It Started in June

by Susan Kietzman

  “And I’m stuck because I’m afraid,” said Bradley, leaning into the table, hands on either side of his empty plate. “I don’t know if I’m mature enough for fatherhood. There are so many other things I want to do.”

  “Like what?” asked Dorrie. That, thought Bruce, was a good question. He sat back down at the table.

  Bradley shifted his weight backward and smiled at his mother. “I don’t have a list ready,” he said. “It’s about living life as it happens, as I choose to live it. Because I suspect that if and when I become a father, my days of walking out the door to do whatever I want, for as long as I want, will be over. There will be daily mini conferences about who’s watching the baby, how long the errands are going to take, why can’t the baby go too, didn’t you hike with your friends last weekend, and on, and on, and on. And these conferences will eventually result in scorekeeping, which will eventually lead to arguments about who is spending more time with the baby, about who is the better parent.”

  Bruce shifted his gaze from his son to his wife. “My head is spinning.”

  “Welcome to my world,” said Dorrie.

  “What about my world?” asked Bradley. “Do you have a comment on what I just poured out to you?”

  “I do,” said Dorrie. “First, I understand your fear and I agree that it’s warranted. Second, I don’t think parenthood has to look like what you described. What you laid out sounded more like what happens on a sitcom than what happens in real life.”

  “I’m not sure I agree with that,” said Bruce.

  Dorrie held up her hand to stop her husband from continuing. “Yes, of course, there are disagreements about who’s doing what. But all of this can be worked out through open, honest communication. Your dad and I are doctors, and we chose to have you. We had a nanny, we tag teamed, we divided chores, we worked it out. If you want to have a baby, Bradley, you figure out how to make it work. All new parents face this.”

  “That’s precisely my point,” said Bradley. “I’m not sure I want to face it.”

  “Meaning it’s okay for Grace to face it on her own,” said Dorrie.

  Bradley took another pancake from the serving platter. “Geez, Mom, I thought you wanted Grace to have an abortion.”

  “I do,” said Dorrie. “But what if we can’t talk Grace into an abortion? What if she really does decide to have the baby—to have your baby?”

  Bradley shoved half the pancake into his mouth and chewed for several seconds. “It’s her choice,” he said finally. “If I tell her I’m out, and she has the baby anyway, it’s her baby, not mine.”

  “Is this what you want?” asked Bruce. “To have nothing to do with this baby?”

  “I don’t know,” said Bradley. “I’m talking like this with you because you’re my parents, and I can be completely honest with you. I would never be this callous with Grace. It would be selfish, and it would hurt her.”

  “Would your absence in her life—your unwillingness to help raise your child—hurt her?” asked Dorrie.

  “Yes,” said Bradley. “Yes, I think it would. She might not admit or even know it, but yes, I think it would hurt her. Plus, why should a baby have one parent when it can have two?”

  “The history books and newspapers are full of success stories about single mothers,” said Dorrie.

  “Yes,” said Bradley. “But isn’t it better for a child to have a mother and a father?”

  Bruce took one more pancake; they never had them at home. “That,” he said, reaching for the bottle of syrup, “depends on the father. An intermittent, resentful father is absolutely worse than no father at all.”

  CHAPTER 19

  They loaded the sandwiches, snacks, and drinks from the deli into Bradley’s backpack and then drove to Grace’s house. Dorrie and Bruce oohed and aahed over the house and its location, seemingly just as impressed as Bradley had been when he first saw where Grace lived. The morning light sat on the still water as white and bright as a blanket of snow. When Grace gave Dorrie and Bruce a quick tour of the house, she was beaming. She was glowing in general, Bradley noted, and he wondered if the pregnancy was a factor. He tagged along, amazed at her apparent ease in being with his parents. His other girlfriends had either been cowed by them or had tried too hard to impress them, which backfired, with his mother at least, a hundred percent of the time.

  On the forty-minute drive to the park, Bradley told them about the hike, about what to expect, in terms of vertical challenges, and about the picnic spot he had selected at the top. Once they arrived and got out of the car, Bradley took the lead, followed by Bruce, and then Grace and Dorrie. They walked past an old quarry, through laurel and hemlock and glacially rounded rock formations, over streams, and along crooked pathways hemmed in by more rock. Bradley and his Dad talked about Bradley’s job, his latest challenges and evolving career goals, and Grace and Dorrie picked up their conversation from the day before.

  * * *

  “I’ve thought about what you told me yesterday,” said Grace, pausing to get a drink from her water bottle, “about if I need to have the baby to prove that I could be a better mother than my mother was to me.”

  In her profession, Dorrie was accustomed to people telling her everything except what needed to be said. Grace apparently liked to dive in, just as Dorrie did. “What are you thinking?”

  “That you’re probably right. That I probably don’t need to have this baby to prove I can be a capable and loving mother,” said Grace. “But even though that’s true, I’m not sure it changes my mind.”

  They were walking again. “Go on,” said Dorrie.

  “There’s another piece to this. As a forty-two-year old, I’m running out of time to have children. I never thought I wanted them—but now that I’m in the position of possibly having one, I feel differently. And no matter what Bradley decides is or isn’t his responsibility, he has contributed some wonderful genes to this tiny being inside my belly. I feel good about this.”

  They walked for a few minutes without talking. And then Dorrie said, “Here’s another question for you. Do you want Bradley to be involved, or would you rather raise the baby, if you choose to have it, on your own?”

  Grace didn’t hesitate before she said, “I’d love to have Bradley involved, but I’ll understand if he opts out.”

  “Why will you understand?” asked Dorrie. “Is he not as responsible for this pregnancy as you?”

  “Yes,” said Grace. “But if I decide to keep the baby, and he doesn’t want to keep the baby, then his responsibility ends.”

  They hiked the next thirty minutes mostly in silence, except for occasional remarks about their surroundings, until they found Bradley and Bruce sitting on two corners of a blanket spread out on a large flat rock. The sandwiches, bags of chips, and apples had been placed in the middle of the blanket, along with four small cans of seltzer water. “Beautiful,” said Dorrie. “And aren’t you clever to think about a blanket.”

  “This is one of the blankets I use on my backpacking trips,” Bradley said. “It folds into nothing.”

  “It’s a very comfortable nothing,” said Bruce. “In fact, nothing has never felt so good.”

  Grace laughed, which Dorrie could tell endeared her to Bruce all the more.

  During lunch, they talked about the loveliness of the day and the natural beauty of the park. Dorrie participated eagerly, rattling off the names of wildflowers they had seen along the way, finding this conversation a welcome change from scrutinizing Grace’s pregnancy.

  After everyone had eaten their fill, they packed up the remainders of the lunch and the blanket and started back down the trail. Bradley and Bruce walked ahead, continuing with their private discussion, as did the women. Dorrie slowed her pace to allow her son and husband to get a bit more ahead, then told Grace, “I’ve got an idea.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Let’s role-play,” said Dorrie, knowing she was possibly crossing the line into her work mode. “You pretend that you want
to get an abortion, and I’ll pretend I want you to keep the baby.”

  Grace surprised Dorrie by smiling and saying, “Okay. You start.”

  “I think you ought to keep the baby,” said Dorrie, jumping right in.

  “I can appreciate that,” said Grace. “I know how much you want to be a grandmother.”

  Dorrie laughed. “Oh, you’re good at this.”

  “But I’m not sure I want to keep the baby,” said Grace, sounding totally sincere.

  “Of course you want to keep the baby. You’re not getting any younger, you know. This may be your last chance to be a mother.”

  “What’s so great about being a mother? I have a perfect life right now. I love my job. I love my boyfriend. I can do whatever I want. A baby would completely change my life. I would lose my freedom.”

  While Dorrie wondered if Grace’s words about loving her boyfriend were real or fabricated, she said, “Isn’t forty-two years of freedom enough? Don’t you want to do something else? How many evenings alone in a quiet house does a person need?”

  “Who’s in a quiet house? I’m out with friends, eating in fabulous restaurants. I’m off on ski weekends in the winter. I entertain A-list guests all summer at my spacious beach house. . . .”

  Dorrie interrupted: “Really?”

  “No,” said Grace, a slight smile on her face. “I’m embracing my role.”

  Back to business, Dorrie said, “You can have a full life with a baby. In fact, I would argue that your life would be fuller.” Dorrie remembered the sense of completion she had felt when Bradley was born.

  “I have a full life now,” said Grace. “I don’t want a baby. A baby would wreck my life!”

  There was something in Grace’s voice that made Dorrie stop walking. She turned around and saw that Grace was standing in the middle of the trail, looking as though she didn’t know where to go, her lips pressed together tightly. Dorrie rushed back to her and put her hands on Grace’s shoulders. “It’s okay,” said Dorrie. “It’s okay.”

  Grace focused her stricken gaze onto Dorrie’s face. “No, it’s a good exercise,” Grace said, shaking her head, “a worthwhile exercise. I stopped because I felt like I was saying the things my mother would have said; I was feeling what she might have been feeling. I hadn’t even considered her feelings before; I had only considered my own. And it makes me think that maybe I’ve made too quick a decision on what is a complicated issue. What else haven’t I thoroughly considered?”

  “I can help you explore this, Grace,” said Dorrie. “Yes, it’s a complicated, multilayered predicament. But we can all help you with this, no matter what you decide.” Dorrie slowly released her grip on Grace’s shoulders.

  “Right now, I don’t know what I want.”

  Dorrie fought the urge to tell Grace that she needed to decide soon, that she was more than seven weeks pregnant, and that the longer she waited to have an abortion, the riskier and more emotionally scarring it would be. Dorrie wanted to tell Grace that she would take her to the clinic. She would cancel her flight home with Bruce tomorrow, so that she and Grace could go together on Monday. But she stopped herself from saying any of this. She would be overstepping boundary lines, something she’d done already. She turned her attention back to the trail, and she and Grace hiked the rest of the way back without mentioning the baby.

  CHAPTER 20

  When they all got out of the car back at Grace’s house, Grace said she had greatly enjoyed the hike, but was tired and had to bow out of dinner. And for a minute or so, they all tried to talk her into changing her mind and joining them. Dorrie, especially, felt bad about the change of plans, wondering if her intrusiveness had been more unwelcome than Grace had let on.

  Both she and Bruce hugged her and told her what a pleasure it had been to spend some time with her. After they stepped away, Bradley wrapped his arms around Grace, kissed her on the lips, and told her to put her feet up. “I’ll call you in the morning,” he said, as he and Dorrie and Bruce walked back to the car.

  As soon as they were out of the driveway, Bruce said, “What a lovely young woman.”

  “She is, indeed, lovely,” said Dorrie, who decided not to point out that Grace wasn’t all that young—well, at least when compared with Bradley. “And engaging.”

  “Yes,” said Bradley, looking at his mother in his rearview mirror. “What did you two talk about today? I meant for us to switch around a bit. But Dad and I were having an interesting conversation and it seemed like you and Grace were getting along all right, so I didn’t push it.”

  “Well, we had an interesting conversation, too,” said Dorrie, somehow already on the defensive.

  “About the pregnancy,” said Bradley.

  “Well, of course we talked about the pregnancy, Bradley,” said Dorrie, leaning forward in her seat. “She is bumping up against the deadline here.”

  Bruce, in the front passenger seat, turned so he could face both Bradley in the driver’s seat and his wife, who was sitting behind her son. “I thought she’d made her decision,” he said. “I thought Bradley was the one who had to make a decision.”

  “We played a little game,” Dorrie said, already bracing herself for the negative reaction her next sentence would generate. “I asked her to pretend that she didn’t want the pregnancy and that I did.”

  “What?” said Bradley, again using the rearview mirror to see his mother’s face.

  “I know what you’re thinking—” Dorrie began.

  “That you’re crazy?” asked Bradley. “Is that what you’re thinking? Because that’s what I’m thinking. Jesus, Mom, no wonder she didn’t want to come to dinner!”

  “No, no,” said Dorrie. “It ended up being okay, I think. It gave both of us another perspective.”

  “Grace already knows what it feels like to not want a child,” said Bradley, moving into the fast lane. “She’s the offspring of a teenage mother who had those feelings.”

  “Dorrie, I don’t often question your decisions,” said Bruce. “But I’m going to have to side with Bradley on this.”

  “You two can side with whomever you want. The reality is that the pregnancy needed to be discussed and analyzed. And that’s what Grace and I did, without, I will add, much input from either of you.”

  “What are you looking for me to say?” asked Bradley. “I’m fully aware of the situation, and I know I have a decision to make.”

  “And how are you going to make that decision, Bradley, without exploring how you and she both feel about it, without analysis? This is not like trying to decide which gym you are going to join, or what you feel like eating for dinner. This is a decision that affects the rest of your life.”

  “You think I don’t know this?”

  Bruce made a T with his hands. “Let’s take a time out,” he said. “We are all thinking about this, whether or not it’s obvious to you, Dorrie. It takes time to process everything. And yes, Dorrie, Bradley and I are aware that this situation is time sensitive.” Bruce then changed gears, remarking on what a terrific hike it had been. But both Bradley and Dorrie said nothing.

  * * *

  Back in the city, Bradley dropped his parents at their place and suggested they get ready for dinner and meet him at his apartment in an hour. He hadn’t planned this time away from them, but he now wanted it.

  His mother initiated conversation about safe, less loaded topics at dinner. They talked about Grace, but only in the sense of her prowess and leadership at the office and how she was proving to be an excellent mentor to Bradley on the museum account. They talked about Bradley’s favorite running loops in the city. They also talked about the local theater scene, something Dorrie had recently read about in the New York Times, as well as the Pizza Trail, a local app Bradley and his friends were using to test and grade every pizza restaurant.

  By the time Dorrie and Bruce, packed and ready to go, shared a quick cup of coffee with their son the next morning, everyone’s moods had evened out, and Bradley was able to g
enuinely thank his parents for their advice as well as their visit. As soon as he waved them on their way, he called Grace to check on her and invite her to dinner.

  She arrived that evening wearing a cotton skirt, light sweater, and flats. She took her shoes off at his doorway, and walked into the kitchen area, where he was spilling cashews into a bowl. When she told him she liked the feeling of cool wood on the soles of her feet, Bradley realized that she always went barefoot at her house, as well. He smiled at this, at her. There was no pretense, no posturing with her. If there had ever been anything false in her personality, the vestiges were gone or invisible to Bradley. She carried herself with understated confidence, and he’d never met anyone with as much integrity. She consistently listened before she talked; she didn’t say anything about anyone that she wouldn’t say to him or her directly; she admitted her shortcomings. And she was lovely, so incredibly beautiful. He put the palm of his hand on her face, and then kissed her other check. He couldn’t imagine ever finding a better partner. If Grace wasn’t the one, who was?

  “I wish I had a gold star I could pin on your sweater,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because of your exemplary behavior with my parents, especially my mother, who doesn’t yet know the meaning of the word tact.”

  Grace accepted the Pellegrino Bradley handed her and took a sip. “I really like your mother. She makes me think.”

  “Yeah,” said Bradley, pouring himself a beer. “She makes me think she’s crazy.”

  Grace laughed. “A little bit of crazy is good. She didn’t back away from talking about my pregnancy. She hit it head on. And that takes courage. It’s much easier to say nothing, to hope and wish a problem will go away, even though this is not that kind of problem.”

  Bradley took a long drink from his glass of beer and then set it down on the kitchen counter. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Maybe it’s not a problem.”