Angel's Choice

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  “Hey,” he says, getting angry, “you promised me and I promised my dad.”

  I lean across the table and speak the words slowly so there will be no mistaking every word.

  “There isn’t any receipt because there’s no point in giving you the receipt. I didn’t have the abortion, and I’m not going to.”

  “You can’t mean that!” Tim says. He has shot back in the booth seat so that now he is leaning as far away from me as is physically possible. It is as though I have shot him. It is as though it is the next-to-last frame in a cheap horror movie and the monster he thought was gone has just sprung back to life.

  “Yes,” I say, “I can mean that. I do mean that.”

  He is calmer now. I can see that he is trying to make himself appear calm.

  “I gave you all that money,” he says. “Where’s the money?”

  “I don’t have it,” I say.

  Tim surprises me with what he does next: He laughs.

  “What’s so funny?” I say.

  “My dad was right,” he says. “He said you were probably just scamming us for the money. Well, you’re not going to get away with it.”

  “I wasn’t scamming you!” I’m outraged.

  “Oh, no? Then where’s the money?”

  “They wouldn’t give it back to me. When I said I wasn’t going through with it, they said I couldn’t have the money back.”

  Something about the way I speak the words must convince Tim that I’m telling the truth, because I see the dawning of reality come into his expression.

  “Oh, no,” he says quietly. “You’re not really planning on … having it , are you?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m planning on,” I say.

  “But that’s crazy, Angel,” he says. “You can’t do that.”

  “Yes,” I say, “I can. And I plan to pay you and your dad back every cent. I just can’t yet. I still haven’t told my parents.”

  “Then there’s still time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “Time to change your mind, of course.”

  “But I’m not going to change my mind.”

  “This is crazy talk. You’re talking crazy. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

  “Yes, it does. For me it does have to be this way.”

  He puts his face in his hands for a long moment. Then, finally, he looks up at me.

  “What is it you want from me, Angel?”

  His question surprises me, but even as I hear his words, I know there is only one answer:

  “I don’t want anything from you, Tim.”

  Week of December 17/Week 16

  And I really don’t want anything from Tim, which is exactly what I tell Karin as we sit in her bedroom.

  We are supposed to be studying for our French IV final, but instead we are talking. Karin has been spending so much of her time with Todd lately, more and more as the days fly by, that it seems like forever since we last talked. In school, in the cafeteria, she mostly sits with Todd now, meaning she also sits with Danny Stanton and Ricky D’Amico. But we have studied together for every French test since freshman year, none of the people she now sits with at lunch even takes French, and so we are together again. It is the one subject besides English I have always scored higher in than Karin.

  “How can you not want anything from him?” Karin asks.

  “A better question would be, Why would I want anything from him?”

  “Because this is all his fault?” she asks-answers. “Because if it weren’t for him, you wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place? Because, if you’re going to go ahead with this … insanity— which I still don’t completely understand—then it should be just as much his responsibility as yours?”

  “And again,” I say, “I come back to the same question: Why? Why would I want someone to be a part of this when that person so obviously does not want to be a part of it?”

  “Because he should pay!”

  I explain to Karin the same thing I explained to Tim: that I will pay him and his father back as soon as I tell my parents, that I do not want anything from either of them.

  “But you should,” she says.

  “But I don’t,” I say.

  I tell her what Tim’s biggest concern was—that even if I pay him and his father back, once I begin to’s how , everyone will blame him for it, everyone will expect him to act like the father. I tell her what I told Tim, that this is the last thing on Earth I would ever want, that I will go to my grave before I ever tell anyone he is the father.

  “But that’s impossible!” she says. “Everyone will know!”

  “No, it’s not,” I say. “The only way people will know for sure is if either you or Tim tell them. You’re the only two people that I’m sure know about this. Hell, I’m not even sure his father knows my name. For all I know, Tim could have just referred to me as ‘some girl from school’ when he asked his father for the money.”

  “But everyone at school knows about you and him at Ricky D’Amico’s party. People will talk.”

  “So let them talk. People will talk, but they won’t know anything. I’ll tell everyone, I’ll tell my parents, it wasn’t Tim. I’ll tell them all it was someone else. I’ll tell them all I won’t say who it was.”

  “But he should be part of it,” she says again.

  “No,” I say, “he shouldn’t. His first instinct, upon hearing about it, was to tell me to get rid of it. I don’t want him to be a part of any of this now.”

  For a while we leave Tim O’Mara behind and concentrate on studying for our French final. We drill each other on vocabulary lists, and I help Karin translate a long passage from a contemporary French novelist.

  Karin has always been so much better than I am at most other subjects, she has always been such a big help, that rather than feeling superior I always just feel grateful to be able to help her with this one small thing.

  Then something in the passage we are translating reminds her of Todd. Well, it seems that nearly everything reminds her of Todd these days.

  “Have you ever noticed,” she says, “how incredibly cute Todd looks when he eats french fries?”

  I cannot honestly say that I have ever noticed this—Todd’s incredible cuteness while eating french fries—but of course I cannot say this to Karin.

  My best friend is obviously in love.

  I can easily see this as she tells me about all of the other incredibly wonderful things that are embodied in the person of Todd. She tells me about everything she feels for him, everything they have done together.

  For a while it feels like old times. It feels like the time that came Before.

  Still, it is hard for me to hear Karin go on and on about Todd. Of course I am happy for her. What kind of best friend would I be if I weren’t happy for her happiness? But every time she is talking about doing things with Todd, she is almost always talking about doing things with Danny Stanton and Ricky D’Amico as well—they are practically a regular foursome now—and I can’t help but think I should be part of that equation. And then when Karin talks about the things she and Todd do alone together, even though it reminds me of the talks we used to have, it also all sounds so normal , it makes me realize how far apart our lives have grown, how far from normal my current life is.

  Suddenly I realize I have my own special secret I want to share. I raise the hem of my shirt slightly with one hand, pull down the waistband of my jeans with the other. There is just the tiniest of bumps there now. If I didn’t know what it was myself, I would think I was just someone who had eaten a larger dinner than normal and was just a little bit bloated, that it would pass in a few hours. But this will not pass. It will only get bigger.

  “Do you want to touch it?” I ask shyly.

  But Karin just stares, then shakes her head, as though horrified at the thought. “No, thanks,” she says. It is clear she wants no part of this.

  Then she flops down on her bed, rolls over on her back, studies the ceiling.
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br />   “I just don’t get you, Angel,” she says. “I don’t get why you have to make this so hard on yourself and on everyone else.”

  And I can see, at last, that I am a puzzle to her. She is my very best friend in the whole wide world and I am a puzzle to her. But perhaps that is not so surprising because, these days, I am a puzzle even to myself.

  Week of December 24/Week 17

  Ever since Dr. Caldwell gave me the pregnancy book, I have taken to reading a little bit each night in bed before going to sleep. When I’m finished with my reading for the night, I put the book back in its hiding place: an old empty shoe box on the top shelf of my closet, putting a floppy hat over the box. The reading fascinates me in a way that is both exciting and horrifying at the same time: I read about the changes my body has undergone, has yet to undergo, I read about the options for delivery, I read about how the baby is changing too.

  But as fascinating as the reading is, I have found myself being more and more tired lately, despite the book saying I should feel less tired now and despite the fact that I did for a while. And on the night before Christmas Eve, with my entire family due here the following night—everyone comes here each year for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day—I make a tragic error: I fall asleep with the book in my hands. This is the position I am in on Christmas Eve morning when my mother comes in to wake me so I can help her finish cleaning the house, start making the pies.

  “Angel! Angel! Wake up!”

  I feel her tugging on my arm, hear her anxious words even as I groggily swim up to consciousness.

  “What the hell is that you’re reading?”

  Before I can even look at the book in my hands to see what she’s talking about, I can hear how serious this is: My mother almost never swears, has always said that swearing is something reserved for people who just aren’t creative enough. “There is nothing creative about using Tuck’ as an all-purpose noun/verb/adverb,” she always says. “Powerful language has more impact when used sparingly.”

  As I come fully awake, I recognize that this moment had to happen. Yet I have been avoiding it for so long, have only felt panic and fear any time I’ve let my mind light on it, certainly have not sought it out, as though believing that if I never said anything about it, perhaps no one else would ever notice.

  But now that this moment is here, there is nothing else for it but to tell the truth.

  “It’s a guide to pregnancy, Mom,” I say, feeling as tired as if I’ve never slept at all. “I’m pregnant.”

  My mom looks at me for a long time, anger and disbelief and sadness mixing on her face, then she picks up the phone on my desk, calls my dad.

  Even though it is Christmas Eve day, he went into the office. He is such a workaholic that he always does this: goes in on Christmas Eve day and works until two or three, when he comes home to help with the preparations.

  I hear my mom say, “I need you home here, Steve. Now.”

  When he arrives home, looking like he raced the wind to get here, we are seated in the living room. I’m still in my pajamas and bathrobe on the couch, my feet tucked under me, while Mom sits in one of the side chairs, an untouched cup of coffee on the table before her. We have been sitting in silence like this since she made the call.

  My dad sits down in the other side chair, jacket still on, leaning forward with hands clasped between his knees.

  “So,” he says, “what’s up?”

  This setup is so familiar. For as long as I can remember this has always been the position we assume whenever there is a need for a family conference. This is the position we sat in when I got in trouble in first grade for calling Billy Bailey a weenie, this is the position we sat in when Karin and I got in trouble freshman year for sneak-drinking during a dance, this is the position we sat in when I was eight years old and my mother had to tell me that I wasn’t going to be getting a younger brother or sister after all.

  But it has never felt like this.

  “She’s pregnant,” my mom says, almost as though she is spitting out the words.

  I can’t help it. Just like even if you are trying to be a good person you can’t help but look at a car wreck for at least a minute, in that minute of involuntary looking I see first shock on my dad’s face and then an expression I’ve never seen before: disappointment. With all the things I have done wrong over the years, some minor and some major, while he hasn’t always loved everything I’ve done, he’s never looked at me like this.

  I have never felt anything but loved by both my parents, but in this moment I can’t help but feel that they love me a little less. And that is, so far, the hardest thing of all.

  “How long?” my dad asks.

  “Yes,” my mother demands, “how long?”—a question she didn’t ask before.

  “About four months,” I say.

  “Four—” My mother nearly leaps out of her chair.

  “When were you planning on telling us? Or were you even planning on telling us? What were you planning to do, be like one of those girls who has the baby in secret and throws it in the Dumpster?”

  We have all read the stories about those girls, the stories that make us wonder, incredulously, “What could she have been thinking?” “And how could no one have noticed?”

  In a way, I understand those girls now, at least in part, understand being so confused and scared you become like a deer in the headlights, unable to do anything to prevent your own disaster, hoping that something else will come along to save you because you can’t act for yourself. But I still can’t understand the Dumpster thing.

  “God, no!” I say.

  “Then what was your plan?” my mother demands again.

  “I don’t know!” I say. “I didn’t have a plan!”

  “Clearly,” my dad mutters.

  “So,” my mom says, tapping her foot, “you didn’t have a plan before. Well, then, what are you planning to do now?”

  “I’m having the baby,” I say.

  “What?” she almost shrieks. “And then what,” she says, “put it up for adoption?”

  “No,” I say, and in that one word I hear the truth of what I have decided without even realizing that I had decided it. If I’m going to have this baby, I can no more give it away for adoption than I can throw it in a Dumpster. I have already paid too much, come too far. “I’m going to keep it.”

  “And how do you plan on raising it?” my mom says. “What about school?”

  “I haven’t gotten that far yet,” I say.

  “It’s not too late,” my mom says. “Sure, you’ve passed the first trimester, but there’s still time. You could still get an abortion.”

  “I could make some calls,” my dad says, starting to rise from his seat.

  “No!” I shout. “I’m going to keep this baby … with or without your help.”

  “Who’s the father?” my dad demands. “Who did this to you?”

  But I tell myself that I will never answer that question. I don’t want them to know.

  “Was it Danny?” my mother asks. “You used to spend a lot of time with Danny.”

  “No,” I say, “definitely not Danny.”

  “Who, then?” my dad asks.

  But still I won’t answer that.

  And so it goes, with my parents trying to get more information out of me, with my parents trying to alter the course I have set myself upon.

  Week of December 31/Week 18

  I spent Christmas, both eve and day, in my bedroom. It was something my parents and I mutually agreed on without spelling it out.

  “You’re probably a little tired,” my mom said.

  “You probably have a lot to think about,” my dad said.

  Both of which were true.

  And yet I knew that a big part of why they were suggesting this was because they couldn’t face the idea of seeing me at the holiday table, knowing what they now know.

  “We’re not going to say anything to anyone else about this,” my mom said.

  “O
f course not,” my dad said.

  And I could tell they were both still hoping I’d change my mind. Or that they could change it for me.

  So I spent the holiday in my bedroom, my mom and dad bringing up trays for me. Through the walls I could hear it when my mother told each arriving visitor I wouldn’t be joining them this year, saying that I had the flu, could hear the concern of the others, could hear it when my next-oldest cousin said grace over the meal.

  At one point my grandmother knocked on my door on her way to the bathroom.

  “What is it, Angel?” she said, sitting down on the bed beside me, placing her cool hand on my forehead. “You don’t feel warm to me. Is there something else going on that your parents aren’t telling us about?”

  I looked at her dyed champagne hair, the crinkle around those dark eyes I knew so well.

  “No, Grandmother,” I said, hoping to put away her fears while at the same time hoping she wouldn’t push with any more questions. “I overdid it studying for finals this year. I think I just need to sleep some more.”

  After she left me to go back downstairs, I tried to tell myself the reason my parents suggested I spend the holiday in my room wasn’t that they were ashamed of me.

  And I continued to tell myself that as the next week of vacation wore on.

  They never said I couldn’t leave the house, never said I was grounded, and yet I remained in the house all the same. It is like I can hear them waiting, hear the very walls of the house waiting, to hear what will come next.

  Finally, on New Year’s Eve, I can’t take it anymore.

  “Where are you going?” my mom asks when she sees me come downstairs with my coat on.

  “Out,” I say.

  “Yes, but where? Are you going to a party?”

  Even though Karin invited me to go to Ricky D’Amico’s New Year’s Eve party with her, I said no.

  “No,” I say, “I just need to get out for a while.”

  “What time will you be back?” my dad asks.

  “I’m not sure,” I say. “Later on sometime.”

  “Hey,” he says, “we’d like some answers here. You can’t just go out till all hours and not tell us where you’re going or when you’ll be back.”