Screwed

by Laurie Plissner

  Grace shrugged. “Maybe.” But the possibility that Betsy and Brad would change their minds and suddenly throw their arms around her seemed less likely than Nick suddenly declaring his undying love for her and proposing on one knee.

  Grace walked into the waiting room, where the nail biter had been replaced by a visibly pregnant Goth girl with raccoon-eye makeup, black motorcycle boots, and no mother hovering nearby. It had been less than an hour since she first put on the paper gown, but she felt like a completely different person.

  Betsy jumped up, dropping the magazine that had been sitting unopened in her lap. “That was quick. Do you have extra pads? It’s a long ride home.” Now things could get back to normal. No one would ever have to know — no judgmental stares at the club, at church, at the farmers’ market. Betsy made a mental note to have a little chat with Jennifer about the value of discretion. The tiny miners who had been swinging their pick axes inside her skull since Grace broke the news started to pack up their tools.

  “I didn’t do it.” Grace’s voice was loud in the library-quiet waiting room.

  Grabbing Grace by the arm, her nails digging in, Betsy practically dragged her out of the office. The receptionist started to call out to Mrs. Warren, as she hadn’t paid for the pelvic exam, but she thought better of it. She would sooner pay the hundred dollars out of her own pocket than risk a black eye from that crazy witch. Pounding the computer keys in frustration, she thought for the hundredth time about quitting this freak-show job with its lunatic right-to-lifers waving their picket signs dripping fake blood, and the outraged mothers who refused to believe that their teenage daughters were having sex until it was too late.

  “What are you talking about?” Betsy hissed at Grace as they stood in the hallway waiting for the elevator.

  “I couldn’t do it, and I’m the one who has to live with the decision for the rest of my life.” Echoing Dr. Ryder’s words, Grace sounded way braver than she felt. On the ride down, Grace pressed herself into the back corner of the elevator, as far from her mother as she could get. There was someone else in the elevator, so Betsy just stared straight ahead, white-knuckled hands clinging to her purse as if it were a life preserver.

  As the glass door of the office building closed behind them, Betsy again grabbed Grace by the arm and picked up right where she’d left off. “About that you’re mistaken, young lady. We all have to live with your so-called decision. What right do you have to behave this way? I don’t know you anymore.”

  “But Mom, Reverend Halvert says every life is precious, even the lives of the unborn, and he’s the leader of our church.” Maybe the stress had made Betsy forget about the bigger picture.

  Betsy laughed — a short, inappropriate chortle. “Reverend Halvert never had a pregnant teenage daughter.”

  “You always taught me that God created life. How can we destroy something that God created?” Grace was grasping at straws, trying to remember something she had learned in Sunday school that might remind Betsy what really mattered.

  “An accident in the back seat of a car is not God’s creation.”

  Grace gasped at her mother’s icy tone. With thirteen little words, Betsy renounced everything she had ever taught Grace.

  Letting go of Grace’s arm long enough to find her keys, Betsy suddenly stopped in the middle of the parking lot, oblivious to the car that almost hit her from behind. She looked up at the sky and let out a shriek, a combination of anger, frustration, and maybe even a little fear. Grace watched, transfixed, as her mother appeared to vent her wrath at God. Then taking a deep breath, Betsy adjusted her sunglasses, looked around to see if anyone had witnessed her manic moment, and marched toward the car. Before Grace was safely in her seat, Betsy had started the engine and shifted into reverse. Grace slammed the door, just missing the car parked next to theirs as Betsy lurched out of the parking space and tore out of the lot. Perhaps, Grace thought, they would be in a terrible car accident on the way home, and then the only urgent decision would be left to her father: open or closed casket.

  Simultaneously merging onto the highway and dialing her phone, Betsy was oblivious to the cars speeding past. “Brad, it’s me.”

  “How did it go?”

  Brad really didn’t want to know any of the particulars, but he felt compelled to ask, as long as his wife was stuck with taking care of all the minutiae of this unpleasant business. He couldn’t even say the word abortion out loud, and the thought of blood and scalpels and DNA belonging to some random guy who had done heaven knows what with his daughter made him physically ill. On some level, he could identify with those crazy people on the other side of the world who carried out honor killings. How did a father ever recover from something like this? It would have been so much easier if she’d been caught with a bottle of his Valium or a fifth of Jack Daniels in her locker. A blurb in the Police Blotter, with not even her name mentioned because she was underage, and that would be the end of it. But being pregnant was like wearing a sandwich board for nine months that said I’m a Teenage Tramp.

  “It didn’t,” Betsy hissed into the phone.

  “What are you talking about?” Brad asked.

  “She wouldn’t do it.”

  “Wouldn’t do it? Why didn’t you make her do it? You’re her mother.” Now Brad regretted not having gone along to make sure things were done properly. He knew a woman couldn’t be depended on to take care of business when there were emotions involved.

  “What was I supposed to do? Hold her down? That’s not how it works in this country, I’m afraid. Parents have all of the responsibilities and none of the rights.”

  Betsy was determined not to take the blame for this one. Her husband, who thought like a lawyer even when he wasn’t at work, always needed to find someone to point the finger at when things went wrong. There was always a guilty party, and Betsy wanted to make sure the blame that resided firmly with Grace didn’t get transferred to her. With a memory like an elephant, Brad would remind her at every opportunity for the next twenty years how she screwed up what should have been a simple task and ruined everything.

  “So, Bets, what do we do now?” Furious with his wife for making it more complicated than it needed to be, Brad did have the wisdom to realize that lashing out at her wasn’t going to solve the problem, even if it did make him feel better temporarily.

  “I think we have to go to Plan B,” Betsy said.

  “There’s a Plan B?”

  Brad wondered if his wife was starting to lose it under all the stress, not that she wasn’t entitled to be a little nutty. Now she was sounding like a secret agent planning to infiltrate enemy headquarters. Up until the last few days, their life had been relatively simple, straightforward, and sanitary. Their little family had always functioned like a well-oiled machine, each member knowing his or her jobs and performing them perfectly. An unwanted child, an unwed mother — Grace had thrown a major wrench in the works. Neither he nor Betsy had the tools to deal with such a catastrophe. It was not part of their world, and he had no interest in figuring it out. An economics degree from Yale and a law degree from Columbia had not prepared him for an adolescent girl who, without warning, decided to go off the rails.

  “There has to be. We can’t just leave it like this, can we? I don’t know what to do.”

  As furious as Betsy was, somewhere, in a part of her brain she rarely accessed, she felt a maddeningly maternal tug that she fought to bury deeper. The internal conflict was making deep furrows in her forehead, in spite of the five hundred dollars’ worth of Botox Dr. Rick had just shot in there. If Brad loosened his grip on his anger, even a little bit, she could almost see getting through this as a family. If Brad could ease up, that could be their Plan B. Other people had daughters who got pregnant, even though they didn’t know any of them personally, and their families managed not to implode. Maybe it didn’t have to be the end of the world. Maybe they could figure this out as a family.

  “Well, the way I see it, the one thing we cannot
do is just leave it. Grace needs to understand that her behavior will not be tolerated. Let me take care of it. I have an idea. Come straight home.” Slamming down the phone, his self-righteous anger renewed by Grace’s latest act of disobedience, Brad stomped down the stairs to the basement.

  Betsy was a very bright woman. Part of Brad’s reason for marrying her was to ensure he would have intelligent children — he couldn’t imagine being married to some bubblehead with an honorary degree from Neiman Marcus who would spend all his money and saddle him with a brood of helpless morons. But like all women, Betsy was too emotional, and that was a crippling weakness. In Brad’s mind, life was simple if you didn’t get tangled up in all that touchy-feely crap — such a waste of valuable time. He was certain that dealing with Grace was all about teaching her a lesson, making her realize on a cellular level how badly she had behaved, how she had violated the family code. A good spanking would do the trick, but unfortunately, the days when corporal punishment was synonymous with no-nonsense parenting were long over. Although she had already begged for forgiveness repeatedly, words were cheap. Grace needed to show by her deed — namely, getting rid of this egregious error — that she was truly contrite.

  In law school, the professors had taught him, or he had chosen to learn, that somebody was always right, and somebody was always wrong. Even when a case settled for nuisance value, with no one admitting culpability, the guy who got the check was the clear winner. And of course, he got paid no matter what, so he was always the winner. In their current dilemma, while Grace was the clear loser, she was threatening to drag her parents into the ditch with her. Having done nothing wrong, Brad wasn’t going to let that happen. It was all about accountability.

  “Bye,” Betsy said, knowing her husband was already long gone.

  It didn’t sound like Brad was ready to let go, to let this play out according to a scenario he hadn’t designed. She could almost hear the steam coming out of his ears, right through the phone. But as long as her husband was willing to take charge of the situation, Betsy decided to step aside and let him have a turn. Initially he had passed the buck to her, and she was relieved that he now wanted to participate in this horrible moment in their life. Hopefully, whatever he had in mind would be more effective than what she had set out to do.

  Thinking back to the other night when she had arrogantly recalled how simple raising Grace had been, she realized she was now being punished for thinking she was better than everybody else. If only she’d been paying more attention when Grace started dating, not that she went out much. And she’d thought Grace was so smart — shouldn’t a kid who got a five on the AP Biology test have been way more savvy when it came to sexual reproduction? Wondering how she was going to face the next meeting of the Save Yourself for Marriage group, Betsy thought about changing the name to Screw Your Fucking Mother. Reaching up to rub her throbbing forehead, Betsy was horrified to discover the ridges were so deep they felt like corduroy.

  In the back seat, Grace pretended to sleep while she tried to listen in on her mother’s phone call. Over the constant stream of chatter from AM talk radio, she was only able to make out something about Plan B. At this point, she could almost believe they might hit over the head with a shovel and give her an abortion on the kitchen table. When she was a teenager, Betsy had received the Gold Award as a Girl Scout, the female equivalent of an Eagle Scout. Maybe she had a D & C merit badge. After what had happened that morning, anything was possible.

  In their driveway, barely able to wait until Betsy turned off the engine, Grace flew out of the car and ran past her father into the house, nearly tripping over a bunch of black plastic garbage bags that littered the front porch. For the last two hours, she had hardly moved for fear she would wet her pants, and she had been too afraid to ask her mother if they could stop so she could use the ladies’ room.

  While Grace was in the bathroom, Brad took the opportunity to fill his wife in on his inspired plan. In his mind, the world was black and white — shades of gray were for wimps and losers. “It’s the only way, Betsy. Grace needs a shock to the system. Her refusal to do as she was told at the clinic tells me that she is feeling a little too comfortable. I firmly believe we need to reestablish the parental hierarchy, and this is the only way she’s going to get the message.”

  “But Brad, it seems awfully harsh.” Betsy had been as furious and hurt as her husband, but throwing their only child out in the street was cruel and unusual punishment. “Are you sure this is a teachable moment, when she’s in this condition? Besides, isn’t it against the law to refuse to take care of one’s own child?” Distracting her husband with a legal issue might take his hysteria down a notch, giving him a chance to regroup and perhaps come up with a less punitive Plan C.

  “Look, Bets, you asked me to come up with a Plan B, and this is it. We need to present a united front, and I’m not talking about kicking her out forever. Just a day or two at Jennifer’s, and she’ll come to her senses. I know my daughter.”

  Not quite as confident as he professed to be, Brad hoped he knew his daughter. But he really believed it wasn’t much of a gamble: Jennifer’s parents weren’t going to house Grace for more than a few days, and after that she had nowhere else to go. They held all the cards. It was just that simple.

  Grace reappeared before Betsy could point out that based on what had happened in the back of Nick Salter’s car, neither of them knew their daughter as well as they had thought. “What’s all this stuff? Why did you put the lawn clippings on the front porch?” Grace asked Brad, who was standing outside the front door.

  Brad spoke to her for the first time in nearly a week. “Those are your clothes, Grace. You can’t stay here anymore. Since you’ve chosen to compound your earlier transgression with your latest poorly considered decision, you’ve really left us with no choice. It would have been so easy to make this thing go away, almost like it never happened. But you’re behaving irrationally, threatening our position in this community, squandering your future. This could have remained a private family matter, but now you’re choosing to broadcast your disgrace. Your mother and I refuse to be a part of this.” His voice boomed as if he were addressing the jury during closing argument.

  Even as the lawyer-speak ricocheted around in her brain, Grace couldn’t quite believe he was saying what he was saying. “Left with no choice?” she echoed. Admittedly, she had done something stupid, but she couldn’t see how this one mistake undid an entire lifetime together. It wasn’t like she’d robbed a bank or murdered someone. “You’re kicking me out? Where am I going to go?”

  “You should’ve thought of that before you gave it up like some floozy.” Not a person who prior to Grace’s screened porch confession had made a habit of using such language, Brad continued to find power and comfort in talking like a low-end crime figure in a bad gangster movie. Aware that his chosen words were not exactly Ivy League, Brad wanted Grace to know that if she chose to have this bastard, she had better get accustomed to hearing people say those kinds of things to her, and worse.

  Feeling like an actress delivering her lines in some cheesy soap opera, Grace looked up and asked, “But Daddy, what am I supposed to do?” She had known they were beyond furious, but she hadn’t in her wildest imagination believed that they would pack all her belongings and kick her out, essentially fire her for poor performance, her failure to meet expectations.

  Before Betsy or Brad could answer, an elderly woman, jogging up the driveway like a young girl rather than the octogenarian she was, called out, “Hello. Sorry to bother you. I just want to give you a letter that the postman mistakenly put in my mailbox.” As Helen Teitelbaum got closer, she realized she had wandered into the center of a major brawl, and she walked faster, desperate to hand over the misdelivered mail and get out of the way.

  Her acquaintance with her neighbors consisted entirely of an occasional wave or “good morning.” Just because they lived across the street from each other didn’t mean they were the kind of nei
ghbors who popped by to borrow a cup of sugar. The Warrens seemed nice enough, if a little uptight, and not particularly friendly, considering their numerous well-publicized acts of Christian brotherhood and charity. Really, how many lasagnas could one woman throw together while still pursuing a rewarding career as one of Cabot Realty’s top closers, while still finding time to run half-marathons to raise money for Children Without Borders or Christian Doctors in Love or some other totally worthwhile cause? Plenty, according to the local paper. Someone at the Silver Lake Gazette must owe the Warrens a lot of favors, because their picture found its way onto the front page far too often for people who were neither politicians nor outlaws. Not that the world couldn’t use people like that, but to Helen the whole thing smacked of insincerity, like it was all about the recognition part rather than the helping part. Maybe she was wrong — she hoped she was.

  “I don’t want to interrupt. I’ll just leave this here.” No one had reached out to take the letter, so Helen put it down on the bottom step of the front porch.

  As she turned to go, Helen glanced up at the daughter, who was sitting on the top step surrounded by Hefty bags, her face swollen and tear-stained. This was clearly more than just a minor family disagreement, but Helen had recently been trying, with minimum success, to be less of a yenta. Never able to have children of her own, Helen attempted to fill that huge hole in her life by coming to the aid of anyone who needed help. According to her brother-in-law, Jacob, there was sometimes a fine line between benefactor and busybody, and in her efforts to save anybody who looked like they needed a little saving, she was in constant danger of crossing it. Fixing everything was not Helen Teitelbaum’s job; not everyone wanted to be fixed, and certain people who looked like they needed fixing were merely exercising an alternate lifestyle choice. That last part had to do with the time Helen found and paid for a six-month lease on an apartment for a homeless couple, who turned out not to be homeless but had merely decided to live off the grid for a year, whatever the hell that meant. Overflowing with good intentions, Helen had further destroyed their social experiment by bringing them a few bags of groceries and buying them winter coats. Who knew that dumpster diving was the latest craze among certain eco-conscious types, and that Helen’s charitable works had probably wrecked their chances of getting a reality show on the Green Channel, which Helen didn’t even know existed? It was moments like those that made Helen think that perhaps she had lived too long; the world no longer made any sense to her. In spite of that little mix-up, Helen didn’t agree with Jacob’s assessment of her yenta-ing, but she was curious to see if she actually could control her urge to stick her nose in other people’s business. The earth would not fall off its axis if Helen Teitelbaum