Angel's Choice

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  “What are you worried about,” I say, “that I’ll get pregnant? It’s not like I can still get pregnant.”

  Before I slam the door behind me, I can see on their faces that this is the crudest thing I’ve ever said to them.

  january

  Week of January 7/Week 19

  WE ARE JUST SITTING DOWN TO DINNER—STEAK, WHICH I can’t even stand the name of now, let alone the smell, and cheesy potatoes, which suddenly sounds like the greatest food ever invented—when the doorbell rings.

  It is Tim O’Mara and his father.

  “Daniel. What are you doing here?” my dad asks Tim’s dad.

  I have forgotten that Daniel O’Mara is a lawyer too, that Tim’s dad and my dad know each other through work.

  Daniel O’Mara is an older version of Tim, that sandy blond hair thinning on top and less curly, his brown eyes tired, his belly turning a bit to paunch.

  “May we come in?” Mr. O’Mara asks formally.

  “Of course,” Dad says.

  My mother says hello, asks if she can get them something to drink as everyone sits down in the living room, as dinner grows cold on the table.

  “Thanks,” says Mr. O’Mara, “but this isn’t a social visit. We’re here to talk about… her.” He gives me only the briefest of glances before looking off into the corner. “And about the … baby.”

  “You know about…?” My mother starts in her seat.

  It turns out that Tim has been doing what I was doing for so long: avoiding the truth. His dad must have been pressuring him about the receipt, Tim must have kept putting him off, only to have to finally admit there wasn’t going to be one, that the girl he’d gotten pregnant had decided not to have an abortion after all.

  I guess that at first Tim refused to tell him who the girl was, but Tim’s father finally pressured him into telling him that as well.

  And now they are here.

  I think I maybe know what Tim’s father wants, but I am not sure.

  “I understand that these things can be very delicate,” Mr. O’Mara says cautiously, “but, surely, you must all see the … idiocy of going through with this thing.” He speaks directly to my dad, as though the rest of us aren’t even there, as though this is something to be decided between the two men. “It’s not too late for us to turn this thing around, Steve. There are doctors who would—”

  “But that’s not what Angel wants,” my dad says, and I hear an anger in his voice unlike anything I have ever heard before. After everything we’ve been through in the last several days here, after all the silent disappointment, I am shocked to hear my dad standing up for me. “It’s Angel’s choice,” my dad tells Mr. O’Mara, “and this is what she chooses to do.”

  “Angel’s not the only person involved here, Steve,” Mr. O’Mara says evenly. “It’s not that simple.”

  “You’re right about that,” my dad agrees. “Your son got my daughter into this mess. Your son should pay for what he’s done.”

  I can see Mr. O’Mara mulling this over. I can see that this is not how he expected this to go at all. He probably thought he could persuade us, persuade me , to see his version of reason. But before his very eyes his plans for the way things should be are falling apart.

  “I can see where you would feel that way,” Mr. O’Mara at last admits, grudgingly. “And, of course, if Angel insists on going through with this … thing , we’ll need to contribute something financially. We can work that out. And, of course, Tim’s mother will need to be told. She’ll be angry at first, of course, but eventually she’ll come around. She’ll probably even decide she likes the idea of having a grandchild. I just don’t want to see Tim’s chances in life destroyed by this. Surely you can understand that?”

  From the expression on my dad’s face, my mom’s face, I can see that, even though they are still very mad at both Tim and Mr. O’Mara, they are pleased that Mr. O’Mara is starting to see things reasonably. They are nodding their heads in approval, even if maybe they don’t like every single one of his word choices.

  At last I find my voice.

  “No!” I say.

  Everyone turns to me.

  “No!” I say. “To everything!”

  My dad is clearly puzzled.

  “Angel?” he says.

  I look at my parents. I am talking straight to them. Frankly, I don’t care what Tim and his father think.

  “When I first told Tim about this, do you know what his first reaction was?” I say. “He wanted me to kill it. Do you think I would want someone like that involved in my baby’s life?” I go on, talking about Mr. O’Mara as if he weren’t even there, “And Mr. O’Mara. Do you know what he said when Tim asked him for money for the abortion? He said he wanted Tim to bring him a receipt. It wasn’t enough what had happened, what I was going through, he needed proof his money was being well spent. Do you think I’d want someone like that involved in my baby’s life now?”

  My dad turns to Mr. O’Mara, disbelief, horror, anger on his face.

  “What kind of a person are you?” he says.

  “I’m just a father, like you, Steve,” he says. “I want the right thing for my son, just like you want for Angel.”

  “Get out,” my dad says.

  “Look,” says Mr. O’Mara, “if you’re not going to let us be a part of the baby’s life, I don’t want this thing hanging over Tim’s head forever. I don’t want everyone talking about him, saying whatever, that he’s not taking responsibility or whatever.”

  “I never wanted anyone to know it was Tim in the first place,” I say. “I certainly won’t say anything. Ever.”

  “We’ll draw up the papers next week,” my dad says. “We’ll renounce all claim of support.”

  “How will Angel take care of the baby by herself?” Mr. O’Mara asks.

  “Her father and I will help her,” my mother says.

  I know that even a half hour ago my mother was totally against this. But I can see that she is so offended by Mr. O’Mara—maybe she would even say now that she is fucking offended by him—that she will not stand down from his challenge. It would be nice if she were supporting me because she actually believed in and supported my decision, but I know she is doing this out of anger toward someone else: Mr. O’Mara. Still, for now, I will take what I can get. It’s all I have.

  “We’ll renounce all claim of support,” my dad says again, “and you’ll sign papers saying you give up all rights to being part of the baby’s life. Now get out.”

  Week of January 14/Week 20

  I go see Dr. Caldwell for my next visit.

  She wants to know how I’ve been feeling, what’s been going on in my life.

  I tell her I’ve been feeling great, which is true—once again the constant feeling of tiredness is gone and I no longer feel as nauseous as I did in the first few months—and I tell her that lately I have this superhuman kind of energy that makes me feel like I could do just about anything.

  “Well, enjoy that superhuman kind of energy while it lasts,” she says, and laughs. “And don’t try to lift anything big like a car, even if it feels like you could.”

  She looks at my chart to see what the nurse has written down on it.

  “Your blood pressure is up quite a bit from last time,” she says. “I’m not loving that. Tell me what else is going on with you.”

  I tell her what should be my big news. “School acceptances came in the mail,” I say. “I got into Yale.”

  “That’s terrific news!” she says.

  “I’m not going, of course,” I say.

  When I told Robin Keating that, he was nearly livid.

  “You got into the only school you were interested in applying to, and now you’re not going?” he said.

  I told him what I am telling Dr. Caldwell now.

  “I decided to go to the community college instead,” I say.

  What I didn’t go on to explain to Robin, but what Dr. Caldwell clearly understands, is that Yale would have been too fa
r. If I am going to have this baby, then until I can afford to pay for a daytime babysitter myself, I will have to go to a school where I can live at home, so my mother can help with the baby during the daytime.

  Despite what my mother said to Mr. O’Mara, about her and my father intending to help me out, she was less supportive after he left.

  “What am I supposed to do,” she said, “give up my accounting practice so I can raise your baby?”

  “It’ll all work out, Hel,” my dad said. “So maybe you’ll need to rearrange your schedule sometimes.”

  “Why is it my life that has to change?” my mother said. “I didn’t ask for this. I already had my baby. I figured the next time I spent a lot of time with a baby, sure, it would be my grandchild, but that grandchild would be coming here to visit occasionally, not to live here.”

  “So my life’ll change too,” my dad said. “When you need me to, I’ll rearrange my schedule too. I’ll help.”

  “You could still change your mind,” my mom said to me, despite what she’d said to Mr. O’Mara. “It’s still not too late.”

  But for me it is too late.

  “Don’t worry,” my dad said, after my mom stormed out of the room. “Somehow it’ll be all right.”

  But things are not all right, certainly not between them. At night I often hear them fighting. I know it is about me.

  “So what’s so great about Yale, anyway?” Dr. Caldwell shrugs now, and with that one shrug erases the last wisp of smoke from an entire dream. “If a person with a C average from Yale can go on to become president of the United States, it seems to me that an A average somewhere else could probably get you pretty far too. You’ll just have to be brilliant somewhere else.”

  One thing I do not tell Dr. Caldwell is about the rumors. If people whispered a lot back in the fall about me going off with Tim O’Mara the night of Ricky D’Amico’s party, now that hum that follows me around school is beginning to turn into a roar.

  I am still not totally showing yet, just a slight thickening around the middle, but I can hear kids at school speculating.

  “What’s up with Angel?”

  “Do you think she needs an eating disorder?”

  Sometimes I try to tell myself I’m just imagining the whispers. Sometimes I tell myself it doesn’t matter if people think I’m gaining weight because I’m depressed or for whatever reason, that it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks.

  “Are you ready for that ultrasound now?” Dr. Caldwell asks.

  I have been nervous about this, even though I know from reading the book she gave me that an ultrasound doesn’t hurt at all. But what if the ultrasound shows that there is something terribly wrong with the baby, something awful that can’t be fixed? I have already decided on my own that if this is the case, I will not go through with the pregnancy, even as a part of me feels guilty at my reaction, wondering if I would still be relieved at such an outcome. Still, I feel more and more all the time that I know what I am capable of. And I know that if there is something terribly wrong with this baby, I won’t be able to go through with this.

  The book Dr. Caldwell gave me was right: The ultrasound doesn’t hurt at all, but it does give me the inside squirmies when she squirts the clear blue gel onto my slightly swollen belly and uses this wand thing to move it around so she can see on the monitor what is going on inside me.

  “Toes, fingers, heart,” she says, eyes on the screen. “Everything is exactly where it’s supposed to be. Do you want to look?”

  So far I have been studiously staring at the ceiling, worried about seeing something scary on the screen. Now I turn my head to the right so I can see what she is seeing.

  To me it looks like a picture of another galaxy. There is a darkish background, with swirling mists of stars on it. At first I do not make out any of the details and I think that whatever Dr. Caldwell is seeing, it must be different from what I am seeing.

  All I know is that this is the first time I have seen what is growing inside me and, in its own otherworldly kind of way, it’s beautiful.

  “See this?” Dr. Caldwell traces her finger on the screen. “There’s the baby’s head. And this slight indent here? That’s the baby’s mouth.”

  And now I can clearly see what she is pointing to: My baby has a head. It has a mouth.

  “Do you want to know what sex the baby is going to be?” she asks.

  “You can tell that just from looking at that picture?” I say.

  “I can make a pretty good guess,” she says. “I could always be wrong, but it looks pretty certain.”

  “That’s okay,” I say. “Let it be a surprise to look forward to. Besides, I have my own pretty good guess about whether this is a boy or a girl.”

  I don’t want to hear her pretty good guess, and I don’t want to make mine, not out loud. What if our guesses don’t agree? Or what if one of us is wrong or our guesses agree and we’re both wrong? I do not want to get my mind wrapped around a certain outcome, only to have it turn out differently.

  After I get dressed, Dr. Caldwell says she’d like to talk to me for a few more minutes.

  She tells me that before long it’ll be March, that the baby’s due just three months after that, so I’ll need to start thinking about signing up for Lamaze classes, if that’s the way I want to go, and that I also need to start thinking about taking breast-feeding classes.

  “Again,” she says, “if that’s the way you want to go.”

  “They have classes for that?”

  “You’d be surprised”—she laughs—“at how much harder certain perfectly natural things are than you think they’d be.”

  Huh.

  “I’m still a little worried about that elevated blood pressure,” she says. “I’m also slightly concerned that you haven’t gained quite as much weight as women usually do at this point.”

  “Aren’t most people too heavy in this country anyway?” I say.

  “Perhaps,” she says, “but pregnancy is no time for strict dieting.”

  “I haven’t been dieting,” I insist.

  “That’s good, then,” she says. Then she repeats something I have already read in the book. “You know,” she says, “a lot of women go along and go along not really showing at all, and then one day—pop! —that belly is right out there.”

  I’m about to go when she stops me.

  “Hey, I almost forgot,” she says, waving what looks like two photographs in her hands. “Do you want these?”

  They are printed-out pictures from the ultrasound with the name HANSEN, ANGEL printed in one corner, the date and time stamped underneath.

  I take them, look at that swirling galaxy again, the shape of that head, the tiny indented mouth.

  “Yes,” I say, unable to tear my eyes away. The deeper I get into this thing, despite the constant underlying fears, I grow more certain all the time. “I do want them.”

  Week of January 21/Week 21

  Dr. Caldwell obviously knows what she is talking about, because what she described is exactly what happens to me. I have just been going along and going along, letting people speculate that maybe I’ve just put on a little extra weight for whatever reason, when one day—pop! —my belly sticks out, my former innie belly button now turned into an outie, and there is no mistaking the fact that I am pregnant.

  “That’s it” my mother says when I come down to breakfast one morning, wearing a pair of my dad’s jeans rolled up at the ankles, because at last none of mine fit anymore, one of his red and navy rep ties woven through the belt loops because if my pants are too tight, his are still too loose. Over this I have one of my gauze shirts left over from summer. Even though it is very cold out now, and we are finally getting the kind of severely frigid New England winter my mother always talks about from her youth, the free-flowing material is the only thing in my closet that will cover most of my belly without looking tight.

  I’m not sure what my mother is getting at. Certainly I think the red and navy tie looks cool like
that.

  “I may not love what you’re doing,” my mom says, hands on hips, “but no daughter of mine is going to go around looking like a ragamuffin.” Then she speaks words I never thought I’d hear her say: “You’re skipping school today. We’re going shopping.”

  When we get to the mall, we go straight to the maternity shop, Mommy Heaven, the window of which I’d gazed into back in October. Now that the high energy of making this decision to play hooky has worn off, my mom is all grim determination as she goes through the racks of clothes. She is a woman with a mission, but, obviously, it is not a pleasant mission.

  “You’ll need some jeans for now,” she says, picking out a few pairs with expandable waistbands, “but you’ll also need some lighter things in bigger sizes for the late spring.”

  I submit to everything, letting her pile clothes up in my arms as she moves through the store.

  Then she spots an outfit nailed to the wall that is not so very different from what I am wearing, except that the pieces aren’t something hastily thrown together. Instead they are artfully designed to allow a woman to look pregnant without looking stupid, without looking like she threw out her fashion sense with her last pack of tampons; and, of course, the ankles of the jeans are much wider than those on my dad’s jeans, much more like what you see women walking around in every day.

  “We never had anything like that when I was pregnant with you,” she says, her voice mixing pleasure with resentment. “Well,” she adds, “we did have bell-bottoms when I was a teen, but pregnant women didn’t get to wear them.”

  Her words remind me of how she always likes to point out that even though what she calls “your generation” likes to think they invented certain fashions, kids wore things that were very similar twenty-five years ago. There had been a few decades’ worth of fashion changes and evolution in between, but we were basically back to the same stuff she and her friends wore.