Читать книгу This Fragile Life - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 10

I hear what Martha says and I am both completely shocked and not surprised at all. I stare at her, my thoughts tumbling through my mind in an unholy kaleidoscope, so I can only snatch at fragments: if she adopts this baby, I’’ll see it all the time. We’’ll have to explain to our parents. I’’ll be pregnant and yet I won’’t have anything at the end. Martha will be so happy.

I shake my head. I’m not sure what I want to say or even think. “Martha—”

“Just think it over,” she says quickly. “I know it’s a lot to process, and of course there’s a lot we both need to think over. It’s a big deal.”

Hell, yes. It’s a very big deal. And still I just stare.

“Only if you want to,” she adds. “I mean, if you’re really sure you don’t want to keep it yourself. It’s an option, that’s all.”

An option that changes everything. How can I turn it—her—down? How can I get an abortion now, without seeming totally selfish? And if I did want to keep it, how could this not always be between us? The baby Martha could have had. The baby I shouldn’t have, that I feel as if I don’t deserve because I didn’t want it in the first place. Because I can’’t be a mom.

“Of course,” Martha continues, “Rob and I would make it worth your while.”

“You’d…pay me?”

“No, not pay,” Martha says. A faint blush touches her cheeks. “That’s illegal, in any case. I just mean we’d make sure you were taken care of, Alex. The medical bills and everything. I mean, even maternity clothes can be expensive. You know, the whole thing could kind of be fun. Almost…almost like we’re both pregnant, you know?” She smiles, and for a second I am reminded of years ago, our senior year of college, when we went to Fort Lauderdale together for spring break. We had an amazingly silly, fun time, just the two of us, kicking around on the beach and in bars, goofing off.

That vacation cemented our friendship so much that even when our lives veered in dramatically different directions, we still met up for coffee or dinner or a glass of wine. I was Martha’s maid of honor, even though she had three gorgeous, accomplished friends from Yale who could have easily stepped into those shoes. She told me she asked me because she was going to be tense enough dealing with her mother, and she needed someone to help her relax.

And even though I’ve rolled my eyes at her controlling and OCD tendencies, I’m glad to have someone like her in my life. I’ve needed someone like her in my life, because if I didn’t I’d just flake out completely. And I know, I absolutely know, she’d make a wonderful mom. A little strict maybe, and probably totally by the book, but still, a good mother.

But to my baby?

Martha is still staring at me, waiting for what? An answer, already? “Sorry,” I finally mutter. “I’m still processing all this.”

“Of course you are. I am too. I’m sorry to spring the idea on you like that. It just popped into my mind.” She bites her lip, and for a second she looks more uncertain, more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen her. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”

And I don’t answer, because I’m still reeling, and part of me is thinking, Yeah, maybe you shouldn’’t have.

Martha returns to work a little while later; I don’t remember what the rest of our conversation was like. She talked about some ad account for women’s running shoes she was working on and I just blanked out. I still feel blank as I take the 6 train down to Union Square and then walk across to the Sunflower Café on Third Avenue.

I’ve been working at the Sunflower for ten years; it’s a funky little place with a relaxed atmosphere and a laid-back owner, Julia, who actually cares about her employees, all three of us. It’s me, Jasmine, and Eduardo, and I get along with both of them.

As I walk in I see it’s me and Eduardo on duty today, and I put my bag in the back and slide on my apron without really meeting his eyes. I still feel weirdly blank, and I’m not sure I can manage a normal conversation.

Eduardo is cool about it though; he just moves over to give me room at the cash register while he’s on the espresso machine, since he’s better at it than I am.

“You okay?” he finally asks when there is a lull in business and the café’s four tables are empty. It’s a beautiful day in early August, warm but not too hot, sunlight gilding everything in gold. Everyone wants to be outside.

I nod, although I feel a little dizzy and definitely nauseous; I’m still reeling from Martha’s suggestion. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I say and Eduardo doesn’t reply, just raises his eyebrows. I know I’m not fooling him. And then, maybe because he’s a pretty nice guy or maybe just because I’m still so dazed from my conversation with Martha, I blurt, “I’m pregnant.”

Eduardo doesn’t say anything; he seems totally unruffled. And why shouldn’t he be? He’s not pregnant. He’s about ten years younger than me, gorgeous, Latino, a dancer. He’s in a modern dance troupe and I’ve seen some of his shows. I kept my eyes on him the whole time; he moved with a sensuous, sinuous grace I didn’t notice when he was working the espresso machine.

I let out a shuddery breath and stare at the cash register. “I don’t know what to do.”

“What are you thinking about doing?” Eduardo asks, and I can’t tell what he thinks about anything from his tone.

“Well,” I say slowly, “termination seems the obvious choice.”

“But?”

“But I don’t think I’m going to do that,” I say, and with a jolt I know I mean it. I really don’t want to go down that road this time, although my feelings about why not are too difficult to untangle right now. Maybe I want to try to be different, but I’m not sure how different I can be. “I can’t have a baby, though,” I say and Eduardo just waits. “I mean, my life is totally not—I live in a walk-up. On the sixth floor. I have no health insurance. I have no money.”

I shake my head at the sheer impossibility of it all and then Eduardo says softly, “But?”

“But?” I repeat blankly, even though I know what he means. Do I want this baby? I can’t think past the impracticalities, the impossibilities. It’s as if a brick wall has been built in my mind, and I can’t see past it. I certainly can’t go around it.

But I know I don’t want to get rid of this baby.

Do I want to give it to Martha?

I think of her and Rob at dinner the other night, the strength and sorrow I felt from both of them. I imagine how happy this baby could make them. I know they’d be good parents. Rob would make up for her OCD tendencies, her need to micromanage. They’d balance each other out in parenthood just as they do in marriage. They’d be perfect, a perfect team. At least they’d be a lot better than I would. I know this, and yet weirdly it hurts. In this moment I wish, bizarrely, that I were different. I almost wish I were more like Martha.

“You have time,” Eduardo says quietly. “Even if it feels like you don’t, you do. Don’t rush into anything.”

After work I head home, because I’m too tired even to think of doing anything else. I’m working at the community center tomorrow, teaching basic drawing to twenty-two nine-year-olds, and I need to go over my lesson plan. Not that my job is really about lesson plans; it’s more about just being there for the kids, offering them a different outlet. I love it, and for a second I think that if I can be a good teacher, maybe I could be a good mom.

But even I’m not that optimistic. I know being a teacher and being a mother are two totally different things.

Back in my apartment I collapse onto my futon, exhausted, nauseous, heartsick. My mind is churning with Martha’s words and my thoughts. I imagine her holding a baby, the baby I gave birth to, and it seems so impossible and yet there is something so right about it too. Martha might be tense, unemotional, even cold, but she’s also been one of my closest friends.

She’s given me brisk talking-tos when I needed them, when I’d broken up with yet another low-life commitment-phobe. She wrote a personal reference for my job at the community center. I’ve drunk more wine at her kitchen table—she doesn’t allow it on the sofa—than at anyone else’s.

But now? This? It feels so much bigger. Scarier. And even though I don’t know what of, I know I’m afraid.

Lying there watching the evening sunlight streak slanted patterns onto the floor, the room hot and airless, I realize I need to get in touch with Matt. I haven’t even thought about him since that night, that oh-so fateful night that started this all. But if I’m not terminating this pregnancy, which I think I have now accepted that I’m not, I need to tell him I’m pregnant.

Don’t I?

I don’t really know the ethics of this kind of situation. If I give the baby up for adoption, does Matt need to know? Does he have legal rights? What if, God forbid, he wants the baby?

I roll over onto my side and reach for my laptop. The Internet is slow this time of day, whenever everyone is returning home from work and going online. It used to exasperate me, the thought of all those nine-to-fivers scurrying back to their bolt holes and plugging into cyberspace. Sitting there impatiently waiting for a search engine to load, I sympathize a bit more.

I type biological father rights adoption into the search box, and find a site about New York State adoptions laws. I read that biological fathers only have rights if they’ve been living with the mother for at least six months prior to the birth. It surprises me, that little wrinkle, because it seems so…arbitrary. What if you’d been living with someone for five months before the birth? Five and a half? Does the father have no rights then?

I keep reading, now about the biological mother’s rights in an adoption. It seems like nothing happens before the actual birth, and even after the birth the birth mother—me—has forty-five days to change her mind. I read that if the birth mother does change her mind, the adoptive parents can contest it, and there is what is known as a ‘best interests’ hearing. A custody case. A legal battle.

It all sounds awful, so embittered, everything a minefield. Of course, it wouldn’t be like that with Martha and me. We’re friends, after all. Yet I still feel a churning inside me as I push the laptop away and roll onto my back. It’s getting dark now, the sunlight fading into dusk, turning all the colors to gray. Below me I can hear the squeak of my neighbor’s bed springs, the tinny sound of his TV. I’ve squeezed past him on the stairs, a tough-looking guy with a buzz cut and tribal tattoos all up his arms. He usually mutters a grumpy hello.

Do I need to tell Matt? Not legally, apparently, but ethically, morally? I think I do. He obviously regretted our reunion, but we got along when we dated and I think he deserves to know. It’s his child as much as mine.

I reach for my cell phone and scroll through my contacts. He’s still there; I never deleted him, but then I never delete anyone. Still, it’s been six years and he left in a hurry. I’m not anticipating him being happy about this call, but I suppose a little part of me still hopes.

A woman answers, laughing, clearly with someone. I hang up.

I lie there, the phone pressed against my chest, feel that fragile little hope blow away like so much ash. I’m not even sure what I was hoping for. It’s not like I thought we were going to get together, turn into some family.

I blink in the oncoming darkness and wonder what to do now. Who was that woman? I know it could be anyone, his sister, his friend, his wife. We didn’t exactly get into any deep conversation that night five weeks ago.

After a few minutes of just lying there, not thinking, I pull the laptop back towards me and log onto my Facebook account. I’m not a huge Facebook user, but I still have an account and a random couple hundred friends from various stages of life: high school, college, early twenties, some other teachers at the community center. Matt is on my friend list, and after a second’s hesitation I message him.

Hey Matt. Do you mind calling me? We need to talk. I give him my cell number just in case he doesn’t recognize it on his phone, and I’m about to close the window when I see an old message from Martha. Curious, I click on it.

It didn’’t happen.

It’s dated six months ago and I remember it was after her third attempt at IVF failed. That one affected her more than the others; we went out for a drink and when I asked her about it she spoke to me in this high, chirpy voice and then excused herself to go to the bathroom. Ten minutes later she came back with slightly reddened eyes, ordered another drink, and started talking about the latest literary masterpiece she’d read for her book club.

For Martha, that’s big emotion. Considering the dynamics in her family, I’m not surprised.

I stare at those three words and feel my emotions see-saw and slide around, an earthquake in my mind. How can I refuse her this? Why am I even hesitating?

Lying on my futon in my tiny, hot apartment, I cannot imagine a baby here. And what about a toddler? A preschooler, a six-year-old, a teen? A human being, totally in my care, dependent on me, loving me. Maybe. All of it is terrifying.

In any case, I don’t have the money. I have a couple hundred bucks in my checking account and that has to see me through the end of the month. And as for the rest… Childcare? Healthcare? I can’t even afford the maternity clothes Martha said were so expensive. What about diapers, baby food, a stroller, braces, college?

I suppose I could make it work if I had to; I could ask my parents for help. I shy away instinctively from that thought because, strange as it might sound, my parents aren’t really into being parents. When I was growing up most of my friends envied me my laid-back parents, the total lack of rules or curfews in my teenaged life. And I reveled in it, then.

But it’s made any kind of relationship between us now kind of…not.

In any case, I don’t even want a baby, not really. I don’t want to raise a child; I can’t have that much responsibility.

But I can have a baby for Martha, a baby who I know will be wanted and loved immensely. I know, however uptight Martha is, she will love this child absolutely.

My child.

My phone rings, and I see that it is Matt. I feel something close to relief, although it’s completely unwarranted. Still, someone to talk to. Someone who is, at least a little bit, in this with me. Even if he doesn’t know it yet.

“Matt?”

“Hey, Alex.”

“Sorry to bother you. I hope this isn’t a bad time.”

“Not really,” he says, but he sounds edgy. My heart sinks. I want him here, fully present and focused. I want him to have wanted to call.

“I called a little while ago and a woman answered your phone.”

“I know.”

He doesn’t say anything else and after a second I say, uncertainly, “Sorry.” No answer. I sit up, cross my legs, take a deep breath. “Matt, I’m pregnant.” Silence. After a second or two I hear him moving, closing a door. Clearly going somewhere more private. I lean my head against the wall, close my eyes.

“You’re sure?” he asks in a low voice.

I suppress a tired sigh. “Yes.”

Matt doesn’t answer, and that’s probably answer enough. But what was I expecting, really? He left my apartment cursing and groping for his keys.

“I don’t expect anything from you,” I say stiltedly. I have never had this conversation before. “I’m just calling you because I’m keeping the baby and I thought you ought to know.”

“You’re keeping it?” He sounds appalled.

“I mean, I’m not having an abortion,” I explain. “I’m thinking of giving it up for adoption.” And I know then that I really am, and I feel a weird mix of relief and sorrow.

“Oh. Okay.” He sounds relieved, and why shouldn’t he be?

“I just wanted you to know, in case—” I stop. He waits.

“Alex?”

“In case, you know, you had any objections.”

Another silence. “I don’t have any objections,” he says finally, quietly. “I mean, I’m sorry it happened this way. For you. For me. But if it makes some couple happy—”

Yes. Yes, it will.

“Okay,” I say, and my throat is tight. When I draw a breath it sounds ragged, revealing.

“I’m sorry, Alex,” Matt says, his voice sad. “I should have told you before. I mean—that night. The thing is…” He clears his throat. “I just got married.”