by Paul Heald
He shut his eyes, as if to keep errant memories from slipping through the cracks of his consciousness. “We should talk about you today, not me.” His voice strained to the breaking point.
“Maybe so, but right now I’d like to hear about you.”
* * *
When he finally spoke, Arthur found himself back in college, sitting in the student health clinic, watching an ashen-faced Julia return with the news that her IUD had somehow failed to prevent the union of sperm and egg. They were nineteen. It was the spring of their sophomore years, and they were utterly unable to comfort each other. Pointless questions abounded: “How could this happen?” “What should we do?” The answer to the first question was self-evident and the answer to the second was so elusive that all attempts to find it ended in bewilderment and frustration.
Being engaged to be married complicated rather than eased their predicament. If they had been casual lovers, the choice to terminate the pregnancy might have been more easily made. Preventing a disastrously forced marriage or single parenthood might have justified drastic action. As it was, they loved each other and planned to spend the rest of their lives together. Those plans, however, did not involve one of them quitting school and caring for an infant. Or working a job at night to make extra money. Or explaining to their parents why they could not wait to marry until after graduation. Or changing anything in their enjoyable routine of attending class, studying, socializing, making love, and sleeping late.
Arthur suggested having the baby and putting it up for adoption, but Julia would not consider an option that involved all the discomfort and scandal of an unwed pregnancy without any of the countervailing joy of being a mother. He understood her attitude but thought that abortion might be a big enough sin to justify the trouble. Arthur was concerned with the question of sin. His intuition told him that abortion was wrong—at least for two intelligent middle-class people capable of caring for a child. And it was such a conscious premeditated wrong, not like his usual transgressions of inadvertence or omission.
Julia was more afraid of the procedure itself than the detrimental effect it might have on her immortal soul. Given she was raised a Roman Catholic, Arthur found this bizarre. Although his liberal-minded splinter of the Lutheran church supported a woman’s right to choose, she had been relentlessly taught that abortion was a mortal sin. She nonetheless displayed a child-like faith that God would understand, irrespective of how many priests and nuns had warned her otherwise. He hesitated to argue that she did not understand her own religion, for fear of making her as miserable as him.
She eventually told him that the university clinic had made an appointment for her at an excellent facility in the northern suburbs of Chicago. Her eyes, dark brown, intelligent, and passionate, told him that her decision was irrevocable. Her complexion was perfect, hair thick and golden, her beautifully proportioned body not yet betraying her condition. He did not argue. Instead, he promised himself to make her choice bearable, even if it meant being quietly miserable.
* * *
His tale sputtered to a halt, and Suzanne urged him to go on. “I’d really like to hear the rest …”
“I’ve never told anyone before.” He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fingers against his temple. “I don’t know why you want to hear it.”
“I always like to hear the truth, Arthur.”
“Yeah, but honesty isn’t always a good policy.” He considered saying more, but stopped himself. “If you really want to know what I think, let me get something.”
He went up to his room and returned a few minutes later with a thin sheaf of papers. “This is as far as I ever got in sorting things out. It’s a stupid short story I’ve never shown to anybody—written in the first person by the Devil.” He handed it to her and shrugged. “Don’t make fun of my writing—I was nineteen and pretty drunk when I did this.”
The Devil and Lemroy Webster
On the evening of February 23, 1979, Lemroy Webster found himself with a severe stomach ache. His girlfriend Eileen was pregnant, and he was staring an abortion right in the face.
Now, abortions are odd things, and I always pay attention to people who have the bad luck to get themselves into the unwed pregnancy situation.
Some unimaginative people do not think twice about driving down to the clinic, nodding their heads at the counselor’s words of wisdom, and laying down to listen to the low murmur of their problem being aspirated away. A much smaller group hates themselves so much before, during, and afterward that even I find their mental state unattractive. However, others, like Lemroy, tend to view the event as a more complicated threat to their morality and the rightness of their relationship to The Big Guy. These people can be fun.
I was initially drawn to the utter hopelessness of Lemroy’s position. Having been hypothetically opposed to abortion all his life, he suddenly found himself being seduced by this seemingly straightforward solution to his problem. It was senseless cursing the sperm who had fought its way past Eileen’s IUD; he had tough decisions to make.
What were his options? Having the baby and embarrassing two families who considered unmarried pregnancies an historical relic left behind on the journey to upper-middle class? Being chained to an unknown other for at least eighteen years? Maybe even dropping out of school? Life should not end at twenty. That left mortal sin as the only reasonable choice.
I’ve found that people who are not used to committing mortal sins usually have a great deal of trouble with their first one, especially when it has to be premeditated and anticipated. So, I decided to pay Lemroy a visit.
Lemroy had a sense of humor, so I crept up behind him and whispered in his ear.
“Boo!” He almost hit the ceiling. It was a cheap laugh, but I couldn’t resist.
“Who are you? How’d you get in here? The door is locked!”
“You know who I am.”
He stared for a moment through narrowed eyes and said, “You mean …”
“Yup.”
He looked firm, determined—not really scared. People of real faith are always a pleasure to deal with. He spoke clearly. “Why don’t you leave? You know where I stand. I’d rather be tortured than give up anything to you. There’s nothing for you here.”
“Don’t be so defensive. I just want to talk.”
“About what?”
“I think you know.”
“I suppose I can guess.” He paused a moment. “Well, you should be happy. We’ve already made an appointment at the clinic for next weekend. So, you’re only going to be wasting your breath.”
I gave him an amused look. “What makes you think I’m so pro-abortion? Every procedure means one less potential soul to add to my collection.”
“Nice rationalization, but I don’t believe it for a second. I know God can’t be too wild about them, and I’m sure they give you plenty of good opportunities.”
“True, of course. But, Lemroy, it’s more complex than that, isn’t it? You see, there’s a wrong decision for everybody in all situations, and we really haven’t worked out a bright-line policy to apply in all cases.”
Lemroy looked a little perplexed and put down his pen. He tilted his head at me and spoke while unbending a paper clip on his desk.
“That means I’ve been wasting my time worrying and feeling guilty, because I might really be doing the right thing?”
“Or the wrong thing,” I added.
“Now, don’t give me this flexible morality, each to his own, bullshit. If that’s the way things really worked, you wouldn’t be here, would you? There’s a right thing to do and a wrong thing to do, period.”
“Well, Lemroy, if that’s the case, then which are you going to choose?”
“You know which … and I know it’s wrong.”
“How do you think that’s going to go over upstairs?”
“Probably not too well.”
“Exactly, then maybe there is something for me here after all?”
This had hi
m worried. He started breathing more deeply, and he leaned forward. He shut his eyes, opened them again, and then shut them for a long time.
“So, I’ve really no choice but to have the kid and go through all the parenting bullshit, since Eileen won’t even hear of giving it up for adoption. Yeah, I’m going to make a wonderful father—I hate the brat already. But with my soul at stake, I really only have one option, don’t I?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, what do you think? I’m not too keen on spending eternity standing knee-deep in shit with you watching reruns of The Love Boat.”
“You need to remember what I said. Maybe raising a child with your attitude would really be the wrong thing to do.”
“So, what is the wrong decision then?”
“There’s a hefty price tag on that.” He was pissed off by my rather juvenile attempt at soul purchasing.
“Oh good. I sell you my soul and you tell me how to save it. How do you fool anybody with lines like that?
“No sense getting abusive.”
“Look, what is the moral of all this? If there is no right or wrong, then you wouldn’t exist. If I were damned if I do, damned if I don’t, then you wouldn’t have bothered me. And if there is a right and a wrong decision, then there’s apparently no way for me to independently determine what it is.”
“That sounds like a good moral. Don’t you feel better?” I faded out with a cheerful, “Have a nice day.”
Lemroy did feel somewhat better for a bit, marveling at the fact that although things looked hopeless, he at least would not be making the wrong decision premeditatively, because the wrong decision was no longer so cut and dried. It took Lemroy about five minutes to realize that he felt better as a result of a visit from me. His heart sunk, and what he planned to do weighed more heavily on him than before.
Humming to myself, I headed off to continue my rounds.
* * *
Suzanne finished reading and looked up. “You know, that was pretty good. It’s really hard not to be preachy when you talk about this stuff.”
“Not when you don’t know what to preach.”
“Do you still feel so conflicted?”
“Pretty much, I guess.”
Suzanne cracked the window to let in the fresh spring air. One of the neighbors fired up a leaf blower, but the din was distant enough not to disturb their conversation. “I’ll make some coffee and you can tell me the rest of the story.”
Arthur got up and opened the window wider. The gauzy curtains blew far into the room. When Suzanne arrived with two steaming mugs, Arthur was sitting on the edge of the sofa, staring at the empty porch swing as it glided silently in the breeze.
* * *
After a lot of hand wringing, Arthur decided to approach a former roommate about borrowing a car for the trip to Chicago. He had not talked to Don for a year, but the awkwardness of renewing their acquaintance paled in comparison to the alternative of revealing to one of his close friends (and therefore to all his close friends) that he and Julia were stupid enough to get pregnant and venal enough to take the expedient way out. Don, who had once confided to Arthur that he had a similar problem in high school, readily agreed to the loan of his battered Plymouth Valiant. He assured Arthur that he could keep it overnight if Julia were unable to travel after the procedure. Given Don’s promise of silence and his disconnection from their usual group of friends, the chance of any public stain on their reputation was slim.
Julia and Arthur conversed little as they sped through the bleak winter landscape to Chicago. She dozed much of the time as he piloted the boxy sedan through a narrow corridor of snowy cornfields, keeping his eyes on the black asphalt of the interstate and away from the glare of the brilliant white countryside. When they got to the outskirts of the farthest-flung suburbs, Julia straightened up in her seat. This was her home turf, and she seemed comforted by the familiar procession of exits and malls.
She turned to him. “You know you didn’t have to help me.”
“What else was I supposed to do? Abandon you? I’m not a shithead.”
“I know, but you might have fought with me.”
“And what good would that have done?” He chanced a glance at her as a semi roared by.
“I would have gone ahead anyway,” she admitted firmly, “even if you were totally against it.”
He wondered for a bright moment whether the clarity of her statement relieved him of responsibility. Did it mean that her decision was not his burden? Yet, Arthur could not make himself feel like a mere bystander. He could still have convinced her to marry him and have the baby. She might have resisted initially, but in the end she would have acquiesced. He had not even tried. Success would have meant becoming a father.
Eventually they arrived at the nondescript clinic, and a friendly, middle-aged receptionist confirmed the 9:30 a.m. appointment and handed Julia several pages of paperwork. “Hand those to Nurse Charone at the back desk when you’re done.”
Arthur had brought a novel to divert his attention while Julia was with the doctor, but he felt uncomfortable starting it while she was right beside him, so he absentmindedly flipped through back issues of Time and Sports Illustrated while she filled out the forms.
The waiting room was comfortable but unimaginatively decorated and furnished. Vinyl and fluorescence were dominant themes, relieved only by a couple of plants next to the nurse’s desk. Limbo might be similarly appointed.
“Are you okay?” Arthur laid a hand on her back and awkwardly tried to massage through her thick winter coat.
“The closer it gets, the less real it seems.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Arthur took her hand but did not embrace her. The stiff and worried postures of the others waiting around them deterred overt shows of affection. When the nurse returned, Julia brought her the papers, then walked back to Arthur and handed him her coat and purse. “They’re ready now. I’ve got to talk with a counselor for a while and then they’ll take me to the doctor.”
She was grimmer and less sure of herself than before. “I’ll see you after.” Then, she turned and disappeared beyond the double doors at the far end of the waiting room.
Arthur spent the next three and one-half hours alternating between supplications to the Almighty and efforts to read his novel. He bargained with God for Julia’s safety and peace of mind. He pledged a huge percentage of his future income to charity, promised to give up drinking, and resolved to tell his father to leave his share of the farm to his brother. He knew such offers were improper, if not blasphemous, but he knew no other way to seek comfort without begging forgiveness for something he had willed to happen.
At about one thirty, the double doors opened and a tight-lipped Julia emerged. She walked directly to Arthur and bent down to pick up her purse. She spoke softly. “Let’s get out of here.”
He helped her into her coat and followed her to the car. Icy ridges of snow lined the single-file trail to the parking lot, preventing him from supporting her with his arm as she walked. She picked her way across the glazed snowpack without incident and slid down into the passenger seat of the Valiant.
Arthur warmed up the car and asked gently. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I’m having a really bad period, but other than that, okay. What I really need is some food in my stomach before I retch.”
The lines of fear and anxiety that had creased her porcelain skin for the last three weeks were gone. To his relief, they had not been replaced by trauma or grief. She looked tired, but strong. She returned Arthur’s stare and nodded convincingly, “I’m okay.”
After a quiet lunch, they filled a painkiller prescription and drove back. Before long, the sprawl of Chicago was just a gray smudge in his rear view mirror. He gazed at the sleeping figure beside him and realized with a sigh that they had gotten away with it. Neither one of them would have to drop out of school. There would be no painful scenes before parents a
nd siblings. There would be no gossip or pity from friends and classmates. Not only was the problem gone, but the solution had been efficient and secret. Even the timing had worked out—they had only skipped Friday’s classes and Julia would have all weekend to rest and recover.
When they got to the dorm, Julia crawled into bed and pulled the covers high up under her chin. “Turn off the light and bring me a glass of water, will you, sweetheart?”
He put his hand under her back as she leaned up to drink and set the half-empty glass on a desk within her reach. He kissed the patch of smooth cheek left uncovered by her down comforter.
“Do you want me to stay here and read to you?” She shook her head firmly, so convincingly at peace that Arthur gave her a final chaste kiss and departed quietly without misgivings about her safety.
Within a week, Julia was back to normal. Arthur could discern no difference in her attitude or mood. One awkward conversation about their trip to the clinic confirmed that he was the only one obsessed with affixing a meaning to the event. She saw no point in ruminating over something that was finished and irreversible. Arthur never broached the subject with her again, at least not until he needed ammunition in the middle of their divorce.
In the weeks after their trip, he brooded on what they had done and finally concluded that although they were equally culpable in theory, he was far more in the wrong. After all, she did not really consider it a serious sin—if she thought it a sin at all. She had not intentionally spit in God’s face. Her actions were the moral equivalent of Arthur’s failure to declare his penny ante poker winnings on his tax return. But he had known better. He knew the gravity of the wrong and the malice aforethought with which he had helped carry out the plan.
He eventually started avoiding Julia, taking his meals at odd hours and playing basketball every day at the university intramural complex until it closed. They talked on the phone when she called, but he found excuses not to visit her dorm room in the evening. She was annoyed, but too proud and independent to make any demands on him. They might have drifted completely apart, were it not for a chance encounter in front of the University Student Union.