SERIES: Dogs In a Manger

PART: 1 of 3

RATING: PG (Adult thematic material)

PAIRING(s): AF/LDF; SF/CR For Now

DISTRIBUTION: To LW, Myself and FG so far; any other archives are welcome to ask, but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine.  Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"

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CATEGORY: Romance/Drama

FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!

SETTING IN TIMELINE: Set pre-canon, post high school for the girls

SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Laverne finds herself pregnant after a prom night indiscretion - leading to a search for respectability and comfort.

NOTES: Lots of alt-canon.

***

Laverne DeFazio clutched her churning stomach as she lay hunched on her bathroom floor.  For the third time that day, she wondered what was wrong with her.  She hadn't had anything to eat for twenty-four hours, which ruled out food poisoning.  She didn't feel feverish, so that meant it wasn't the flu.  She wracked her miserable mind for a solution but could only remember some dusty passage from an old dictionary she had avidly studied at fifteen: symptoms of pregnancy may initially include fatigue, nausea...

She was seventeen.  She couldn't be pregnant, for pete's sake!  She had just graduated from high school three months ago - the lease she and Shirley had co-signed on their new basement apartment was only four weeks old.  Shirley, eighteen, didn't need her parent's permission, but Laverne had needed Frank to co-sign the application.  The struggle she and Shirley had gone through to get their place!  It wouldn't be fair for her to get pregnant just as she began experiencing her first heady rush of freedom...

But it would make sense, a tiny voice whispered in her head.  Don't you remember?  Senior prom ring a bell?  It rang more than a bell in Laverne's mind.

That night had been the stuff of dreams.  She and Shirley had gone in their coordinated pink-and-purple chiffon ball gowns, paid for lavishly by Laverne's father.  Shirley had gone on the arm of Carmine Ragusa, her erstwhile steady, but Laverne had selected someone with the streak of danger she so adored. 

She had met Arthur Fonzarelli in fifth period gym two years before, and he had been her regular steady.  Fonzi, as everyone called him, was a rebel with an attitude, a laconic been-everywhere-seen-everyone look on his face, and a leather jacket so controversial that the principle had banned him from wearing it.   Fonzie's response was that it was a safety device he needed to make sure he wouldn't crack his head open on the pavement while speeding his brand-new Indian around the streets of Milwaukee.  The principle had been outraged but stymied by this, and allowed Fonzie to keep his jacket.

Everything else about Arthur seemed as daring too.  He cut classes regularly, hung out with the juniors drinking and smoking out at Inspiration Point - so often that he was finally expelled, just three credits shy of his graduation.  To an infatuated Laverne, who thrived off of the intoxicating energy Fonzie exuded, it didn't matter.  She was the envy of all of the Debs, most importantly her lifelong rival Rosie.  Only Shirley had, in her squirrelly, intelligent way, questioned Laverne's relationship with Fonzie, and had worried about Laverne's safety.  Of course she would, Laverne snorted.  She and Carmine had been the Sandra Dee and Bobby Darrin of Fillmore High.  No one's opinion mattered.  Fonzie had introduced her in rapid order to smoking, drinking, speeding, heavy petting, low-cut sweaters, hand jobs at the drive-in, and intercourse, the latter of which commenced in the back seat of his Cadillac the night of her senior prom.  For Laverne, it was the capper on a night of triumph all around.  Everyone at the prom had been shocked to see Fonzie on her arm, and Rosie Markum and her nerdy boyfriend Ogden Greenbaum had been the most scandalized.  She and Fonzie had danced away the night to whispers that Fonzie was about to be elected prom king by a landslide.  When that prediction came true, it was Laverne on his arm, elected Queen by a few random threats spread around by Fonzie.

It felt as if it had all happened yesterday.  But Laverne supposed that maybe her clinging to the freshness of a memory that was firmly locked away in the past.  The evening after their magical prom night, Fonzie had been caught spray-painting the phrase "sit on it!" on the back of Cunningham's Hardware Store.  With his history of petty crime, the juvenile court sentenced him to a year in Milwaukee Juvenile Hall, a school where he would learn a trade while being held until his eighteen birthday.   Frank DeFazio, who had turned a blind eye to Fonzie's antics because he seemed a fine, upstanding Italian boy, strongly suggested his little girl stop seeing the thug.

Regardless, she ignored her father's wishes and went to the sentencing, an unpleasant experience all around.  Fonzie's mother had cried voluminously on her shoulder, professing his innocence, which Laverne guiltily swore she believed in.  Fonzie hadn't acknowledged her presence, and, though she wrote him near-daily, had never received a letter back, even though she had mailed him her new address in the first letter.

The bathroom door swung open, and Shirley stepped inside.  "Are you still upchucking?" Laverne nodded her head.  Shirley bent over her hunched form, rubbing her forehead.  "Still no fever.  I think you need to see a doctor."

"I ain't sick!"  Laverne protested.

"But you've been throwing up for two weeks now!  If it were the flu, you'd have a fever, and if it was food poisoning you'd be over it.  Something's seriously wrong," Shirley flushed the toilet, and then helped Laverne to her feet.  "I'll get you an appointment with my mother's doctor..."

"We don't got enough money for that!" Laverne whined.

"And we'll keep losing it if you can't get back to work!  You've used up a whole week of sick pay."

Laverne gave her best friend a miserable look.  She didn't want to lose her new job, lousy as it was, and she didn't want to spend the rest of her life hunched by a toilet.  "All right.  You call the doctor and I'll go."

***

"How did it go?"

Laverne locked her legs together modestly.  Her black sweater, white skirt and new heels gave her a demure, professional look.  She was fully aware of being the only woman there with another woman.  "He took some blood.  It'll take a few minutes for them to finish off the rabbit test."

"RABBIT TEST!" Shirley's saucer-sized blue eyes conveyed her shock more clearly than her overly-melodic public tone of voice.  "I know you're embarrassed about still being a virgin, Laverne, but lying to a medical professional is against the law!"

"I ain't lying, Shirl."

"But that means..."

"Me and Fonzie the night of senior prom," she explained shortly.  "He didn't want to use a rubber, and I just finished up my period."

Shirley's hands were white-knuckled around her purse.  "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't think you'd understand!"

"But we share everything with each other!" Shirley's voice had gone beyond a polite whisper.  People were staring.  She swiveled toward Laverne.

"Crapola!  You do things with Carmine I never hear about!"

Shirley blushed.  "But we don't do anything that might get me in trouble.  You did something risky with Fonzie."

"Everything I do with Fonz is risky," Laverne replied softly.  "I never got caught before.  I didn't think we ever would..."

"Miss Kelly?  Grace Kelly?" Laverne's head shot up from her clatch with Shirley.  "Doctor Winebaum has the results of your test.  He'd like to see you in his office."

Laverne's hearing became a far-off tinny echo.  Somehow, she heard Shirley hissing "Laverne!  Please let go of my hand!"

Her fingers unclasped, and she gave her a feeble smile.  "I can't do it alone," She hissed.

"Do you want me to go with you?"

Laverne knew that would only make the whispers louder.  "No.  I'll be okay."

Shirley punched her in the shoulder.  "Go and get 'em, girl!"

Laverne's wan smile told a tale of pained fear.  But she made herself rise and follow the nurse into the oak-paneled conference room.  Her stomach dropped out when she saw that Docto Winebaum waited for her behind his desk.  He stood to meet her, and pulled out her chair, seating her.

"I have the results back, Miss Kelly..."

"I can take it doc - just tell me, how long do I got?  Four months?  A year?"

He gave her a wise look.  "Around seven.  But you should be fine after the delivery."

Laverne felt her face go pale.  "Oh no," she squeaked. 

"I'm sorry.  Was the pregnancy unplanned?"

"I ain't married - it was my prom night..." Laverne blurted.  "I just got my first apartment!  My boyfriend's in juvenile hall!"

He patted her hand.  "I'll set you up with a councilor at Good Samaritans.  She'll know what to do for you."

Laverne felt herself tremble.  Good Samaritans was the Catholic League's home for unwed mothers.   The debs had whispered to each other about it like campers spreading the legend of the horny teens and the bloody hook in the car door.   "I ain't giving my baby away."

He looked up at her sharply.  "You're a young woman with your life ahead of you, Miss Kelly.  The other option would not only risk your health but put you in jail..."

"Nothing's happening to the baby," she rubbed her flat belly.  "Arthur gets out of juvie in a year.  I know he loves me.  We can get married when he gets a day pass!"

"Is this the Mister Fonzarelli on your reference?" She nodded.  "That would be impossible.  You list him as being seventeen on this paper.  You'd have to drive to Tennessee for a vaild arrangement..."

"I don't care - neither with Fonzie!  You'll see," she stood up briskly.  "When I tell him, he'll jump over the moon!  We'll get married, and I'll have my baby, and then we'll move to New York and start REALLY living!" She picked up her purse. 

"I would feel more comfortable in letting you leave if you'd take this..." He ripped the page out of his notebook.  She knew it was the address to Good Samaritan.  Laverne crumpled it up and tossed it into the wastebasket. 

"I don't need no help," Laverne said.  "I know the way it's gonna be," she turned away, walking to the door.  "The way it's gotta be," she whispered, before opening the door and facing the hopeful expression of Shirley Feeney.