Danny, as usual, turns away from me when he sees me coming, but Ricky has no problem looking at me head-on.
“Well,” she says, “just look what Mother, um, Nature dragged in.” Then she recites her next words so perfectly, one hand to her cheek in mock horror, that a part of me wonders if she’s practiced this, waiting for just such an occasion: “Old Angel Hansen lived in a shoe, she was about to have a baby, oh, what would she do?”
Danny may not be looking, but he is certainly listening, because he turns to Ricky sharply, anger all over his face.
“What did you just say to her?” he says.
I don’t hear how Ricky responds, because I am already turning away from them, moving quickly for the door. Whatever else goes on between them, I don’t hear it, only hear her shouting, “Danny!”
As I run out of the cafeteria, I hear Danny shout after me, “Angel!” It is the first word he has spoken to me in I can’t even say how long, but I don’t stop running. I run out the doors of the school, run to my car, and it is not until I’m fumbling with the key in the lock that I realize it started to snow while I was inside.
The flakes are big, downy, soft, but I don’t care about that, don’t care about anything as I key the ignition, turn on the radio as loud as it will go. I need to drown the wordd of Ricky DAmico, I think, need to drown the sound of her taunting me.
I am pulling out of the driveway, feeling the bass guitar thrumming through the car, feeling as though it is thrumming right through my body, erasing everything, when I hear, over the sound of the music, the noise of a car horn blaring and the screech of the tires of a car failing to brake in time, as a car plows into me from the left.
After that, I remember nothing.
Week of February 18/Week 25
When I wake up in the hospital, my mom is seated in a chair holding my hand, my dad standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder.
I start to rise in the bed.
“Is the baby okay?” I say. “Is she okay?”
“She?” my mom says.
I have never said that aloud before, that I am convinced the baby will be a girl.
“She or he is fine,” my dad says.
“It was touch and go there for a while,” my mom says, “but now it seems like everything is going to be fine.”
I settle back into the pillows, ask what happened.
“You were pulling out of the school parking lot,” my dad says, “and some jerk ran a red light and smashed right into you.”
“You were unconscious when they brought you in, “my mom says. “Your left ankle is sprained and you were hit pretty hard in the head when you struck the windshield. There was blood all over the place.”
I reach my hand to my forehead, feel the bandage beneath my hairline there.
“You have a concussion and you lost a lot of blood,” my dad says. “Head injuries are always the worst.”
“Why weren’t you wearing your seat belt?” my mother asks.
I shake my head like I don’t remember.
“Why did you leave the dance so early?” my dad asks.
I shake my head again. I don’t want to say it was because I was so upset, I don’t want to say I didn’t put on my seat belt because I just wasn’t thinking straight at the time.
“But the baby—,” I start to ask again.
“Is fine,” my mother says. “Dr. Caldwell was very concerned at first—all that blood you lost—but then things turned for the better and she said we’d be surprised how resilient babies are.”
I smile because that sounds exactly like Dr. Caldwell. She is always saying that.
Up until the moment of the accident, up until now, there have still been times when I thought that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if some kind of accident did happen to me, some kind of accident that wasn’t my fault but that would resolve the issue of the baby all the same. Maybe I would then be able to go back to the life I was leading before, get back on the track I had previously set for myself.
Did I purposely pull out into the street, in the hopes of getting hit?
No, I realize. Nothing I was thinking about on the night of the Valentine’s Day dance was that deliberate. I quite simply wasn’t thinking at all, my entire impulse being to get way from Ricky D’Amico as fast as I could.
Before, I would have said I was only having this baby because I could see no other choice for myself, being me, to make. I would have said, if I was being honest, that I was only doing it because I felt like I had to do it, because I would have felt too guilty not to.
But now I see something I never saw before: I want this baby. Maybe I didn’t before, not really, maybe I was just doing things out of some extreme sense of responsibility. But I want it now.
“The baby is fine,” my mom says again, “and you’re going to be fine too.”
“We love you,” my dad says. “Everything’s going to be just fine.”
Week of February 25/Week 26
I am still at home nursing my injured ankle. Even though the doctors gave me this crutch to help me get around, which I should only need hopefully for another week, my parents are worried that if I go to school, I will slip on the ice. Ever since Valentine’s Day we have gotten at least three more snowfalls, as though the heavens decided we needed to make up for the relatively mild winter of the year before, and late into my sixth month of pregnancy it is hard enough to get my unfamiliar bulk around, let alone trying to negotiate a crutch and ice as well.
My father is at work, of course, and my mother has gone off to do the grocery shopping, as I sit on the couch in the living room, still in my bathrobe even though it is late afternoon, watching TV. But neither soap operas nor talk shows interest me, and the early reports of spring break on MTV only serve to depress me. It is impossible to think I will ever want to put on a bathing suit in public again, let alone a bikini with a thong bottom. So I am staring out the big picture window, lamenting the growing size of my butt as I take in the view of six inches of unsullied white snow on the lawn, when I see Danny Stanton walk by the window, a winter coat shielding his body, something green and cone-shaped held in his hand. As much as I would like to change into something less … frumpy-looking, he is at the door ringing the bell before I can barely even lift myself from the couch. I grab my single crutch and hobble over to the door in order to let him in.
“Hey,” he says softly.
“Hey,” I say back.
“Do you mind if I come in?” he asks.
I open the door wider, indicate the living room with the tip of my crutch.
“Isn’t this great?” I say, displaying my crutch as if it is some kind of great fashion accessory. “As if I didn’t look ridiculous enough already, now I can be Pregnant Girl with a Crutch.”
“I think you look wonderful,” he says. Seated on the couch, he looks nervous.
“Do you want to take off your coat?” I offer.
“Oh. Right,” he says. But when he goes to remove the sleeves, he forgets to switch the green cone-shaped thing in his hand to the other side and the sleeve of his coat gets caught on it.
“Oh, dub,” he says, holding it out for me. “These are for you.”
I take the crinkly green paper and look inside. There are roses inside, a pale purple color, and as I lift them to my nose, I vaguely remember once-upon-a-time telling Danny that purple was my favorite color.
“I better put these in water,” I say.
“No, let me,” he says. He points to the crutch. “It’s probably not all that easy for you to get around on that thing and carry stuff at the same time. Just tell me where I can find something to put them in.”
It feels strange—surreal, my Creative Writing teacher would say—standing in my kitchen, leaning on a crutch, while I direct Danny Stanton on where to find a vase.
“That’s perfect,” I say when he sets the flowers, now in their crystal vase, down in the middle of the kitchen table. “They’re beautiful. Thanks.” I feel so awkwar
d. “Can I get you something to eat? Something to drink?”
“Shouldn’t you be sitting down?” he says.
“Maybe,” I admit, thinking that mostly I should be sitting down because it is such a shock to see him here.
He gently takes my elbow, as though I am something fragile or special, and leads me back to the couch in the living room, where he seats me on the couch before sitting down right next to me.
“Listen,” he says, “I’m so sorry about everything that happened.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “It wasn’t like it was anybody’s fault. Well, except maybe for that woman who ran the red light and slammed into me.”
“Yeah, but if Ricky hadn’t gotten you so upset,” he says, “none of that ever would have happened.”
“Yeah, well …”
“You know, I tried to see you at the hospital.”
“You did?” This is totally news to me.
“Of course. I chased after you when you ran out, I saw you get hit, I used my cell phone to call 911, waited with you until the ambulance came, followed you to the hospital. I tried to see you. I came every day you were there, but your parents kept saying no.”
For a moment I am incredibly angry with my parents. But then, for whatever reason, the anger fades as quickly as it came.
“Did they say why?” I ask.
“They said they had no way of knowing why you left the dance so quickly after getting there. I think they were worried it was my fault somehow, but they had no way of knowing what really happened.”
It is hard to believe that my parents never once mentioned Danny trying to see me, never once asked me straight-out if he had anything to do with it or not. It is hard sometimes to understand why parents ever do the things they do, and I wonder if I will ever understand them.
At last I shrug my shoulders. “Parents,” I say.
“Yeah,” Danny says, as if he knows exactly what I am talking about.
“So,” I say, “why did you keep trying to see me?”
Now Danny looks agitated, as if I am just not getting something.
“Because I was sorry!” he says. “Didn’t I already say that?”
“And I already said the accident wasn’t your fault. It was just one of those stupid things that happen.”
“Not just that!” he says. “I’m sorry about everything! “
“I don’t understand.”
“What part of ‘everything’ don’t you understand?”
“Well,” I laugh, “everything.”
And he is suddenly laughing too. “Yeah,” he says, “that would about cover it.” Then he turns serious again. “It’s like this: I’m sorry for being such a jerk before. I’m sorry for all those months I didn’t talk to you. I’m sorry I didn’t see what you were going through. I’m just plain sorry I didn’t see you.”
Even though we saw each other every day at school, even though we are technically seeing each other right now, I know instinctively he is talking about something else.
I try another laugh. “So it took me almost getting myself killed and dying for you to see me?”
He shakes his head. At me? At himself? “No, I think I used to see you, but somehow I forgot how. I was too busy seeing my own fucked-up bullshit for too long to see anything else. But I see you now, Angel.”
Maybe it is the pregnancy hormones I am always reading about, but I feel tears come to my eyes.
“I broke up with Ricky,” he says.
“It wasn’t really her fault what happened,” I say.
“No, I know that,” he says. “Still, I broke up with her.”
I don’t ask why he went out with her so long in the first place, if he thinks he would ever get back together with her again. Somehow I think the answer must be no.
“You’re my best friend, Angel,” he says.
The tears come to my eyes again. I think I understand what he is saying. A part of me feels like I know him so well, have always known him so well. But I need to hear him explain it to me.
“Why?” I ask.
“Remember what I said to you the night of Ricky’s party at the end of the summer?”
“I think I do,” I say cautiously. Then I try to turn the sudden seriousness of this into a joke. “You mean when you said how much you like beer?”
“Did I say that?” He shakes his head. “No. I mean, yes, I do like beer. But, no, that’s not it. I said that the thing I liked best about you is that you don’t care at all, not about stupid stuff like me playing basketball, how if I stopped playing tomorrow, it wouldn’t matter to you at all. And I don’t think it would matter to you, not unless it mattered to me.”
I nod, because it’s true.
“Everyone else,” he says, “they care about what I can do. They don’t care about who I am.” I nod again.
“Sometimes I think,” he says, “that all that stuff we used to do, you and me, just hooking up together occasionally at parties, never getting serious, was because the very idea of you scared me, Angel, I liked you so much. It was easier just to go on being what everyone else saw in me. What I felt for you was too real. You were too real.”
Then Danny Stanton reaches out a hand, covers one of mine with his.
“You’re my best friend, Angel,” he says again. “I want to be there for you now.”
march
Week of March 4/Week 27
TAKING LAMAZE CLASSES WITH DANNY STANTON AS MY coach may qualify as the weirdest thing I’ve ever done.
But Danny keeps insisting he wants to be there for me, and when I say I am starting Lamaze classes, he says he wants to come along too.
“They have classes to teach you how to have a baby?” he says. “Who knew?”
When Dr. Caldwell told me about the Lamaze classes, she said it would be better if I had a coach.
“Sure, you can try to do it by yourself,” she said, “or you can even hire a doula, someone who makes a profession out of helping women give birth. But most people prefer to have someone they know with them during labor and delivery. And it’s much better when you’re taking the classes if you have someone else there with you to help with the breathing exercises and to function as a second set of ears when the instructor’s talking.”
I had thought long and hard over whom I could ask. I thought about asking my mom, but then my dad would feel left out, and besides, things are still not all that great between me and her, not like they used to be. I thought about asking Aunt Stacey—which seemed like almost the perfect choice, because she has been so perfect and so cool about everything with me—but then my mom would be hurt. And of course there was always Karin, who I still think of as my best friend—my best girl friend at any rate—but things have been so distant between us for so long, I worried she would say no or, worse, go ahead and do it even though her heart wasn’t really in it.
So of course Danny offered to go with me, and then of course everyone was offended.
“Wouldn’t you rather have me there?” my mother asks. “Why would you want to have him there?”
I know that my mom and dad have been thinking Danny must still be feeling guilty about what happened on the night of the Valentine’s Day dance, that he must be responsible somehow. After all, they’re probably thinking, why else would he be spending time with me now, why would he want to go through any of this with me at all if he didn’t feel like he had to?
No matter how many times I tell them this isn’t the case, I can tell they still think it is.
“Because,” I tell my mom, “he’s the first person besides me to show any real enthusiasm about this.”
But I am less enthusiastic about this myself when we get to the class that is held in one of the conference rooms at the hospital. I am less enthusiastic because while it is one thing to read descriptions and see pictures of childbirth in a paperback book that measures eight inches by eleven, it is quite another thing to see it projected on a large screen. I am less enthusiastic because it is one thing to think,
in theory, that it would be cool to have Danny Stanton in the labor and delivery rooms with me, and quite another to picture him beside me, holding my hand as I scream my bloody head off like the lady on the screen is doing every time she’s not panting like a dog.
“You can back out any time,” I lean over and whisper to him.
“Are you kidding me?” he says, eyes glued to the screen as he slouches in his seat, arms crossed. “This is way cool.”
The Lamaze instructor flicks on the lights, and she talks to us about some of the things we will need to know, repeating some of the material I have already read in the book. She talks about when to call the hospital, about centimeters and dilation, she talks about back labor, which sounds positively awful.
As she talks, I look around the room at the six other couples there. The women are on a continuum of largeness, but I know it is impossible to tell where people are in their pregnancies until the Lamaze instructor does roll call by due dates; some women gain a lot, some can be due in a week and still look like they’ve hardly gained at all.
The couples are all older than Danny and I, some by a little, some by a lot. All the women have wedding rings on, except for one whose fingers are swollen up like sausages from all the water retention, but I can see from the white band of skin around her finger that she has one somewhere too; she just can’t wear it right now. I know this does not really speak for society at large, that plenty of unmarried people have kids—single people, even gay people—but it still feels odd being the only one, except for the woman who can’t wear hers, without a ring in here.
It is nice that Danny wants to be here, but I am so used to feeling as though I am alone in this, it is a little hard to make space for someone else in this picture. And then I ask myself, Can he really want to be here? Isn’t he maybe just trying to be nice?
I lean over toward him again, whisper again. “Really,” I say, “you can back out at any time.”
Angel's Choice Page 11