Sarah's Choice

by Rebecca St. James

  Sarah let that settle in the soft air between her and Audrey. In it she could still feel her father kissing her hair, still hear him leaving her there to know what she had to do.

  “So what did you do about Stone?”

  “Stone?” Sarah laughed. “You mean Brick.”

  “I knew it was something like that. My next guess was going to be Rock.”

  “I didn’t have to do much about him, actually. I still thought he was the greatest thing since the iPod, but two things happened. One was that every time Brick vowed his undying love for me, I closed my eyes and saw the hurt on my father’s face.”

  “What was the other thing?”

  “Brick kept pushing for us to have car dates—which I didn’t ask my dad about again—and I got the feeling he was getting impatient to get me alone.”

  Audrey’s eyebrows practically became one. “Really, Sarah? Really?”

  “I know, what was my first clue, right? Then one night after youth group when I was waiting for Dad to pick me up, Brick just pretty much shoved me into his car and started driving off. It was funny at first until he pulled in behind the Dairy Queen and tried to put his tongue down my throat.”

  “Eww.”

  “Exactly. And he said, ‘This is what it could be like, Sarah.’ Then he took me back to the church and I got to the pickup stop just in time for my father to drive up. Dad kept looking at me every time we stopped at a light, but I didn’t say anything. Except, ‘Dad, you were right.’ ”

  “So no more Brick.”

  “He stopped pushing, stopped calling. Stopped smiling. I didn’t get the respectful breakup thing he did with Marilee Baltes, and I was okay with that.”

  “Because . . .”

  “Because I started to see how he pulled off being all things to all people. He manipulated them like some kind of crafty chameleon. When I realized that even the jerks liked him, I finally got it. And what do you know: he stopped coming to church.”

  “Shocking. You really dodged a bullet.”

  Sarah shook her head. “No. I think my dad reached up and caught it with his hand.”

  They were quiet for a minute. In it, Sarah longed for a whisper.

  “I can see why you miss him so much,” Audrey said.

  “There’s never been anybody else like him in my life. Can you blame me for wanting that in a life partner? I don’t mean a guy has to be my dad, but I want the qualities that I had in that relationship.” Sarah thought back. “You know, my father and I actually had a conversation about that. If you want to hear it.”

  “I’m only two rows in. Of course I want to hear it.”

  “I was in college by then, undergrad, and I was dating this guy named Ben. Great guy, really. We liked the same things. My family liked him. My mother especially. I think she wanted me to drop out of college and get married and have babies like my sister. Anyway, Ben was like my dad in some ways.”

  “But . . .”

  “But he just couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to have sex.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Twenty.”

  Audrey lifted her eyebrows at the needles. “Impressive. So what happened?”

  “I told him I couldn’t understand why he couldn’t wait a year until we were out of school, and he cut me off with, ‘You mean and get married?’ That’s when I knew we were not on the same page.”

  “At all.”

  “We weren’t even in the same chapter. So instead of going to the UP with him for a week after the spring semester like we planned, I went home to talk to Dad. That’s when I told him I wanted a man like him. He wasn’t at all flattered. In fact, he got really stern and said that wasn’t fair either to the men in the world or to myself.”

  “I’m liking this man more all the time.”

  “He said I didn’t need to find a man like him. I needed to find a man who was right for me. He made me promise I would stop trying to find a younger version of him.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yes. That was the first and only time I ever lied to my father.”

  Audrey took a sudden intent interest in the knitting and purling Sarah now knew she could probably do while simultaneously kneading bread and doing the Hokey Pokey.

  “What?” Sarah said.

  “I was just wondering if you wanted to talk about Matt.”

  “No,” Sarah said. “I don’t.” She sighed. “Sorry. Was that rude?”

  “No. It was honest.”

  “I should go.”

  “I won’t push you on that.”

  “I know. I just need to hit the restroom.”

  Audrey’s eyes looked concerned. “Are you still nauseous?”

  “Actually, no. I just want to look in the mirror and see if I’m the same person I was last time I looked. This is all so . . . I don’t even know.”

  “Very cool,” Audrey said.

  “Very cool?”

  Audrey shrugged. “I don’t think she was really you anyway. It takes the real you to make a decision like this.”

  “Then I’d better hurry up and find her,” Sarah said.

  “I think you’re getting there. How do you feel about minestrone?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Something about her talk with Audrey made Sarah hope she would hear from her mother that night. Maybe, she thought, it was a more real Sarah who wanted to mend things.

  But she didn’t get a call, at least not from Agnes.

  Matt’s Aunt Jerri called, and when Sarah didn’t pick up she left a voice message.

  “So—Sarah . . . thought you might want to talk . . . just about, you know . . . things. Text me and we’ll get together.”

  Matt had obviously found someone to talk to. Why wouldn’t it be Clay and Jerri? They loved Matt like a little brother—wanted him to have the life he deserved. Sarah wouldn’t mind getting some of that love herself . . . if Jerri wasn’t convinced Sarah was the one who could give him that life.

  She didn’t call her back.

  The one call she did take was from Denise at work Wednesday morning. Denise never called her there.

  “Is it Mom?” Sarah said. “It’s Mom, isn’t it?”

  “Can’t your sister just call you to invite you to lunch?”

  Sarah glanced over her shoulder and cupped a hand around her mouth. “She can, if she’s not going to tell me I’m giving my mother panic attacks. I got that part.”

  “No—”

  “Or try to convince me not to—”

  “Sarah.” Denise’s voice was a determined version of the usual calm. “I just have something I want to talk to you about, and, no, I will not try to convince you to do or not do anything.” Her laugh was light. “Like I could anyway.”

  Sarah swallowed down the tears that were now as ever present as the nausea and the urge to snatch people bald-headed at the slightest provocation. “I’m sorry. It’s these stupid hormones.”

  “Then you’re still pregnant.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  In the pause, Sarah heard a relieved sigh.

  “I still haven’t made a decision,” she said.

  “Do you mind if I tell Mom this much? That you haven’t had the abortion yet?”

  Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw her mother clinging wild-eyed to the railing with a blizzard swirling around her. She could at least give her a few minutes of peace.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  There was a wobble in Denise’s breath. Maybe Sarah was giving her sister a few minutes of peace too.

  Sarah left a note for Audrey and arrived at the Wildfire before Denise. She got them a table and ordered a ginger ale. When this was over, one way or the other, she was never going to touch the stuff again.

  The place hadn’t changed since the last time Sarah ate there, but the classy nostalgia of the 1940s dinner club atmosphere didn’t do anything for her today. It had when she and Denise had brought
their mom here to celebrate Agnes’s forty-eighth birthday. It was only a year after Sarah’s father died, and she remembered the quiet stream of tears on her mother’s face, whether she was reading one of their cards out loud—a practice she insisted on, no matter how sappy the verse—or soaking in one of Denise’s stories about the boys like the classic grandmother she was, or biting at her lip because Sarah and Denise picked up the check.

  Sarah remembered that part of the conversation as if it were currently taking place at the next table.

  MOM: I know you girls can’t afford this. You’re already taking on too much of my financial burden.

  SARAH (holding the check out of her reach): Give it up, Mom, it’s your birthday.

  DENISE (covering Mom’s hand with hers): After all you’ve done for us through the years, it’s our turn to have some of that joy, okay?

  Sarah took a sip of her soda. If left on their own, she and her mother probably would have argued about the tab for the rest of the afternoon. But all Denise had to do was say one silken sentence, and Mom acquiesced with the grace of a queen.

  It had always been that way from the time they were old enough to know they weren’t just appendages of Mommy. Sarah would stand in the middle of the kitchen with her fists balled at her sides and debate everything from having another cookie to extending her curfew. Just when Sarah was about to be banished to her room, a convent, or simply the streets, Denise would inevitably appear between them like Glinda the Good Witch and purr something soft and reasonable that Sarah never would have thought of, and everyone went away thinking they’d won. Later Sarah always realized she hadn’t scored a complete victory but at least Mom was back to humming and packing lunches and regaling her friends with how wonderful her daughters were.

  Sarah never figured out just what secret Denise possessed, but as she watched her now greet the hostess with the guileless smile few people still had at thirty, she hoped that secret was still there. If she decided to end this pregnancy, both Sarah and her mother were going to need for Denise to use it.

  Denise blew a kiss onto Sarah’s forehead and plumped into the leather-backed captain’s chair, rosy-faced and breathless. She pulled off a floppy knit hat and let her blonde hair fly out. Denise could make even static look good.

  “Sorry I’m late. Just as I was walking out the door, Tim pitched a fit. You know, the kind where they hold their breath until they turn purple?”

  “Fortunately I don’t know,” Sarah said.

  “You will.”

  A small curly-haired person with cherub lips smiled her Chiclet teeth into Sarah’s mind. Daisy would never pitch a fit.

  She was definitely losing it.

  “I’m sorry.” Denise curled her fingers around her wrist. “I promised I wouldn’t pressure you.”

  “It’s fine. Let’s order.”

  Denise opened the menu, blocking her face from Sarah’s. “You never could lie very well. I actually don’t think you ever tried to.”

  Sarah closed her own menu and sighed. “How can we help talking about it? It’s like this elephant in the middle of the table.”

  “I think I have a way to get rid of it.” Denise peeked at her. “After we order, I’ll tell you.”

  The waitress took the downed-menu cue and was there with an endless verbal list of specials. The very sound of a horseradish-crusted filet made Sarah feel green.

  She cut her off at the Asian duck quesadilla with, “Just a cup of your chicken soup, please. And crackers. Lots of crackers. Okay?”

  She did get a smile out and hoped she hadn’t come off like a diva.

  “Still sick to your stomach?” Denise said.

  Sarah watched the server retreat to the kitchen, probably to tell the cooks to put extra salt in that soup order because the woman at table 5 was a pain.

  “It gets better in the afternoon. Okay, I want to hear about Mom first. Is she okay?”

  “Physically, yes. But she’s mad at me right now.”

  Sarah’s eyes widened. “Mad at you? Why?”

  “Because I said I could understand why this decision was so hard for you. To her it’s black and white.” Denise poked at the lemon in her water with a straw. “I’m sure she expected me to completely side with her, but I told her I also had to support you. As my sister.”

  “I hate that this is messing things up for everybody,” Sarah said.

  Denise set her drink aside. “Some of this doesn’t have to be messed up, you know. I tried to tell you this the other day at Mom’s: Justin and I are not as bad off financially as you think we are. He just got a raise, and I’ve started working part-time in the church office now that I can take the boys to Mother’s Day Out.”

  “No,” Sarah said.

  “You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

  “Yes, I do. And I’m not going to let you and Justin take on any of the financial burden. This is something I have to do.”

  Denise pressed her fingers to her temples. “That’s what I don’t understand. Why does it have to be all on you? It’s not your fault things were such a mess when Dad died.”

  “Stop—”

  “And it’s definitely not your fault that Mom and Dad had no savings to fall back on—”

  “Yes, it is!”

  Sarah could feel heads turning. She wanted to smack all of them.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Denise, can you just drop this?”

  “Not now. What do you mean it’s your fault?”

  Denise was looking at her the way she did her sons when they’d crossed the mommy line. Sarah tried to look away.

  “Tell me,” Denise said.

  “If I do, will you leave this alone?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “All right—look, when I got the scholarship to Northwestern, it wasn’t a full one. There was still a quarter of the tuition to pay, plus room and board and books. It was going to be a lot of money and Dad wouldn’t hear of me taking out any student loans. He said unless I became a brain surgeon or something, I’d never make enough to warrant that kind of payback.”

  “I know all this.”

  “You don’t know that he assured me they’d saved enough to cover it.”

  “They obviously had.”

  Sarah dug her hands into her hair. “Don’t make me say this, Denise.”

  “Say what?”

  “My education depleted it. All of it. I got scholarship money for grad school, too, but Dad sent me money every month to help pay for the apartment.”

  “You always worked.”

  “For incidentals. So I could buy lip gloss.” Sarah heard her voice rising again, and she caught it back. “They spent everything they’d saved on me, Denise. While you got nothing. Nada. You didn’t even get to finish community college.”

  “By choice!” Denise lowered her own voice. “Do you really think I hold that against you, Sarah? Do you think Mom does?”

  “No. But don’t you see? Mom wouldn’t be in the position she’s in if she had at least a cushion to rely on. I have to do this. I owe it to her.”

  Denise was obviously fighting back tears. Why not? Sarah had just hit her with car number five.

  “I wanted to die myself when I found out,” Sarah said. “But I thought at least you never had to know. And I wouldn’t have told you if I hadn’t gotten myself into this mess. I probably shouldn’t have told you.”

  “Do you have anybody else to stand by you?”

  Sarah opened her mouth to tell her about Audrey, but Denise wasn’t finished.

  “Besides Matt?” she said.

  “Matt is not . . . no, Denise.” Her jaw tightened. “But I don’t want to come between you and Mom either. She needs you.”

  Denise shook her head. “She hasn’t turned me away completely. We’re still talking.”

  “Mom mad at you is different from Mom mad at me. She wouldn’t even look at me when she left the other night.”

  “Part of that is fear.”

&nbs
p; Sarah waited for the server to leave the soup and a mountain of crackers on the table before she whispered, “Fear that I’ll go through with it?”

  “That. And she’s afraid you and she will never be close again.”

  “If I do this.”

  “Or if you don’t. She just feels like too many things have been said that can’t be unsaid.”

  Sarah parked the spoon in the cup and squeezed her hair back to the nape of her neck. “I’ll try to find a way to fix that. I will. But right now . . . Denise, I’m no closer to making a decision than I was the day I found out.”

  “That’s why we’re here. I think I can help with that.”

  Denise dabbed at her mouth with her napkin and focused on refolding it next to the chicken salad she hadn’t yet touched.

  “How?” Sarah said.

  “All right, just hear me out, okay? At first this may sound too far-out, but listen to the whole thing.”

  You want me to take a leave of absence and send me to a home for unwed mothers and give my baby up for adoption. You want me to have the “procedure” and tell Mom I had a miscarriage.

  Sarah had to cover her mouth with her hand to keep from spewing out the possibilities she’d already wrung out so many times they hung like limp rags in her brain. She nodded for Denise to continue, but she was sure there was nothing she could say that Sarah hadn’t already thought of and tossed aside.

  Denise’s soft blue eyes waited for Sarah until she met her gaze. “Justin and I have been talking about this—”

  “You told him?”

  “I tell him everything. He’s my husband.” Denise blinked at her as if any moron knew that.

  “I’m sorry. Go ahead,” Sarah said.

  “Last night we were up all night talking about it, and actually he wanted to be here to help me tell you, but I thought it would be better if it was just the two of us.”

  She looked like she needed for Sarah to agree that, yes, that was a fabulous idea. Whatever this was, Denise was having an uncharacteristically hard time getting it out. Uneasiness stirred in Sarah’s stomach with the soup.

  “We’ve prayed hard about it, and we’ve been realistic about how we can do it financially and—” She took Sarah’s hand into both of hers, clammy with nervous sweat. “Justin and I want to adopt your baby.”