How to Save a Life

by Sara Zarr

  “Yes?”

  Let it go, Jill. Let. It. Go. “Never mind.” I almost touch her shoulders, almost lean over and kiss the top of her head. What I want more than anything in this moment is to have faith, the way she does, that everything’s going to be okay.

  “What, Jill?” She spins her chair around; my arms drop. She touches the mole on her jaw. “You’ve been wanting to say something all week. I can tell, and it’s made me nervous. Spill it or let me get back to work.”

  I grasp my fingers together, stuck. I have to ask. “Do you have something from Mandy about the father? Like a thing where he signed over his parental rights or something?”

  Instantly she’s beyond irritated. “Why are you asking me this?”

  Just as instantly, I manage to find that self-righteousness that was so sharp and fresh at lunch today. “Because you’ve never said anything, and I would think it’s kind of important. God. Sorry for caring.”

  Mom speaks slowly. “Jill. I have been trying to involve you in this from the beginning. You practically put your hands over your ears every time I brought it up. Now you have questions?” She turns back to her computer. “Trust I’ve got it taken care of, and by all means don’t let it bother you.”

  Her back is rigid, and though she’s moving the mouse around and typing figures into her map, I don’t buy that she’s paying any attention to her work.

  “Well it does bother me. It bothers me. I’m sorry for how I was before.” She spins her chair to face me again. I take a deep breath and continue. “It didn’t seem real. I didn’t believe it was going to happen. Now that Mandy’s here, I’m just saying what if in five years, after we’re all attached to this thing, some dude comes knocking on the door and is all, ‘That’s my baby, give it over.’ ”

  Mom picks up her mug of tea and gazes into it. Less irritated. More contemplative. “ ‘This thing’? You say that it wasn’t real before, but you still don’t see the baby as a human being who’s going to be in our lives for… ever. Since you’re so concerned about ‘this thing,’ I’ll tell you. Mandy did her best to contact the father, but she couldn’t. It was difficult because she…” Mom sighs, and her voice goes from serious to sounding what-the-hell?-ish. “She didn’t know his last name or live in the same town. She only saw him once.”

  “It was a one-night stand?”

  “It was a one-night stand.”

  After that bullshit Mandy was saying last week about the baby being “made from love.” Love!

  “I didn’t want you to hold it against her,” Mom says. “Or the baby. So now you know.”

  Now I know.

  “Here’s another shocking revelation, Mom: That doesn’t make me feel any better. Dad would have asked more questions.” I blurt it. Stupidly. Meanly.

  Chair spins back. Clicking of mouse. Entering of figures—traffic counts, GPS coordinates. “Well, he’s not here now, is he?”

  As if either of us needed reminding. I try to sound less accusing this time. “I’m merely saying, the guy could turn up—”

  “I know, Jill.” She turns around again, and her face—her face so much like mine, no matter what Mandy says about us looking nothing alike—is full of outrage, yet so alive. “The father could show up, Mandy could change her mind. The baby could be born deaf or blind. I could die tomorrow. I know. I know! You think I don’t know, after the year we’ve had, that anything could happen? That no matter what precautions you take, how smart you are, how much you prepare and plan, anything could happen.”

  My eyes burn. I don’t know why she had to say that she could die tomorrow. Why did she have to say that part?

  I’d miss her so much. It’s a jagged thing in my throat, how much I’d miss her, how much I miss her now, how much I want us to be able to find each other now that we don’t have Dad as a bridge between us.

  I want to say it. I’d miss you. My vocal cords are paralyzed.

  “You want to shut life out, Jill, that’s your choice. Push everyone away. Refuse change.” She laughs a little and throws her hands up. “You used to not give a damn about anything, but that was because you were brave, not cynical. You used to have so much courage. Dad and I would lie awake at night worrying about the trouble you’d get into because of your courage.”

  They did? I had courage?

  Mom continues, “I don’t know how you got so scared.”

  She tosses it off, unthinking. We stare at each other. How can she say that? She does know. She does! I swallow, finally finding my voice. “I don’t know how you didn’t.”

  What I mean is, Tell me how. Tell me how to keep being the way I was. But she’s still defending herself. “I have to believe…” She jabs at her collarbone. Her voice cracks. “I have to believe something surprisingly good can still happen.”

  I nod and retreat to the living room, where I sit in Dad’s club chair and put my feet up on the ottoman, trying to understand Mom the way he understood her.

  “Your mom doesn’t listen to sense,” he used to say.

  “Your mom does what she does, damn the torpedoes,” he used to say.

  “Your mom’s a nut,” he used to say. “I’m just along for the ride.”

  I mean, I get it. I sort of get it. She’s not just doing this because she wants a baby, though I think she really does. She’s doing this to say a big eff you to fate, or God, or luck, or whatever it is that took Dad away from us. I dare you, she’s saying. I dare you.

  Mandy

  What I’ve noticed is that certain people can make you feel like a fraction of yourself. As big as my body is now, after talking to my mother yesterday, my soul could squeeze down into almost nothing. It could live in a matchbox. It could slip between the cushions of this leather couch where I spend almost all my time now, while I wait—incubate—for five more weeks.

  I reach into my dress pocket and close my fingers around the watch. Today I need it with me, close, to remind myself that I can decide what I want. Nothing is settled yet. And no matter what happens, I’ll never have to go back to my mother.

  I wish she couldn’t make me feel like that. It’s hard to know what I should feel about her. She gave birth to me, and even though she lived her life mostly like someone who didn’t have children I always had food and clothes and somewhere to live because of her. I have her eyes and her small hands. She never wanted me, though. If she’d done what I’m doing, instead of keeping me, everything about my life would have been different. But then I wouldn’t be me. It’s impossible to think of myself as anyone else.

  And I know when I make this choice, I’m giving something to my daughter but also taking something away. The something I’m taking away is me. She won’t be able to look at Robin and see her own eyes or her own hands. Maybe in eighteen years she’ll be sitting here on this exact couch having the same thoughts about me that I’m having about my mother. I don’t want it to be like that, but I don’t know how to make it not be.

  When my mother told me Kent is making her move out, I thought, Good. A thing in myself I don’t like was glad it happened to her. Like I was the reason Kent let us stay there, like he chose me instead of her. Even though I never wanted him to. But out of the two of them, Kent is the one who paid more attention to me, I think, and that counts for something? Or, I don’t know. That wasn’t caring attention. Not how it’s supposed to be. The way things were with Kent is complicated, and all mixed up in my mind. Sometimes he did nice things, like remember the kind of pop I like, and drive me to school if I slept too late for the bus. Sometimes.

  He pretended I wasn’t pregnant.

  I told him before I told my mother, before I showed. It was a Saturday and she was out. Kent was sitting in the living room watching TV, with his computer in his lap. Maybe doing billings and things for his business, or maybe looking up what truck he wanted to buy next, or playing poker online, I don’t know. I came in and stood near the TV, waiting for him to say, “What is it?” but he never did, so I sat in the chair and watched the TV awhile. D
uring a commercial he asked me to get him a can of pop, so I did. When I handed it to him, he didn’t look up or say “thank you.” I could see the top of his head, the little bald spot under the gray-brown. His thick neck, his big upper arms.

  “I have to tell you something,” I said.

  “What.”

  You should pay attention while I’m telling you this, I thought. You’re going to want to see my face.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  His hands stopped moving on the laptop for a few seconds. Then they started again.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes. I am.”

  He folded his laptop shut, got up, and took his keys and cell phone from the coffee table. “It’s got nothing to do with me.” And he left. After that, we never talked about it again, and my mother never said anything about it in front of him. I don’t know if he told her not to talk about it to him or if she just decided not to. Once in a while I’d catch him staring at me, staring at my stomach, but mostly whenever I came into a room, he left it. And never came into mine at night again.

  Sometimes I missed it.

  That’s what I mean when I say it’s all mixed up. I hated him, I hated it. But after I told him I was pregnant and he left me alone, and I told my mother I was pregnant and she was mad, I would sometimes lie in bed at night and wonder, Does it matter anymore to either of them that I exist? Do I exist? I would run my hand down my arm to make sure I was still there. Sometimes I would stay in my room during dinnertime to see if either of them came to get me. Sometimes my mom would, but not always, and never Kent. Other times I would go walking after school and stay out until my feet hurt too much to keep going, and wonder if they would yell at me for being late and worrying them. They never did. Days and days and days could go by when all they did was look through me. All I wanted to know was that they saw me. That I was seen by someone. That feeling of disappearing can be worst of all.

  One night when I touched my arm, I started to doubt I was really there. I pinched the skin. I dragged a fingernail across my collarbone until it stung. I got up and looked in the mirror. I didn’t know if I could believe what I saw, that I was there, that I was me. I touched the mirror where my face was. I put my cheek to it and breathed on it until my breath condensed on the glass. But I still wasn’t sure. The only sure sign I had that I existed was the ripple of life inside me.

  That was the night I decided I would leave.

  I’ve gotten used to the way Robin’s footsteps sound on the stairs—clip-clip-clip—whereas Jill’s are more clomp-clomp-clomp.

  “I’m headed to a client meeting,” Robin says. “Need anything? I could swing by the store on my way home.”

  I turn so I can see her from the couch. Her head is down, one hand deep in her purse as she pauses on the bottom stair. This morning when we had breakfast together, like we always do, she had on yoga pants and a sweatshirt. Now she’s wearing dark brown slacks with pinstripes, a white top, and a burgundy blazer. A real career woman. “You look nice.”

  “Thanks, sweetie.” She withdraws her hand, keys found, and continues toward the door. “Call if you think of anything you need.”

  What I need is to not be alone, where that disappearing feeling might come back.

  “Maybe I could go with you.”

  “To my meeting? I don’t even want to go to my meeting.”

  It takes a lot of concentration to not beg her. Please, please, don’t leave me here alone. Normally the TV is enough to keep me from thinking about Kent and my mother too much, but today I’m not that strong, even with the watch.

  “I mean, I wonder if there’s somewhere you could drop me off,” I say, making my voice not break. “Like a mall or a movie theater or anywhere?”

  Robin presses something on her phone and looks at it. “I’m running…” Then she drops her arm and sees me. She sees me. “Of course. You must be desperate for a change of scenery. Come on, get your stuff. I’ll warm up the car.”

  She leaves me at a big shopping center that has an outside part and an inside part. Be careful walking and watch for icy spots if you decide to go to the outside part, she tells me, and that there are some cute stores there. Not to eat junk food. She gives me twenty dollars and her American Express card. “Get yourself a snack if you’re hungry. And something special for yourself.”

  Something for myself?

  She sees the expression on my face and smiles. “Just don’t go crazy.”

  I spend a long time looking at the directory. The stores here are a mix of the same stores we have around Council Bluffs and Omaha, and places I’ve never heard of. There are two Starbucks, that’s how big it is. At the closest one I get a hot chocolate and sit so I can rest my back and legs, which are already tired, and watch people go by. It seems like they’re mostly wives. That’s what they look like to me—women whose husbands make a lot of money, so they go out shopping, alone or with friends, and then have lunch in a restaurant and have a new purse every six months and their roots never show.

  That’s the kind of woman my mother always wanted to be. Every man she dated or lived with was supposed to be the one who could make it happen. Kent was it, she thought, the last one and the right one. Contractors can make a lot of money, as long as they work hard and do a good job and don’t make their clients mad by not showing up or going over budget. As long as they don’t think they have to have a brand-new truck they can’t afford, every year. As long as they don’t gamble or have to pay people off to not report them for using and underpaying illegal aliens for labor.

  “Mind if I sit here?”

  It’s a pregnant woman, with two big bags and several small ones. That’s the other kind of woman here at the mall: mothers. She’s holding a coffee cup with a tea bag string hanging over the side. The chair across from me is the only one left in the whole Starbucks. “Okay.”

  “Thanks.” She lowers herself into it after setting her bags down. “What are you? Thirty weeks?”

  I stare at her. “What?”

  “I’m guessing you’re thirty weeks. Along?”

  “Thirty-five.”

  She leans over the table to get a better look at my belly. “I’ll buy that.” Her eyes narrow in a friendly way. She’s pretty. “You’re young. Your first?”

  “Yes.”

  “Third,” she says, patting her stomach, then grimacing. “Not sure what I was thinking.”

  I sip my hot chocolate which isn’t so hot anymore. I don’t care. It’s good and sweet and I’m having a regular conversation with someone who isn’t Robin or Jill. “You don’t like the other two?” I ask.

  Her eyes widen. “What? God no, that’s not what I meant. I love them. Of course! Being pregnant, though.” She shakes her head. “Right?”

  “Right.”

  She waits, smiling. No one has to tell me I’m not good at making conversation. At school I didn’t have friends. There were two girls I had lunch with most days: Lucia Reynolds and DebAnn Forsyth-Miller. We were not friends. We were people to eat lunch with. Lucia always had earbuds in. I don’t think she listened to music as much as people thought, because even though she acted like she couldn’t hear anything, if DebAnn or I actually talked about something and Lucia had an opinion, suddenly she could hear us. DebAnn wore a long, beige puffy coat—every day, even when it was hot, and she’d been wearing it since ninth grade. If you bumped into her in the hallway, she wouldn’t feel it.

  Lucia had earbuds, and DebAnn had her coat. I had something, too. I don’t know what it was, but it made me as invisible as they were, at school like I was at home. Until the baby started to show.

  I miss school. I’m not a dropout—at least, not the way my mother makes it sound. I would have graduated this June, finally, after getting messed up from missing sixth grade when I was supposed to have it, which was my mother’s fault. Her boyfriend that year was a truck driver. Leo. It was temporary—he had a plan to drive his truck for a year and save every penny, then start a business. The bu
siness would be selling little supplies and things for truckers, like televisions and coffeemakers and blenders that all ran on twelve-volt batteries. For the plan to work, he couldn’t have housing expenses for one year. So we went with him and lived in the cab of his truck. After the first few thousand miles, Leo and my mother fought a lot. The cab was cramped. Sometimes we went a week without a shower. And I was absent for all of sixth grade.

  When I took the tests to see if I could go straight to junior high, I didn’t do too well. My mother said I did bad on purpose to make her feel guilty about Leo, who broke up with us and never started his business.

  The woman across from me now looks like the kind who had lots of friends in sixth grade.

  “So you must be excited,” she says, dunking her tea bag up and down. Her hair is brown and bobbed, and you can tell her clothes aren’t cheap, even though they’re plain. I imagine us meeting here once a week.

  “I’m giving this one up,” I say.

  Her dunking suddenly stops. The tea bag drips, suspended above the steaming water. Then she starts dunking again. “Good for you, I guess. Personally, I couldn’t do it.”

  “You could. If you knew it was the best thing.”

  Her eyes narrow again, different this time. “Just wait. When you go through hell to give birth to your baby and then it’s over and you finally have it—wait, boy or girl? Do you know?”

  “Girl.” Christopher’s skin. My eyes.

  “When you finally have her in your arms and hear that helpless little cry, you know you’d give your life for her and you wouldn’t let anyone pry her from your cold, dead hands. You’ll see.”

  She flicks a packet of sweetener between her fingers. Her face is smooth and worry-free, as if she’s only making friendly conversation.