Sarah's Choice

by Rebecca St. James

  But she sagged against the wall. She was probably too hard on Matt. No, there was no probably about it. She was. The anger had just burst open its drawer and clawed right at his face before she could stop it. That hadn’t happened since the day her life was wrecked like a five-car collision on the Ike.

  Anger had gotten her nowhere then, and it wouldn’t now. She had to go with her strengths. That was somewhere on the list.

  Sarah headed for the computer and slid on something on the floor. Already wishing Catfish a hideous attack of food poisoning, she realized it wasn’t a rent notice but the three wise men staring off into space. The card must have fallen out of her coat pocket.

  Speaking of weird. She tossed it toward the wastebasket.

  She had to get to something that made actual sense.

  But first she forced herself to get into pajamas and brush her teeth before she went for the computer. The idea was to get sleepy and fall into bed and not think about any of this after she got the information she needed to make a logical decision. There had to be one, right?

  The idea that there might not be came at her like an arrow, but she dodged it and carried her laptop to her desk.

  Two layers of late notices had to be shoved out of the way before she could even set the thing down, and that nettled at her. Good grief, this was a mess. No wonder she was confused: everything around her was in chaos. After finally finding a horizontal space for the computer, she pressed her hands to her temples. One thing at a time. That had to be on the list someplace too. Although not doing it that way would never have entered Megan’s mind.

  Neither would getting pregnant without the benefit of, oh, you know . . . a husband.

  Sarah dodged that, too, and googled “abortion facts.” The first site she clicked on announced that here she could see early fetal development.

  “In other words, a wart,” she said to the screen.

  If that Michelle woman was right, she’d see no brain. No limbs. Just a clump of cells. It couldn’t hurt to see that for herself.

  Since the site gave week-by-week options, she clicked on seven weeks. Her phone vibrated on the desk. A text from Matt.

  Actually several, each one more imploring than the one before it and the last one reading, I’m coming over.

  Sarah squeezed the phone in her hand. She could still see his face, the way he looked at the Grille when she threw the whole thing in his face like a drink, ice and all. The shocked confusion made him seem more than ever like a little boy lost on the playground. And although that wrenched at her now, how was the next conversation going to go, when she didn’t know any more now than she did an hour ago? She didn’t want to scream at him again, and she couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t until that drawer was slammed shut and locked.

  Don’t, she texted him back. We’ ll talk tomorrow.

  When the phone vibrated again, she turned it off and went back to the laptop screen, which now showed a round pink being that looked more human than she’d expected.

  “ ‘Arms and legs stretch out more and more,’ ” she read out loud to no one. “ ‘Brain is developing.’ ”

  That wasn’t the picture the NP had painted for her. She definitely hadn’t told her the lenses of the eyes were appearing. Sarah put her finger close to her own eye. That kind of detail was already happening? Something that tiny and real? And functional?

  Sarah turned the image to see its small pink profile and caught her breath.

  “You don’t look like a wart to me,” she whispered to it.

  Okay, stop. Just. Stop.

  It had been a long, exhausting, gutting day and she wasn’t thinking any more clearly than Matt was. She needed sleep. She could almost hear her father saying what he’d always said when she wrestled with some tween-girl issue at bedtime: “Everything always makes more sense after you’ve let it rest.” Then he would launch into “Tomorrow” from Annie until she begged him to stop without meaning a word of it.

  She wasn’t sure how this could make any more sense tomorrow than it did today, but she headed for the bed anyway. En route, she stepped on the wise men card again. She must have missed the trash can. The thing was more ubiquitous than Megan’s protestors.

  She was too tired to try to get it into the trash again, so she propped it on the bedside table and dropped into bed. She probably wouldn’t be able to sleep, but she’d give it an hour . . .

  In some amount of time she couldn’t grasp, the edges of all she could see were framed in a faint amber light. Inexplicably she was at her mother’s house, stripping off her coat and scarf in the hallway and calling out to Mom, who called back, “We’re in here, Mommy.” A baby was crying.

  Sarah pressed her hand against the wallpaper. Its stripes were real. The smell of cheesy potatoes was real. The insistent wails of a tiny person were real. Maybe even more than real. Vibrant. That was the word.

  “Mom?” Sarah said.

  “There she is, sweetie. I told you she’d be back.”

  Sarah found her mother in the dining room by the window, arms around a bundle of pink that waved its protesting mini-fists.

  “Daisy and I were starting to get worried about you,” Mom said. “Were the roads bad?”

  “Roads?” Sarah said. “What roads?” She didn’t even know how she’d gotten there.

  “Are you all right, honey?” But then Agnes didn’t wait for an answer. She beamed instead at the squalling baby. “Daisy needs to be changed. You take her and I’ll take your coat. Do you want some tea?”

  Sarah couldn’t even give her a head shake. Agnes deposited the infant—whose name apparently was Daisy—into Sarah’s stiff arms and bustled happily through the swinging door to the kitchen.

  Sarah stared at the baby, into the tiny scrunched eyes and the miniature tears and the red bow of a mouth that pouted between wails. “Mom, why do I have to change her?”

  Agnes pushed the door back open a few inches and laughed through the crack. “Well, she’s your baby. I’m just doing the grandmother things.”

  My baby?

  Sarah bounced the baby girl, for lack of anything better to do. When that did nothing to quell the squalls, she tried patting. Unlike Denise, she’d never babysat as a teenager and she’d been away at college when her nephews were little babies. She’d definitely never changed a diaper in her life.

  But somebody had, because there was a complete set-up on the dining room table. She had a master’s degree, right? She could do this.

  Her baby, though? Had she missed something? Something big—like an entire pregnancy, labor, and delivery—and about two months of this little thing’s life? No wonder Daisy and Nana had wondered where she was.

  When Daisy let out the ultimate scream, Sarah had to do something, even if it was wrong.

  She laid the baby gingerly on the table on what appeared to be some kind of mat. There were tabs on either side of the diaper. Those obviously had to be pulled back, and . . .

  The instant the soaking thing was pulled off, little Daisy stopped crying and peered at Sarah through tear-clouded eyes.

  “I’d be crying, too, if my pants were that wet,” Sarah said. “Ooh, not a good image.”

  It apparently worked for the baby because she locked onto Sarah with a trusting gaze.

  “Don’t put too much faith in me yet,” Sarah said. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

  One thing she knew: she wouldn’t want to be put into dry clothes while her skin was still damp with her own . . . yeah. Those things in the plastic container looked like the wipes she used to clean her counters. On the rare occasion when she actually cleaned.

  She pulled one out and eased it over the pink skin. If she wasn’t mistaken, the baby sighed. Fighting off the thought that she was probably mistaken about this whole crazy thing, Sarah searched the table for the next step. The baby’s eyes still tracked her, so Sarah kept talking.

  “All right, the air’s really dry so some lotion should feel good . . . here we go . . . don’t need to
hold it at such a high altitude . . . a little powder because I remember seeing that on a commercial . . . okay, probably not that much, we’re not baking a pie here . . . not that I would know how to do that either.”

  Now to try to operate the diaper. She should have paid more attention to how the other one was put on.

  “You’ll let me know if I get this on backward, won’t you?”

  Daisy’s eyes widened.

  “I’ll try not to . . . I’m just warning you . . . but I think I’ve got it. Yikes. We did it.”

  Sarah heard herself giggle, not a sound that came out of her mouth often, but it seemed to be a sound the baby liked. She searched Sarah’s face with her dark little eyes, and then she smiled, faint and fleeting.

  “Was that a smile?” Sarah said. “Was it real?”

  Was it real?

  Was it?

  Sarah hugged the baby close to herself, but she was too soft, too squishy . . . because she was Sarah’s extra pillow. She sat up in bed—not in her mother’s house, but her own apartment. The first of dawn teased through the slats of the blinds. The amber frame was gone.

  For somebody who didn’t think she could sleep, she’d gone off somewhere deep and had a dream so vivid she couldn’t believe she wasn’t still standing in her mom’s dining room holding a—her—baby.

  As soon as she was finished throwing up, she was going to get back on the Internet to find out if bizarre dreams were part of pregnancy. Fighting down last night’s soda, she climbed out of bed. Her eyes lit on that Christmas card she couldn’t seem to get rid of—

  Sarah heard her breath catch. “No. Way,” she whispered.

  Those three wise men had all been staring off camera yesterday. She knew they had. That was the one thing she’d noticed about the drawing.

  But now, one of them was looking straight at her, eyebrows raised.

  She moved the card, thinking she’d missed something before. Some drawings were made to change when you wiggled them.

  That didn’t happen. The first wise guy was still staring at her when she dropped the card and ran for the bathroom. And then she was definitely going back to that website. Forget weird dreams. Was certifiable craziness a symptom?

  Matt switched off the first of the three alarms he always set to get him up every work morning. He didn’t need it today. He didn’t need any of them because he’d been awake all night. He hadn’t done that since college when he was always disappointed that parties had to end at dawn. Back then the only six o’clock he knew was p.m.

  That didn’t seem all that funny anymore.

  Nothing did.

  Matt abandoned the beanbag chair and made his way through the dark to the kitchen. He didn’t need intravenous coffee to wake up either, but maybe if he did some things the way he always did them, the things that were never going to be the way he always did them wouldn’t freak him out so much.

  He turned on the faucet and stuck the coffee pot under it. That was the one—the only thing—that became clear to him somewhere between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m.: most of what he’d thought was his life would never be the same again.

  Not the confidence that he could fix anything if he could only find the punch line.

  Not the belief that other people made life a whole lot harder than it had to be.

  Not the idea that there was plenty of time to settle down and get serious later. That now was the time to be young and free and spontaneous.

  And stupid.

  Matt felt something cold on his hand. The coffee pot was overflowing its contents down the gurgling drain. He shut off the faucet and stared into the sink.

  Sarah never believed any of that. He’d known it, but not how wide the gap really was between her system and his. Until 4:00 a.m. he thought he could still bridge it. She just needed time to get her head together. She said in her last text they would talk today.

  But when that dark-before-dawn deepened and Matt was still awake, still searching for the button to push to cheer her up, the last truth hit him, the truth that crawled along his skin until he found himself in a cold sweat.

  He couldn’t cheer his Sar out of this one. And without the ability to do that, what did he have to offer her?

  Looking at it again, now, with the gray light intruding under a bent slat in the blinds, it seemed even more stark and true.

  And for the first time, so did his father’s ever-nagging words: Grow up or give up. It’s time to choose.

  It was the only time he’d ever thought his father was right. About anything.

  Chapter Twelve

  Buzz Lightyear chose that morning to stay in hibernation. The fact that Sarah flooded the engine by furiously pumping the gas pedal only deepened the Toyota’s determination to remain comatose.

  So she took the train, which deepened her stomach’s determination to spew its contents into the paper bag she had at the ready. The only saving grace was there was nothing left to spew. She gagged quietly and miserably until she got off at North Michigan and took the stairs to her office to avoid human contact. When she finally reached her desk, she dug into her briefcase for the crackers the Internet suggested she nibble on to stem the tide.

  Surprisingly, it worked.

  When she was calm enough, at least physically, to open her mail, she found a hand-written note with the letters JN embossed on the front. What was with the cards: Catfish, the senile woman at the clinic, and now Jennifer Nolte? Jennifer, the very one who’d said, “You’d think they never heard of e-mail.” Since it probably wasn’t an eviction notice or a vision from the Lord, Sarah opened it.

  I wanted to tell you this in person at lunch yesterday, Jennifer had written in cursive worthy of having a font named after it. But since we couldn’t get together, here it is—

  Sarah closed her eyes. Was this how they told you they’d given the promotion to someone else? Had they found out—

  Okay, stop. The only people who knew were Matt and Megan, and neither one of them would chat it up with Jennifer. Pregnancy was definitely messing with her brain. She focused on the card.

  Although your skills and creative ideas are enough to land you this promotion in my opinion, you would also bring considerable integrity to the table. That is a rare trait that would raise the quality of this company as a whole—

  Sarah stopped reading again.

  How was it that the same words—which two days ago would have wrapped themselves around her like an 800-thread-count down comforter—now slapped her across the face?

  Integrity?

  Where was that when she fell into bed with Matt without giving possible pregnancy a thought beyond, You have the condoms? Great.

  Why hadn’t she thought, Gee, how will I pay Dad’s bills if I have to take time off to have a baby? Where was this so-called integrity then?

  Her desk phone rang. Sarah slid the card from Jennifer under a stack of files and picked up.

  “You need to come to my office,” Megan said—in lieu of “Hi-how-are-ya?”

  “When?” Sarah said. “I really need to start—”

  “Now. It’ll take five minutes.”

  Megan hung up before Sarah could tell her she didn’t have five minutes. She stared at the pile of folders. The key to getting on top of this thing was what she’d always done before: lose yourself in those—get focused on the work—stay on one thing at a time.

  And she was supposed to do that how? With this decision ripping open every drawer and dumping their contents out into one hopeless pile?

  Maybe it did make sense to try to sort it through with Megan. Seriously, who else did she have to talk to about this?

  Not Matt. Not yet.

  Megan was in the doorway when Sarah got there and she closed the door, and locked it, behind her. She nodded at a steel-and-black-leather chair, but Sarah shook her head. It felt a little like martial law had set in, and she bristled. Megan didn’t seem to notice as she leaned against the front of her glass-topped desk. Her hair was swept almost cruelly into a bun,
which made her look like she was bordering on militant.

  “So have you made a decision?” she said.

  Sarah shook her head.

  Megan nodded hers. “I knew it was going to be hard for you. I’ve been thinking about this ever since yesterday, and I think I can help you get things in perspective.”

  Sarah sat in the chair after all. “I could use some perspective. I don’t usually get this confused over things.”

  “I can totally understand that. And you’ve got to take into consideration that your hormones are out of control right now.”

  That might explain the dreams. Maybe Megan’s take-charge attitude was what she needed.

  “Yesterday we just talked about your career and how having a baby was basically going to wreck it. But I think you need to consider that keeping this kid could also ruin your entire life.”

  Sarah opened her mouth but Megan said, “Just hear me out.”

  She reached behind her and produced her phone, which she proceeded to thumb. “What’s the rent at that dump you’re living in?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a dump, exactly.”

  “Trust me, it’s a dump. What’s the rent?”

  “Eight hundred a month.”

  “Is it big enough for you and a baby?” Megan pulled her chin down to look at Sarah. “Take into consideration a crib, a swing, a changing table, a stroller, a dresser—”

  “Okay, no. It’s not.”

  “Which means you’ll have to move to a bigger place, so let’s double that rent.” She thumbed in numbers.

  “The woman at the clinic already said it would cost me eight thousand dollars the first year.”

  “Was she including the increase in rent? Day care? A new car?” Megan lifted one side of her mouth. “Are you seriously going to drive a baby around in that heap?”

  Heap. Dump. It was like seeing her life boiled down to a junkyard.

  “All right,” Sarah said. “I get that it would be expensive.”

  “Not to mention completely confining. How often do you go to the Grille after work?”

  “A couple of times a week.”