Sarah's Choice

by Rebecca St. James

  Sarah set the spoon back in the soup. “I don’t even know what to say to that.”

  Audrey shook her head, sending the bob into a light toss. “You don’t have to say anything. I’m only telling you this because you’ve made me realize there’s no reason to hate you at all.”

  “Well, no. I mean, you’re about to have your baby.”

  “It’s not just that. Seeing you this last, what, week or so since you found out, I’ve realized you aren’t taking it lightly. It’s not like, ‘oh well, I can always have a kid later’—nothing like that. You’re struggling with this decision. Or am I wrong about that?”

  “Did somebody tell you—”

  “It wasn’t hard to figure out, at least not for someone who’s recently been there. You’re actually being very discreet. I don’t think anyone else knows unless you’ve told them.”

  Sarah tore off a piece of bread and picked it apart and picked those bits apart, all while Audrey quietly spooned in her soup.

  “So,” Sarah said finally, “I still don’t quite get why you invited me over.”

  “Because I have a lot of respect for you, for one thing. And I thought you might need a break.”

  “Then you’re not going to tell me how having this baby or not having this baby is going to affect my promotion.”

  Audrey sniffed. “No. I’m sure you have Megan to tell you that. Assuming she knows.”

  “She does,” Sarah said. “And I probably shouldn’t have told her.”

  “In my experience, shoulda-woulda-coulda doesn’t get you anywhere.”

  She drained the rest of the bowl like she was drinking a glass of milk and came up with a soup moustache as endearing as her overbite. If that baby looked anything like her, he was going to be one cute kid.

  “We don’t even have to talk about any of it,” Audrey said. “I just thought we’d enjoy each other’s company.”

  “Not to disappoint you, but lately I’m about as good company as Howard Stern in your living room.”

  Audrey laughed—a sound something like sand being shaken in a can. It was infectious.

  “I’m serious,” Sarah said. “I can’t talk to my boyfriend without singeing his eyebrows. Last night I turned our family tree-trimming party into a scene out of some bad reality show—”

  “You’re killin’ me.” Audrey gave another sandy laugh. “I never realized what a sense of humor you have. You’re funny.”

  “I’m just trying not to come apart.”

  Audrey surveyed her, eyes wise. “You look pretty together to me. More bread—since you decimated that piece?”

  “No. I’m sorry, I just don’t have much of an appetite.”

  “Understandable. Pardon me while I wolf down another half a loaf.”

  Audrey broke off a hot hunk and closed her eyes as she took a bite. The other hand rested as usual on her shelf of a belly, fingers spread out as protectively as hen’s wings.

  Sarah burst into tears.

  Kleenex appeared, along with a blanket around Sarah’s shoulders and another log on the fire. Sarah sat staring at it for long moments, until she could speak without drowning. By then, Audrey had pulled out her knitting and was rhythmically adding stitches to a tiny blue hat.

  “I’m not some clueless teenager who never thought this could happen to her,” Sarah said.

  “Clearly not.”

  “And you’re right, it’s not like, ‘oh well, I can always have kids when I’m ready.’ I know the value of human life. Trust me.”

  “That’s pretty obvious too.”

  “I hope you won’t think I’m materialistic when I say this, but a lot of what I’m wrestling with in this thing is money.”

  Sarah looked at Audrey for any signs of disapproval. A nostril flare. A nose pinch. An invitation to get out of her house. She didn’t see any. Audrey was curled up in her chair, hands working the needles. The light from the fire made her eyes shine.

  “Do you really want to hear this?” Sarah said.

  “I do, but that’s not the question. Do you really want to tell it?”

  Sarah pondered that for a few seconds and then nodded. She did want to, because suddenly it seemed that the only way to see it was to put it outside herself and look at it. Maybe then she could get it all to fit again.

  “I’m in an unusual financial situation,” she said. “I don’t have credit card debt or student loans or a car payment—none of that. I wish it was that.”

  “Oh?”

  “The only way I can describe it to you is . . . three years ago it was like I was involved in a five-car collision on the Ike. Not literally—it just felt like that. Car number one hit me: my father died from, well they said it was complications of lung cancer but he was only in treatment for a year and, yeah, he was sick from the chemo, but they were getting decent results. We thought we were looking at remission soon, and then . . . his heart just stopped beating.”

  “So it wasn’t a shock, but it was,” Audrey said.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you were close to him.”

  “Beyond. He was my best friend. I know that sounds strange.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “So losing him was like, well, like I said, getting hit by a car. I was also plowed into by car number four when my sister and brother-in-law and I discovered the financial situation my mother was left in.”

  “What happened to cars two and three?”

  Sarah felt her shoulders move up to her earlobes.

  “Okay,” Audrey said. “Number four works.”

  A nod of thanks, and Sarah went on. “The only even barely negative thing I can ever say about my father is that for an insurance guy, he was so inadequately covered—it was like he didn’t even know what insurance was. Their health insurance didn’t cover all the medical bills. When he first got to the point where he couldn’t handle things, he asked a guy from the church to help my mother with the money, which none of us knew until we confronted her after he died. She said she was too embarrassed to go to him. Which was why no tax return was filed that year, and the interest and penalties accrued for another year before the IRS notices started coming in. They don’t care if you’re dead or not, somebody has to pay that. Then my dad’s Jeep was repossessed because she wasn’t making those payments. Or the payments on the loan they took out to try to keep themselves afloat.”

  Audrey’s needles paused. “I am so sorry.”

  “We figured out that with just her disability, my mom needed to have my dad’s life insurance money in the bank or she was going to go under. That left nothing to pay off all those bills. My brother-in-law has a decent job, but they have two kids and a mortgage. So the only thing left was for me to pare down my expenses and pay it off with payment plans.”

  “Or let your mother file bankruptcy. That’s what that option is for.”

  “We’d have to put her in the psych ward if that happened. And I can do it and I need to do it.”

  “Because?”

  “I just do.” Sarah pressed her lips together. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bite your head off.”

  “You didn’t. It’s still there.” Audrey focused on the yarn. “I might have been prying.”

  “Why wouldn’t you ask that? I just can’t—anyway, when I had the chance to go for the promotion and take over the ConEx account while you’re out on maternity leave—”

  “And be assigned to other accounts later.”

  “Right. It just seemed like the perfect opportunity. I could pay everything off in a year. I could almost see it, you know—me getting to actually start living again. Or maybe just start living, period.”

  Sarah cocked her own head to look at what had just come out of her mouth. Audrey seemed to be looking at it too.

  “You weren’t happy before that? I mean, I know you were grieving for your father . . .”

  “I don’t know, because I hadn’t thought about it until I just said that, but maybe I wasn’t. No, maybe it was that I knew I
wasn’t as happy as I used to be, before my dad died, but I didn’t really think that was possible. And then it did seem possible, if I could just get financially stable. Then I could actually do the things that used to bring me joy. I’m not making any sense at all.”

  “Actually you are.”

  “It was probably stupid to hang so much on the promotion.”

  “Do you really think so? As far as I’m concerned, it’s a done deal.”

  “Not now.”

  Audrey tucked a panel of the bob behind her ear. “Because you’re pregnant.”

  “Yeah. I guess that was the stupid part.” Sarah shook the blanket from her shoulders. “It’s like I’m in this trap now. Do you mind if I try to describe it, because this is really helping.”

  “Go for it.”

  Sarah closed her eyes. “If I have the baby and keep her, my mother will probably lose her house and have to move in with Denise and Justin. Then everyone will lose their minds. If I don’t have the baby, my mother will lose me because she’ll never speak to me again.” Sarah let her face drop to her hands. “Who am I kidding? I’ll never be able to speak to me again. I can’t just end my baby’s life and then move on. So there’s the trap: I’ll never be happy no matter what I choose.”

  “May I ask a question?” Audrey said.

  Sarah nodded. She needed a minute to catch up to herself.

  “Is your boyfriend in this picture? Matt, isn’t it?”

  Sarah lifted her face. “How did you know his name?”

  “Jack and I met him at the company picnic in August. I sort of floated in and out of the conversation, but they probably talked for thirty minutes about cars.”

  “Only thirty?” Sarah said.

  “It would have been more, but I dragged Jack away. Another ten and he would have had Jack uncovering that ’57 Chevy we have in the garage.”

  “I’m surprised Matt wasn’t over here the next day with his tools.”

  “He offered.” Audrey laughed. “I threatened Jack.”

  Sarah felt the tears welling up in her throat again. “He’s a good, decent guy.”

  “He’s precious.”

  “He’s everything but responsible. He can’t even decide whether to marry me or . . .”

  Sarah bit the rest of it back. She couldn’t imagine saying the word abortion in this house where the smell of new baby sweaters and delicious anticipation was everywhere.

  “I’m not trying to garner sympathy,” Sarah said. “I brought this on myself. But I’ve just never felt so alone.”

  Audrey looped a few more stitches. “I bet you wish your dad was here.”

  “I do. And I don’t. He’d be so disappointed.”

  “That you made a mistake?”

  “It’s a pretty big one.” Sarah pushed the blanket the rest of the way off of her shoulders. “I really should go. Thanks for listening to me. At least I can see what I’m dealing with now.”

  She waited for the question that begged: So what will you do?

  But Audrey just tucked the tiny blue hat into the knitting bag and smiled at her. “I was right,” she said.

  Sarah grunted. “To hate me?”

  “No. I do enjoy your company.”

  “Yeah,” Sarah said. “Yours too.”

  Although Sarah offered to walk to the train, Audrey wouldn’t hear of it and drove her there and waited until it arrived. When Sarah slid out of the SUV, she paused with the door open.

  “Your baby is really lucky to have you for a mom,” she said.

  Audrey tilted her head one more time. “So is yours,” she said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Although Uncle Clay had seemed a little off since the baby stroller prank, Matt still went down the hall to his office Monday morning and asked if he could take him up on that offer to meet at the Grille after work and discuss his future.

  Clay continued to stare at his computer screen. “What’s it gonna be this time, Matt? A mickey in my drink so you can watch me stagger down the sidewalk?”

  “No. I’m serious.”

  Clay swiveled the chair and studied his face. Suspicion faded from his eyes. “Either you actually are, or you’re a better actor than I thought—in which case you need to pursue that as a career.”

  “I’m a lousy actor,” Matt said. “I’m starting to think I’m a lousy everything.”

  Clay stroked the rusty mustache. “Meet you there at six.”

  Matt nodded his thanks and started to leave.

  “Matt.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You okay, buddy?”

  “Never been worse, Uncle Clay,” Matt said.

  That may have been one of the truest statements he’d ever made. But knowing he could roll this all out for his uncle at the end of the day made getting through it seem like it could actually happen. He’d spent the entire weekend in his apartment—no football—with the TV off, actually—checking for messages from Sarah. Starting to text Sarah and then deleting. Punching in all but the last digit of Sarah’s number and hanging up.

  When he wasn’t doing that, he was staring at a fetal development website and becoming more certain by the minute that if she had an abortion, he would never be the same. He already wasn’t.

  There were no nagging father words for that.

  Sarah didn’t question that she would spend her lunch hour with Audrey on Monday, until she was standing in Audrey’s open office doorway with her box of saltines in one hand and her bottle of ginger ale in the other. She’d spent all day Sunday thinking about what they’d talked about and trying to get more clarity, and yet nothing seemed to come unless she said it out loud. But now, watching Audrey on the phone with what was obviously her husband—unless she called somebody else “sweet darlin’ ”—Sarah wasn’t sure this was how Audrey wanted to spend hers.

  And then Audrey put down the phone and looked up at Sarah and tilted her head in that way she had. She tilted and the world set itself upright.

  “There you are,” she said. “I’m warming up last night’s leftovers for us.”

  Sarah closed the door behind her. “Are you sick of listening to me yet?”

  “Are you kidding? We’re just getting started, I hope. Try this chair.”

  Sarah sat in the wingback diagonal from the one Audrey sat in and took the mug she handed her. This time she downed several long sips before she set it down.

  “Now that I’m here, I don’t even know what I want to say.”

  “I know what I want to hear about.”

  “What?”

  “Your father.”

  Sarah felt her eyes widen.

  “I don’t know why,” Audrey said. “It just seems like somewhere you might want to go.”

  “I don’t go there a lot.”

  “Too painful?”

  “Not if I go way back. Those memories are good.”

  “You were a Daddy’s girl, then?”

  “Always. My mother says it was a good thing I wasn’t her first baby or she would have been upset that I preferred my father to her, even as a tiny thing. She was actually grateful because Denise was sick a lot after I was born, so the minute my dad walked in the door after work, she handed me to him so she could tend to Denise.” Sarah took another drag on the soup. “My mother has never been that emotionally stable; she can’t handle more than one thing at a time even now.”

  “Good thing she had your dad.”

  “I can remember even at three, standing in the front window every day at 5:45, waiting for him to come down the sidewalk from the train. As soon as I was big enough to open the front door myself, I was out there to meet him. I wanted to get close enough to smell him.” Sarah looked through the steam at Audrey. “I guess that sounds a little weird, but really he had this combination of scents like nobody else.”

  “Doesn’t sound weird at all. I could pick out my husband blindfolded in a crowd at a rock concert just by sniffing.”

  “Then you get it.” Just like she seemed to get eve
rything else. Sarah swallowed another mouthful. “I’ve heard smell is the strongest scent in terms of evoking memory, and I think next has to be touch. My dad had a heavy beard and by the time he got home from work in the afternoon, he had the five o’clock shadow guys try for now. You know the one I mean?”

  “I do. Jack has more hair on his face than he does on his head.”

  “If he and my mother were going out again for the evening, he would have to shave again. I loved watching him shave. I’d sit on the edge of the tub and just gaze while he creamed up his face and worked the razor all around the contours. He’d twist his mouth so his cheek would smooth out on one side, and I’d giggle. When he dried off he would always let me touch it because it was so smooth. But I liked the end-of-the-day pricklies better because that meant he was home. A smooth face meant he’d be leaving soon.”

  Sarah drained her mug. Audrey still sat with her hands cupped around hers.

  “You okay?” Sarah said. “You aren’t going into labor, are you?”

  “I wish. No, I’m just thinking how beautifully you put that. It’s like you’re there right now.”

  “I kind of do that when it comes to him. That’s why I don’t do it that often. When I come out of it, I’m sad because he isn’t still here.”

  And then I get angry.

  Sarah looked quickly at Audrey to see if she’d said it, but she didn’t read that in Audrey’s eyes. She only saw an invitation to tell her some more.

  “If they did go out at night, he and my mother, I’d try to stay awake until they got home and usually I made it. Mom would check on Denise and he would come into my room and we’d do this thing we always did. I’d say, ‘I’m happy to see you, Daddy,’ and he’d say, ‘I’m happy to see you, SJ.’ ”

  “SJ?”

  “Sarah Jane.”

  “I like it.”

  “It went without saying that we loved each other, and as I got older we actually said it less, but I felt it more. He was just so interested in everything Denise and I did. Even in high school, when I started playing around with photos on the computer and making the fliers for all the bake sales and car washes we did for clubs and teams. Denise was getting babysitting jobs and learning to cook, and I was joining everything.”