A Little Bit Engaged

by Teresa Hill

  “I don’t.”

  “You always know what you’re doing.”

  “Well…I don’t anymore,” she cried.

  Ben was feeling particularly pleased with himself by the time he got back to his office, something which made Mrs. Ryan even more suspicious than before. She squinted at him with her glasses on, as if that would help her see him better and maybe figure out what he was doing.

  “You’re up to something,” she accused.

  “Yes, I am,” he said.

  “You’ve been running around with that girl again.”

  “Yes, I have,” he admitted, pleased as can be.

  It wasn’t the most conventional courtship, but so what? He wasn’t good at conventional courtship. He’d just have to try it his own way.

  “I think she likes me, too,” he said. “And don’t listen to anything anybody tells you. She’s not pregnant.”

  Mrs. Ryan gasped. Maybe she hadn’t heard that particular rumor yet.

  “By the way,” he asked, “do we have any couples in the parish who are trying to adopt right now?”

  Mrs. Ryan’s mouth was hanging open, but no sound was coming out.

  Ben liked this. Maybe he could keep her speechless for a while. His life would be much easier if he didn’t have to listen to her tell him everything he was doing wrong. Of course, it might be a problem at times like this, when he needed to know something.

  “Well?” he tried.

  “Two, at least,” she said. “Why?”

  “Because I might be able to help them.”

  After all, he was here to help people.

  Kate finally calmed down enough to go to work. Not that she got anything done. Then she went and left early again, nearly making Gretchen fall out of her chair to try to run after Kate before she got away.

  She got home to find Shannon sprawled out on the couch eating ice cream.

  They really had to do something about the girl’s diet.

  “What’s wrong now?” Shannon asked.

  “Nothing,” Kate said. Not really.

  Her sisters were acting as if the end of the world was coming or something, all because Kate was a little confused. Surely she’d been confused before. But they’d gotten all their utility deposits paid and were supposed to have electricity, gas and water by the weekend, which meant they could move.

  Hallelujah!

  Time to move on. Kate hadn’t managed to make a list today, but she did have a few things lined up in her head that she needed to take care of.

  Shannon was next.

  “Look, I’ve been thinking…” she began.

  Shannon jumped up off the sofa and put on her most belligerent look. “I know. I’ve overstayed my welcome. I’ll get my things and get out of here.”

  “No,” Kate said. Did she really think Kate could kick her out? When she was nearly eight months pregnant? “I want you to stay.”

  “You mean…for a few days,” the girl said. Looking like a girl at the moment, not a Halloween mannequin.

  “I mean, until after the baby comes,” Kate said. “Kathie’s moving in with Kim, so you can have her old room.”

  Shannon stared at her as if there had to be a trick of some sort. “Why would you want me to stay here? You don’t even like me.”

  “I don’t dislike you. I just…don’t understand you,” Kate admitted. “You know…the way you don’t understand me.”

  Shannon laughed. “I understand you just fine. Little Miss Perfect. It’s not that hard to figure out. You’ve always done everything right your whole life. And you’ve always made everyone around you feel stupid and completely inadequate.”

  Kate didn’t know what to say to that.

  “So,” Shannon went on, “how’d I do?”

  “I…I never wanted to make anybody feel bad.”

  Shannon arched a brow, as if to say, So what?

  Kate felt awful all over again. “I just thought, if I always did the right thing, maybe I could keep bad things from happening to me. That’s all. It’s the only way I knew to protect myself. Not that it’s worked. But didn’t you ever try to protect yourself, Shannon? Didn’t you ever think, it was up to you? That you were the only one who could do it?”

  Angry tears filled the girl’s eyes, and Kate felt bad for making her cry. It seemed she was failing once again.

  “What if you stay until you find somewhere else to go?” Kate tried. “And if that doesn’t happen until after the baby comes, that’s okay.”

  “You just want to look good to Ben,” she claimed.

  Kate went back to the way she’d handled Shannon that first day in the park.

  “What if I do?” she said, as offhandedly as she could manage. “It works for both of us, right? You get a place to stay, and I get what I want. It’s perfect.”

  Shannon shrugged once again. “I guess so.”

  “Good. That’s what we’ll do. We need to find you some dinner.”

  Shannon held up the carton of ice cream and her spoon.

  “No,” Kate said. “Not that.”

  Time to play mother. In a nicer way, she hoped.

  Chapter Eleven

  Shannon watched in awe that weekend as Kate’s sister actually started moving out. Kate and Ben moved what little Shannon had into the empty bedroom, then produced an old bedroom set of Kate’s mother’s for Shannon to use.

  It looked as though she really was going to get to stay, and this was the nicest place she’d ever lived. It was warm, and she had her own room. There was always food in the refrigerator, and nobody yelled at her, except when she tried to sneak a cigarette, which she’d now promised not to do. They didn’t even seem too upset that she was pregnant. She wouldn’t let herself believe they actually cared about her, but she didn’t have to have someone to care about her.

  She spent a good hour arranging things in her room the way she wanted them, then her stomach started growling. On her way to the kitchen, she found Kate and Ben in deep conversation in the living room.

  When he saw her, Ben said, “Hey. Why don’t you come sit down? We need to talk about some things.”

  Her first thought was a panicked, I don’t get to stay after all? She barely managed not to ask.

  “It’s nothing bad,” Ben said.

  He really did seem incredibly kind at times. Lost at other times, but mostly kind.

  Shannon sat down.

  “We need to talk about your baby, Shannon,” he said.

  “What about it? Is something wrong with the baby?”

  “No. Nothing’s wrong with the baby,” Ben said. “We mean…what are you going to do with this baby? It’s coming soon. You have some decisions to make.”

  “Are you going to make me give it up?” Shannon asked.

  “I’m not going to make you do anything,” he claimed. “This is your baby. You have to decide what’s best for it.”

  “Which isn’t me, you mean.”

  “You’re going to have to decide that for yourself,” Kate said.

  Shannon made a face. “Like you’re not going to tell me what to do? You tell everybody what to do.”

  “I’m reforming,” Kate claimed.

  Shannon gave a sarcastic laugh at that.

  “No one can make this decision for you,” Ben said. “It has to be yours.”

  Shannon could tell it was all Kate could do not to rattle off all the reasons she had to give this baby up. Not that she needed Kate to tell her. She’d thought of all of them herself. But it was her baby. She’d never had anything that was truly her own before, and she knew what it was like to lose a mother. She hadn’t cared so much about her own mother, who’d never really been a mother to her. But losing her grandmother…that had been awful.

  Still, all the practical things about keeping it couldn’t be ignored. She had no money, no place to stay after the baby came, no job, not even a high school diploma, and she’d lived with people who’d struggled with money their whole lives. Not struggled to afford a nice car
or a nice house. Struggled to afford any car or any kind of place to live and to put food on the table. To have money to go to the doctor when they were sick. Things like that. She didn’t want her baby to ever go hungry, to ever end up living on the streets or be sick and not be able to go see a doctor.

  But wouldn’t she find a way to keep her baby if she really loved it? Wasn’t that what a mother did?

  “Go ahead,” Shannon said. “Tell me what you think I should do. I know you want to. I know you’re going to, no matter what you say.”

  Kate opened her mouth to respond, but Ben put his hand out to stop her.

  “All I want you to do is look at your options,” he said.

  “Which means…what?”

  “I talked to your teacher, Betty. She knows four girls at your high school who had babies last year. I want you to talk to them and see what their lives are like now.”

  “So I’ll think it’s too hard and give up my baby?” she said.

  “So you’ll have a realistic idea of what you’re getting into,” he claimed. “Come on, Shannon. That’s not too much to ask. I think you’re a realist at heart. I think you want to know what it’s going to be like.”

  She shrugged. Maybe she did, and maybe she didn’t. “What else?”

  “I have a number of couples who go to my church who’ve adopted. I want you to meet some of them, meet their children, see how that’s working out for them.”

  “What else?” she asked.

  “That’s it. Just talk to some people. Surely that’s not too much to ask.”

  He sounded as reasonable as always, and he did seem to be a really nice man, a good one, completely unlike her father or her ex-boyfriend, both of whom didn’t want anything to do with her or her baby.

  “Do you have kids?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “You ever want them?”

  “Someday.”

  She wouldn’t mind so much giving her baby to him. She hadn’t been sure men like him existed in the world, but here he was, seeming to be everything the males in her life weren’t. He’d make a good father, she thought. He wouldn’t yell. He wouldn’t lose his temper. He’d probably always care.

  “Just tell me you’ll talk to them, Shannon,” he said.

  “All right.”

  She’d talk.

  How hard could that be?

  Kate made spaghetti for dinner, and she managed to stay quiet until Shannon went to take a shower before bed. The minute she heard the shower come on, she turned to Ben.

  “What do you mean, you’re not going to tell her what to do?”

  “I’m not,” he said, in the middle of clearing plates from the table. “I can’t.”

  “Of course you can. You say, ‘Shannon, you have no idea what it’s going to take to raise this baby. You have to give it up.’ How hard is that?”

  “She won’t do it because someone tells her to, Kate. And she won’t believe me if I tell her she can’t take care of her baby. She has to figure it out for herself.”

  “You’re going to trust a fifteen-year-old to do that?” Kate asked, as she rinsed the dishes and handed them to him, to put in the dishwasher. It left them side by side in her kitchen, so close they hardly had to raise their voices to argue.

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  “That’s right, because you don’t tell people what to do. You just steer them toward the decision you want them to make, and it works for you? Well, she doesn’t steer well.”

  “What else can I do? I’m not her father. I’m not her legal guardian. I’m not anything to her, except a guy who’s trying to help. I can’t make her do anything.”

  “Well, somebody has to,” Kate argued as she dried her hands, dishes done.

  “Fine, if you think you can do it, go ahead.” He was practically yelling at her. “Let me know how it works.”

  Kate was surprised at the sharpness of his tone. He looked tired, she realized, as he stood there leaning slightly against her cabinets. He looked almost sad. She’d never seen him sad.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “Lots of things are terribly wrong in this world.”

  “Something in yours specifically right now?”

  He groaned, more angrily than sad, and looked away. “Yeah.”

  “What is it?”

  “Bad day at work,” was all he said. “What about Shannon?”

  “What about you?” A bad day at work for her was too many phone calls, documents missing, deadlines that no one cared about making but her. His bad days were likely much worse. “Mrs. Ryan catch you doing something you shouldn’t?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  Kate finally felt like she was getting her footing with him. So far, all he’d done was help her and Shannon, and Kate just didn’t know how to let people help her. She wasn’t comfortable with the idea. But her helping others…that was her forte. This was the way life was supposed to be.

  “Come on.” She took his hand and tugged until he followed her back to the sofa and sat down beside her. “Tell me. I can help.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “Sure. We’ll make a list. Do you ever make lists? We’ll break the problem down step by step and cross things off as we go. It’ll be great, you’ll see.”

  “A list isn’t going to help, Kate.”

  “Sure it will. What’s the problem?”

  He looked her right in the eye, his expression as bleak as any she’d ever seen and said, “A young couple in my parish had a baby five months ago. Hannah. Gorgeous little thing with the most beautiful smile. She has a heart problem, something the doctors don’t think they can fix. And…well, they didn’t expect her to last this long, but she has, and now she’s getting worse. I’ve been at the hospital most of the day with them. It’s…it’s hard.”

  “Oh.” She backed away physically, her whole being recoiling from the pain and the unfairness of it. “There’s no list for that. I hate problems where there’s no list that helps. I don’t know how to deal with them.”

  “Yeah. There shouldn’t be problems where a list won’t help.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “Is there anything I can do? Do they need anything?”

  “Nothing anybody in this world can give them.”

  He said it with a kind of resignation that pulled at her heart. People came to him with unsolvable problems, she realized, and expected him to be able to help. What would that be like day in and day out? Having people bring unsolvable problems and expect him to fix them? Or make sense of them?

  “Don’t you get angry?” she asked.

  “Very often.”

  “What do you do about it?”

  “Get angry,” he said. “What can I do? I’m just a man.”

  And yet, people wanted him to be more. She knew because she’d wanted the same thing from her mother’s pastor when her mother lay dying and there was nothing to be done. She’d been so angry, had even taken some of it out on the minister, not her finest hour.

  Kate took Ben’s hand in hers and this time, held on to it. He looked up in surprise, with questions, it seemed. She ignored them and just sat there with him.

  “And then, here’s Shannon,” she said, “having a baby when she’s much too young to take care of one, with no one to help her, and this poor couple’s probably going to lose their daughter… It doesn’t make any sense. I meant to sign up for a world that made sense. Where actions had predictable consequences and somebody spelled out all the rules clearly, so people knew what to do to keep themselves safe. That’s the world I wanted.”

  “The one with all the lists,” he said, not looking quite so bleak.

  “Yes. That one. Why couldn’t it work like that? That would make sense.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t know.”

  And then they sat there, quiet as could be. She held his hand and then eased over beside him and put her head on his shoulder, wishing she could take some of his pain and frustration away, w
ishing she knew something to say.

  He’d been so good to Shannon and to Kate, and here she was, feeling like there was nothing she could say to make things any better for him.

  They stayed that way for a long time before he got up to leave. She walked him to the door, and before he left, ended up wrapped up in his arms, kissing him softly, sweetly, kindly, wishing she could help him in the same way he’d helped her.

  Kate was grabbing a quick lunch at the diner on the corner two days later when she came face-to-face with Joe.

  “Hi.” She felt every eye in the place turn to them.

  They hadn’t bumped into each other since their little talk about him being in love with someone else. He gave her an odd look, one that started at her face and ended pointedly at her waistline.

  “No,” she said, not quietly. “I’m not pregnant.”

  A collective gasp went through the diner, and Kate had to fight not to laugh. Might as well take care of that little rumor right then and there.

  “Well, that’s good to know,” he said. “I hear you have a new…friend.”

  He made friend sound like a dirty word.

  Kate laughed. “I do, but I’m not in love with him, the way you are with… I don’t even know her name. What’s her name, Joe? How long have you known her?”

  Another collective gasp, this one even louder.

  Joe’s cheeks flushed an angry color of red, probably not so much because she’d been seen running around town with Ben, but because she’d made a scene. He hated any sort of public confrontation.

  “Go ahead and ask,” she told him. “Whatever you want to know, I’ll tell you.”

  “Were you seeing someone else while we were together?” he whispered furiously.

  “No. I wasn’t. I met him the day before you and I broke up.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right.” He nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.” That they both hadn’t handled this better. “I hope you’ll be happy with this woman, whoever she is.”

  He shot her a look that she couldn’t begin to understand. Like…she had no idea what he was facing? Or how little chance there was of him being happy? What in the world?