“Thank you. We went to Sal’s Pizzeria and then we took a drive down that dirt road at the end of the lake. ” It had started out so wholesome — Diet Coke and pizza. Even though she loved onions, Grace had ordered her pizza plain, hoping that there would be lots of kissing after dinner. Looking back, she probably should have gone for the onions — natural birth control.
“The only thing I know about Easton Road is that’s where people go to have sex in their cars. It’s common knowledge. I’d guess that was where you took a wrong turn … as it were.” Again Jennifer looked skyward. She tried to control herself, but her eyes seemed to have a mind of their own. “Not that it’s any excuse, but maybe Nick thought you knew where you were going and what you were doing.”
“If you keep doing that, your eyeballs are going to get stuck. And I didn’t know that was where everyone went to have sex. I mean, I knew that we were going to mess around, but I wasn’t thinking of going all the way until we were in the middle of it. How was I supposed to know that when Nick turned left by the lake, he thought I knew that he thought … shit.”
“I’m closing my eyes so you won’t see them rolling, but what kind of stupid are you? Are you telling me it was just a spur-of-the-moment decision, like chocolate, vanilla, or full-on sex, please? Really?”
“Stop being all judgy and preachy. It’s not helping.” Maybe all this therapeutic sharing wasn’t such a good idea after all.
“Fine. I’m sorry. It’s just that ….” Jennifer was finding it nearly impossible to keep her mouth and her eyes still, so she covered her face with her hands and nodded her head, followed by a muffled, “Go ahead.”
“We parked and we started making out. He was kissing my lips, but I could feel it in my toes. You know?”
“No, I don’t know, but don’t let that stop you. Go on.”
Maybe she shouldn’t be so judgmental. Maybe if some guy stuck his gifted tongue down her throat, Jennifer would also unceremoniously part ways with seventeen years of common sense. Not that it was likely to be an issue any time soon. Her one and only make-out session had been courtesy of Alvin Kloster — his name said it all. It had been like burying her face in a plate of sushi. For the ten minutes, an eternity, that it had lasted, all she could think about was how soon she could escape to wash his saliva off of her skin. Comparing her own experience to Grace’s was like comparing root canal to a day at the spa.
“He took off his shirt, and then he took off mine, and we kissed for a really long time, and then he slipped his hand in my pants, and I don’t know what he did, but it was incredible. He said he wanted me.”
In the end, Grace realized, it had been all about feeling wanted. How pitiful was that? Sipping her decaf, which tasted flat and bitter, Grace waited for Jennifer’s harsh critique.
“Well, no one’s ever kissed me like that, or touched my encyclopedia.” At the age of two, Jennifer had informed the woman next in line at the Walmart that, “You’re a girl like me, so we have vaginas.” Mortified, her mother had arbitrarily renamed that part of the anatomy, and even now, more than fifteen years later, Jennifer still referred to it as her encyclopedia. “So I can’t really speak to a situation where you’re so incredibly turned on your brain stops functioning. Sex feels great. I get it. But you knew it was risky. And you certainly aren’t, or I should say, weren’t the only one who’d been missing out.”
“Correction. The stuff before the sex felt great. The actual sex hurt. And as far as risk, I didn’t think about condoms not being a hundred percent effective. They talk about having safe sex with condoms, but apparently that’s not even remotely true.”
“Didn’t your mother’s abstinence class explain all that? I don’t remember what they told us in sex ed.”
“Are you kidding? They never even use the word sex in SYFM.” Grace wondered if Betsy really believed that if you didn’t say it out loud, it couldn’t happen. “And I don’t remember a single thing from health class. It was a million years ago.”
“What does your pastor call it? Fourth base? Home run?” Ready to launch into another harangue about euphemisms for sex, Jennifer bit her tongue to keep from laughing. “Sorry, I know it’s not funny.”
“They call it marital relations. Anyway, my mother and Reverend Halvert only talked about the spiritual side of it. Not all that relevant when a guy has his hand down your pants in the back seat of his car, and you’ve managed to convince yourself that hooking up is the key to happiness,” Grace said.
“No, probably not. I’m sorry, sweetie. I had no idea you were that unhappy. Why didn’t you tell me?” A little hurt by the knowledge that Grace had kept this from her, Jennifer resisted the urge to chastise her. The last thing Grace needed at this moment was more criticism.
“What could you do about it?”
Friends were supposed to share all their feelings, good and bad, but Grace had been embarrassed in her misery. Really, what did she have to be depressed about? Loving parents, no money worries, perfect grades, clear skin. Now she felt like she had every right to be despondent, but back then, she had felt guilty for being dissatisfied with her cushy life. Now she wished she had confided in Jennifer. Talking to someone who had been her best friend for more than a decade was way more comforting than nearly anonymous sex in the back of a Jeep that smelled vaguely like a cross between Old Spice and the inside of a gym bag.
“I don’t know, but I’m sure I would have come up with something better, something that wouldn’t end with you pushing a Volkswagen out of your encyclopedia in nine months,” Jennifer said.
“Yuck, but you’re right. I should have come to you first. Lesson learned … the hard way.” Throwing her arms around Jennifer, Grace held her tight. “I love you, so much.”
“Me too.”
A double stroller rolled by, two babies screaming while the mother chattered away on a cell phone, ignoring the crisis taking place underneath the stroller’s canopy. Even though Grace knew nothing about infants, she wanted to jump up and do something to make them stop crying, not that she had any idea what that something was.
“What am I going to do? I’m not ready for this,” Grace moaned, her voice drowned out by the chorus of hungry, wet, needy human life.
CHAPTER 3
Jennifer’s voice was loud over the phone. “Your little time bomb is ticking away in there. If you’re going to tell them, you need to do it soon. It’s been two weeks since you’ve known for sure, and it’s not going to get any easier the longer you wait. Your options don’t get any better as the bean gets bigger. You’re eight weeks now.”
It was easy for Jennifer to have all the answers. Her brain wasn’t foggy with pregnancy hormones, and she wasn’t the one who was stepping up to the guillotine.
“Thanks for the reminder. I’m going to tell them — but every time I open my mouth, it seems like the wrong moment.” Not an hour went by that Grace didn’t calculate how far along she was, and how much harder it was going to be to make a decision with every passing day.
“There isn’t going to be a right moment, Grace, ever. You just have to get it out — it’s like throwing up. You’re an expert on that these days. Based on that alone, I’m surprised they haven’t figured it out.” Jennifer made a retching noise to illustrate.
“I’ve gotten to the point where I can barf silently, and you know my folks. They’re pretty clueless. But you’re right. I’m running out of time.”
This is a disaster of biblical proportion, Grace thought, almost, but not quite, smiling at the irony. Her parents sat smugly in the front row of church on Sundays, tossing a hundred-dollar bill in the collection plate every week, running the canned food drive, spending Thanksgiving and Christmas mornings at the local soup kitchen. With one word, Grace was going to shatter their morally watertight little world. Could she get away with feigning total ignorance as to how she ended up in this condition? Was there any way Betsy and Brad would buy a twenty-first-century immaculate conception? Although she doubted it, Grace was ju
st that desperate to resort to such a fraud. The alternative, to tell them the truth, was an act of bravery she didn’t think she had the guts for.
“Are you okay? You look a little pale, honey.” Grace’s mother briefly rested her hand on Grace’s forehead. “No, no temperature. I hope you’re not coming down with something right before school starts.”
“No, Mom, I’m not sick.” If she didn’t say something soon, Grace was sure her body would say it for her. There wasn’t much room on her small frame to hide anything, and although she might have been imagining it, she was certain her stomach was starting to bulge. “But I do want to talk to you about something. Maybe tonight, after you get home from work.”
“Sounds important. College stuff? Do you want to talk to Daddy, too?”
Having raised a good girl with values and plenty of fear thrown in for good measure, Betsy couldn’t contemplate her only child getting into trouble. In her mind, a serious talk could only be about some academic decision, perhaps a change in the college list or a desire to take the SAT again, in pursuit of that elusive 2400. One more year, Betsy mused, and her only child would be off to college. The time had passed too quickly. As she climbed into her Lexus and drove off to show a house to a new client, she smiled to herself at how smoothly Grace’s adolescence had gone, self-satisfied in her certainty that those parents who griped about the difficult teen years were obviously just doing it wrong.
After the last of the dinner dishes were dried and returned to the cupboard, Grace hung up the linen towel and retreated to her bedroom. In spite of her earlier determination to come clean to her parents, her nerve had once again failed her, and she decided to postpone her confession for yet another day … until the knock on her door.
“Grace, your mother said you wanted to talk about something?” Her father stood there, sipping from a steaming mug of coffee. “Do you want to go over your essay for the common app? Get your stuff and come out to the screened porch. It’s a beautiful evening.”
A beautiful evening … to slit my wrists, Grace moaned to herself. Before she could tell her father that she wanted to talk about something other than school stuff, he was gone. Essays? College had been the last thing on her mind the past few weeks. Not only did she have no 500-word, witty, sophisticated encapsulation of her personality to show them, but she was going to have to explain how she, the only child of two of the most morally irreproachable citizens in their quaint little Connecticut town, had managed not only to lose her priceless innocence to someone she barely knew, but had the audacity (they would never see it as just incredibly bad luck or a fleeting lapse of reason) to get pregnant. Heart thudding mercilessly against her ribcage, Grace shuffled toward the screened porch and the inquisition that awaited her. Perhaps the adrenaline that was flooding her system would bring on a miscarriage, or a heart attack. Either one would do. She stepped onto the cool slate floor of the Florida room. In the backyard, the green glow of fireflies appeared and disappeared, like tiny UFOs traveling through space. How Grace longed to be an insect at that moment.
“So, kiddo, what’s up? Your mother and I know you’ve probably put together something good enough for the New Yorker.” Her father smiled up at her eagerly. “Are you reciting from memory?” he asked, noting that Grace had brought no sheets of paper, no laptop. They had no idea that a meteor was about to crash land in their sinless little oasis.
“That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.” Speaking slowly in an effort to control the quaver in her voice, Grace was sure she must sound drugged.
Crickets chirped rhythmically, and a dog barked in the distance. Wishing she had rehearsed exactly what she was going to say, Grace didn’t think she could actually get the words out. Other than the abstinence meetings and Betsy’s admonition that a boy would never buy the cow if he could get the milk for free, Grace’s parents had never discussed sex with her, convinced that ignorance was bliss and that their child was not one of those girls who would ever be stupid enough or reckless enough to get pregnant. They were churchgoing people, and they had raised her with principles. Kissing, maybe, but not much beyond that, they were certain. Not their daughter. Their daughter knew better.
“What’s up?” her mother asked. “Are yousure you’re not ill? You’re acting kind of strangely.”
Planting her feet firmly, Grace took a deep breath. Uncertain what was going to come out of her mouth, she would either tell them she was pregnant or vomit all over their shoes. “Mom, Daddy, I did something bad, and I don’t know what I was thinking, and I’m so sorry, but please ….” Stars danced in front of her eyes and she sank to the floor. The cold stone felt good on her clammy skin. Slow, deep breaths of the cool night air, and the stars began to recede.
“What did you do?” The way her mother asked, Grace knew that she had already figured it out, but her father was bewildered, looking first at his daughter and then at his wife, eyes wide. Men were so clueless.
“I’m pregnant.” She had done it, and the word hadn’t caught in her throat as she had feared. It had been surprisingly easy in the end.
A single gasp from her mother and the crash of her father’s cup shattering on the stone floor. Grace’s arms stung as shards of pottery glanced off her skin. Had he accidentally knocked it off the table, or had he thrown it to the floor?
“You’re what? That’s impossible!” Her father sounded just like Jennifer had. Apparently you didn’t look any different after you lost your virginity, because her father was clearly stunned by the news. Perhaps Grace could go with the Virgin Mary argument after all, like a Hail Mary pass in the fourth quarter, as her parents — or at least her father — could not imagine his seventeen-year-old daughter doing the nasty with some filthy boy.
But Grace’s mother was less trusting. Her voice was like steel — all business. She was already in damage control mode. “How far along are you?”
“Eight weeks,” Grace whispered, chin down, not wanting to see the disappointment in her mother’s eyes.
“Eight weeks,” her mother echoed. “Nice of you to share this little tidbit with us. What were you waiting for? The three wise men?” There went the Virgin Mary excuse.
Now that she had told them the worst, she could be honest with them. Looking up at her parents, her eyes glistening with tears, Grace blinked twice and said simply, “I was afraid.”
“Afraid? You should have been afraid eight weeks ago, before you let some boy ….” Brad couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. “What the fuck were you thinking?” Grace gulped. She had never heard her father say fuck before.
“I know. I was afraid then, too, but I just, and he ….” There were no words to explain to her parents the feeling that washed over her body when Nick had touched her and whispered in her ear how he’d never met anyone like her, how perfect they were for each other. Every time she closed her eyes, she could see his face hovering above hers. And even if she could somehow describe the situation, it wouldn’t matter now.
“So who is this he? How the fuck could you let some reprobate anywhere near you when you know how we feel about such things?” Now that her father had discovered his new word, he seemed to enjoy it, how the hard k sound made Betsy wince.
“Brad, I don’t think we need to wade in the gutter just because our daughter has chosen to go for a swim there. That language is completely unnecessary … and beneath you.” Betsy’s lips were pursed, and she looked down her nose at Grace if she were a cockroach. “But it would be nice to know what kind of garbage you’ve been consorting with, Grace.”
“His name is Nick Salter. We only went out a few times. We just did it once. I thought we were being careful. I don’t know what happened. He used a condom, but ….”
The words tumbled out of Grace’s mouth, her face turning red in the dark as she said the word condom in front of her parents. She realized as the words petered out that no explanation on earth would suffice. Her parents were likely aware that condoms were only about ninety percent effec
tive, a statistic that had been far from her consciousness when Nick slipped his hand inside her jeans in the back of his Cherokee.
Sounding like one of the famous abstinence lectures, her father said, “The only way to be careful is not to let some teenage Lothario climb all over you. Where did this happen? Not in this house, I hope.” Brad raised his hand and Grace flinched, afraid he was going to hit her, but instead he swatted at a bug only he could see. If he had slapped her, she would not have been at all surprised — he was that angry. “Like two animals.”
“We did it in the back of his car, down by the lake.”
Doing it in the back of a car was both skanky and clichéd. But as horrible as it was to regurgitate all of these details for her parents, Grace thought that by confessing she could somehow repair a tiny bit of the trust she had shredded. If she came clean, she could prove she was worthy of being their daughter again. Just because they weren’t Catholic didn’t mean she couldn’t tap into the power of the confessional.
“For such a smart girl, you certainly are proving to be pretty stupid when it comes to life. This is not how I raised you. I expected a lot more from my daughter.”
Her father’s voice was suddenly detached, as if he were talking to one of his clients at his law firm, explaining why the case was a loser and he wouldn’t take it to court. As her father, Brad knew he had no responsibility here. Educating a daughter about the hazards of dating and premarital sex fell squarely under the purview of maternal responsibility. Fathers brought home a regular paycheck, killed spiders, and took out the garbage. The other stuff was for women to handle.
His rage cut through her, splitting her heart in two. “I know, Daddy, and I don’t know what I was thinking.” That wasn’t true. She remembered exactly what she’d been thinking as Nick slipped his hand inside her panties. I don’t know him well enough to be doing this, but it feels so good, and everybody else is already doing it, and if we’re careful, nothing will happen, and if I don’t do this, he won’t like me anymore, but if I do it with him, he’ll be my boyfriend and he’ll love me, and I won’t be a weirdo anymore.
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