Diana decided her only hope was that this would burn itself out, that there would be some natural end to it. Passion like this couldn’t last. They’d get caught, or they’d both starve to death. Already she’d lost six pounds, the inevitable by-product of having sex instead of lunch (the good news about that was, it gave some credence to her claim of chronic diarrhea). Doug would meet someone else, someone appropriate, maybe one of his fellow med students, and that would be that; he’d move on and she’d be brokenhearted, but eventually, the madness would loosen its grip and she’d be free once more to become the woman she’d always been.
LIZZIE
Before she started and stopped two colleges, before she was ransomed and sent away to rehab, before she moved to Philadelphia, before she met Jeff, Lizzie and her best friend Patrice had discovered a television program called I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant. The show, true to its title, featured a series of women, represented in dramatic reenactments, who did not, in fact, realize that they were pregnant until they went into labor, which they universally failed to recognize as labor, and surprised themselves and their loved ones and sometimes the paramedics by pushing out a baby.
Lizzie’s memories of the past decade were patchy, a moth-eaten lace doily hanging together by threads, but she had an indelible recollection of the last time she and her friend had watched the show. “This is bullshit,” Patrice had said, setting down her MegaGulp and picking up the bong. “I didn’t know I was pregnant. I mean, excuse me, but how are you not gonna be knowing some shit like that?”
Lizzie had giggled. Lizzie was a great giggler and snorter even when she wasn’t high—and, she’d learned in the years following her twelfth birthday, dope made almost everything funny.
“Bullshit,” Patrice repeated, wrapping her lips around the glass pipe. “Bull. Shit.” Patrice was eighteen and lived in the Pembroke House apartment building, with her nephrologist mother and neurosurgeon dad, both of whom were constantly on call and neither of whom kept careful track of their prescription pads. Patrice had spent her summer vacation at the Well-spring Center, dealing with the eating disorder that had left her at seventy-eight pounds, with every ridge of her rib cage and bump of her kneecap or clavicle visible beneath the covering of fine blond fur that her body had grown to keep itself warm. Lizzie reasoned that Patrice’s parents knew their daughter was a pothead—her clothes and hair always had that telltale skunky reek—but maybe they didn’t mind. Pot equaled munchies, and Patrice’s weight was back into the triple digits, so probably they figured it was an acceptable trade-off. Potheads didn’t drop dead of heart attacks. They just watched dumb TV shows and laughed a lot, and okay, so maybe they weren’t the most productive members of society, but she and Patrice weren’t hurting themselves (at least not that much), and they definitely weren’t hurting anyone else.
“My periods had never been regular, and I went on the pill, so I thought we’d be safe. One night, my stomach just started killing me, but I thought it was bad sushi,” said the girl on the screen, holding her nine-month-old surprise visitor in her arms.
“Bad sushi,” Patrice said, and passed the bong Lizzie’s way. “Baaaad suuuushiiiii.”
Lizzie laughed and laughed, choking on the smoke. Patrice smacked her leg. “Pay attention!” she cried. “The baby’s coming!” Lizzie set the bong on the coffee table, and the two of them leaned forward as the actress portraying the episode’s ignorant pregnant lady crouched on the toilet.
“I was trying to have a bowel movement,” the real-life lady reported, in case there was any doubt about what all that straining and grunting were meant to convey. “I thought if I could just have a bowel movement I’d feel better and I’d be able to go to sleep.”
Patrice squinted at the screen. “You know,” she said, “that’s actually kind of harsh. I mean, someday her kid’s going to see this and know that his mom thought he was a bowel movement.”
“Harsh,” said Lizzie, who thought she knew a little bit about what it was like to feel like a less-than-wanted, less-than-ideal child. The actress sat on the toilet, bracing her arms against the walls, and pushed with all her might. “And then I heard a splash …” said the mother’s voice-over.
“A splash!” Patrice and Lizzie cried.
“… and a thunk,” she continued.
“Oh, Jesus,” Lizzie murmured. She hated this part. “Thunk!” Patrice was laughing so hard that she’d rolled herself into a hundred-pound ball on the floor. “Thunk!”
“I turned around, and I saw this cord …”
“Ew!” Patrice and Lizzie shrieked, as the actress, looking shocked, turned on the toilet and followed the swollen, purplish-blue cord down into the blood-spattered bowl and retrieved a slimy, white-streaked baby (Lizzie knew it was probably a doll, but it looked so real!).
“And that’s another thing,” said Patrice, catching her breath. “They shouldn’t call this show I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant. They should call it I Pooped a Baby.”
“Patrice!” said Lizzie. She flopped back on the couch, accidentally knocking the bong to the floor. Bong water—the stinkiest liquid known to mankind—instantly soaked the carpet.
Patrice had scrambled to her feet and was standing on top of the couch, gazing down at the spreading, stinky brown puddle. “Oh,” she said. “Oh shit. Hey, Lizzie, we should clean that up, right?”
They’d gone to the kitchen for rags and Comet, which, Lizzie reasoned, was what you wanted for a tough and smelly stain. They’d sprinkled the Comet on the rug, and laid the rags on top, and stood on top of them, sopping up the mess until another un-suspecting pregnant lady came on TV. This one thought she was too old to get pregnant, and figured that the growing bulge in her midriff meant she was eating too many carbs, so she’d gone on a diet, until the fateful day when she’d rushed to the hospital with crippling stomach pains, certain that she was dying of cancer, only to discover …
“Lizzie?” Lizzie looked up from the couch, where she’d fallen into a pleasant doze, to find her mother staring at the two of them. Sylvie wore a Chanel suit—black, with beige trim on the pockets, and matching beige pumps. A leather attaché case was under her arm, and she looked tired. Lizzie struggled to remember what she’d been doing—some luncheon, some speech, some something—as Sylvie sniffed the air. “What’s going on?”
Quickly Lizzie used her foot to roll the bong underneath the couch, while Patrice, under the guise of helping herself to a handful of chips, grabbed the lighter.
“Nothing!” Lizzie said brightly. “We’re just watching TV.”
“No homework?” Her mother’s nose wrinkled. Lizzie took a surreptitious sniff. It still smelled pretty bad in the living room. “Did you spill something?”
“Just a little soda,” said Patrice.
“What’s that smell?” Sylvie asked. She bent and took off one high-heeled shoe, then the other.
“Mother,” Lizzie hissed, shooting Sylvie a stern look, one she hoped her mother would interpret as a cue not to ask too many questions about smells when Patrice was around. For a while, in the throes of her eating issues, she’d allowed herself nothing but kimchee, and her farts could clear rooms.
Sylvie looked at them for another long moment before walking, barefoot, down the hall, to Lizzie’s dad’s office, where she’d probably plan another party, a picnic or a parade or a Rotary Club sit-down, a street fair or a Jewish holiday where Diana, in her second year of med school, would be trotted around like My Pretty Pony, and to which Lizzie would most likely not be invited.
“Close call,” breathed Patrice, retrieving the bong, wrapping it in a towel, and tucking it into her bookbag. Lizzie thought of explaining that she could have been shooting heroin in front of her mother, her arm tied off with surgical tubing, the needle right there in her vein, and Sylvie would have chosen not to notice. Oh, it’s just vitamins, Lizzie would say, and Sylvie would give a vague wave, then retreat to the office to do something else for Lizzie’s dad.
Patrice scoope
d up the snacks, and shook her head once more at the screen, where yet another hapless mother was recounting giving birth on the toilet. “Tell you what,” she said. “If I was pregnant, I’d be knowing that shit.”
I’d be knowing that shit, Lizzie thought. At the Duane Reade on Seventy-second Street she pulled her baseball cap low over her forehead, on the off chance that someone would recognize a disgraced senator’s daughter shopping for sundries at eleven o’clock in the morning. Grabbing a plastic basket from a stack by the door, she loaded it with shampoo and deodorant, lip balm and skin cream, ponytail holders and razors … and then, in the Feminine Needs aisle, she bought tampons, napkins, and two home pregnancy tests.
I’m wrong, she thought. I’ve got to be wrong. We just did it that one time. No one can be so unlucky. Up in the apartment, she walked through the entryway lined with family photographs: her father at his inauguration, her father with the president, her parents all dressed up, dancing at some ball. These were all pictures other people had taken. She’d taken shots of her parents over the years, getting ready for parties or returning from them, but they’d never hung her work. They’d thank her and lavish praise on the framed pictures, but Lizzie didn’t know where they put them—only that she’d never seen them hung.
She dropped her purse on the table by the door and locked herself in the bathroom where she’d spent large swaths of her adolescence, rifling through the medicine cabinet, or puking, or under the influence, studying the fascinating topography of her face in the mirror. She read the instructions, then squatted over the toilet with first one indicator stick, then the other, beneath her, counting to five, then setting the sticks on the side of the sink and squeezing her eyes shut. One Mississippi, two Mississippi … after two minutes, she wiped, flushed, washed her hands, and looked at the sticks. One of them had two bright, distinct blue lines. The other had a plus sign. And even Lizzie, who’d nodded out in health class and skipped out on science, knew exactly what that meant.
Just tell him, Lizzie thought to herself, the way she’d been thinking for the two weeks since she found out she was pregnant. She got off the train at the 30th Street station and followed the crowd of passengers up the escalator and out to the street. Telling him was the right thing, the adult thing, to do. At least she was pretty sure that was the case. She would tell Jeff it was a mistake. God knows it was the truth, she thought, as she plodded along the sidewalk. She hadn’t been trying to trap him or trick him. It had just happened … and she would take care of it herself.
Jeff had sounded happy to hear from her the night before when she’d told him she’d be in town to visit her nephew and her sister. She’d been avoiding his calls ever since the positive pregnancy test, certain that if she spoke to him she’d wind up blurting out the news. When she finally called he’d asked if she was mad at him; if he’d done something wrong. “No,” she’d said, trying to sound as if she meant it. “No, I’ve just been busy. I’m not mad. Everything’s fine.”
“I’ve missed you,” he said, his voice warming. “Are things okay with your sister?”
“I think so,” she said.
He paused, then asked, “Do you want to stay over?” It was all Lizzie could do to keep from groaning out loud. If this hadn’t happened, she would have loved to spend a night in his sweet-smelling treehouse of a bedroom, snug in bed with him, warm and happy. But now … “Let’s play it by ear,” she said, even though she was pretty sure that once she gave him her news, the last thing he’d want would be her company. Probably he’d be angry at her, she thought, remembering how his jaw had tightened when he’d talked about his mother … and here she was, another irresponsible female, messing up his life.
She’d packed a bag, just in case, and then, steeling herself, she’d called her sister, leaving the same message on her home phone and her cell phone and her e-mail and her pager: I’m sorry for the misunderstanding (not that the misunderstanding was her fault, but she could afford to be the bigger person here—she knew the voice that had told her You can do this would concur on this matter). I’m coming to town. I would like to see you and Milo. None of her messages had gotten a response.
She walked through the gathering clouds all the way to Washington Square, which took her almost forty minutes. It was a gloomy gray day with a brisk wind blowing, and she wished she’d brought a sweater, and worn jeans and actual shoes instead of billowy cotton pants that ended mid-shin and flip-flops. She took the elevator up to Jeff’s apartment on the eleventh floor, making her way slowly down the hallway with her bag over her shoulder. She’d barely finished knocking when the door swung open, and there was Jeff, barefoot, in jeans and a collared shirt, with his hair still wet from the shower.
“Lizzie,” he said, and pulled her into his arms for a hug. They stepped into the apartment, with its family photos on one wall, its bright posters on the other, and—she squinted, making sure—the photograph she’d taken of him, the first night she was over, in a frame on the kitchen table. She looked over his shoulder, through the big window. From eleven floors above the street, the park looked like a puzzle, with wedges of green and lines of gray and the round fountain splashing in its center. “You look great,” said Jeff.
She doubted that this was true. Whether it was the hormones or the stress, she had a major zit on her chin, and her hair, in its customary bun, had gotten tangled on her way over. Holding her hand, Jeff walked her to the couch—she could see he’d fluffed the pillows and folded the blanket draped over its back. She wondered whether he’d planned on pulling her onto his big, soft bed for a predinner quickie. She could smell something cooking in the kitchen, the rich smells of garlic and onions and chicken, she thought, roasting in the oven, and all she wanted to do was take off her clothes and be with him on that big blue-quilted bed. Was this normal? Were pregnant ladies even supposed to get horny? Maybe there was something wrong with her.
Jeff leaned in for a kiss. Lizzie turned her head away. “Can I talk to you for a sec?” she asked.
Looking puzzled, Jeff shrugged and stepped aside, letting her walk past him. “Sure thing.” Lizzie pulled her bag off her shoulder and pressed it against her midriff. Jeff sat on the couch while she stood by the window that looked out over the cloudy sky and the clean-angled lawns of the park, and spoke without turning to face him.
“So listen,” she said. Soonest begun, soonest done, Grandma Selma always said. Lizzie’s hands and knees were trembling, the muscles in her legs were twitching. She wanted to move, to hurry back out into the hallway, down the elevator, out onto the street, to run away from what she had to tell him.
“Whatever it is, you can tell me sitting down,” he said, patting the cushion again, but Lizzie knew better. Start on the couch, and end up in the bed. She took a deep breath, trying to still her jittery body … but when she opened her mouth she found that she could barely speak. All her good intentions had evaporated; all her words were gone.
He was staring at her. “What is it?” he asked again.
“I’m …” She swallowed hard, then said, “I’m an addict.”
Jeff’s face was as shocked as if she’d slapped him. “What?”
Lizzie bent her head, not wanting to see the way his eyes had widened and his mouth had dropped open. “I was in rehab this spring, before I started working for Diana.”
“So you’re okay now?” Before she could answer, he gave an unhappy laugh. “Never mind. Stupid question. If I told you how many times I heard my mom …” He pressed his lips together hard.
“Heard her what?” Lizzie whispered. Jeff got to his feet and walked to the window.
“Heard her say that she was fine. That she was done drinking forever. Forever was usually a couple of months. Then it would all start again.”
She was gripping the straps of her bag so hard that her knuckles were white. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I should have told you.”
Jeff exhaled, shoving his hands in his pockets and finally turning toward her. “No. I
t’s … I mean, you were going to tell me eventually, right?”
“Of course,” said Lizzie, who actually wasn’t sure. She’d never thought in terms of eventually. She’d never had a guy hang around that long.
He turned to look at her. “So are you okay? Do you think … ?” His voice trailed off. He stared at her hopefully and she knew, looking at his open face, that she couldn’t go through with it, couldn’t tell him the rest of it. He’d had a drunk for a mother, and she had failed him, that was clear. How could Lizzie tell him she was pregnant, pregnant and, in Jeff’s mind, getting ready to start the same sad dance over again?
“I think I’m okay,” she said. “I think I’m actually done with it. I think I’m going to be fine.”
“Yeah?” Everything about him—the look on his face, the tone of his voice, the way his body had turned toward her—said that he wanted to believe it. Time to go, Lizzie thought. Time to go before I tell him everything and break his heart.
“What time is it?” she asked.
Jeff looked puzzled. “Five-thirty.”
“Oh my God! I totally forgot! I told Diana I’d pick Milo up after his chess club …” She slung her bag over her shoulder. “I’ve got to run.”
“Wait,” he said. “Hang on. You just got here! What about dinner?”
“I’ll come back,” she said.
He still looked puzzled as he held the door open for her. “I’ll walk you down.”
“No, no, I’ll be fine. I can just grab a cab on Walnut Street.” Poor Jeff looked astonished as he gestured toward the kitchen. “I can keep everything warm.”
Lizzie felt her insides cramp. No boy had ever cooked dinner for her before. The guys she’d been with, she felt lucky if they had a few bucks for a slice of pizza. “I’ll come right back,” she promised … and then she stepped forward, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed his cheek, choking back a sob because she knew it would be the last time she touched him, the last time she was in these rooms, the last time she saw him. “You’re a good guy,” she whispered. Find someone else, she thought. Be happy. You deserve it.
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