“Ouch!” said Perry, rumpling my hair. “C’mon—do you all have time for a drink before you hit the road?”
“One,” said Daniel, who had volunteered to drive home. “As it is we’ll be back at 2:00 in the morning.”
The quick drink reassured me of two things: firstly, Perry had no thoughts of Joanie beyond finding her generally attractive; and, secondly, Joanie was aware of this and it ticked her off.
I wasn’t the only one busy observing others. When Perry walked us to our car, he whispered to me, “Still with that James?”
“Yes,” I murmured. “Why?”
“I’m thinking Daniel looks at you a certain way.”
This was neither a new idea nor a welcome one. I had no clue what was going through Daniel’s head, but if it was starting to be noticeable to Phyl and Perry, it was going to be a problem. All I knew was that I did not have the emotional bandwidth to deal with it. Denial is our friend.
“Whatever, Perry,” I scoffed. “That’s the way he looks at every woman who isn’t wall-eyed with a pronounced limp.”
My brother shrugged elaborately. “Suit yourself, Cass. That was just an FYI.”
I sniffed. “Thank you very much, Sherlock Holmes, but I think you’d better stick to dramaturgy.”
Chapter 34: The Thing
The second I held out the little box to her my worst fears were confirmed.
“You don’t need to buy the name brand,” said Nadina irrelevantly, glancing at the pregnancy test box but not taking it from me. “The generic works just fine—they’re trying to get to your emotions. Like the thing is even gonna care that you shelled out five extra bucks to know it’s there. That’s where all that crap starts—designer jeans, where you live, what kind of car you drive—”
“Nadina,” I interrupted. My stomach was clenching up. “Stop already. Why do you think I bought this for you?”
“How the hell would I know?” she shot back. “I’m surprised you don’t do friggin’ random drug tests on me.”
“Are you pregnant?” I whispered. No answer and an averted head. “Did you already take one of these tests?” Nothing. “Does Mike know, or Mark Henneman?” I bit my lip in frustration, wishing I could just grab her by the shoulders and shake some answers out of her.
We were sitting in the Palace kitchen because a bitterly cold rain was falling. I hadn’t even waited for Tuesday, but rather parked outside Camden School and, like a child predator, lured her into the car with promises of cookies and a visit with Benny. No sooner was she done running him around the house like a madman, than I sat her down for cocoa and oatmeal hermits and sprung the box on her.
Present tactics proving ineffective, I changed course slightly. “How have you been feeling? Still pretty tired? When I was pregnant with Min I slept a lot too, but when I wasn’t sleeping, I was eating. I guess that’s why I didn’t recognize what was going on with you. Every…pregnancy is different.”
She unbent slightly, as she usually did when I stopped going for the jugular. “Still tired, but the food is getting better. If I’m not around chicken or broccoli or vinegar or fish it’s okay.”
“The first trimester is usually the worst for all that—you know, the first twelve or so weeks,” I continued cautiously. “By the second trimester I had more energy and my appetite got more normal. How far along do you think you are?”
She shrugged. “My period’s all over the map, so I don’t have a clue. All I know is that I gotta get rid of this puppy fast because the longer you go, the more expensive it is.”
“How—how far along were you the other time this happened?”
“I dunno. Maybe a little over three months.” She gave a nervous laugh. “It took me way longer to figure out that time because I wasn’t tired or nothing, and that was when Mike and I were trashed a lot. I—I haven’t told him this time because everything’s going so well for him. I know he’ll freak out and get all pissed off. I made an appointment for next week, and I’m gonna ask my mom to lend me some money because if I don’t have my half of the rent, Mike is gonna figure it out.”
I noticed I was gripping the edges of the table, white-knuckled, and made a conscious effort to relax my hands. “Money for what?”
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you think? I gotta get rid of this thing. I’m not having any friggin’ baby! And you can’t tell anyone, Cass, because this is my business. I mean it! I’m gonna take care of it, and you can’t go telling Henneman. Promise me.”
“What will you tell your mom?”
“Who the hell cares?” she snapped. “I’ll tell her that Mike’s dad has started charging rent and wants a deposit or something. I might even tell her the truth because Mom would be all for getting rid of the thing.” Did she really feel this indifferent, or was she bluffing to shield herself from my concern? I heard myself breathing shallowly, needing to speak, but afraid of enraging her or shutting her down. God, what do I do? What do I say? How can I even get through to her on this? Please let her hear me. Open her heart.
Nadina knew me too well by now. Watching me fret, her brows drew together, and then she went after me. “What? What the hell are you thinking, Cass? I can tell you’ve got some kind of friggin’ sermon to preach, so preach it. Why do you think I didn’t even want to tell you? ʼCause you’re gonna go all friggin’ religious and judgmental on me, like you could even know what it’s like. Mike’s okay now! I’m okay now! I don’t want this fucking everything up!”
“Would you quit cussing at me?” I asked in a tired voice. “If you haven’t noticed by now, you stupid girl, I love you. I don’t do and say things that you don’t like because I like to piss you off. I do and say things that sometimes you don’t like because I care about what happens to you.”
“But what?” Nadina demanded. She crossed her arms over her chest defensively, but I detected a slight softening in her expression.
“What do you mean?”
“But what’s the catch? Spit it out. I know you friggin’ religious types are all against abortion, and don’t I know the thing’s heart is beating and crap like that. You want to say it, say it.”
“I have five things I want to say to you,” I said shakily, holding up my hand. Why I put up my hand I couldn’t say—maybe to stop the flow of her hostility. And what were the five things I had to say to her? I couldn’t even think of one, much less four more. But there were my five fingers raised like a stop sign.
“Your life matters.”
I put my thumb down. She waited. I waited. What next?
“Your life…matters.”
Down went the index finger.
“Your life matters, Nadina.”
Middle finger.
“Your life matters.”
Ring finger.
“Your life matters.”
My hand was closed now. I felt the heat of tears behind my eyes and reached across the table, laying my hand on her shoulder.
Her breathing was as shallow as mine, and I saw her blink rapidly. It was so silent in the kitchen I could hear Benny on his bed, snuffling to himself. Oblivious to any crisis, to lives hanging in the balance. A sudden memory presented itself to me: that time months ago in church when I thought of God as a dog, an unpredictable dog who had turned on me to tear my life apart. It was all wrong. That should go without saying, of course, but it had taken me all this time to believe it. Nadina’s life mattered, and so did mine.
Your life matters.
Nor was God like Benny, oblivious, doing His own thing, letting us all go to hell in a handbasket. In that moment, in my passionate desire for Nadina to know that she was loved, that she mattered, I had a glimpse of God’s heart. This was how He felt for her. This was how He felt for that little child growing, unwanted, inside her. This was how He felt for me.
Nadina had to clear her throat several times before she could speak. “How—how can you say my life matters,” she began unsteadily, “when you know having this baby would wreck it?”
Thi
s baby. I felt my heart constrict painfully with joy. It had already begun to change in her mind.
“You matter so much,” I said slowly, “to me and—and to the God who made you, that He wants you to live. He wants you to be whole. He wants you to know your life is precious and sacred. To have this baby wouldn’t be about wrecking your life—it would be about healing it. It would come from an understanding of how much you matter, how much each one of us matters. When we…deny life…we deny our own.”
She sighed deeply, burying her hands in her spiky blonde hair. “I don’t know if I believe that. And I can’t believe you do. You, with the dead husband and the dead baby. Didn’t their life matter?”
“They’re okay. Troy and Min are okay. I wasn’t ready to let them go, but I know they’re all right.” I shook my head slowly. “Really, I was more concerned with me, the one who got left behind. I used to wonder, Nadina, why we weren’t all in that car that day. Wouldn’t that have been easier? If we all three died and went on together? I wondered why I wasn’t done on earth yet. I guess one reason must be that I was supposed to talk to you today. To tell you how much you matter.”
She stirred the dregs of her cocoa, thinking. “If I did this—and I’m not saying I will—Mike would friggin’ flip out.”
“He probably would be pretty upset at first,” I conceded, “but you’re not expecting him to raise the baby or support the baby. It would just be dealing with a few months of you being pregnant.”
“He’ll freak,” she said despondently. Then, “I don’t think I could give the baby to some randoms out there.”
“It wouldn’t have to be random. You could use a selective agency or interview couples yourself, pick and choose.”
“They wouldn’t give a shit about me,” she uttered in a low voice. “Not like you do. They would just want the baby, the second they could rip it away. Be all nice to me and kiss my ass until they got what they wanted.”
“That’s not true,” I protested, “they would care about you because they would be so grateful to you. You don’t know—people who can’t have babies go a little berserk. They’d probably want to hear from you every day of the pregnancy, get all the gory details.”
Her voice dropped even lower, but I think I recognized the expletive. “No way. No friggin’ randoms.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” I repeated. “They wouldn’t have to be random. You could know them as well or as little as you like, I imagine. It could be a family here in Bellevue or across the country. People you get to know, or people whose names you don’t even want to learn. This would be your choice. All yours.”
“If—if I got to choose,” said Nadina hesitantly. “I—I— ” She trailed off.
“You what?” I prompted.
Her pale blue eyes looked straight into mine. “If the choice was all mine, I would choose you, Cass.”
There was a sudden silence in the kitchen. Nadina and I were perfectly still—even Benny seemed to be holding his breath. I could hear the clock ticking, Phyl’s clock with the orange blossoms on it. Outside, a car whizzed by on the wet pavement. Nadina’s words seemed to hang in the air, as if they were painted on a banner unfurling behind a plane, and I looked at them, detached. I-would-choose-you-Cass. Shocking words that, for some inexplicable reason, failed to shock. The banner may as well have read Shop-at-Pendergast-Furniture or Did-you-take-your-vitamins-today?
Twenty months ago, when I came home from that Hot Yoga class, I threw my gym bag in the hallway and called for Min, wondering why she didn’t come running to greet me. “Troy?” I called again. “Did you already put Min down for her nap?” No Troy either, as you well know. Just that blinking light on the answering machine and the hospital asking me to call back immediately. Oh God, no. I’ve never been a morbid person, never spent my time imagining worst-case scenarios. Nor was there any reason to suppose the hospital had news of my husband and daughter—it could as easily have been news of my own parents or Max or Raquel while Troy obliviously pushed Min on the swing at the park. But that day when my shaking hand reached for the phone, I already knew what someone dreaded having to tell me. Denial would come later; disbelief would come later; in that moment I knew.
Steadily I gazed at Nadina, the memory of that strange certainty tugging at me. If she had her way, she would choose me. Although I shouldn’t have been able to understand her, although I ought to have been on the floor hyperventilating at the thought, I felt instead an eerie calm. Something clicked into place. Hard to describe, but most like the Troy-and-Min experience. It was as if she were telling me something that found an immediate echo inside me and evoked no surprise.
“You would choose me to take the baby,” I said, quiet as you please.
“I would choose you to take the baby,” she said again, her eyes never wavering.
“You wouldn’t want the baby to have a father? Brothers or sisters? A mother with a reliable income?” My questions sounded strangely pro forma, as if I were reading down a checklist and this had nothing to do with me.
“You’re old, but you’re not dead,” said Nadina with equal calm. “The baby might one day have a father or brothers or sisters. You might one day get a real job.”
Some detached part of my brain was shaking itself awake. You, Cass? Take a baby? You swore off babies, after Min. You wouldn’t even consider babies, when James asked you. James! What would James say? Where would you live, since you’d have to move out of the Palace? What would everyone say? Remember the last time you felt as certain of something—it led to the worst year of your life!
But it remained a detached part of my brain, squeaking and rattling in the face of what felt unaccountably like a certainty. That strange calm. Knowing.
“This isn’t a decision to be made in a day,” I said finally. Bemused, I realized I was referring only to her decision, and not to my own. “Sleep on it. Think about it.”
“You’re not saying no, are you?” Nadina remarked. I wondered if she felt that strange rightness in the air. “Didn’t you say no more babies?”
“I did,” I replied, giving a short laugh. “More than once. And I meant it.”
• • •
We were quiet when I dropped her at the school bus stop. She got out, waving at me, and I drove away. Without conscious thought, I found myself heading for the church, rather than back home. The sanctuary was empty—no school choirs rehearsing or people setting up for an evening activity. Sitting in one of the back pews, shadowed by the balcony, I sat down, resting my chin on my arms along the back of the pew in front of me.
Peace that passed understanding. That little part of my brain kept trying to speak up, but the rest of me refused to get agitated. It was going to happen. Nadina would have that baby, come what may, and I would take it from there, come what may. Why this should be so—why I should be so receptive and unruffled at the idea of adopting the baby of a messed-up teenager who had subsisted on coffee and sweets since the moment she got pregnant—was a mystery. I, who fought the very idea of even having another baby by the traditional route. I suspected it had everything to do with my revelation of that afternoon: that, contrary to my fears these past few months, my life mattered utterly to God. I was not a cosmic, unresolved plotline in the Story of Life; the Storyteller was skilled; every character had a role. He could be trusted.
I had fought that trust every way I could, putting up barriers and shields. If I never had a husband again, if I never had a child again, I would never again be so vulnerable. If God were going to give me things, just to take them away, I would just make sure I didn’t have anything I couldn’t live without. Slowly, slowly—imperceptibly—He had, over the past months, pried my hands open. Not so He could take something out of them, but so that He could put something back in them.
Opening my hands, I stared at them.
Your life matters.
Chapter 35: Breaking News
Who knew that confronting a hostile, secretly distraught teenager over her unwanted
pregnancy and agreeing to adopt her child was actually the easy part? As I guessed, additional days of sleeping on it didn’t change Nadina’s mind, and I ended up needing every ounce and shred of the supernatural peace I experienced to survive that week’s emotional, Bataan Death March of Telling Other People.
“Have you lost your mind?” shrilled Joanie, pacing feverishly back and forth in front of Phyl and me. “Are you completely nuts?”
“Maybe,” I responded, having prepared myself for this. “I didn’t expect it either. It feels right.” Phyl reached for my hand and clutched it, wordless and shocked.
“It ‘feels right’?” Joanie echoed incredulously. “Adopting the baby of some thieving little toilet-cleaning drug addict and his fifteen-year-old girlfriend? Nadina’s a mess! The baby’s probably got that fetal alcohol syndrome, if it even has all its arms and legs. How can you do this to yourself? Tell me you’re not going to do this, Cass…It took months and months before I could say ‘date’ around you without you biting my head off, and then when you finally do start dating a great guy, you wig out because he wants to marry you and have kids with you, and now, instead of doing something logical, you decide you want to become some single, welfare mom?”
“Joanie…” Phyl remonstrated.
I winced when she mentioned James. There was the rub. “It isn’t logical, I know, Joanie. Do you…do you think James won’t want to marry me anymore?”
Joanie stopped short and wedged her behind between mine and Phyl’s on the couch, her vivid blue eyes locking with mine. “Cass—if you do this, it’s over. Can you blame him? You tell him a week ago you can’t even think about marriage or having children and then—oh, scratch that—what you really meant is that you can’t stand the thought of him and his children, but you’ve got no problem with someone else’s crack baby.” Phyl gasped and climbed over Joanie to sit on my other side.
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