“It’s fine. It’s expected, right?” But quiet tears find their way down her cheeks.
“You’re a good person, Val.” My hand hovers over her forehead, then slowly settles. She sighs, and the tension in her body eases a little as I begin to stroke her hair, frazzled and sticky with products, not soft and smooth like Abigail’s. “Those people in the home are lucky to have somebody like you.”
“I liked Marcus,” she says. “His kids never came to visit. Couldn’t even be bothered to come say goodbye. So maybe he wasn’t a great father. But I liked him.”
We sit in silence, my hand moving rhythmically over her forehead and her hair. Lift. Repeat. It’s an exploration for me, this closeness. Her breathing slows and eases, and I think maybe she’s fallen asleep. I’m wondering whether to cover her with a blanket or wake her when she asks, drowsily, “Have you patched things up with Abigail?”
My hand stops moving. “Not sure that’s possible.”
Val’s eyes pop open and she scrutinizes my face. “So what did you fight about first? Since you didn’t tell her about the house.”
“Those letters Thomas kept from her, for one thing.”
“She was mad at you about that?”
“Justifiably, really. I used them to distract her from the pregnancy.”
Val sits up, wide awake and wide eyed. “Abigail is pregnant?”
I stare at her. Wait a beat. I’m not ready to speak the words out loud.
“Coffee?” I moan and groan my way up onto my feet and into the bathroom to pee, disappointed for the first time in my life to discover that I am not bleeding. In fact, the cramps disappear the minute my bladder is empty.
“Just spill the news already,” Val calls through the bathroom door.
“I need coffee. And breakfast. Want an egg?” I head for the kitchen and start the coffeepot, already preloaded, sticking my head in the fridge to hide my face.
“Make it two.” Val settles herself on a stool. “Tell me about Abigail.”
“What about me?” Abigail pops into the kitchen like an angry genie. “It’s seven o’clock. How come there’s no coffee?”
“Your mom slept in,” Val says. “Probably worrying. I’m so sorry I dropped that news on you last night. I thought you knew.”
“Mom’s a great one for keeping secrets.” Abigail slams open cupboards and drawers, obviously still mad, while I pull out eggs and bread and totally on impulse the jar of pickles. Why fight a craving just because it’s ridiculously predictable?
“Seriously?” Abigail snarls. “Are you trying to live out every cliché in the book?”
“Oh, I hardly think this situation counts as cliché.” I fish out a big fat pickle and crunch into its cold, salty tang, holding the remains in one hand while I turn on the burner beneath the frying pan with the other.
Abigail slams her still-empty mug down on the counter. “Pardon me for forgetting to stock up on ice cream.”
Val stares at us both, then says with the sort of caution you might use if forced to address a maniac wielding a chain saw, “Does anybody want to tell me what we’re talking about?”
“Well?” Abigail juts out her chin. “Are you going to tell her or shall I?”
“I think I already know,” Val says. She gently puts a hand on Abigail’s shoulder. “It will all be okay. You’ll see.”
“How is this ever going to be okay?” Abigail shouts. “We’re talking about a baby! A little difficult to hide the evidence.”
“We’re not sure yet that it’s a baby,” I interject. “It might just be a tumor.”
“It might what?” Val looks away from Abigail to me and then back again. “Of course you didn’t plan this, but it’s not—”
“It’s not Abigail.” My pan is hot, and I turn my back and add four eggs, two for Val, one for me, and another for Abigail. On second thought, I add one more, already counting the possible tumor as an extra mouth to feed.
“You thought it was me?” Abigail screeches. “Pregnant? How could you ever possibly get the idea that I would be so careless, so stupid, so . . . immoral?”
I poke at the eggs with the spatula, even though they’re not remotely ready. One of the yolks breaks, and I watch the little yellow rivulets spread into the white and think about a tiny little microscopic egg and a cohort of eager sperm all racing for the prize. Why couldn’t that yolk have been broken?
“You’re pregnant?” Val squeals. “You? That’s incredible. You told me how you’d always wanted another baby. Now look at you! Your own house and now this. Dreams coming true everywhere you look.”
“You don’t think I’m a little old for this?”
“I’ll be an aunt!” Val says. She puts her arms around my waist and hugs me, spatula and all.
“More like an honorary grandmother!” Abigail shouts. “What is wrong with you two? Surely you can both see that Mom cannot keep this baby.”
“What did Lance say?” Val asks.
“Lance doesn’t know.” I look her directly in the eyes. “Nobody can know, Val. Promise.”
“I promise. But you can’t hide it forever.”
“There’s still a possibility that it’s not a baby. I have to see the doctor again. More tests.”
“My lips are sealed until you give the okay. But if it is a baby, you know I’m totally here for you, right? Driver, hand holder, diaper changer, babysitter.”
I hug her. “I know.”
“Do you two hear yourselves?” Abigail demands. “Nobody is changing diapers. Mom is fifty!”
“Forty-nine.”
She rolls her eyes. “Pardon me. So you’ll only be sixty-seven when your child graduates from high school, not sixty-eight. That is so much better.”
“Absolutely decrepit,” I say lightly, but inside I’m reeling at the math. Abigail is right. I’m already old enough to be a grandmother.
“This is not funny! It’s dangerous. It’s—against nature. The body isn’t meant to do this!”
“You forgot to tell the body that, apparently! What do you want me to do, Abigail? Have an abortion?”
It’s a low blow. I know how she feels about abortion. I also know how much she wants this inconvenient, embarrassing, and potentially dangerous pregnancy to just go away.
She takes a breath, lowers her voice to a semblance of calm, and says, “I want you to be reasonable. The health risks can be managed. There are so many people wanting to adopt a baby. Nobody here would even have to know. We’ll move you out of town and—”
“What? Send me to a home for unwed mothers?”
“I think those eggs are done.” Val turns off the burner and removes the pan. The eggs are more than done. An unpleasant burned smell fills the air.
Abigail doesn’t even notice. “It’s embarrassing! What do you think? My fifty-year-old mother is pregnant, not even a year after my father dies! People will—”
“Forty-nine. And yes, people will talk. You care too much what people think.”
“I care too much? You raised me to care,” she snaps. “Everything I did, every word I ever spoke, was subject to judgment. ‘The congregation is watching you, Abigail. Be an example, Abigail.’ And now you’re surprised by that?”
“And the solution is what? Send me and my embarrassing mistake out of town, and then you suddenly get a whim to adopt a baby and—”
“Mother! This is not one of your stupid novels. And I am not taking care of your mistake.”
I’m out of line, and I know it. I make myself take a breath. And then another. “I’m sorry.”
“Good to know,” Abigail retorts, still livid. “So we’ll start looking for a place—”
“Don’t misunderstand, Abigail. I’m apologizing for the way we raised you, nothing else. It was wrong to teach you to care so much about the opinions of others.” I lean toward her. “I spent way too many years caring. But right now I don’t give a rat’s bony butt about what the congregation thinks. I don’t know that I cared then. That was one of your
father’s things.”
Her mouth opens, and I hold up a hand to stop her. “I know. You see him as a paragon of perfection. He was human and fallible, Abigail. And he was wrong about women and our place in the world.”
Abigail pinches the bridge of her nose.
“Stop trying to shift the blame to Dad. It might have escaped your attention, but the idea of you running around having sex with that guy—”
“Lance.”
“What kind of name is that, anyway? Like he’s a knight. Or a porn star. Why couldn’t you just be—a widow?”
“Like Earlene, you mean? That’s really what you want for me?”
Val shovels the ruined eggs into the trash and starts washing the pan.
Abigail and I glare at each other across the kitchen. I remember her sitting at the kitchen table eating cookies and drinking a glass of milk after school. Drawing pictures. Doing her homework. Reading to me aloud while I made dinner.
I can still search out the child she was in her features, in her expression. She was always serious. Intense. Focused. We didn’t do that to her, she came that way. But we channeled it. Taught her control, perfection, self-righteousness. I’d like to take it back, but I can’t. There’s not a decision in the world I can make for her; she’ll have to figure it all out on her own.
My decisions now need to be for me. Choices that I can live with for the rest of my life. I soften my voice.
“Abigail. This is my life, not yours. And I’m not making decisions based on who is watching and what they are going to say. Do you understand?”
I think I see a softening in her eyes, but it’s gone before I can be sure. “I need to get ready for work.”
She stomps out of the kitchen.
I sink down onto a stool, wrung out and exhausted. “Well, that went well, don’t you think?”
Val breaks new eggs into a sizzling pan and slots bread into the toaster.
“You have options,” she says quietly. “Adoption is only one of them.”
“Terminating, you mean? I don’t think I could kill a baby, Val.”
“You’re super early. No heartbeat yet, not really a baby. All you’d do is take a pill and have a heavy period. Not like those horror stories they tell you about ripping a baby apart. No drama. No need to even call it an ‘abortion.’ And nobody needs to know.”
Something about her tone of voice, the way she glances at me sideways and then turns her face away, prompts me to ask, “Have you? You know . . .”
“After I left the Accursed Ex, I realized I was pregnant. I was terrified. I could just barely take care of Lenny. I started having morning sickness and almost lost my job because I was home puking. So. It was the right thing. It was the only thing. But sometimes I dream about a daughter. And then I wonder if I could have managed somehow. Wished it hadn’t been necessary to do what I did.”
“Would you do it again?”
She hesitates. “Yes? I think so. It nearly destroyed me, but I was further along. Had to go to a clinic and all that.”
My heart breaks for my friend, even as it yearns toward the sweet simplicity of this solution. This pregnancy could be just a little speed bump in my new life. Lance would never need to know.
Abigail would remember these last few months as “that time Mom went crazy after Dad died” and not be humiliated by my pregnancy, or obligated to help me care for a sibling she doesn’t want.
“It’s too early to decide anything,” I say as Val slides a plate of toast and eggs onto the counter in front of me. “Tests first. And then we’ll see.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
May 23, 2019
Dear Me,
According to the doctor, we still don’t know anything for sure. All of the tests are back. The ultrasound showed no tumors, but it also didn’t show a pregnancy, which the doctor says is normal. We won’t be able to see anything before six weeks gestation, and another ultrasound is scheduled for then. Meanwhile, my HCG levels continue to rise and be consistent with a pregnancy, the timing of which matches my very clear date of conception.
Meanwhile, I am not deciding anything. I tell myself this is logical; how can I make decisions until I see the ultrasound and know for sure?
And until I know for sure, I don’t need to tell Lance. I can continue to look him in the eye and pretend all is well.
I’m also still moving. Steve and Felicity’s mortgage came through. I’m not waiting for the closing date! Val and I spend all of our spare time cleaning the new house, top to bottom. I’ve hired a moving company for three weeks from now, and bought a new mattress and bed frame to be delivered that same day.
Abigail is threatening to move into an apartment rather than aid and abet me in this insanity. She claims I’m in denial, and the truth is she’s right.
I don’t need any fancy medical test to tell me I’m pregnant. This morning I puked right after I woke up and then was instantly ravenous. Still eating pickles, over which Abigail continues to be furious. But she’s furious in general and alternates between ignoring me and lecturing me about my stupidity in letting this happen.
Today I’m going to paint my new bedroom. And yes, I’m still hoping that this pregnancy will just somehow evaporate. Poof. Gone. As if it’s never been.
This baby might not be big enough to show up on an ultrasound, but it’s big enough to pour nausea-producing chemicals into my bloodstream and make me want to sleep for a hundred years. Tonight’s rehearsal feels like a marathon and I can’t wait for it to be over. I’m tired of smiling and pretending nothing’s wrong. I’m tired of lying to Lance with my silence.
All I want to do is escape, to sink into a hot bathtub and close my eyes.
Instead, we’re working choreography, which is not my strong point. I never was a great dancer, maybe from an inborn lack of grace, maybe because I never had much practice. During my life with Thomas, dancing was one of those forbidden things, inspired by the devil to lure humans into extramarital sex.
Lance is an excellent dancer, which makes it easier, and at least if we’re dancing, I don’t actually have to look into his face and keep from blurting out my big news.
But my legs feel like they’re filled with lead weights. I keep praying Bill will call some sort of halt so I can sit and recover from the exertion, but instead he keeps pushing harder. Only a few weeks to go before dress rehearsal, so there’s no time to waste. A cold sweat slicks my body. My heart is racing. I’m beginning to stumble over my own feet.
My willpower keeps me moving until we hit the scene where Lance is supposed to twirl me around three times and then catch me. My balance isn’t down with the swirling thing, and the room keeps on going when my body stops. My vision begins to darken from the edges inward. My legs go boneless. For a lingering minute, I hear Lance’s voice cut across the music, sharp with alarm.
“Liz!”
The next thing I know, I’m lying flat on my back on the stage.
Lance is chafing my hands. Val has my feet in her lap. A circle of anxious faces peers down at me.
“There you are,” Lance says as my vision clears and I look up into his face. “God. You scared me.”
I try to answer but my lips don’t move. I moisten them with my tongue. Try again. “I’m fine.”
“Not sure I’d call this fine,” Bernie’s voice says.
I start to sit up, but Lance presses me back. “Just lie here for a minute, Liz.”
“Let me get up. I’m okay. I promise.” I roll onto my side and push myself up into a sitting position. My head swirls briefly, then settles. I feel tired. Weak. A little nauseated and shaky. Nothing I haven’t felt on and off for the past week. All symptoms I had with Abigail, even the fainting episode.
Val and I exchange a look. “Did you eat today?” she asks.
I think back. “I think I might have forgotten.”
The truth is that I couldn’t keep anything down in the morning, and then I got busy working on the new house and then I came to rehearsal.
I know better.
“Do you tend to have low blood sugar?” Lance asks. “Has this happened before?”
“Ambulance is on the way,” Bill calls, walking up the aisle with his phone to his ear.
“I don’t need an ambulance!” I protest.
“Any chest pain?” Lance asks, checking my pulse. “Or pressure in your chest, or unusual sensations in your throat? Your neck? Heart attack symptoms are different for women.”
I’m going to have to tell him, and I’m going to have to do it now, in front of everybody.
“This happened a couple of times with Abigail,” I say. “I just need to eat something.”
I watch Lance’s face, the way he’s trying to process this comment.
“I’ve got chocolate,” Tara says, holding out a Twix.
“She needs protein, not sugar,” Val counters.
“What about the ambulance?” Bill asks.
I turn back to Lance, watching his face as I say carefully, “Tell them it’s a false alarm. I’ve already seen a doctor. I’m just . . . pregnant.”
The cluster of faces hanging over me all gasp, nearly in unison. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. Lance is frozen, eyes fixed on mine, for what seems like forever.
Finally he breathes. Rocks back on his heels. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I can’t do this.”
He gets to his feet and stalks out of the theater, leaving me horribly, devastatingly alone. My knight in shining armor has left me to fight the dragon on my own.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Val practically drags me to the next rehearsal. There are so many reasons not to want to go.
I’m embarrassed by passing out. I don’t know how I’m going to get through scene after scene onstage with Lance. We need to talk, but he hasn’t answered any of my text messages. When I tried to call, it went to voice mail, and he’s never called me back.
“How am I going to manage with Lance onstage?” I ask Val.
“That’s why they call it acting,” she says, towing me to her car.
“He’s going to be so—”
“Fuck him!” Val turns me toward her and straightens my hair. “He’s every bit as much responsible for this as you are. Maybe more, taking advantage of a vulnerable widow and all.”
A Borrowed Life Page 20
