who’s just given birth. He looks back at his parents with an awkward, toothy grin.

“Look, we’ll have more kids when we’re ready,” Will says. “Maybe not ninety-nine more, but … I know we both want more. I always kinda wanted four.”

“Mmm, but we talked about that,” Lucy says. “Remember, you get to write the checks, but I’m the one who has to cash them.”

Will’s ears get red again, and he kneels down to whisper to Lucy.

“So,” he says, “which one of ‘em is gonna hold her first?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Lucy whispers back, “my mother.”

“Your mother?”

“Yes. I’m the one in the hospital bed. My family should go first.”

“And give my mother a heart attack?”

“It’ll be, like, two seconds!”

“Alright, alright, that’s fair. Also, you know, I can’t say I don’t love torturing my mom. Just a little bit.”

Lucy smirks.

“What if we call them at the same time?” she asks. “So I can torture my mom a little bit, too?”

Will’s eyes light up like fireworks.

“You’re a fucking mastermind, you know that?” he says. “Nah, I know you do.”

Lucy grins, and she and Will put their heads together. Without counting, they open their mouths and call out at the same time.

“Mom!”

[motownfiction]

am i ever gonna see my wedding day?

Will’s parents take the engagement news a little easier than Lucy’s. Colleen and Patrick O’Connor also fell in love in high school – got married a month after their graduation. They don’t have grand ideas about where Will should go to college or where he should live when he gets older. They have too many kids to write each of their futures in a book, after all.

But even the O’Connors have their druthers.

“I’m just not following,” Colleen, a pretty woman with straight black hair and a raspy voice from years of smoking, says for what feels like the hundredth time all night. “John and Mary gave you their permission to get married?”

“Yes,” Lucy says.

“John and Mary Callaghan?”

“Yes, Mom,” Will says.

“The same John and Mary Callaghan who made their daughter hold one of their hands to cross the street until she was in fourth grade?”

Lucy turns a horrible shade of red.

“It was third grade,” she mutters and stares at the floor. “But I hear your point.”

Will grabs Lucy’s hand and threads his fingers through hers all over again. He still can’t believe she lets him do that. Then again, he still can’t believe a lot of the things Lucy lets him do.

“It took them some convincing, but they got it,” Will says.

“What’s to get?” Patrick, a tall man with gray-brown hair and glasses thicker than Buddy Holly, asks. He has the same gravelly voice that Will picked up around ‘79. Pat O’Connor’s only thirty-seven, but he has the constitution of an eldritch creature. Having six kids before the age of thirty will do that to you. Will looks down at himself and prays to God it doesn’t happen to him.

“What’s to get is that Lucy’s having a baby, and it’s mine,” Will says. “I should be married to the woman who’s having my baby, don’t you think?”

Before either of his parents can say anything, Lucy paws at Will’s forearm.

“Will, honey, don’t you think this feels a little … Medieval?” she asks.

“No, but it does feel a little Leave It to Beaver,” Will says.

“Why would you say that? Do you want our marriage to be like Leave It to Beaver? Because if you do, there’s a certain clip-on earring I’d like back.”

“I don’t want our marriage to be like Leave It to Beaver, but it’s like Burczyk keeps saying in AP Lang, right? We gotta know the audience.”

Lucy turns a strange shade of red, and Will knows he’s got her.

“Nothing wrong with a man being married to the mother of his child,” Patrick says. “Only you ain’t a man, Will. You’re sixteen.”

“So?” Will asks. “How old were you when you knew you were gonna marry my mother over there?”

All eyes on Colleen. She gulps and tries to hide behind her hair. It doesn’t work.

“Mom?” Will asks.

“Well,” Colleen says, “I guess we were about sixteen.”

“Exactly,” Will says, grabbing back onto Lucy’s hand. “You were sixteen. If I had a case, I’d rest it right here.”

“Now, hold on,” Patrick says. “Before you get carried away, as you are wont to do.”

“Love getting carried away,” Will says, and he squeezes Lucy’s hand even harder. “No point in living if you’re just gonna be bored.”

“Me and your mom didn’t get married until we were eighteen. We didn’t need our parents’ permission, and by then, they were happy for us, anyway. We got married because we knew we wanted to, not because our situation was dire.”

“Oh, your situation was dire. At least we got it out of the way.”

Will doesn’t even have to look at Lucy to know how red in the face she is. She drops his hand, and he figures he deserved it. He’ll make it up to her later, he thinks. Somehow.

“Will, watch your mouth,” Colleen says. “Me and your dad … we just want to make sure you’re not rushing into anything.”

“You already rushed into a lot,” Patrick adds.

Will looks over at Lucy, who appears to be dying on the spot. Colleen notices, too, and anchors her gaze toward Lucy.

“Lucy, I hope you know we love you,” she says. “I loved you as soon as I saw you at that birthday party, remember?”

Will frowns.

“She threw a water balloon at me!” he says. “In February!”

“I was seven,” Lucy says. “I just wanted your attention.”

“It was your birthday party. You had my attention.”

“Yeah, but I wanted to make sure.”

When Will looks at her, he’s not sure he’s ever been more in love with her than today. He grabs her hand again, and she gives him the prettiest little smile. In the end, he thinks, that’s how he knows it’s going to work. This is the scariest shit of their lives, but he’s always known how to make her smile.

Colleen and Pat see it a little differently.

“I can’t stop thinking about that,” Colleen says.

“Yeah,” Pat agrees. “Me neither.”

“What?” Lucy asks. “About the water balloon? I’m really sorry about that. It’s just that I was so young, and I had this weird crush on Will that I didn’t understand. I’d never throw a water balloon at him now. Well, not out of spite.”

Will squeezes her hand again.

“Callaghan,” he says quietly, “they’re not talking about the water balloon.”

“Then what are they talking about?”

“We’re talking about how long Will’s had a crush on you,” Colleen says, and now, it’s Will’s turn to die on the spot. “You know he came home after his first day in Ms. Cunningham’s class and told us he was going to marry the new girl, don’t you?”

“And would you look at that?” Will asks. “I was right.”

“Maybe,” Pat says. “Or maybe you can’t let go of an idea you had when you were six.”

Lucy raises her shoulders above her ears – a rare move from her. Will drops her hand again, but this time, it’s to defend her. He stands up from the couch and looks both of his parents firmly in the eye.

“I guess I should’ve known you were gonna say that,” he says.

“How could we not?” Colleen asks. “You cut her picture out of the yearbook and kept it in your dresser.”

“Will!” Lucy says.

“I was eleven!”

“That’s worse!”

“Don’t change the subject,” Pat says. “How do we know this isn’t just some way for you to live out the dream you had when you were a little kid?”

“Dad …” Will starts, but Pat cuts him off.

“It’s a good question. Do you like Lucy now, or do you like Lucy ten years ago?”

Lucy looks up at Will, and for maybe the first time in their lives, she looks scared. She looks hurt. Rage bubbles up in Will’s guts, but he breathes through it. He knows his audience.

“Mom, Dad, did you know Lucy’s favorite color used to be pink?”

Lucy furrows her brow and tugs at Will’s hand. He gives her a look back, and he knows she can read it perfectly.

Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. You’re gonna like it.

“No,” Colleen says. “I don’t even know her favorite color now.”

“It’s red,” Lucy says. “Or purple, depending on the day. But mostly red.”

Colleen nods. Later, Lucy will learn that she was making herself a mental note that red and purple would be a terrible color scheme for a wedding.

“I knew Lucy’s favorite color was pink,” Will says. “And I knew why. It was because her mom used to make this pie with whipped cream and strawberry Jell-O, and that was her favorite food. She used to bring in a slice of it for lunch if her mom made it the night before.”

“You didn’t even sit with me at lunch back then,” Lucy says. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t sit that far away, either,” Will says. “I was always listening to you.”

“So, you knew her favorite color, and you knew her favorite pie,” Pat says. “Tell me what that has to do with marrying her now.”

“I dunno,” Will says. “I think it does. Because I remember a couple of years later, when her favorite color was purple, and she loved pepperoni pizza. We used to get it in the cafeteria on Tuesdays. They wrapped it in tin foil. She used to make little dolls out of the foil and play with ‘em in the classroom when it was too cold to go outside. I remember once, I asked her if I could have one, too.”

Lucy grins.

“I remember,” she says. “You were Dr. Stud. I asked you what kind of medicine you practiced, and you said, ‘I don’t know, but I’m rich and have 100 kids.’”

“Might’ve cursed myself with that one,” Will says. “But I remember that day. That was the day I figured out how funny Lucy is. And then a couple of years later, I was cool enough to have lunch with her again. I remember I’d sit there with her and just watch her study. She’d read everything twice. I think that’s when I figured out she was a hard worker. And I kinda … I liked her even more once I got that. And … every year, I’d find out new things about her. Some things stayed the same. Some things changed. But everything I learned … I just kept liking her more. I don’t … I don’t think that’s gonna stop. I wanna … I wanna keep learning more things about her, and I wanna do it with her. Not away from her.”

He looks back at Lucy, that hunger for approval in his eyes. She’s smiling at him with all her teeth, and he knows he’s got her.