Pregnant with My Roommate’s Dad by Sofia T Summers
Maxie
Icouldn’t get through three days of my last semester without my garbage luck getting in the way. It was all too good to be true. I had a roommate I liked in a budget-friendly apartment close to campus. It wasn’t perfect, but it had been nice enough . . . right up until the ice water started pouring from the ceiling.
Coming back from my Friday classes, I immediately noticed our cheap sofa was soaked beyond repair. Water poured from the ceiling like a faucet, and I could see where the white popcorn ceilings were beginning to sag from the torrent of rain. Desperate to save something, I managed to clear out a few small things before they were washed away in the great flood. I thought I might keep them safe in the kitchen, but there was already water leaking over the little breakfast table and around the oven’s old metal hood.
Brandy went off like a siren the moment she walked in.
“What’s happening?” she squealed in cartoonish shock.
It wasn’t her fault that she had a silvery sing-song voice and a cherubic doll face. Truly, I thought the world of Brandy. We met in a seminar freshman year as partners for a midterm project, and I’d adored her ever since. She could be smart and kind. Still, there was no getting around her girlish features, making it hard to take her seriously in a crisis.
At only about five foot two, Brandy was four inches shorter than me. My size fourteen clothes would swallow her willowy body whole, but Brandy was made of stronger stuff than most people realized. They couldn’t see past the pixie-like façade. Panicking, her sweet high sound only got higher. Her doe eyes made her look even more innocently childish.
“It looks like the pipes have burst in the apartment above us,” I explained, trying to catch another leak in a bathroom waste bin.
I’d seen this happen time and again growing up in the mountains. Someone would go for too long in the winter without letting hot water run, and the metal would freeze up with the water. Pressure would build. Next thing you knew, your bathroom was an ice-skating rink. I’d seen one or two pipes burst, but never like this. The water was coming down so fast now that I’d grabbed my navy rain jacket and green boots from my closet.
“Is it just in here?” she wailed. “Oh, no! The kitchen!”
“If that’s upsetting, don’t look in the bathroom!” I called back.
The tub was overflowing already, and I didn’t want to know if there was water coming from the toilet. The thought of the porcelain bowl’s germs made me grimace. It was better to live in ignorance.
“My dad can fix this!” Brandy declared from the kitchen. “I’m gonna give him a call!”
With my friend wandering elsewhere, she couldn’t see the instinctive frown forming on my face. Mr. Ian Weiss wasn’t always the most pleasant person. He was a little rough around the edges as it was, but I could see that he didn’t like me. When he looked my way, it was like I’d licked the red off his candy, and it happened every time he started to grill Brandy about her education or her behavior.
It was like he thought I was the one doing it all.
He never said it out loud, but the look was right there. Of course, I’d never forced any alcohol down his little angel’s throat. It wasn’t my fault that when Brandy turned twenty-one she decided to launch herself into the deep end of the local bar scene. When she was underage, Brandy hesitated to have anything more than a beer or two at parties, but not anymore.
The little cherub had tossed her halo aside. She had jumped off her heavenly cloud to live among us mere mortals, and Mr. Weiss didn’t like that. He worked hard to keep her up on that cloud with the help of a massive ivory pedestal. He couldn’t believe she did it of her own volition. No, I must’ve been the culprit, ‘the chubby bumpkin from Blowing Rock’ or whatever people called me these days. It didn’t bother me one bit.
I was far more interested in making the most of my college experience. I budgeted my time and money to let loose now and again, but Brandy . . . she couldn’t even keep time after three drinks. I’d show up to a party and find her among a crowd of her sorority sisters. Brandy would be stumbling over herself after just a few glasses of wine or three light beers.
The poor child couldn’t hold her liquor, even if her life depended on it.
Time and again, I dragged her out before she got herself into too much trouble, and yet I was the one getting the blame. Just because I was trying to make sure Brandy didn’t get sick or assaulted by some perv, somehow, that meant I was the one dragging her around to these parties. No good deed of mine could ever go unpunished.
“Don’t worry, Maxie!” Brandy exclaimed. “Dad’s on his way!”
“Oh, okay!” I called back, grabbing another pot to help with the water.
I didn't know why I was trying. The old wood floors were already warping from the water damage. The kitchen electrics were likely compromised, and the bathroom . . . I still had to ignore that one. I didn’t even know what my bedroom looked like now, but it had been dry in there when I went to get my raincoat. I just prayed that it was still that way.
Fourteen and a half minutes later, there was a knock at the door. Brandy jumped over a half-filled bowl in the tiny hall to answer it. Taking a cue from me, Brandy had put on her bubblegum pink rain slicker and daisy-covered boots.
“Coming!” she cried out in her girlish voice.
I didn’t want to see him, but I was getting desperate. I was running out of places to hide the things I actually liked from the water’s wrath.
“Daddy!” she greeted him, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Thank God, you’ve come!”
I looked away to roll my eyes. She didn’t need to butter him up quite that much.
Scratching at his unshaven face, Ian Weiss glanced around the room. He was here for five seconds before the disapproving look followed him inside. The grimace of disappointment passed over me as I stood in the living room, holding onto a pile of books to keep them safe.
“I always knew this place was a dump,” he grumbled under his breath. “That idiot landlord of yours doesn’t know a thing about taking care of a place. Have you even heard from him?”
“Um, I tried this afternoon,” I piped up. “I think he’s on vacation right now in Mexico. His voicemail said something dumb about too many margaritas, and then there was some Spanish gibberish.”
Part of me wished I’d just kept my mouth shut. His steel-blue eyes cut to mine with that familiar I-licked-his-candy look, but even through the frown and the unkempt face, Ian was absurdly good-looking.
When I was a kid, my father had tried to relate to me the only way he knew how—movies. He showed me all kinds of action flicks and science-fiction sagas, probably before I should’ve seen them. Still, I watched them all with excitement until my young heart began to beat for the eighties’ Harrison Ford.
I adored his perfect head of hair and the build of his chest. I didn’t mind when his velvety baritone voice got a little stern or ill-tempered. It was still heartbreaking to hear.
Whether he was a space cowboy or saving the President of the United States, that man made me realize I was never going to be gay, and Ian Weiss was a dead-ringer for the actor. They had the same straight nose, the same coloring of their hair and skin. There was even a similar timbre to their voices. The only difference was Ian Weiss’s steely blue-gray eyes always holding me in contempt.
Young Harrison Ford would never have looked at me that way.
“I’m sure I can get it to stop raining,” he assured us. “But this is a problem your landlord needs to deal with. Not me. Is there no superintendent on staff?”
“No,” Brandy fretted. “He lives in the super’s apartment.”
“Of course, he does,” her father sighed.
He pulled off his work coat, and his snug Henley shirt and jeans showed off his well-formed figure. Artists like Rodin or Michelangelo would’ve loved to see that physique in action. He strode confidently around the eight-hundred-square-foot apartment, carrying his heavy toolbox like it was just a feather. I tried to focus on salvaging my books and trinkets from around the apartment, but I couldn’t help but to sneak a peek or two.
It was just an innocent glance here and there. It certainly didn’t kill me to relive my middle-school fantasies of a daring archaeologist saving me from a murderous tribe of people. After a day like this, I welcomed the distraction.
When the last leak dripped out of existence, we all sighed in relief.
“So, can you fix the damage too?” Brandy asked him.
“Yes, but no,” he sighed, obviously annoyed with the situation. “The property owner needs to take care of this. If I just make the repairs myself, there’s no guarantee he’ll pay me for my time. It’s not like he’ll give me any money for what I did today.”
“I tried calling him again, but he won’t pick up!” Brandy lamented, her voice verging on shrill.
Her father got a determined look in his eyes. The steel in his gaze looked ready to break something or someone who was giving his only child trouble.
“Give me your phone, Brandy,” he insisted, waving her over. “I’m going to call him.”
“When?”
“Now, and I’ll keep calling until he picks up,” Ian Weiss swore. “What’s his name again?”
“Gary Smith,” Brandy replied.
I wasn’t sticking around to watch that drama unfold, but I heard it clearly enough through the paper-thin walls. After about ten minutes of nonstop calling, the guy picked up. Brandy’s dad wasn’t shy about leveling out the extent of the damage, including other problems that we’d been living around, like the noisy heater and the dead ceiling light in the hallway. The growing tension lured me back toward the kitchen.
“I’m glad you got the voicemails,” Ian huffed, his voice rising with impatience. “But what are you going to do about the situation? This is a condemnable property, Gary! I should call someone to tape off the whole freaking building!”
Toying with my necklace, I muttered to myself, “For the love of God.”
This man had one hell of a temper.
“Next week?” Ian scoffed at the man. “I don’t care if you get back next week! I can have a lawyer draft up a lawsuit against you before then!”
My eyes bugging, I forced myself to look away from the man fuming in our shoebox-sized kitchen. He swore a string of profanities under his breath as he finished the heated conversation.
“Well, you can’t stay here,” he insisted to us, his voice still worn from the arguing.
“What do you mean?” Brandy fretted.
“I’m sorry, Angel, but you’ve got to find a new place to live.”
My eyes went wide in horror. Backing out would mean risking losing our deposit and being held liable for any remaining rent, as stipulated in our contract. The guy was an idiot who would definitely lose in this case, but it didn’t mean I would be able to waste hundreds of dollars in legal fees. I couldn’t decide which would be the greater expense.
Even worse, we didn’t have a place to sleep tonight.
My mind began to spin. I felt myself becoming unbalanced from the world tilting underneath me. I didn’t have room in my life for this kind of error. Every penny was accounted for in my budget. If I didn’t waste any money getting out of this lease, I’d certainly lose the best deal on rent in Ann Arbor. Everywhere else would charge us hundreds more, and it couldn’t be that much better than this place. Nobody cared about student apartments.
Hiding from the panic, my mind started running through every possible solution. The simplest choice would be to go to university housing and beg for any spare bed, but that would risk my temporary residency to receive in-state tuition.
I would’ve stayed in the residence halls if it hadn’t saved me thousands of dollars to get an apartment and a Michigan driver’s license so I could declare Michigan residency. Besides, even if they did scrounge up something, it wouldn’t be a room for us both. I’d probably be stuck with some freshman who scared off her other roommate with weird behavior.
I knew the horror stories, and I didn’t want that drama in the last few months of my undergraduate years. I just wanted to breeze through my last few classes. Then, I could proudly saunter onto the graduation stage to shake hands with the head of the communications department before my actual diploma arrived in the mail. The path had been clear cut for me, but not anymore.
It took all my resilience not to lose my balance. I had my four-door Jeep parked outside and a couple of spare bucks I’d saved for spring break. That money could buy me a week at a hotel, but not much more. My mind kept turning, but there was nowhere to turn and nobody to stop me.
Shutting my eyes tightly, I swallowed back the bile in my throat as I forced myself to realize I was unofficially homeless.
