Life and Other Inconveniences

by Kristan Higgins

  It was Pop who’d said, “We’ll get through this, honey,” even when his face was gray and his eyes teary. My grandmother, who could still hold me on her lap at that time, stroked my hair.

  Genevieve came out for the funeral. Told me to “be strong” and made me wear the black Mary Janes that were too tight.

  For the first few days, my father and I stayed with my mother’s parents, sleeping in my mother’s old bed. We went home the next week, and everything was different. Everything was wrong. My once-cheerful room where my mom had read to me and made my stuffed animals talk in squeaky voices . . . what had happened? She’d loved me, and she killed herself! The kitchen where she’d made such delicious food now smelled like hot dogs and burnt toast, courtesy of my father. Papers piled up, and everything was sticky and grimy.

  I wanted to move in with Pop and Grammy, but after a few weeks, my father told me I’d be visiting Connecticut.

  He left out the word forever. He left out the words by yourself. He neglected to say goodbye, but instead just said, “Try to be brave.”

  So. I had no plans to forgive him for abandoning me, and he didn’t seem to care much. Why? How did a person not care about his child? I mean, yes, my father had suffered, losing his brother, his father and then his wife. But you’d think (or so I thought, as a child, then a tween, then a teenager swamped with feelings 24-7) that those losses would make him love me all the more.

  They didn’t.

  As for Genevieve, she was utterly inscrutable. She was doing her duty by me, and she made sure I knew it. Things that I thought would make her happy didn’t. For instance, when I was put on the varsity swim team my freshman year, she told me to stop gloating; I had an unfair advantage, since Sheerwater had a heated pool we kept open eight months of the year. She’d go for days without speaking to me for no apparent reason, Donelle simply shrugging if I asked why Genevieve was mad at me. Then again, I sneaked in after curfew at least once a week after I started dating Jason, and she never said a word. One time, when I thought I’d be grounded for sure, since it was after one a.m., she said only, “Make sure the door is locked, won’t you?”

  So uncomplicated was a joy. Uncomplicated meant I could breathe. My shoulders would drop an inch when I was with Jason, and my teeth, which I clenched at night, didn’t hurt as much. Jason’s eternal good cheer, good looks, good kissing . . . what more did a teenage girl need? His parents liked me, welcomed me into their home, and all the love I gave Jason was returned right back to me.

  He wasn’t like other boys. He never was crass or rude or gross—no fart jokes, no filthy bathroom, no crude comments about women or sex. Instead, he’d tell me I was beautiful. I was fun. I made him so happy. He loved me.

  You have to understand . . . no one said those things to me. Donelle was kind, but not loving in the way a parent might be. Pop was gruff, more after my poor grammy died. I needed someone to love. Anyone, really.

  Jason filled that gaping hole in my heart. We didn’t go for more than half a day without speaking, and with few exceptions, we did something every weekend and several times a week. On the appropriate holidays, he’d get me something lovely—a delicate bracelet or a journal or fancy chocolates. He held my hand all the time, in the halls of school, in front of my grandmother. We were voted cutest couple and prom royals.

  Almost three years of blissful first love without a single fight, without tears, without drama. After all those years of feeling lost, I’d finally been found.

  Then my period was late. I told myself it was the stress of graduating from high school, though we’d basically been killing time since Memorial Day. But I knew. One time without a condom, even with me on the Pill, which I forgot to take one time. One time.

  When I was ten days late, I told Jason, and he came over with a pregnancy test he’d bought two towns over. We didn’t say much; Genevieve was at some luncheon in New York, Donelle was repainting the laundry room, and Helga was banging around in the kitchen, brewing coffee, a smell I usually loved and now made me want to puke.

  Jason, pale and silent, sat on my bed. I went into the bathroom like it was a prison cell, pulled down my pants, prayed that the test would be negative and peed on the stick. Before the waiting time was even up, the two lines showed loud and clear.

  My heart thudded against my ribs. I was pregnant, all right.

  Not real convenient.

  In August, I was supposed to leave for Smith College to double major in marketing and economics. My times had qualified me for the swim team. I was going to live in Cutter House, a special interest residence where we’d only speak French. My roommate and I had coordinated our comforters. Even Genevieve approved of my future.

  Which did not include a baby.

  Oh, God. What was I going to do?

  Suddenly, I wanted my mother so, so much. Forget that she’d killed herself. I wanted her, hugging me, stroking my hair, telling me it would be okay. I wanted the mother who’d tucked me in so perfectly every night, folding back the covers the perfect amount and kissing my forehead, nose and lips, then doing the same to Cookie Monster, who slept with me every night.

  I put my hand over my stomach, where cells were burgeoning and reproducing, practically tap-dancing with life.

  I was pregnant. God! This was terrible. Almost laughably wretched. Jason, too, had a bright future . . . well, a good solid future. He planned to major in business and go into his family’s construction company. He wasn’t a twit, but mature wasn’t a word that leaped to mind when I thought of him. Fun. Happy. Nice.

  Young.

  So I should probably make things easy and not stay pregnant. My brain—and heart—bounced away from the uglier words.

  My mother’s face flashed before me, smiling, her freckles and pretty red hair blowing in the wind. The smell of her, always so comforting. The way we’d held hands and she’d let me wear her rings on my thumb.

  This baby would be a piece of her, too. Her grandchild. Granddaughter, because I suddenly knew it was a girl. I believed in a woman’s right to choose. I knew this could be over in a day. I knew life would be a lot easier if I followed the plan of college, staying in Genevieve’s good graces, not becoming a teenage mother.

  And I knew with abrupt certainty that I was choosing this baby. This clump of cells, this little zygote, had my mother in its DNA.

  I loved Jason. I wanted a family with him, though I’d always thought it would be at least seven or ten years down the road. I’d always wanted kids, ever since I was about thirteen and started babysitting. Jason wanted them, too. Just a few weeks before, we’d gone out for breakfast, and the server’s name was Meghan, and he’d said what a nice name that would be if we had a daughter someday.

  I went into the bedroom. “Positive,” I said, and Jason looked like he was about to burst into tears.

  “Okay,” he whispered. “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to keep it,” I said.

  Jason closed his eyes. “Your call, obviously.” Not exactly a reassuring answer.

  “We can do this,” I said more firmly. “It’s a few years ahead of schedule, but we can do this.”

  He grimaced a little, then fixed his face. “Yeah. We can. You’re right. We love each other, and we . . . well, we’ll figure it out, I guess.”

  At that moment, though, sitting on my bed with Jason, our combined ages making us all of thirty-six, I was naive and selfish and right. Having Riley would turn out to be the best thing I ever did, and ever would do.

  When Genevieve came home, Jason and I sat down with her in the formal living room and told her. She ordered Jason out of her house and, within the hour, cut me off and kicked me out. We told Courtney and Robert, and they were dismayed, betrayed and disappointed in both of us (me especially, those pesky eggs of mine seeming to bear more blame than Jason’s sperm).

  We talked about me going with Jason t
o the University of New England, but Courtney asked who’d pay my tuition, sliding Robert a murderous look when he opened his mouth. It didn’t make a lot of sense, she said, and Jason nodded. Better if he went to college so he could support us.

  “You can stay here, I guess,” Jason said. “Take some classes, have my mom help you out.” Courtney didn’t have a job outside of homemaker, and now her only child was leaving for school. I looked at her hopefully.

  “No,” she said, her chirpy voice suddenly hard. “I’m sorry, I have to agree with Genevieve. You took this chance, Emma, and now you have to pay the piper.”

  I took the chance. I had to pay. Jason’s life would be pretty much the same, it seemed. Four days before, Courtney had told me I felt like I was her daughter when she took me for a pedicure. Of course, four days ago, she thought I was heir to a considerable fortune.

  So I called Pop and told him the news in a whisper. “Guess you better live with me,” he said, his voice gruff. That was all, but it was so much.

  “I’ll come out to Chicago all the time,” Jason said. And once it was settled, he returned to being his uncomplicated, happy self. “College seems so stupid, but I guess I’m not much good for you two without a career.”

  Besides, his mother had insisted he finish school. Insisted. And Jason rarely disappointed his parents. Knocking me up was bad enough. Dropping out of college before he started (or at any time) wasn’t going to happen.

  The fact that I’d had to put college on the back burner wasn’t discussed.

  So Jason flew me out to Chicago, told Pop he’d support me and the baby, already had a job lined up on campus, thanked him for taking care of us and didn’t seem to mind the fact that Pop said not one word to him.

  We held each other and sobbed when it was time for him to leave. “I miss you both already,” he said, and I knew he meant it.

  But already I was growing up. I wanted Jason to live up to his promises, but there was a tiny kernel of knowledge in my soul, and it told me I was just another single mother about to be disappointed by the baby daddy.

  I ignored it. I had to. As I grew bigger and more awkward, when stretch marks made it look like I’d survived a werewolf attack, when the baby pressed against my sciatic nerve and I could barely sit on the stool the grocery store provided, I had to think Jason would come through. We’d be a couple. We’d make it. The picture of our happy future cradled me when the lady at the community college told me that my check bounced, when the store manager yelled at me because I dropped a bottle of corn syrup and it broke, and he made me clean it up, even though I could hardly bend over because I was nine months pregnant, when my car broke down on the highway and no one stopped to help.

  Later, I’d think long and hard about the selflessness and heroism of girls and women who go through pregnancy and give up their babies for adoption. Later, I’d realize I had no business having a baby without the means to support her, without any real knowledge of what it took to raise a child or even keep one alive. Later, I’d know the odds of Jason and me being a married couple were almost nonexistent.

  When she was born two weeks early, my poor grandfather was at my side, trying not to see too much—Jason was at Miller and Ashley’s wedding.

  It didn’t matter. When I first saw my daughter’s beautiful face, I made a vow. I’ll do my best. Every day, I’ll do my best.

  She had red hair. If that wasn’t a sign from heaven that my mother loved and watched over me, I didn’t know what was. I named her Riley in honor of my grandfather. Olivia for a middle name, which had also been my mom’s.

  I honored my vow. Every day, every hour, I did the best I could to take care of my baby, love her and care for her, to try to deal with the exhaustion, the fear, the terror of being a single mother. That instant love I felt for her wasn’t pretty or besotted; it was primal and fierce. I’d die for her. I’d kill for her. Later, it would gentle into the gift it was—the shimmering, wonder-filled love for my favorite person, my daughter, my treasure . . . my reason for being.

  But I still kept imagining a future with Jason. When I figured out just how damn painful nursing was and broke out in a sweat when Riley clamped down, when she cried nonstop every afternoon for six straight hours until she was four months old, when she had her first fever and was so limp and sick, I held on to that vision. Pop was still working (he had to, with me and the baby), and calls from Jason were a lifeline.

  “You’re amazing,” he said. “I love you so much. This will all be worth it, honey, I promise.”

  I wanted that to be true so much. I imagined a path toward a happy life out here. We’d have a little house. Sometimes, on a Sunday, I’d pack Riley into the little front carrier and go to open houses and imagine a couch here, a crib there.

  Jason came to see his daughter, of course. He came every few months, which was not nothing. He made much of how he suffered for fatherhood, the only freshman in his dorm to be a dad, how the other kids at school couldn’t believe it. He complained about how he had to take the bus one time since his parents wouldn’t give him a plane ticket, making his trip seem Odyssean. He was often tired on the visits to Chicago and slept more than I did.

  Pop would give me a look and say nothing, but I knew. I felt it. Over the months, then years, it became clear that Jason was a perpetual boy, whereas I’d become an adult the day I saw those two lines on the pregnancy test. From that moment on, everything I did was for the good of my baby. My needs, wants, dignity, health, pride, everything . . . they were a far-distant second.

  Meanwhile, Jason got Cs at the University of New England, would call to tell me about a party his fraternity had hosted where thirty uninvited girls had crashed. He told me he loved me but didn’t think he could make the trip out over spring break because he’d been fired from his on-campus job. The ten hours a week had proved too demanding.

  He contributed. I might’ve been naive, but I wasn’t stupid. I sent him a list of our expenses each month, and he sent a check to cover half. I knew the money came from his parents . . . not that they ever acknowledged Riley.

  It was crushing, but I didn’t have time to wallow. I waited, yes. Boys matured more slowly than girls. I knew that motherhood was the strongest urge in nature. I knew Jason would’ve chosen an abortion.

  But hope. That thing with feathers, right? Like a stupid pigeon who crashes into someone’s windshield on I-90 and then flies off, not realizing that all its flapping isn’t recovery . . . it’s a death knell.

  I needed that dying pigeon. When Riley spent her entire fifteenth month with a stomach virus so bad her butt was raw and she cried at the sight of food, I pictured being a “real” adult. Pictured Jason walking in like a man this time, not a skinny college boy, telling me it was time for us to be together, his parents and college be damned. That he’d bought a little house a few blocks from Pop, and it was waiting for me and Riley, and I’d plant tulips along the stone wall and we’d get a puppy and his job would support us, and I could take classes more regularly and wouldn’t have to fall asleep with my head on a cash register, an open textbook in my lap.

  It was like being a kid and believing in Santa. What’s the upshot of knowing the truth? Why not hold on to the magic a little longer? Why not, when my days consisted of childcare, laundry, working, cooking, studying, little spurts of sleep that only reminded me how tired I was? Why not picture a fricking ring and a small but tasteful wedding, a swing for the baby, a blue couch where Jason and I would sit each night, his manly arm around me, the two of us unbreakable?

  He had his moments. When I learned I was a sister and flew out to meet Hope, Jason came down from Maine, not telling his parents, and paid for the hotel. He brought Hope a stuffed animal and was kind to her. I cried when I had to say goodbye to her, and Jason took me to a tiny restaurant in Norwich, and I felt cherished as he listened sweetly and told me I was a good person.

  Never once was he
harsh or cruel. He was just . . . young.

  Every time he came out, he’d kiss me, carry Riley on his shoulders, bring presents. The pigeon of hope continued to flap once in a while. I waited. I made excuses. I didn’t want to imagine anything but that little house, that blue couch, the yellow tulips and Riley’s swing.

  When Jason graduated, I asked him when he was coming to visit. For the first time ever, his voice became uncharacteristically cool. “You’ve been riding me to get a job all these years, Em,” he said. “Now I have one. I need to do it.”

  Me? Riding him? I’d been ridiculously accommodating. “I think I’ve been kind of amazing, actually,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “And I think I’ve done a lot more than most guys would’ve in my shoes,” he said.

  It was a threat. And yet, it was also true.

  Two months later, he came out for a visit and everything seemed fine. He was happy to see us, kissed me, swung Riley around and called us his little family. The child support increased without me having to ask, which was good, because Riley was starting nursery school, and even at that age, there were extra costs.

  At Christmas, he came out again, with a bike for Riley that she’d have to wait three years to ride, it was so big. On Valentine’s Day, he sent me a card that said, You treat me like a unicorn when we both know I’m an ass. Not exactly romantic. In March, he came out, rented an unremarkable hotel “suite” that had an alcove with a twin bed for Riley, and invited me to stay over.

  I did. We had quiet, not-great sex while our child slept. We were each other’s first love. And, I told myself, sex, even not-great sex, showed we were still a couple. It was a fragile, fraying thread, but a thread nonetheless. He never mentioned a girlfriend, and I sure as hell didn’t have the time or inclination to date. While the sex wasn’t what it used to be, it was at least comforting.