A Borrowed Life

by Kerry Anne King

  Her eyes widen, then narrow. “Don’t be ridiculous. This isn’t a joke. Tell me the truth.”

  “That’s the truth. That’s what he just said. My HCG is elevated and consistent with pregnancy.”

  “Maybe it’s just a tumor.”

  “I’m going back for more tests.”

  She drops my hand as if it burns her, sits back in her seat. “But how is this even possible? Dad’s been gone since January. You’d be showing by . . .” Her eyes go round. Her mouth drops open. “You didn’t!”

  The waiter arrives with two giant plates of food, destined to be uneaten.

  Abigail leans forward, lowering her voice with a side glance at the table next to us. “Tell me you didn’t have sex with that man.”

  There is nothing I can say, so I say nothing.

  “How could you!” She’s moved from shock to outrage.

  “As it turns out, that part was really easy.”

  “Mom!” Abigail slams her hand down on the table, hard enough to jar the silverware. Her face is flushed, except for two little indentations of white in the sides of her nose. “This is how you repay Dad for all of the years he put up with you? By having sex with some guy? I can’t believe you!”

  “You know what I can’t believe? I can’t believe that you think your father was perfect and that everything is my fault. Are you completely unable to see what he did to us? How he held us back and kept us small and—”

  “I will not listen to you badmouth and diminish him!”

  “And I’m done letting you idolize him.”

  People are staring, but Abigail doesn’t seem to notice. For me, the worst has already happened, and I don’t care anymore who hears me.

  “You know what I found in his desk drawer, Abigail? Letters. Letters that belonged to me and to you, that he kept from us.”

  Abigail turns a shade paler. “He must have had a good reason.”

  “Oh, he had a reason all right. To make me feel like I had no other options, and to keep you out of medical school.”

  “No.” Abigail’s knuckles, circling her glass, are white, and I’m afraid she’s going to crush it, as if we’re characters in some overly dramatic B movie.

  “There was a locked drawer in his desk. I found the key.”

  She shakes her head in denial. Her hand around the glass, still raised, has developed a slight tremor, and I reach out and press down on her wrist, gently, and then more firmly, until hand and glass lower safely to the table.

  I lick my lips, dry, salty, and go on.

  “My mom didn’t want me to marry your dad. We’d never been close, but we had a falling-out. She died, and all this time I thought she didn’t want to talk to me, but then I found letters she wrote, reaching out. Asking for contact. He kept them from me.”

  Abigail shakes her head. “He wouldn’t have. I don’t believe it.”

  “And you. You’d been accepted to Yale. University of Washington. Duke. Your pick of universities. He hid those letters from both of us.”

  Her eyelids squeeze closed, her lips quiver. And with that, my anger flees. She is immediately my baby girl again. I want to put my arms around her, to rock her. I want to take everything back, make up another story.

  I want to shout at her father. To shake him until his teeth rattle and his perfectly combed hair is awry and he begs for me to stop. But he’s dead, and I’m pregnant, and there’s no going back to undo any of it.

  I watch Abigail pull herself together by sheer willpower.

  Her hands open palm down on the table. Her shoulders drop. She draws a deep breath and her face smooths. When her eyes open, there is no trace of tears.

  “Why?” she asks.

  “He loved you. He thought it was the right thing to do.”

  “Not him. You.” She leans forward, both palms pressing into the table. “Why are you telling me this now? So I’ll overlook your absolutely shameless and unacceptable behavior? I’m not going to desecrate his memory like you’ve done. He was right. He was always right.”

  Her words cut me, dice and slice. I press my feet against the floor, a reminder of gravity and support in a chaotic world where I have no anchor and nothing to hold on to.

  Abigail folds her napkin and sets it on the table. Adjusts her silverware. Twists her margarita glass one turn to the right. She pushes back her chair and walks away from me. Perfect posture, perfectly braided hair, perfect shoes to match her perfect skirt.

  “Is there a problem?” The waiter appears at the table, polite but knowing.

  “My daughter had to leave early. Could I have all of our food in a box, please?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  My phone rings as I’m getting into the car. It’s Val. I stare at it, torn. I want to tell her everything, but that means telling her my news, and I just want to pretend the word “pregnant” doesn’t even exist.

  “How did it go with Abigail?” she asks as soon as I pick up.

  “Disastrous. We got into entirely the wrong conversation. Huge blowup.” Tears threaten, and I press my hand over my mouth to silence a ragged breath.

  A pause from Val, and then, “So you didn’t tell her you bought the house?”

  “We got off on a tangent.” A distant corner of my mind rolls its eyes at the understatement.

  “Shit. Don’t hate me.”

  “Why would I . . . Oh, Val. Oh no. You didn’t.”

  “I did. Oh God. I’m so sorry. I was trying to help, and I know I’ve made things worse.”

  I groan. “I’m not sure it’s possible to make things worse. What happened?”

  “She got out of her car looking like the tortured martyr on the way to the stake—so I assumed you’d told her and she didn’t take it well. I just walked over and said, ‘Go easy on your mom. She deserves to have a life, too.’ She gave me this laser-eyed stare—no offense, Liz, but your daughter can be scary intimidating, and I got all scrambled up and started babbling. I told her how much I was going to miss you, and that I was mad at first when you bought the house so far away from me, but then I realized it was because I love you and it will complicate my own life, and that was selfish and—”

  “Oh, Val.”

  “You’re mad. I don’t blame you.”

  “How can I be mad when you just said you love me?” I find myself laughing, a creaky, lumbering sort of laugh. “What did she say?”

  “She just gave me that look, the one your husband used to give me, like I was a fly that she was forbearing to squash out of Christian kindness. And then stalked right past me and into the house.”

  “I’m sorry, Val.”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. She was going to find out sooner or later.”

  And everybody else is going to find out that I’m pregnant. Unless it is just a tumor of some kind. Maybe a nice little cancer in an early stage. Something operable that hasn’t spread. Lance would be sympathetic. My daughter would forgive me and take care of me.

  “I have to work tonight,” Val says, interrupting my daydreaming. “Coffee in the morning?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I start my engine but still sit there, not sure where to go. I can’t go home; I am so not ready to face Abigail again. I want to go to Lance, to have the comfort of strong arms around me, but dear God, I can’t tell him about this; we barely know each other. My new house, instead of being an exciting adventure, now feels like a colossal mistake. If I’m pregnant, if I’m going to have a baby, can I live so far from town all by myself? It’s too far from hospitals and schools and babysitters and Val, the only support I have in this suddenly very much bigger and scarier world.

  “I warned you,” Thomas says. “You can’t make your own decisions. Just look at the mess you’ve made of things. Now what are you going to do?”

  “Right back where I started from,” I whisper, leaning my forehead on the steering wheel.

  I feel like history is repeating itself. The details are different, but the results
are the same. I’m still the same.

  Even though I want to remember my pre-Thomas self as independent and self-sufficient, in reality, I was geeky and insecure, always searching for acceptance and love. Neither of my parents had time or emotional energy for me. My father was too busy drinking to care much what I did; my mother was so exhausted from managing everything that she was most happy if I stayed quiet and out of sight.

  Drama was my life. I lived, ate, and breathed theater productions. My head was full of epic romances, and I was constantly waiting for my knight in shining armor to show up and rescue me from a life that was far removed from fairy tale. I wasn’t having a lot of luck. Most of the boys I knew were as awkward and inept as I was, also looking to be saved by some sort of magic. I had a few dates, experienced some back-seat fumbling that stopped short of actual sex, but it was clear that none of them could save me or give my life direction.

  I lived vicariously through books and movies. I read everything I could get my hands on, working my way through the libraries at school and in town. But plays—real, live, professional theatrical productions—were my passion. The Shakespeare videos my drama teacher showed us were sterilized versions of the real thing. I wanted to see the scene changes. I wanted to sit in the audience and feel the excitement of a crowd, of the real-life actors onstage.

  There were plenty of professional productions in Seattle, but they all cost money. My part-time job at a nearby sub shop barely financed clothes, shoes, and lunch money, certainly not quality theatrical productions. I begged my parents for tickets. My father laughed at my begging when he was sober, and cursed it when he was drunk. My mother, ever the martyr, would go into long soliloquies about how hard it was to make ends meet while Dad drank all the money away, simultaneously deploring my selfishness. How could I even think about wasting her money and my time on watching a bunch of live puppets reciting lines on a stage?

  “Go to church,” she said, “if you want to hear puppets reciting nonsense.”

  And so I did. I saw a poster about a spiritual drama troupe hosted by a local church. Admission was free. Unable to talk any of my friends into attending, I went alone. The play was well done, the actors so convincing, that tears poured down my cheeks when the leading lady parted company with her beloved because he couldn’t put God first in his life.

  And then, when the play was over, a young man walked onto the stage and rewrote the course of my life.

  All of these years later, I can still feel that moment like the reverberation of a thunderclap.

  The spotlight remains on the heroine while the rest of the stage goes dark. Tears glisten on her cheeks, but her hands are clasped at her breast, her eyes lifted heavenward, a smile touching her lips. Soft music comes up. The choir begins to recap “Just As I Am,” a hymn sung during the play.

  And then a new circle of light illuminates a young man at center stage. His hair is dark, his features look like my fantasy version of Romeo. He holds his hands out directly toward me. I feel as though his eyes have singled me out in the crowd, that his invitation, in a warm voice, tremulous with passion, is for my ears alone.

  “Are you lonely, struggling, frightened of the future? Do you want faith, comfort, and companionship for the journey? Surrender yourself now to your Lord and Savior, and you will never be alone again. He will walk beside you. Fight your battles for you. Most of all, He holds all of the answers. Are you ready to let go of your own pitiful, selfish existence and step into His?”

  Yes, my heart sighs. Yes, I’m ready, so long as this new existence has something to do with this passionate young man and his melodious voice.

  “I hear you,” the man says, his voice almost breaking with emotion. “I know you are ready. Jesus asks us to declare our intention publicly, just like these people in our play. Can you do that? Stand up right where you are.”

  I rose from my seat, buoyed up by this new emotion, found myself swept forward into the aisle and to the altar. Up close, my spiritual Romeo was even more beautiful, with commanding dark eyes. He took my hands in his and prayed for me, and by the time I left the church, I was utterly under his spell.

  Sunday found me back at the church, where it turned out that the young man’s name was Thomas and that he served the church as youth pastor. I joined the youth group. I volunteered for anything and everything. All else fell away—friends, my plans for college, even my beloved theater. That last semester, I was too busy helping arrange an evangelistic series to even audition for a part in the spring production.

  Neither of my parents had been to college and had no aspirations for me, beyond the expectation that I find a way to be self-supporting. So long as I kept my religion to myself and didn’t try to inflict it on them—a mistake I was only foolish enough to make once—they paid no more notice to my church obsession than they had to my drama productions. Of course, they didn’t know about Thomas.

  Thomas began to rely on me. To ask for my help, to thank me for my service. For the first time in my life, I felt needed. Valued. One evening, after I stayed late to help clean up after an event, he asked me to join him in his study.

  He held my hands, looked deeply into my eyes. “I’ve been offered a chance to serve the Lord in an even deeper capacity,” he said, his voice tremulous with emotion.

  My heart dropped out of my chest, a slow roller-coaster ride down to my shoes. In the space between these words and the next, I pictured him moving across the country where I would never see him again. Dying in a jungle as a missionary. Serving as chaplain in a war and then expiring romantically from a wound acquired while saving a child.

  “Are you going away?” I asked, choking back tears and wondering what I would do without him.

  “I’ve been offered a church! Just a small church, in a small town. But I need a wife.” In my mind, I started running the list of eligible women and girls he might choose, but he went on, “Marry me, Elizabeth. Be my helpmeet and my better half. We will serve the Lord together, two bodies with one soul, one heart, one mind.”

  “Yes,” I said without hesitation.

  Only then did he kiss me, and surely that was the moment I could have seen that he believed my soul, my heart, my mind, would now belong to him, but that his would never belong to me. Looking back, I can see that he asked me because the position required him to be married, and not because he loved me. Even the kiss was more contract than passion.

  But I was only eighteen, so young, so inexperienced, so infatuated.

  How fervently I believed that he was my salvation, sent to rescue me. He was my first love. I was filled with pride that Thomas had chosen me—me!—to be his wife. I lived for the times he noticed me, for his smiles of approval, the touch of his hand, the occasional kisses. I missed all of the warning signs and remained totally under his spell until I woke from my dream on our wedding night.

  There was never any romance, and he was not a prince. But he did take care of me, and I let him. He made the decisions, managed the details, kept me fed, sheltered, and clothed. And now that he’s dead, it turns out my decision-making skills are no better than they were when I first fell under his spell.

  “Sad, isn’t it?” his voice says. “You’ve deluded yourself into thinking you want freedom, but you don’t. Not really. Right now, all you want is for somebody to tell you what to do.”

  I feel myself sinking under the familiar weight of guilt and futility, but a sudden thought buoys me up.

  Yes, I was bad at decisions when I got married. Teenagers are supposed to make bad decisions; it’s what they’re known for. Parents are supposed to run interference. And if I’m bad at decisions now, it’s because I’ve had precious little practice. Maybe my new “What would Lacey do?” decision-making tree isn’t the smartest one in the world, but I’ve lived more in the last few months than in the last thirty years.

  I will gather all of the facts, and then I will make my own decisions about the baby, the house, and the rest of my life.

  Chapter Twenty-Th
ree

  For the better part of three decades, I’ve been waking up at 4:30 a.m. It began when Abigail was a baby. I wanted precious time alone with her, the two of us in the not-quite-dark living room, rocking as I nursed her. I didn’t want to share her with Thomas in those moments. And then when she was a toddler I wanted there to be an easiness when she woke up, which meant I needed to prepare breakfast and everything Thomas might need beforehand so I would be free to lavish my attention on her.

  Later, I spent that precious time with my journal.

  But this morning, exhausted by the emotional roller coaster of yesterday, I’ve slept in. By the time my eyelids flicker open, the room is full of light and Val is standing in my bedroom doorway.

  “Sorry to wake you, but I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m fine,” I croak. “Just overtired, I guess.”

  “You don’t look fine.”

  I don’t feel all that fine. An ache has settled into my lower back. I feel vaguely crampy. Irritable.

  And then I remember. I’m pregnant.

  Panic is closely followed by hope. Maybe the crampiness means I’m miscarrying. Maybe all of this will just go away, and twenty years from now I’ll laugh and tell the story about the time I thought I was pregnant when I was almost fifty.

  “I’ll make the coffee,” Val says. “Want me to bring it to you in . . . well, not in bed. On floor?” Her laugh lacks conviction, and she looks in no condition to be taking care of me or anybody. Her hair has come mostly loose from a ponytail. She’s still in her work scrubs, and there’s a brown stain over her left breast. There are dark circles under her eyes, fine lines around her mouth.

  “You don’t look so hot yourself. Rough night?”

  She flops down beside me on the floor, spread-eagled on her back.

  “It was a shit night. Shit everywhere. Literally. And then Marcus passed.” She closes her eyes and draws a quavery breath.

  “Ah, honey. I can’t imagine how hard that is.”