Angel's Choice

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  “Are you kidding me?” he says. “I can’t believe how cool this is.”

  I study Danny’s profile as he listens with as much attention as any of the real fathers there, that face I know so well, love so much.

  I tell myself not to get my hopes up, not ever, not about anything.

  I tell myself this could be just a passing phase for Danny Stanton, a flight of fancy. For him maybe this is just a new hobby. But, for me, this is my life.

  Week of March 11 /Week 28

  Being finally back at school is no different from how it was before. Or maybe it is different, a little bit. Before, I was The Girl Who Isn’t Smart Enough to Have an Abortion. Now I am The Girl Who Isn’t Smart Enough to Have an Abortion and Who Was Also Stupid Enough to Get in a Car Accident. Except for Joshua Carr, who keeps trying to be my friend, and Kelly Bergstrom and John Paul Johnson, who are still hoping I will become a charter member of Students 4 Life, everyone cuts a wide detour around me in the halls.

  At least Robin Keating is glad to see me back.

  “I’ve been looking into special programs at the community college for you,” he says. “It’s still not Yale, but I see where they have some kind of writer-in-residence program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts that attracts at least one name author each year. I’m thinking that could at least be good.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  When I see Karin, I don’t ask her why she hasn’t been to visit me. Maybe she has just been busy with studying, with Todd, I tell myself.

  In the cafeteria, I am waiting in line to pay for my salad and turkey sandwich when Ricky D’Amico brushes past me from behind.

  If I had thought about this encounter in advance, I suppose I would have guessed she would be embarrassed by what happened. But she doesn’t look embarrassed at all. If anything, she only looks sorry she didn’t just knock me over. And she looks angry. I figure she must blame me for her breakup with Danny.

  “Could you be taking up any more space?” she says to me, walking past with her tray.

  And then I hear, from behind me, “Hey. Ricky. Cut it out.”

  It’s Danny’s voice. Then he adds, looking right at Ricky, “Could you be any ruder?”

  She looks at us both in disgust, as if we are one person, before walking off to sit with her friends.

  “Here,” Danny says, taking my tray out of my hands so that now he is holding both of our trays, one in each hand, “let me get that for you.”

  He leads me over to a long table where no one else is sitting, sets down our trays. If there were proper seats here and not benches, I swear he would pull out my seat for me.

  All around us I feel the air in the room change as Danny starts talking to me.

  “So what was Keating saying to you before?” he asks, biting into his burger, not even noticing that everyone is staring at us.

  I tell him about the writing program at the community college.

  “That could be cool,” he says, “but I know how much you had your heart set on Yale. I mean, me? I’ll go, I’ll play ball somewhere, hopefully I’ll get okay grades. But you? You were lined up for the big time.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  In a school where there’s a new rumor every day, it doesn’t take long for the whispers to start up again, and into the silence following my “Yeah, well” I hear some guy sitting behind Danny say, “What the hell is he doing with her?”

  And Danny, who has never worried about what anyone else thinks, who has never had to worry about what anyone else thinks, because he is in fact Danny Stanton, spins in his seat.

  “Hey, asshole,” he says, “what the hell are you staring at?”

  And then something happens that I never would have thought would happen in this cafeteria, not in a million years: Danny reaches across the table with his hand, takes my hand in his.

  I am holding hands in public with Danny Stanton.

  And it is such a deliberate act, his taking my hand like that, that I’m shocked. What will doing this cost him? Will it cost him anything?

  I think about the things we do and how every single thing we do in this life matters. Nothing is without consequence. That doesn’t mean a person shouldn’t act. If we thought and rethought every single thing before doing it, no one would ever act. We’d all be Hamlet, or so my Creative Writing teacher says. But we do need to weigh things enough , and this means that there are always at least two paths from any given point and we should always try to choose the better of the two.

  I look at Danny’s hand holding my hand and, thinking about what it means to live deliberately, I make a choice and squeeze back.

  Week of March 18/Week 29

  My mother says we should do something to mark my eighteenth birthday.

  I tell her this will be great if only I can stop peeing long enough to enjoy it. Now that I am into my third trimester, the bathroom and I have become best buds and I need to stop myself from laughing too hard at anything because it is always possible that urine disaster will ensue.

  We have always had family parties to celebrate my birthday, going back as far as I can remember. In the family photo albums there are pictures of me smearing pink frosting on myself when I turned one, me getting my first bike with training wheels at age three, and last year a family party that combined my relatives and friends from school.

  Of course, up until last year when we combined the two, I have always celebrated with my friends as well: the duckpin bowling party when I turned five, the manicure party when I turned eight, the sweet-sixteen party, held at home, where my parents even had a band playing in the garage.

  This year, of course, I have no interest in or intention of going out partying. It is enough, at this point, to be able to reach my own toenails in order to clip and paint them, to see my shoes when I stand up, to find a comfortable position so the nearly constant back pain eases a bit.

  “Eighteen is an important year,” my mom says. “You should have whomever you want here.”

  Then she tells me she’s already invited Karin.

  Well, why wouldn’t she? Karin has always been at my parties, whether for friends or just family.

  “I talked to Karin’s mother,” my mom says, “and she said yes, that Karin would love to come.”

  A part of me wonders if Karin’s mother asked Karin first, wonders if Karin would have said yes so eagerly if it had been left up to her.

  “Naturally,” my mother adds, “you can invite anyone else you want to. Maybe you’d like to invite some of the other kids from school?”

  But, of course, there is only one person from school I want to invite: I surprise myself by getting up the nerve to invite Danny Stanton, and he surprises me by saying yes right away.

  Even though I know my parents must have told the rest of the family about my pregnancy, even though they all sent cards when I was in the hospital and recovering afterward, with the exception of Aunt Stacey, this will be the first time I am seeing everybody since Christmas. And even then I didn’t really see them, being hidden away most of the time up in my room.

  It is strange how they are with me when they arrive. I have known all of them my whole life, and yet now it is as though I am an entirely different person to them. Except for Aunt Stacey no one asks directly about the baby. I could be wearing a beach ball under my blouse or a time bomb they need to avoid.

  Karin arrives before anyone else, because my mother has asked her to come early, probably assuming we would want to spend time alone together talking about whatever we have always talked to each other about first, before everyone else arrives.

  But Karin doesn’t appear to have anything to say to me, and she spends the pre-party time helping my parents put things out on the table: fresh veggies, chips and dip, cheese and crackers.

  It is later, with everyone else seated around the table to eat—eggplant parmesan, pasta, all of my current favorites—when the doorbell rings one last time.

  “I’ll get it,” I say, struggl
ing to my feet.

  It’s Danny, his hair carefully combed, a sloppily wrapped present in his hands.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he says. “You don’t know how many tries it took me to wrap this thing.”

  When my parents see who is at the door, they are both obviously upset.

  “You didn’t say … Danny was coming,” my mom says.

  “You should have said something,” my dad says.

  Even though his being there bothers them, they would never say any more in front of the relatives, in front of Karin, than this. I know they are upset to see him there because they still blame him for a lot of things. Plus, my mom is still resentful that Danny is the one going with me to Lamaze classes.

  Karin is visibly thrown by Danny being there too. Even though she must have seen us talking together in school the past few weeks, even though she was in the cafeteria the day he told off Ricky and sat down with me, I’m sure she never expected to see him here, not at my eighteenth birthday party. The way things used to be, Danny Stanton would never have been here with me like this with my family. It is funny , I think sometimes, how invested people become in seeing you as you were, and how hard it is for them to see you as you are.

  My grandmother, who has always seemed to me to be a bit oblivious anyway, fails to see the sudden tension in the room.

  “Sit, sit,” Grandmother Hansen says to Danny, pulling up a seat for him beside her and placing food on his plate even before he can sit down.

  Later, when we are clearing the table, Grandmother Hansen stops me in the kitchen.

  “Such a nice boy,” she says, “that Danny. You and I should talk sometime. Soon.”

  Still later, we are opening presents on the living room floor before having cake.

  My aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins, all give me the kind of practical things they’ve been giving me for years: cash, savings bonds, gift certificates for clothing and music stores. No one ever thinks to give me gift certificates to bookstores, which I would really love.

  My mom and dad give me a basket filled with school supplies: pens and paper, of course, but also a computer program for screenplay writing.

  “It’s for later,” my dad says. “You know, afterward,” meaning the baby.

  “I know you say you want to write novels,” my mom says, my literary-aspirations cat having popped out of its bag, “but it can’t hurt to stretch yourself in different directions.”

  “I guess not,” I say, and laugh, patting my belly. “I’m obviously stretching in all kinds of directions.”

  They look horrified at this.

  “Seriously,” I say, “thanks.”

  Then Karin gives me her present. It’s a top from our favorite store at the mall. It is purple with a halter on top, but just below the breasts the material is filmy, so it has the effect of looking like something a genie on the beach might wear. It is exactly the kind of thing I would pick out for myself, except …

  I hold it up to my body. There are a couple of inches of me spreading out on either side of the narrow cut.

  “I didn’t think—,” Karin starts.

  “That’s okay,” I say, and smile. “I’ll save it for sometime afterward. Really, it’s perfect.”

  My mom says it’s time for cake and we are all getting up when Grandmother Hansen says, “What’s this? You forgot to open one of your presents.”

  In her hands is the sloppily wrapped present Danny arrived with, that he’d put off to one side, and I open it as everyone sits back down again.

  There are three things inside. The first is a journal with a leather cover and gold-tipped pages.

  “I guess this is really the same kind of thing your folks got you,” Danny says. “I guess I just thought it might be nice for you to have somewhere you could write whatever you want, maybe even write about the baby.”

  I see my relatives thinking, see Karin thinking, How does he know about Angel’s writing?

  The second thing is a baby blanket that feels soft against my cheek and is as purely white as the snow was the day Danny came to visit me after the accident.

  Now Danny is starting to look embarrassed. For someone who is used to having all that attention focused on him on the basketball court, he has trouble dealing with all this attention in my living room now.

  “I know you said you didn’t want any kind of shower,” Danny says. And again I see my relatives thinking, see Karin thinking, How does he know these things? “But I thought you should have something special for the baby.”

  The third thing is a purple ribbon to tie back my hair. If Danny was on his way to embarrassed before, he is totally there now, but that doesn’t stop him from speaking. “I was reading this Web site online,” he says, coughing into his hand to clear his throat, “and it said that women, when they get into the later part of their pregnancies, like to feel as though they’re still pretty, still themselves, like they’re more than just a person carrying a baby.”

  My family has no idea what to do with Danny, what to do with any of this, so we do what we always do when we don’t know what else to do. We eat; in this instance, cake.

  “Make a wish?” my mother says as the candle burns.

  But right now there is nothing else I want other than what I have already, in this moment. Or maybe there is one thing I want, but I tell myself that Danny Stanton is only being so nice to me because, maybe, Danny Stanton is just an incredibly nice person after all.

  I blow out the candle, wishless, and think this is certainly the strangest birthday party I have ever had.

  Week of March 25/Week 30

  I tell myself this is not a date, that Danny is just being friendly when he asks me if I want to see a movie with him on Friday night, especially when he adds that Karin and Todd will be going too.

  Karin acts strangely from the minute I get into the car with them. I think maybe it is because she got used to having Ricky there whenever she went out with Danny and Todd.

  I have never asked Karin what that was like, being with Danny and Ricky. I didn’t want to know, still don’t.

  I am so excited to be doing this, doing something that feels normal , that I do not even care what movie we are going to see and am surprised when it turns out to be a romantic comedy, which would normally be a good thing but which in my present pee-happy condition presents a dilemma.

  The heroine in the movie is something of a ditz, and she keeps finding herself thrown together in situations with this guy she keeps telling everyone she dislikes. She trips over a curb and falls at his feet, she accidentally sets fire to her apartment and he has to save her, and the whole time it is hard to believe she is unaware of the most obvious fact: She is in love with him.

  But none of that matters as I sit in the darkened movie theater eating my popcorn. In all the time I have known Danny we have never done something so simple as go to the movies together, not since that first date years ago.

  Afterward Danny suggests we go to the diner. I say yes even though now that I am into my third trimester, what Dr. Caldwell predicted, has happened. The baby is taking up so much space inside me now, I find I can only eat small meals at a time, otherwise I get heartburn, and the popcorn has totally filled me up.

  But I am just happy to be here, even if Karin barely talks to me, even if Ricky D’Amico glares at us as she walks by our table.

  Danny is oblivious to Karin’s silence, oblivious to Ricky’s glare. He is content just to eat his cheeseburger, and I am content to watch him eat it.

  Danny asks if we want to go anywhere else. Maybe we could take a drive to the lake?

  But Karin says no.

  “Thanks,” she says, “but I’m kind of beat. Maybe you could just drop Todd and me at my house?”

  “How about you?” Danny asks after we drop them. “Do you want to go to the lake?”

  The idea of being alone with Danny at the lake sounds heavenly but now that I am in my third trimester I get tired easily and it is well past my new bedtime.<
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  “Another time?” I say as I yawn, barely able to keep my eyes open.

  When we get to my house, Danny walks me to the door, the porch light guiding our path.

  “This was great,” he says.

  “It was,” I say, and smile sleepily.

  “We should do this again sometime,” he says.

  I am brought up short by that “sometime.” It is such a vague word.

  Then Danny leans down to my short height from his far greater one, and his face is just a breath away from me.

  “I’ve never kissed a pregnant girl before,” Danny says, right before he does exactly that, his lips gently touching mine.

  When he pulls away, I think of how what he just said must be true: Of all the girls Danny Stanton has kissed, and there have been a lot, I must surely be the first one who is seven months pregnant.

  Then he touches his lips to mine again and the kiss turns into something else, something more like the way he used to kiss me when we used to hook up at parties occasionally, only different. This kiss is deeper somehow. It feels, in a way, as though he is trying to read me, as though I am trying to read him.

  I don’t want the moment to end, not ever, but I feel Danny pull away.

  “Well,” he says, “I guess I better get going. You need your sleep.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  As I watch him walk away, I tell myself that this must just be some kind of novelty to him, that whatever that kiss just meant to me, it couldn’t possibly mean the same thing to him.

  april

  Week of April 1/Week 31

  THE VERY IDEA OF BREAST-FEEDING FEELS LIKE AN APRIL

  Fools joke.

  What kind of God would invent such a thing? I think, as I listen to the midwife from Dr. Caldwell’s practice give her mini-lecture. If we need to ensure the survival of the species since women already have to give birth to the babies, shouldn’t guys somehow be able to do this part? Okay, so maybe guys would look really stupid with breasts, but couldn’t babies just feed out of, oh, I don’t know, guys ‘fingers or something?