Instead, all I could think about was how my apartment would be a horrible place to raise a child. Apart from the bathroom and a closet, it was just one big room, really. There was no way to put up baby gates to keep a toddler from the kitchen. And there wasn’t a lick of carpeting in the place. I’d have to pull out the oven and make the kid wear a helmet at home.
How would my parents react? They’d be disappointed—and I wouldn’t hold that against them. I would be pretty disappointed myself. But would they still love me? Of course they would, I answered my own silent question. And they would love the baby. But would they be ashamed of me? Of the baby? Would they hide it all from people as long as they possibly could, so as not to shatter everyone’s perception of their life?
How would I tell Will?
That was the one I couldn’t allow myself to think about. Not yet. Mercifully I arrived at CVS and was able to focus instead on picking out the best version of something I knew nothing about. The best version among at least a dozen or so brands. How was I supposed to know if I preferred to look for lines or pluses? Words! Yes, I definitely needed the one that plainly stated either “Whew! You got lucky,” or “Have fun telling Nessa McCaffrey she’s going to be a grandmother!” Would the generic brand work just as well? I am a woman who studies and plans and makes her decisions based on thorough understanding, but there wasn’t time for any of that. Just grab one, Cadie. Against my bank balance’s better judgment, I chose the most expensive one, hoping that it was expensive because it was the best, and then I paid and rushed back home.
My walk of shame continued, as I had suspected it would. As I suspected it would forever. I felt as if every person I passed—people who were working, walking, living—knew what I had done. I was pretty sure even their dogs were judging me—probably for briefly believing, earlier in the evening, that I had the emotional fortitude and upright moral character to care for one of their kind.
Without even taking off my coat, I hurried to the bathroom as soon as I walked in. I quickly read the directions, which my clouded brain struggled to understand, even though they really consisted of very little more than “Pee on the end of the stick thing,” and then I did it. I peed on the end of the stick thing.
It’s not every day that one is acutely aware that they are experiencing the most important pee of their life.
I set the timer on my phone for two minutes, and then I walked away. I couldn’t just stand there and stare at the seconds ticking down. I went to the kitchen and looked around for something to do, but of course I was obsessively neat, even on vacation—apart from the Milano crumbs. There were no dishes to put away or spills to sop up, but I still grabbed a Clorox wipe from underneath the sink and began sanitizing every surface.
I told myself it would be fine. I told myself I was worrying about nothing, and that the odds of getting pregnant at thirty-four from my first time were astronomical. Never mind that I had no idea what the odds actually were, and never mind that scenes from movies and TV were rushing through my head—shows like Degrassi, which made it pretty clear that every woman gets pregnant her first time.
But then, without any warning that it was about to happen, I found myself dropping to my knees in a flood of tears and despair.
“Please don’t let me be pregnant!” I cried aloud to the ceiling. “I can’t do it. I can’t . . . I just can’t, Lord. I can’t face my parents, or my friends. I wouldn’t be able to face Will. Please don’t tie me to him forever. Please don’t do that to me. I want to move on, and I want to begin putting him behind me, and I don’t know how I’m going to do that anyway, but with a baby—”
I was startled out of my heart-to-heart with God—the first one I’d allowed myself to have in far too long—by the sound of the timer on my phone buzzing in the bathroom.
“Not yet!” I shouted, surprising myself.
In that brief moment I had begun to feel God’s presence for the first time since before that Thursday when I had chosen to ignore his outstretched arms and had sought comfort in Will’s instead. Since then, I hadn’t allowed myself to pour my heart out to God or even so much as ask for forgiveness. Instead of running to the Lord with my shame and heartbreak, I had spent the week vegging out in the Garden of Eden, acting like I was simply wearing my fig leaf because it was the latest thing in Madison Avenue foliage wear.
“Not yet,” I repeated much more quietly as I rubbed the tears from my eyes and prepared to get real with God. I shifted from the increasingly uncomfortable position of kneeling and sat flat on the tile instead. I pulled my knees up against my chest and rested my forehead on them, and I tuned out the incessant buzzing from the other room.
“I am so, so sorry,” I prayed. “You know that if I could go back and make it not happen, I would. It was so stupid.” I sniffed and banged my head against my knees. “I was so stupid.”
The tears began to flow even more freely, and I could barely choke out the words that were on my heart. My throat felt thick with shame and despair.
Please forgive me, Lord. I stopped speaking aloud, fully aware that God could hear everything I had to say to him with or without the filter of my voice. I never meant for this to happen. I’m sorry I’m so weak. I mean, I was pretty strong for thirty-four years, but . . .
I groaned aloud, frustrated that I was trying to find a way to defend myself even in the midst of my confession and repentance.
I’m sorry I’m so weak. Thank you for loving me anyway. I do really, really hope I’m not pregnant, Lord. “Please,” I whispered painfully. But regardless of what the test says, please help me to deal with it . . . however I’m supposed to deal with it. If I have to be a mom right now, help me to be a good one. If I have to share a child with Will, help me to talk to him, and for us to somehow work that out. If I have to tell my parents about all of this . . . I shivered at the thought and moved on, unwilling to go to the very scary place where that thought was threatening to take me. If I have to find a different apartment, help me to accept that—even if I don’t get to live this close to the subway again. Even if I have to leave the Village. Even if there isn’t a Magnolia Bakery nearby . . .
On one hand, that felt like the wrong thing to pray. On the other, I was certain that God understood the value of being a few steps away from Magnolia’s banana pudding.
Whatever it is, Lord . . . please be with me. Even though I don’t deserve for you to be.
I struggled to breathe normally as I stood from my cold, hard, unsafe-for-toddlers tile and replaced the Clorox wipe in my hand with a tissue. The buzzing continued and I began walking slowly toward it, as if pulled in by an invisible force. I tapped my phone to silence it and then picked up the stick.
Not pregnant.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
The doorbell rang and I walked to answer—as if pulled by the same invisible force that had drawn me to my phone’s buzzing just a minute or two prior. I wasn’t ready for Darby yet, but of course she had headed over anyway. Ready or not, I knew that once I saw her I would be glad she was there.
I looked through my door’s peephole and jumped at the sight of him. No. No, no, no. If I wasn’t ready for Darby, I definitely wasn’t ready for Will. I backed away from the door, slowly and silently, and made my way back to the bathroom, where my phone remained. Darby would know what I should do. At least, I really hoped so, because I didn’t have a clue.
“Well?” she answered before the end of the first ring.
“Will’s here,” I whispered.
The doorbell rang once again, and then the relatively calm chiming was replaced by an incessant knock and Will’s voice calling out my name. “Cadie? I know you’re in there. I really need to talk to you. Please open up.”
It was very possible that my head was going to explode.
“Will’s there?” Darby asked. “Why is Will there?”
“I have no idea. What do I do? He won’t stop knocking, and he says he knows I’m in here.”
“How would h
e know?”
“I don’t know, but I am! So what do I do?”
“Cadie, did you take a test? Are you pregnant?”
“Yes. It’s fine. I mean, yes, I took a test. No! I’m not pregnant. Now tell me whether or not to open the door!” I exclaimed as Will’s nonstop knocking continued, every seven beats playing out as an endless remix of “Shave and a haircut—two bits.”
“Well,” Darby said with a sigh. “You’re going to have to talk to him eventually.”
Was I? I had very specifically asked God for help with that if Will and I had to share a child. Didn’t a negative result get me off the hook?
As if my very sanity depended upon a moment of silence—which, let’s face it, it probably did—Will stopped knocking, and neither Darby nor I spoke. The pounding in my head continued, but that was to be expected, I suppose.
I sighed as a tear rolled down my cheek. “You’re right. I’ll call you later, Darb.”
“Love you, sweetie.”
“Love you too.”
I set the phone down on the kitchen counter as I passed from the bathroom to the front door, and I took a deep breath. If he’s still there, I talk to him and end things once and for all, I prepared myself as I placed my hand on the knob and pulled the door open.
“I was about to give up,” he greeted me softly as soon as we saw each other.
“You probably should have.”
He held a huge bouquet of roses in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other.
“Is that from Sarge’s?” I asked, quite possibly disappointing him by zeroing in first on the familiar packaging of my favorite New York deli.
“Wow, you’re good,” he responded with a laugh as he used the pastrami-induced distraction as an opportunity to slip past me into my apartment. “Here. For you.”
In response to his offer I reached my hands toward the bag. Unfortunately, he tried to hand me the roses instead, and when I looked up at him, he laughed.
“I guess you can have this too.”
I snatched the bag out of his hand and caught myself smiling at him. Smiling! No, no, no! This was no time for smiling. In fact, this was no time for pastrami. Sure, one could argue that it was always time for pastrami, but one could also argue that it was immoral to accept brined meat from a man you’re about to break up with.
“What were you doing way over on Third?” I asked as I opened the bag and plucked out a thin slice of meat. Any less would have just been rude.
He exhaled and ran his hand through his hair. “Walking. Thinking. Look, Cadie, I have some things I need to say. Things like apologies, and I’m prepared to grovel if necessary. But I feel like, more than anything else, I just need to tell you—”
“It’s over, Will!” I exclaimed, startling both of us.
I’m just not sure I could have come up with a worse way to tell him if I’d tried. I was still chewing, for goodness’ sake! But I knew he was about to tell me he loved me, and that he was still committed to trying to make it work, and I just couldn’t let him say that. I was done. I couldn’t keep hanging on, expecting things to change, knowing they never would.
All of the color had drained from his face and the flowers that he had been carefully holding upright began to droop in his hands—matching the general countenance of his face.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes. I didn’t mean to; I just couldn’t help it. What did I mean? What else could I have meant?
“I mean it’s over. Between us, Will. I’m done. I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean to tell you this way. But then, I didn’t expect you to show up at my door unannounced.” I reached into the bag and pulled out another lump of mustard-covered pastrami, which promptly got stuffed into my mouth. “But thank you for the pastrami.”
“You seem pretty calm,” he observed, even as the sweat began beading on his brow and his feet began shuffling, clearly indicating that calmness was not a quality we shared.
And he was right. I did seem pretty calm, and in some ways, I suppose I was—although it’s difficult to say how much was calm and how much was resignation and defeat intermingled with pregnancy fear, from which I hadn’t yet had time to recover.
“I’m sad,” I confessed. “Heartbroken, in fact. I never thought we’d end up this way, and I certainly never wanted us to.” Tears began pooling in my eyes. I was really breaking up with him. It was actually happening. “I’m really sorry, Will. For so many things. But where can we possibly go from here? We’re headed nowhere, and that was true even before we . . .” I took a deep breath, and then another. “There’s no moving forward and there’s certainly no turning back, so what choice do we have but to—”
“Marry me, Cadie,” he suddenly blurted out.
Those words.
“What? I’m sorry, what?!”
“Marry me,” he repeated as he rushed toward me, removed the paper bag from my hands, and placed it, along with the roses, on the floor beside us. He clasped my hands in his as he said, “I mean it. I know this isn’t how we planned for any of this to go, but—”
“No!” I pulled my hands from his as if I’d been burned, and it felt as if I had. “You don’t—this isn’t—you don’t get to—” I released a primal, guttural cry as I backed away from him and the tears overtook my eyes, erasing any projection of calm I had been displaying. “We’re done, Will! We’re through. And now you ask me to marry you? How clueless are you? No. No! I won’t marry you. You ask me now, just because . . .” I groaned in frustration as I picked up the roses from the floor and left the bag right where it was—even in my frenzied state knowing better than to willingly give away a sandwich from Sarge’s—and shoved the bouquet against his chest. “I think you should go.”
Pain and shock were evident on his face, but I didn’t care. He’d had four years. Four years! And for the last of those four years, he’d pulled so far away from me that he’d called nearly every moment of the first three into question. But still, at pretty much any point during those four years, I probably wouldn’t have let him get the words out before I’d joyfully accepted his proposal. But now? Today?
He finally proposed, and it was nothing more than an act of desperation.
He cleared his throat and swiped at his eyes. “Cadie . . . I love you. I want to marry you.”
“Go home, Will,” I said—quietly, exhausted.
“I’m sorry, but you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to kick me out of your life and act like we’re not in this together.”
“In what together?”
“Life, Cadie! Life. I know that having sex changed things. I get that. But—”
“That’s the thing!” I shouted. “Having sex wasn’t the cause of the change. Having sex was a symptom of the change.” I choked down the tears that were struggling to break through. “I mean, what are we even doing? Who are we? We were hanging on by a thread for the last year, at best, and then we threw away so much of whatever was left, for nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
The redness in his eyes made it clear how much that stung him. “I know it was a mistake, but I wouldn’t exactly call making love for the first time nothing, Cadie.”
“Did you ask for forgiveness?”
“You mean, from God?”
“Of course I mean from God.”
He sighed. “I guess I haven’t really gotten to that yet. All I’ve been thinking about is you. I know it’s been rough for you, but it’s been pretty rough for me too. No matter how wrong it was, it doesn’t change the fact that you and I shared something very intimate, and then you were just gone. That’s what I’ve been thinking about, Cadie.”
He kept talking, but I didn’t hear the words he said. I didn’t need to. I knew what he was saying, but I was unable to move on from “I guess I haven’t really gotten to that yet.” The numbness and the shock and the complete and utter shame that had been controlling every thought for two-and-a-half weeks suddenly gave way to an unspoken fear of mine. A fear that was
so much worse than thinking I could be pregnant. Worse than the fear of being a mother, of doing it all alone. Of the judgment I was going to face from everyone in my life. Even worse than having to go out of my way for banana pudding.
My hands began trembling and I clenched them tightly together in front of me. I stared at them, willing them to stay still, as I heard my voice come out as barely a whisper. “What if God won’t forgive our sin because you aren’t sorry?”
“What?” he asked softly as he took one step toward me. “Is that what you’re worried about?” He took another step, but my still-trembling hands raised slightly in warning, and he halted his advance. He sighed. “How many times do I have to tell you that I am sorry, Cadie? What’s it going to take for you to believe me?”
Tears flooded my cheeks. “It was a two-person sin, Will. Maybe it requires two-person repentance. And if you were really sorry, I think you would—”
“You think I would what?” he snapped. “Please, by all means, tell me how you think I should handle my heart. My relationship with God.”
My breath caught in my chest. It took him hurling my patronizing, judgmental attack back at me for me to realize how thoughtless my words were.
I shook and lowered my head. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”
“Where is this even coming from?” He exhaled and turned and began pacing the room as he chuckled bitterly. “Of course. Your mother.”
“My mother?”
“You sound just like her. I can’t believe you let her get to you.” He stopped walking, and I heard him taking deep breaths and muttering to himself. He was still turned away from me when he said, “At least that explains why you’re acting like this. I should have known.”
“My mother doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
He turned, his face carrying with it an expression of forced peace and patience. “This is a lot for both of us, and of course we’re having some thoughts and saying some things that aren’t doing anyone any good, so I’m going to go.” He stepped toward the door without looking at me, and he still didn’t look at me as he turned the doorknob and said, “I’m going to ask you again tomorrow. Maybe by then, you can figure out how to think for yourself.”
Wooing Cadie McCaffrey Page 10
