“I think that should be up to you.” I hoped it sounded diplomatic. For several minutes she sat staring at the floor, her elbows on her knees.
“I’d just like to make one smart decision in my whole life,” she said.
“Okay. Why don’t we do the most practical thing then?”
“What’s that?” It sounded hostile.
“We’ll get married.” It wasn’t very graceful, but I wanted to say it and cut through whatever assumptions she’d been making. Her response was strictly conversational.
“That’s your idea of practical?”
“Well, it solves a lot of things like where you’ll live and who’ll help with the baby. That’s practical.” I heard myself at fifteen trying to pull my pathetic weight on the debate team. It wasn’t so much that it was the most practical idea I had. It was the only one of several that I didn’t find repugnant.
“I’m sorry,” I said and immediately regretted it. How do you apologize for something like that? Finally she asked what time it was.
“I made an appointment to have a pregnancy test, so I’d have to tell you this morning. I need to go now.”
“Okay. I’m ready.”
“People are going to find out anyway, but if you go with me, everyone’s going to know by the end of the day,” she said.
I went.
On the drive, Meda didn’t look sad so much as she looked worried, and I recognized the look as one she’d worn for several weeks. Things had been a little uneven for us since Muriel’s surgery. Physically, Muriel was better, but the tensions between her and Meda remained. Those tensions seemed to spill over between us, so there was a lot of silence when we were together. I felt stupid for having been so oblivious. I had wondered if Meda was just tired of me.
We went, not to a doctor’s office like I’d imagined, but to a small clinic in a shabby concrete block office, next to a bail bondsman. The nurse gave Meda a little plastic cup and sent her into a bathroom. She came back in a few minutes, and sat next to me, holding a magazine on her lap, but not reading it.
“Meda. It’s okay, really,” I said.
I hoped it was okay, because I was stunned. I wondered what my mother would think; I couldn’t help myself. I put my hand on Meda’s knee, to remind myself of where I was, to avoid drifting. The way she looked at me, I knew I had been.
When they called her back, I got up to go with her, but the nurse shooed me back to my seat.
“We always counsel the woman first,” she said in an undertone. It clinched my impression that I was the villain.
Knowing
Meda
“I’ve known for almost a month,” I told the nurse. “I don’t know why I took so long waiting to have a test done.”
“We see plenty of people who are five or six months before they finally have a pregnancy test,” she said. At least there was nothing to be embarrassed about with her. Plenty of people stupider than me had passed through her office, including a younger, stupider me.
“I couldn’t let myself think about it.”
“That’s natural, especially if you don’t know how you feel about being pregnant.”
By the time Mom had her surgery, I’d known I was pregnant, because I missed my period, and started feeling strange all over. I felt like an idiot. The girls’ gym teacher always told us it doesn’t matter how careful you usually are, if you aren’t always careful. At first, I thought about doing something really bad. I thought, well, I can just take care of it and he won’t have to know. I knew that wasn’t fair to Bernie, but I thought about it all the same. It made me crazy, thinking about what would happen if I had another baby.
I had a little money and I figured I could take a day off and go into the city. Bernie probably wouldn’t even ask why I needed the day off, and if I picked a day that was busy for him, he’d loan me his car. That’s what I was thinking, and even looking at Annadore didn’t make me think differently, because Annadore was Annadore. She was a done deal, but this was a whole new thing. Then I stopped thinking about how badly it was going to screw up my life, and made myself remember how Bernie said he was glad that I had Annadore instead of an abortion.
I tried to straighten myself up before they brought Bernie back, but I’d been crying so much it was pointless. Bernie sat down in the empty chair, looking like he’d been called into the principal’s office.
“As I told Meda, the pregnancy results are positive,” the nurse said. It was a big relief to me that she told him, because I don’t know if I could have. Bernie nodded and seemed pretty calm. “Have you talked at all about what the two of you want to do? About whether you plan to continue the pregnancy?”
Bernie tensed up, but didn’t say anything.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think that’s what you wanted, too, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Bernie said. I think he almost said, “Thank you.” He reached over and held my hand. I guess it was supposed to be comforting, but it really wasn’t.
Midstream
“We’ll refer you to an obstetrician to get started with pre-natal care. I’m guessing we don’t need to worry about any information on public services?” the nurse said. She knew exactly who I was. Meda was right. There are no secrets in a town that small.
“No,” I said.
The nurse gave us a list of doctors and there wasn’t much else to say. We were going to have a baby. I looked at my watch. Less than two hours had passed since Meda walked into the study. It was amazing how such a small window of time could radically alter the world. Actually the window was smaller than two hours. The failed mental process that led me to do what I did on the night of the Hall of Fame had probably only taken a few seconds. The world had seemed wonderfully real that night, the way it almost never did. I’d just forgotten how the real world has consequences.
We had no place of our own to go that wouldn’t involve seeing other people. Instead we got something to drink and stopped at the empty city park. From where we were, I could see the little path I used to follow on the way home from school.
“I’m turning out just like my mother,” Meda said.
“It’s not like we’re fifteen, Meda. It’s not the end of the world.” She didn’t answer, so I tried again: “I’m not Travis.” She gave me a look with so many layers I couldn’t begin to decode them. I was afraid she would cry again. I racked my brain, trying to think of something to make her feel better. “I like Annadore. I’ll like having a baby.”
“Really? You like Annadore?” I had all of her attention.
“Yes. It’ll be okay.”
“I guess it’ll have to be. I just hate having to tell everyone.”
“We can wait to tell people, until after we’re married.”
I reached for Meda at the same instant she jerked back from me.
“You’re serious about getting married? I thought you just said that because you wanted me to have the baby. Are you crazy?”
There was no safe answer. I was serious, but I actually had a medical diagnosis on the other one.
“That’s a big thing to do on the spur of the moment,” she said.
“I know you don’t want to tell people, but you said it yourself, people are going to know. So could we please tell my aunt today? I don’t want her to hear it from someone else.”
“Sure you can, if you want, but count me out.” Meda was convinced my aunt was going to be mad at her, but eventually she gave in.
“That’s what they’ll put on my headstone,” she said. “She gave in.”
I didn’t laugh, because I wasn’t sure she meant it to be funny.
We drove to my aunt’s and went through the painful necessity of making small talk until we were settled into the parlor. I tried to relax, to let all of the familiar furniture and filtered light calm me, but Meda was like a brick wall next to me. I had a small, bitter taste then of what it was like being her, when she’d come into the study to talk to me. I took a deep breath, bit the bullet, and told Aunt Ginny. It turne
d out that my aunt was quite spry for her age, because she leapt up out of her chair and descended on me, fluttering her purple sweater shawl like bat wings.
“Oh, Bernie, sweetheart, oh, that’s just wonderful. Oh, how wonderful. Oh, oh, oh!” She practically screamed it, like she’d just won something on a TV game show. Then she swooped onto Meda. I got one brief glance at her face before she was obscured by the fluttering. She looked paralyzed. After hugging and kissing her about a dozen times, Aunt Ginny let Meda up for a breath.
I repented at leisure my own lackluster response to the news.
“Oh, goodness, you’ve made me so happy. I’m going to be an aunt again! Oh, and Annadore will have a brother or sister—you don’t know which yet, do you? Well, when are you getting married? I’ll be an aunt again twice, with Annadore. Soon? You are getting married?”
“Yes,” I said.
Meda stared at me with something between outrage and what might have been relief, but didn’t say anything. I was relieved. I hadn’t expected a standing ovation for something that was essentially carelessness.
A Doozy
Meda
Maybe Bernie thought getting married was the practical thing to do, but it scared me. After I got pregnant with Annadore, I wanted to marry Travis. As stupid as I was, I thought we’d get married and live happily ever after. They say you learn something new every day. That was a doozy.
I never knew what to make of Bernie, because I was expecting some long-winded explanation, but he just leaned over to his aunt and said, “Meda’s pregnant. We’re going to have a baby.” Go figure. He’s got a hundred words for any simple thing he wants to say, but this one, he doesn’t even use up ten of them.
“I think it’s totally crazy for you to be talking about getting married like that,” I said when his aunt left the room. “When you got up this morning, before you found out I was pregnant, were you thinking about proposing to me?”
“Well, no, which is why I hope you’ll forgive me for doing this without a ring.” At first I thought he was joking when he got down on his knees in front of me. “Will you marry me?”
I couldn’t help myself—it was like my chair was on fire—I jumped up and tried to get away. He surprised me by catching me around the waist and holding me there.
“Meda, please don’t be upset,” he said. His aunt came back into the room then and saw him on his knees with his hands on my hips.
“Meda?” He really expected me to give him an answer.
“I can’t think with you looking at me like that.” I didn’t care if his aunt heard it all. I felt like I was getting ready to be railroaded. He wasn’t the first guy to ask me to marry him, but he was the first guy who’d ever asked me that I really believed. If I said yes, I was going to end up married.
“Bernie, dear, why don’t you let us girls have a little time together,” his aunt said.
I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. I guessed it wouldn’t be good, because what does someone like her have to say to someone like me?
“I need to get Annadore,” I told them. “I left her with Loren today and she has to go to work at five.”
Convincing Meda
Aunt Ginny
Meda looked so upset; of course she needed some time to think.
“Bernie can do that, can’t he?” I asked her.
“I can do that.”
“Will that be okay, dear?”
Meda nodded slowly, looking as if she wanted to say no. I gave Bernie a moment to kiss her before I sent him on his way. When I walked him to the door, he gave me a very hard look for such a sweet boy.
“Be nice to her, Aunt Ginny,” he said in that wonderful, deep voice he almost never uses.
“Oh, you. You should talk about being nice to her after what you’ve done. For shame.” He blushed when I said it, so I knew he felt badly. After he was gone, I went out to the kitchen and made some tea, to give Meda a few minutes alone to think. We didn’t talk at first, simply sat drinking our tea.
“Now, Meda, dear, I don’t know a thing about what it’s like to be in your situation. Things were very different when I was getting married. So why don’t you tell me why you’re so upset?” I was confident that if I gave her a chance she would tell me, and she did.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to get married because I’m pregnant. Bernie says he wants to, but he’s not even thinking about what it would be like being married to me. He says it’s the practical thing to do, but there’s nothing practical about marrying someone you barely know.”
“Are you worried that he doesn’t know you or that you don’t know him?” I said.
When her eyes met mine, she seemed less upset.
“Both. Sometimes he scares me,” she said rather bravely.
“Meda, there’s nothing to be scared of. He’s a good, good boy. He would never hurt you.”
“I don’t mean anything like that. I don’t think he’d ever hurt me. I’m scared of him for him. He’s so depressed sometimes, and he has problems, emotional problems, I guess. He’s so easy to hurt,” she said.
“He’s not made of glass, dear. You know what happened to him, don’t you? I assumed you knew about that.”
“I know that he was kidnapped, but I don’t know what they did to him. Something really bad, I guess. He told me that he’s had a lot of therapy.”
“He doesn’t need therapy. He just needs someone to love him,” I said.
I patted her hand and she smiled such a sad smile I felt sure she did love him. I pulled her closer to me, because she seemed like a little girl, like her daughter with her big dark eyes.
“I don’t know. He can’t sleep when there’s someone else in the room. He won’t even sleep with me. I mean sleep, not sex.” Meda’s face got very red and she said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Raleigh.”
“Dear, I’m not his maiden aunt. I assumed, of course, that this was not an immaculate conception. But I did not know that.”
“He says his mother doesn’t like to see him, because it reminds her he’s not perfect, because he got kidnapped, like it was his fault. And he says it like there’s nothing wrong with that.” She sniffled. With a little urging she put her head on my shoulder and I stroked her hair until she relaxed. Then I began to tell her about what Bernie had been like as a little boy.
“You won’t believe me, but he used to love to sing and dance. He was such a silly little boy, well, not that little.”
She settled against me more, like I was her very own auntie, and gave a whisper of a laugh. “He still sings in the shower.”
“He used to sing everywhere,” I said. “But after that terrible thing, something happened inside of him. A great deal of violence was done to him, things he never spoke about. Do you know, they mailed his finger—they cut off his finger and mailed it to us. The sort of person who could do that to a little boy, well, I suppose could do anything. Bernie was very sick in his mind for a long time, even after he’d healed physically. He wanted to hide. He was afraid that man was going to come and take him again.”
“But didn’t they catch him, the guy who kidnapped Bernie?” Meda said, very deep in her throat.
“Oh, no. No. They didn’t catch the third one, the worst of them. For a long time, Bernie was scared to go outside. His grandfather Pen thought that meant he needed to be hidden somewhere safe, so they sent him to that school for his safety. I think also they didn’t want to be reminded that they hadn’t protected him. Now that I’m an old woman, I’m not afraid to say my husband’s family was very wrong-minded about a great number of things.
“They sent him to one specialist after another, trying to get him ‘right’ again. That was their notion of a cure for his affliction. Not to help him become himself again, but to get him to their idea of normal. They made him into an observer and now he has to learn to live life again.”
Meda nodded, but didn’t speak. I hoped I hadn’t said too much.
The Grape
vine
The grapevine went like this: a woman, who was at the clinic to get her birth control pills, called her sister, who called her ex-roommate, who called Rachel’s daughter, Stephanie. Stephanie called Rachel, who called Mrs. Trentam, who called Muriel, who called Loren, who was helping me gather up Annadore’s stuff when the phone rang. Loren picked it up and said hello. Then she said, “Are you serious? Where did you hear that?” She stared at me, nodding.
“Hang on, Mom.” She put the phone down and said, “Bernie, did you get my sister pregnant?”
“Guilty as charged,” I said, trying for witty and apologetic.
“Damn!” She picked up the phone. “He says it’s true.” I had Annadore’s shoes on her by then, so I picked her up and started to leave, but Loren said, “Stop right there, you asshole. You’re not going anywhere.” While Loren was hanging up with her mother, I thought about making my escape, but she looked upset, and I didn’t want to leave on that note.
“I’m sorry. I really am, but it’s going to be okay,” I said.
“No, it isn’t going to be okay! It’s not fair!” Loren burst into tears. I put Annadore down and stepped into the kitchen, but Loren backed away from me.
“I’m not going to hurt her. I want to marry her.”
“She’s not going to marry you. She wouldn’t even marry Travis and she was in love with him.” Loren looked strangely triumphant in the midst of her tears.
“I got the impression Travis was at fault for that,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s what she wants you to think. That’s what she tells everyone, but I was there. He asked her to marry him and she said no.”
“I’m sure she had her reasons.”
“Yeah, and I’ll bet she has her reasons, too, when she doesn’t marry you.”
“Okay.”
I picked up Annadore and left.
Bernie’s Idea of Good News
Meda
Bernie and Annadore looked so sweet together when they got back, that I felt better about it. Mrs. Raleigh took Annadore from him and winked at me. “We’ll go have a snack and let you two get reacquainted.”
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