Angel's Choice

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  I turn on the hand mixer, and underneath its loud whirring noise I imagine I hear Karin’s voice from the week before, when I came into the waiting room of the clinic about two hours before she expected me.

  “What happened?” she asked. “What are you doing?”

  “Let’s go,” I said. “I changed my mind. I can’t do this.”

  “But you have to,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked, her voice sounding more desperate than even I was feeling, as I led us back outside, out into the light of the cold November day.

  “They gave me some literature to read and a number to call if I didn’t want to go see my regular doctor,” I said. “They said I’ve already missed three months of taking”—I paused over the unfamiliar words—“prenatal vitamins and that I’d better see someone before too long.”

  “Then you’re going to—” She paused, let the words hang there.

  “Yes,” I answered her unfinished question. “I’m going to have it.”

  Karin got into the driver’s seat of the car, turned on the ignition, didn’t say anything.

  For as long as I can remember, for as long as our friendship has gone on, Karin has always been supportive of me. So it feels weird that, ever since that day, there seems to have developed a certain coldness between us. At first she called every day on the phone, asked me what I was going to do, asked if I’d told my parents yet; even though we talk every day at school, I guess she feels it’s too risky to talk about it there. Each day I have told her I still plan on having the baby. Each day I have told her I haven’t told my parents yet.

  This morning there was a football game at school, the annual Thanksgiving Day showdown between our school and a rival town—we always lose—and Karin wanted me to go with her, but I said no. I just couldn’t face the idea of seeing Danny Stanton and Ricky D’Amico together, couldn’t face the thought of maybe running into Tim O’Mara, couldn’t face the thought of seeing everyone’s lives going on as if nothing were different.

  I turn the switch off on the hand mixer, put one finger into the creamy white mixture inside the big green bowl, taste it to see if I’ve gotten the consistency right, if it needs more salt or butter.

  “You’d better be careful with those extra tastes,” my mother cautions.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  She reaches out and does the kind of thing only a mother will do: She inserts one finger inside the waistband of my dark purple skirt. It’s a tight fit.

  “I can remember when that skirt was loose on you,” she says. “Not that I mind if you gain a little weight,” she adds hastily, obviously not wanting to offend. “I always thought you were too skinny before anyway, but I know how you girls today worry about every pound.”

  I realize she is right: My clothes are getting tighter and I’m going to have to figure out something to do about that.

  “I made the mistake of putting it in hot water in the wash,” I say, feeling the blush of the lie in my cheeks. “I think it must’ve shrunk a bit.”

  Then I take the bowl of mashed potatoes out into the dining room, set it down on the table. I help my mother carry everything else out: the regular salad, the three-bean salad, the two bowls of stuffing, the gravy, the canned cranberry sauce that everyone will eat and the homemade cranberry sauce that no one will eat. My mother carries in the turkey herself.

  After everyone is seated at the table, after everyone has whatever they want to drink—wine, beer, soda; I have milk, because I have read the literature they gave me at the abortion clinic about having a baby, and a glass of water—my dad starts carving the turkey right at the table, just like he does every holiday.

  Grandfather Hansen says, “Angel, tell me, how did your SATs go? Did you get your scores back yet?”

  When he talks to me, his face reminds me so much of the doctor at the clinic that I have to push the image away before I can answer him. I tell him I did and that my scores were better than I’d hoped.

  It was not the perfect twenty-four hundred that Robin Keating had jokingly said I needed, but it was close enough: twenty-two hundred.

  “So?” Grandfather Hansen raises his wineglass to me. “Yale?”

  Even though we have nearly all college grads among my parents, uncles, and aunts, even though all my cousins are already in college and some plan to go on to grad school, I am the first on either side of the family to have a shot at an Ivy League school.

  I raise my glass of milk in Grandfather Hansen’s direction, acknowledging the toast he’s offering. “That’s the dream,” I say.

  Before he asks me if I still plan on studying English—a course of study he obviously feels is a waste of time, which makes me thank the stars he doesn’t know I specifically want to study writing—my dad finishes carving the turkey and we pass the platter around, filling our plates with this last item.

  “Angel?” My dad looks to me. “Grace?”

  As the youngest this has always been my job, a job that has frequently embarrassed me. We are not a very religious family—“nonpracticing” is what you would call us—but Mom and Dad like for us to make this gesture on holidays, and it falls to me to do so. In previous years I have skated by with mumbled thanks, sometimes nothing more than, “God is great, God is good, we humbly thank you for this food,” sometimes saying something as little as, “Rub-a-dub-dub, let’s eat the grub,” Grandfather Hansen’s personal favorite.

  I bow my head over my clasped hands now and for the first time in my life feel the seriousness of the moment.

  “Thank you, God,” I say, “for everyone who was with us in the past, for everyone who is with us now, today, for everyone who is yet to come. Amen.”

  december

  Week of December 3/Week 14

  I GO TO SEE THE DOCTOR THAT THE WOMAN AT THE ABORtion clinic recommended. This time I drive myself. When I told Karin I had made the appointment, she offered to go with me, but I told her that it was okay for me to go alone. Somehow I sensed her heart was not in the offer—things have been so different between us lately, so strange and changed—and, anyway, I just feel better about going for the first time alone. I will pay for it with money from my savings account. I know my parents will ask questions about the withdrawal when the statement comes, I know I will eventually have to tell them what is going on, but today I want to do this on my own.

  As I drive to the doctor’s office, I am aware of how few times in my life I have ever done anything of importance by myself. Whether going to the abortion clinic or shopping for something cool to wear to a party, someone has always been with me—my mother, Karin, sometimes my aunt Stacey. Even when I took the SATs, I may have been taking them alone in that it was me filling out the answers, it was me who was responsible for what I did, but there was still a whole roomful of people around me, all sharing a similar goal: to not be complete failures, to maybe even have a little success. So this is the first time I am doing something like this alone.

  But then I realize I am not alone. There is another life growing inside me now. And even if at times it is hard to wrap my mind around that startling fact, even if it is nearly impossible to believe that before too much more time has passed I will have a child, it is the greatest shock of all to think that I am not alone in this.

  I don’t know why, but just like the day at the abortion clinic, I keep expecting everyone at the doctor’s office to be mad at me, keep expecting them to judge me.

  But the nurse is very nice as she weighs me—I’ve only gained six pounds since this all started, which she tells me is normal for some people, what with the nausea and all—and takes my blood pressure, asks me the date of my last period. And the doctor, Dr. Caldwell, who turns out to be a woman, is very nice too.

  Or at least she is very nice after we get over the first hurdle.

  “So what took you so long to come in for your first appointment?” she asks sternly. “Don’t you know it’s imp
ortant to start on prenatal vitamins as soon as you know you’re pregnant? Don’t you realize how important it is for you to see a doctor regularly for the sake of the baby?”

  “The baby.” This is the first time someone has spoken those words aloud to me.

  Dr. Caldwell is very short, even shorter than I am without heels, and has short hair dyed red. She looks to be in her midforties and wears tortoise-framed glasses on a chain around her neck, her eyes a warm shade of brown.

  “No,” I say, “I didn’t realize that. I’ve never known anyone who had a baby before.”

  And this is true. My older cousins haven’t had kids yet, I have no brothers or sisters, and sure I’ve known girls at school who got pregnant before—Karin, for one—but none of them ever went through with the pregnancy.

  “Well,” Dr. Caldwell says, “it’s very important.” She sits down at the little gray counter attached to the wall, scribbles out a prescription.

  “Here,” she says. “You can get this filled at the pharmacy after we’re done today, start taking them right away.”

  “I guess I wasn’t sure before,” I say, “that I was even going to have … the baby. I thought I was going to just …” I let my words trail off.

  “I see,” she says. Then she smiles, pats the examination table beside me. “Let’s get a look at you, see what we’ve got here.”

  I stare at the ceiling as I feel the fingers on one of her hands move inside me, feel as she presses down on my lower stomach with the fingers of her other hand.

  “Everything feels perfect,” she says, removing her fingers, snapping off her rubber gloves, tossing them in a waste receptacle. She looks at the chart with the information the nurse filled out earlier. “I’d say you’re about fourteen weeks along. We’ll give it a due date of June third.”

  For some reason hearing an actual date, a date for when the baby is due, makes it all seem more real.

  She asks about my eating habits. I tell her I’ve been having trouble keeping food down, but that my mom has always been a stickler for balanced meals.

  “That’s good,” she says. “As for the nausea, hopefully that’ll pass now that you’re into your second trimester, although it doesn’t always. It’s hard when someone’s as tiny as you are.” She indicates the short span between my breasts and hips. “There’s just not that much room in there for the baby to grow. Sometimes tiny mothers like you get a lot of heartburn throughout the pregnancy. “

  Then she asks me about alcohol. Do I drink? Take drugs?

  “I never liked drugs much,” I say, an admission that would have made me feel uncool to say it in school but that makes me feel relieved now. “And I’ve been so nauseous since … this started, I haven’t had any interest in drinking at all. In fact, the last time I had a drink was the night that …”

  “That’s good.” She drops her words brightly into the void left by my trailed-off speech. “Just don’t start again now.”

  “I don’t think there’s much chance of that,” I say. Then: “Doctor?”

  “Yes, Angel?”

  “The fact that I … waited so long before coming to see you—will that harm the baby in any way?”

  “I don’t think so,” she says. “You know, I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but for years, before we had things like prenatal vitamins, women had their babies and mostly it turned out just fine. Still, modern technology and science are wonderful things. So now that you do have the prescription”—she taps me gently on the leg with the chart —“don’t forget to take them.”

  She must see from the look on my face that I’m still worried, still concerned my not coming to see her earlier might have put the baby at some kind of risk. And it is weird to be feeling like this, since a dim part of me feels as though if some kind of accident were to befall the baby now, not something I’d chosen to do but something I had no choice or control over, it would save me from having to go through what I am going through now. I could just go back to my regular life with nearly no one the wiser.

  “Don’t beat yourself up, Angel,” she says softly. “Human babies are remarkably resilient little creatures. There’s no reason to believe that anything will go wrong with your pregnancy or that your baby won’t be born just fine.”

  She reaches into a cabinet over the sink, pulls out a large paperback book that she hands to me. The book is called something obvious like Your Baby and You.

  “This should tell you a lot of what you need to know,” she says, “about how the baby is growing and changing inside you, about what to eat and what to avoid, even how to wipe yourself properly when you go to the bathroom in order to prevent infection.”

  “Is this all I need?” I ask. I’m used to having to read so many books for different subjects at school, it’s amazing to think I can have a baby with reading just the one.

  “Well,” she says, and smiles, “if you want to make yourself really crazy, you can always get the bible all the mothers like to get, What to Expect When You’re Expecting. But why make yourself crazy if you can avoid it? And, of course, as time goes on, you’ll probably want to look at a few baby-names books. Most people usually do.”

  Baby names.

  But I haven’t even decided yet whether I want to keep the baby or not. Sometimes it feels like this is all moving so slowly like watching someone else’s car wreck. Other times it feels like everything is moving too quickly for me to even make proper decisions.

  Dr. Caldwell tells me to make an appointment at the desk for a visit in about a month. She says for now the visits will be monthly, but as we go along they’ll become twice a month, then every week, then maybe even every day at the very end.

  “Have you thought about what kind of delivery you want?” she asks. “Have you thought about Lamaze?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “I hadn’t really thought that far ahead,” I say.

  “You don’t need to decide today, of course. Just take your time and read that book I gave you. Decide what you want, how you want it to be.”

  “Okay.”

  “Angel?” She has one last question for me.

  “Hmm?”

  “Have you told your parents yet?”

  I shake my head.

  “Not that it’s any of my business,” she says. “My only business here is taking care of you and that baby. But you might want to consider telling them soon. Before too long”—she looks at my waist, slightly thicker than it was three months ago—“your body will tell them for you.”

  Week of December 10/Week 15

  But before I can tell my parents, I need to talk to Tim.

  I call him and tell him I want to meet him at the diner.

  He says, “What’s wrong with meeting in your driveway, like last time?” He says, “What’s the big deal, if all you’re going to do is give me a receipt? It’s sure taken you long enough.”

  The diner is about as public a place as there is in our town. It’s the place kids go to hang out after school, after games. It’s the place parents take their young kids for cheap food that they can pretend is better than McDonald’s. But I do not care about that right now. Everything, so far, has been on Tim’s terms. This, I decide, will be on my terms.

  Dr. Caldwell said the nausea might pass soon, but it certainly has not passed yet, I realize as the odor of old grease slaps me in the face when I enter the diner.

  The pregnancy book Dr. Caldwell gave me had a number of chapters on the second trimester, which I am now in. The book said that the breast tenderness might decrease, which it has; that the nausea might disappear, which it hasn’t; that I might experience leg cramps, back pain, pelvic ache, and hip pain, stretch marks and other skin changes, hemorrhoids and constipation, heartburn, nosebleeds and bleeding gums; and that while my breasts would be less tender, they would also become larger, the veins would be more noticeable, the nipples would grow larger and darker, there would be small bumps around them, and I might even get stretch marks there, too. I have had preliminary glimmer
ings of many of these symptoms and I find all of it gross. But one other thing the book said would happen was that the fatigue I’d been feeling for the past few months would disappear, and in this the book is right. As I enter the diner to have my talk with Tim, I feel more awake than I have in a long time; certainly, I feel stronger.

  Tim is already there, I see, in a booth in the back corner, and I slide into the red leather bench across from him.

  Tim has a large coke in front of him already, with more ice in the glass than coke, and a large plate of fries. On the fries there is no ketchup, just so much salt that you can see the tiny white crystal rocks of it glistening atop the grease of the fries.

  “Want one?” He waves a fry at me in offer before popping it whole into his mouth.

  Believe it or not, with the exception of the night he came to my parents’ driveway to give me the money, these are the first words he’s spoken to me face-to-face since the night of Ricky D’Amico’s party in August. Not even a “Hi” in the hallways. Just those snickers from the back of the room.

  I shake my head, no, the last thing in the world I want right now is a french fry, and the other last thing in the world I want right now is anything from Tim O’Mara.

  Nervously Tim wipes the salt and grease from his fries on the legs of his blue jeans, reaches one hand across the table.

  “Let me have it,” he says. “You have no idea what a hard time my dad has been giving me about this.”

  “I don’t have it,” I say simply.

  “What?”

  “I don’t have a receipt,” I say.

  “Come on, Angel, don’t mess with me. You should hear my dad. He’s even been threatening to tell my mom about this.”

  I just stare at him, but he misreads my stare as fear.

  “Don’t worry,” he says in a hushed voice. “He’d never say anything to my mom about this. He’s even more scared of her than I am.”

  “I don’t have a receipt,” I say again evenly, “and there’s not going to be any receipt.”