The Inconceivable Life of Quinn

by Marianna Baer

  Isa stood up. “Let’s just say it,” she announced, looking back and forth between Caroline and Sadie. She turned to Quinn. “We didn’t just get together to test Juna’s products. I mean, we’ll do that, too. But this is an intervention.”

  “An intervention?” Quinn said. For a shocked second, she wondered which one of them had a drug/alcohol problem or eating disorder and how she didn’t know about it, before realizing they were all looking at her expectantly. “For what? I’m not getting an abortion, if that’s what you mean.” She pressed her hand against her belly.

  “No! Of course not,” Sadie said. “Maybe intervention is too harsh a word. We’re just . . . We’re worried about how isolated you’re getting.”

  “We never know what to say to you,” Isa said. “Because it’s like this whole, huge topic is off-limits.” She held her arms out wide for emphasis. “And we just think that it would be a lot healthier if you, you know, let us know what’s going on.”

  “We’re not blaming you,” Caroline said. “We’re worried. And we want you to know that you can trust us.”

  “You’re our friend,” Sadie said. “And we can tell you need friends. Other than Jesse, who really doesn’t count in this situation. So we’re forcing ourselves on you. That’s the intervention.”

  Panicked by the intensity of their stares, Quinn briefly considered making something up. Some fantasy guy she had a one-night stand with. But then she remembered her father saying that if she lied now, it could hurt them if they eventually tried to press charges against someone. She’d be painted as a liar, an unreliable witness.

  Part of her wished she could just tell them the truth, but a bigger part of her knew that it would be too bizarre for them to handle.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I love you guys. But I’m just . . . not ready to talk about it.”

  “It’s been weeks,” Isa said. “What’s going to make you ‘ready’?”

  Quinn shrugged again, getting annoyed now. “I don’t know.”

  For a few moments, the only sound was the muffled footsteps of the upstairs neighbor above their heads. Then Juna’s voice came from down the hall. “Girls? I’m ready with masks for two of you. One for combination skin, one for oily.”

  The four of them exchanged glances. Sadie unfolded her legs and stood. “Isa, should we go first?”

  “I don’t have combination or oily,” Isa said.

  “You do now,” Sadie said, taking her by the arm and pulling until she got off the bed.

  After they disappeared out the door, Quinn pushed herself up and went over to look at Caroline’s costume, so they wouldn’t be sitting there not talking.

  “This is beautiful,” she said, fingering the top layer of silky fabric.

  “Thanks,” Caroline said. “You know, not to make you worry even more, but the weirdness at school is just going to get worse when you look really pregnant. Might as well try to make it as normal as possible now. Not going to Sadie’s party just makes it more obvious.”

  Quinn turned to face her. “I’m really not sure I could go, even if I wanted to. My parents . . . they’re pretty uptight these days.”

  “Well, if your parents will let you, you should go and you should wear something funny, that doesn’t try to pretend you’re not pregnant. Make use of it.”

  “What do you mean?” That sounded like a terrible idea.

  “Something subversive. Like . . .” Caroline stared at the ceiling for a moment. “The classic pregnant Catholic schoolgirl, in a uniform? I don’t know. Anything that lets you make a joke out of the pregnancy before other people do. That’s one of the best ways of making people not tease you. Make fun of yourself first.”

  It did have a certain logic, Quinn supposed. “Maybe,” she said.

  She moved over to look at a bunch of small, brightly colored Mexican tin paintings on Caroline’s wall, souvenirs from her family’s annual trips to Tulum. Quinn’s gaze lingered on a portrait of Mary and Jesus.

  “Do you like going to church?” she asked, lightly touching the sharp corner of Mary’s hem. “Your priest seemed nice.” She’d met him today when they picked up Caroline at the book sale.

  “Yeah, Father Bob is pretty cool. And it can be interesting, I guess. If there’s a good sermon.” Caroline paused. “You think you have it hard, imagine having been Mary. She was younger than us, and sex out of wedlock was a way bigger deal back then.”

  “Well, yeah,” Quinn said. “But everyone knew it was an Immaculate Conception.” It felt like dangerous territory to say the words Immaculate Conception out loud, even though Caroline couldn’t possibly guess anything.

  “You mean Virgin birth,” Caroline said. “Not Immaculate Conception.”

  “What?” Quinn faced her again.

  “Virgin Birth,” she repeated. “It isn’t the same thing as the Immaculate Conception. The Immaculate Conception is about Mary being made free from original sin so that she could have God’s child. Not about Mary being a virgin.”

  “Wait, what?” Quinn said, still confused.

  “Never mind, you heathen.” Caroline waved her hand in the air. “Anyway, it’s not like everyone back then would have believed Mary was a virgin. It’s not clear when that whole story even started. And some people don’t even believe it now. I don’t believe it, in fact.”

  “You don’t think Mary was a virgin?” Quinn said in surprise. “Isn’t that one of the basic things in the Bible?”

  “Well, yeah. But the Bible was written by people, and people don’t always tell the truth, right? Do you believe everything you read online?” She stretched her legs out in front of her. “Some people think Mary was raped, and that Jesus’s followers made it up so that he wouldn’t be illegitimate. Or so he’d be all divine and cool, like some of the gods other religions worshipped. Lots of gods’ mothers are supposedly virgins. And some people even think that the Bible was translated wrong, and no one ever even said she was a virgin at all.”

  “Mary might have been raped?” Quinn couldn’t keep the shock from her voice.

  Caroline shrugged. “No one knows. I guess that in the end, it doesn’t matter if the stories are true true. It doesn’t change what I think about Jesus’s teachings. For me, you know, that’s the most important part of my religion. I believe God chose Jesus, and he gave us those stories to teach us.”

  As Caroline spoke, questions crowded into Quinn’s brain. Did Mary’s parents tell her what to say, and make up the whole God thing, so people wouldn’t know what really happened? Or did Mary hallucinate the angel, Gabriel, who told her the baby was God’s? What did Joseph know? Did he think she cheated on him? Did she tell him the real story? Or did she not even know the real story herself?

  “Basically,” Caroline said, “I don’t think it really matters if Mary was a virgin.”

  “It mattered to her,” Quinn said.

  Caroline laughed. “Good point.”

  All of a sudden, Quinn’s hand flew to her stomach.

  “You okay?” Caroline said.

  She didn’t answer right away. There. It came again. A distinct movement in her gut. A kick. Her heart kicked, too. “I felt the baby move,” she said, just above a whisper.

  Caroline sat up straighter. “Wow. Is that the first time?”

  “Um . . . I’ve felt sort of flutter-type things, but couldn’t tell if they were the baby or indigestion. But that . . . that was the baby.” She’d had her twenty-week OB appointment a couple of days ago and had been told that this would happen soon, if it hadn’t already. But nothing had prepared her for the moment.

  “It’s really in there,” she added with a nervous laugh.

  “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?” Caroline asked gently.

  Quinn shook her head. “Everyone thinks it’s better if I don’t find out, so I don’t get too attached.”

  Caroline nodded, her mouth a solemn line, and then said, “The fact that there’s a little life inside of you right now . . . that’s all the pr
oof I need that God exists. I mean, isn’t it a miracle?”

  Quinn rubbed her belly in a slow circle, imagining the baby swimming in its little ocean, underneath her hand. “It is,” she said. “It really, really is.”

  For once, she wasn’t lying.

  QUINN

  Quinn’s parents said she couldn’t go to Sadie’s party. No surprise there. But she was ready with a plan, because there was no way she was letting her friends slip even further away. They would obviously see her absence as symbolic of how disconnected she really was. (And it’s not like they were wrong. She was currently feeling more connected to some girl from over two thousand years ago who might possibly have had just as confusing a pregnancy.)

  The Tuesday before the party, Quinn caught her father as he was on his way out to a meeting. She hated asking him instead of her mom, but he was the one she saw an angle with. “Dad,” she said, as he put on his jacket. “Sadie’s parents are really offended I’m not going. I think they’re taking it personally since you’re friends with them, and Sadie and I have been friends so long, and . . . you know.” You know was referring to the fact that the Weston-Fines (only Sadie was a Weston-Hoyt) were big donors to her father’s campaign. “I didn’t know how to explain it to them,” she added. “I’m pregnant, not on my deathbed. They don’t know there’s anything more to it.”

  The bluff worked.

  Between schoolwork (which she was still behind with), therapy, and Earth First, she didn’t have time to think about a costume during the week. On the day of the party, she brought an old clothes box from the basement and the dress-up box from Lydia’s room into the bathroom, so she could try stuff on in front of the mirror. She rummaged through, hoping to find a random kilt for the Catholic schoolgirl idea, but she didn’t, and nothing else she found was right. She wrapped an old blue sheet around her like a cape, looked in the mirror and considered Batgirl. But that had nothing to do with pregnancy, and while she had a black leotard and tights, she didn’t have gold boots or a mask. She texted Jesse.

  You done?

  Mostly, he wrote back. Need sunglasses. He was dressing as Richie from The Royal Tenenbaums.

  If have time come over and help? Emergency!

  He was there within minutes and began brainstorming with her, totally in agreement that it would be best if the costume played off her pregnancy. He came up with a couple of good ideas—Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby or Ellen Page in Juno—but Quinn didn’t have the right hair for Rosemary, and Juno wore the same type of clothes Quinn did, so she’d look like she hadn’t bothered to dress up.

  Quinn threw the blue sheet over her head in frustration. “I’ll be a blueberry,” she said into the fabric. “And since no one will see my face, I won’t have to be mortified by the stupidity of it.”

  “Uh . . . Okay?” Jesse said, clearly not sure whether she was kidding.

  “Arrgh!” She yanked off the sheet. Her hair was all messed up; she pulled it into a ponytail while glaring at her reflection, angry that she’d waited until the last minute to deal with this. And then, as she tightened the ponytail . . . the faint glimmer of an idea. She picked up the sheet again and brought it down over the top of her head so that it framed her face like a hooded cloak. She stared at her reflection and rested a hand on her firm, rounded belly. It was just a blue sheet framing her face and her center-parted dark hair. But she’d been to enough museums to recognize the visual effect.

  Jesse’s voice came from behind her. “What if we cut this—”

  She turned around, holding the sheet together under her chin, and keeping the other hand on her belly for emphasis.

  His mouth dropped open. All he could say was, “Holy shit.”

  * * *

  “I thought it was a costume party?” Katherine said when Quinn came downstairs that evening.

  Quinn gestured at the shopping bag in her hand. “I have a sheet to be a ghost. It’s all I could think of. I’ll put it on when we’re almost there, though. It’s a pain to walk in.”

  “What else do you have in there?” her mother asked. “Aren’t you just giving an envelope as a gift?” Sadie had requested donations to charities instead of presents.

  “More clothes to wear under it, in case I get cold.”

  They walked down the stoop and closed the gate behind them. As they headed up toward the park, they passed a couple with a stroller. The toddler in the stroller was coughing loudly—frighteningly loudly for such a little body—and the mother had a hand on his chest.

  “Excuse us,” Katherine said to the couple, as she waited for the man to move over a bit so they could pass.

  He moved out of the way, looking from Katherine to Quinn, a strange, surprised expression on his face. He held Quinn’s gaze for a moment. Something about the look in his dark eyes froze her feet in place.

  “Quinn,” Katherine said from up ahead. “We have the light.”

  Quinn broke the man’s gaze, and they hurried across Prospect Park West.

  “Mom,” she said, a bit breathless. “That man looked at me weird.”

  Katherine stopped. “What do you mean, weird? Did you recognize him?”

  They both turned back. The man had one hand on the woman’s arm and one on the stroller. Quinn studied him, but no further hint of recognition came. Just a middle-aged man out with his wife and kid. His kid who sounded really sick. They were probably walking to Methodist, the hospital down the street.

  “No,” Quinn said. “Sorry. I’m just . . . you know, always wondering.”

  “You’re sure?” her mother said. “Should we go back?”

  “No,” Quinn said again, taking one last glance. The man and woman were now both squatting next to the stroller. “Let’s just keep going.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Positive.”

  They walked a bit.

  “I really don’t like you being in the park at night,” Katherine said. “Even with other people.”

  “It’ll be fine, Mom. I shouldn’t have said anything about that man.”

  “Ben’s going to be back from Florida today or tomorrow. He started the drive up already, but said he had to make a detour on the way. Anyway, I’m thinking of asking him to stay home long-term, so we have another person to be around for you and your sister.” In the last few weeks, since the paternity test, Katherine had become totally focused on safety issues, never wanting the girls home alone, driving or walking them everywhere, talking about installing an alarm system . . . Quinn sensed it was the only thing that made her feel like she had control over any of this.

  “What does Dad say about Ben staying?” Quinn asked.

  “I haven’t mentioned it yet.”

  With how tense the house already was, Quinn wasn’t sure it was a good idea. The election was less than three weeks away, and while her father was still beating the Republican in the polls, there was a constant sense that he wasn’t as far ahead as he should be for a Democrat in such a liberal district. His campaigning had taken on a frantic tone, at least behind the scenes.

  After they took the loop road around the north end of the park, Katherine insisted on walking Quinn right up to the back entrance of the Boathouse. Through the glass door, Quinn could see down a short hallway into the softly lit main room, where people were standing around in small clusters.

  “Put on your costume and we’ll go in,” her mother said. “I’m going to come say hello to Sadie’s mom.”

  “No offense,” Quinn said, “but please don’t. I’m sure no one else’s parents are here, and I’m weird enough already.”

  Katherine considered a moment then nodded. “Have a good time, sweetie,” she said and gave her a kiss. “Be safe.”

  Quinn pulled the door open and was hit by the sound of echoing voices mixed with a pop song she didn’t recognize. Before anyone could see her, she hurried into the bathroom just to the right. Luckily, it was single occupancy, not multiple stalls.

  She locked the door, pu
lled out her phone and texted Jesse.

  Here. Where you?

  A second later he wrote back: 2 min.

  And, sure enough, in about two minutes a knock came at the door, along with Jesse’s voice. “Q? It’s me.” Quinn opened it, partially dressed already. She had on a white bathrobe over leggings and a tank top, with a pillow stuffed into the waistband of the leggings. Although her bump was definitely noticeable, at almost five months it still didn’t scream “pregnant,” so she’d added some size. All she needed to do now was drape the blue sheet over her head and affix it with pins, like she’d practiced at home. It worked perfectly over the white bathrobe.

  “Lookin’ good,” Jesse said.

  He had on a pair of brown pants and an oversized brown button-down. After Quinn had settled on her costume, they’d come up with a new one for him, as well.

  “You look like a UPS guy,” she said, laughing.

  “Hold on, I’m not done.”

  As Quinn arranged and attached the sheet, he tied a tan piece of fabric around his head, then took something out of his bag and worked it on, too—a brown beard held on by an elastic band.

  “Joseph had one in all the paintings,” he explained.

  “Very convincing,” Quinn said. A tidal wave of emotion swelled inside her; she leaned forward and kissed him. The matted synthetic beard smelled like chemicals and scratched her skin, but the touch of his lips spread warmth all through her. “I’ve never kissed a bearded man before.”

  Sound increased outside the bathroom. She felt a sudden surge of nerves.

  “This is funny, right?” she said. “People will get it?”

  “Definitely. We should probably go out before someone knocks, so we get to make a better entrance.”

  They gave each other a last once-over.

  “Ready?” Jesse said.

  “Ready.”

  Quinn reached for the door.

  MARCO CAVANAUGH

  Marco was deciding between a vintage button-down from a used-clothing store and his favorite worn-in Phillies tee when someone knocked on the door of his dorm room. “Yeah?” he called, slipping the T-shirt over his head. It felt right. He wasn’t going to know a lot of people at his teammate’s house party tonight and would be kind of nervous. This was a tee he felt good in.