Random Acts of Hope

by Julia Kent

  “She did it again.”

  “Did what?” Darla asked.

  “Cheated on me.”

  “Huh?” Sam made a strange raspy noise.

  Amy’s hand flew to her mouth. “Charlotte’s pregnant again?”

  I just blinked. My stupid eyes. In the rush of my life imploding I’d forgotten to clean my contacts. My eyes were drier than Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents’ dinner.

  I expected Sam to start blustering about it all, like he usually did, but everyone just looked like they’d rather be getting colonoscopies than be in the room with me.

  “I think you need to get tested,” Amy and Darla said in unison. Like they planned it. But they didn’t.

  “For what? I’m clean. I don’t have any STDs.”

  “Not that kind of test.” Darla shook her wrist up and down. “The kind that involves a cup, and I don’t mean Two Girls, One Cup.”

  “Sperm test? No way. I can’t be the father.”

  “You used birth control, right?”

  “We…well, the…sort of.”

  “There is no ‘sort of’ when it comes to birth control. Do or do not. There is no try.” Darla’s eyes were wide with skepticism and authority.

  “You’re quoting Yoda at me after Charlotte tells me she’s pregnant with a baby that can’t be mine. For the second time in five years.”

  “The fact that it’s weird doesn’t make it any less true.”

  “I can’t be fertile. I can’t. My swimmers are dead,” I insisted. And yet already something in me was unraveling, because lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice.

  Does it?

  Long shots aren’t supposed to be repeatable. That’s why they’re long shots.

  “You keep saying that. Go jerk off in a cup. Get the damn test,” Darla said.

  “What if…”

  “What if?”

  “What if the test comes back and just confirms what I already know? That’s a lot of money that I don’t have right now.”

  “What happened to your Eden money?” Sam asked.

  “Gone.”

  “What?” We’d each earned $10,000 for a performance last year.

  “Dude, it was, like, $6000 after taxes and I need to eat. And drive. And pay rent and shit.”

  “Go to your dad and get the cash. Or your mom.” Sam’s advice was nice and all, but he didn’t understand. None of them did.

  “And explain what? ‘Hi, Mom, I need to go to the same doctor who confirmed I’m shooting blanks because I didn’t get Charlotte pregnant again’? That would—”

  “When you say ‘sorta used birth control,’ what do you mean?” Darla interrupted.

  “Condom broke.”

  Every man in the room jumped a little and flinched. “That can really happen? I thought it was an urban legend,” Sam choked.

  “When you’ve got a big cock, it stretches, and—”

  A pillow smacked me across the face. “Cut it out,” Sam said. “Seriously? Condoms break? I thought that was a myth.”

  “Nope. It broke and Charlotte freaked and—holy fucking shit,” I groaned, holding my head in my hands. “This is all my fault. No, it’s not! It’s can’t be!”

  “He’s losing it,” Darla shouted to no one in particular.

  “What is it, Liam?” Amy asked.

  “When the condom broke, Charlotte panicked and insisted I take her to a drug store or whatever or to go home and get her Plan B. Some sort of pill you take—”

  “In case the condom breaks,” Darla and Amy said in unison.

  “I swear you two were separated at birth,” I muttered.

  “So you did!” Darla said with relief.

  “Uh, no.”

  “Why not?” She and Amy were in stereo. Bose should snap them up for their research labs.

  “Because that’s when I told her I was sterile.”

  Again, all the eyes lasered on me. “You told Charlotte for the first time ever about your sterility when you were in bed, finished having sex and you slid the broken condom out of her?” Amy asked in a high, disapproving voice.

  She sounded like my mother.

  “When you put it that way it sounds so…”

  “Vulgar!”

  “Stupid!”

  “Badass!”

  “Day-um!”

  All of them surrounded me with so many interjections and judgments about me that I shot to my feet, ready to bolt.

  “Okay, okay, I don’t need to hear this shit. I get it. I fucked up, bad.”

  “She didn’t take Plan B because you told her she didn’t have to,” Amy said. The simplicity of her words made my teeth ache.

  “Yes.”

  “And now she’s pregnant,” Darla added.

  “But it can’t be mine!”

  “Liam,” Amy said softly, crouching down and looking up at me, forcing eye contact. “You’re in some sort of crazy denial. You can be really arrogant and cocky and think your way is always the best, but on this one you’re wrong.”

  “I can’t be, I just…”

  “Why not?”

  “Because then what have I done?” I shouted, the sound growing into a low moan of pain. “If it turns out the doctors were wrong, my Mom and Dad were wrong, and somehow I defied science and my swimmers came back, then I spent more than seven years living a lie!”

  I started to pace, my feet moving of their own accord, as if they were trying to escape.

  But they were trying to escape me.

  And that was as impossible as my being the father of Charlotte’s child.

  Twice.

  “And that means what I did to Charlotte five years ago—Jesus fucking Christ, if some guy did that to any woman in my life I’d fucking kill him! I destroyed her! I cut her out and forced myself to close up and pretend it all never happened because that kind of pain was like being sent through a meat grinder every day, then waking up and starting over, staying alive but walking around raw and twitching.”

  All three of them just watched me. Once the flood walls were breached, I couldn’t let the rush of words stop.

  “If that baby was mine—and this one is, too—then it means all these years I’ve spent bracing myself for not having kids, for having to explain it to women, for all of the pain it’s caused—that was for nothing! Worse than for nothing, because it means I was…I…I threw away the most important person in the world. The most important people! Because my baby was part of that. And when Charlotte lost the baby I wasn’t there. Wasn’t there…”

  “Staying in the dark isn’t going to change any of that. I think we should take up a collection if you don’t have the cash for the test,” Sam said roughly. He was eyeing Amy with a kind of protectiveness I knew all too well. It was how I felt about Charlotte.

  “No. I can ask my mom,” I groaned.

  Darla reached for my phone and handed it to me. “Do it now.”

  What if? What if something changed and everything I thought I knew about my future was wrong?

  One phone call.

  One phone call was all it took.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Liam

  “Welcome aboard, Liam.” Dad showed me to the new office where I’d start my job as sales manager in four days. As I walked past the bank of windows that looked in on the tiny cubicles that I’d walked past a thousand times since childhood, my own reflection surprised me.

  It was me, but it wasn’t…me.

  The day Charlotte left that voicemail I’d called Mom. Explained everything. She offered to pay for the sperm test and referred me to my old doctor. The entire process was fucking fast.

  Meanwhile, I’d texted Charlotte and simply said, I got your message. We’ll talk soon. It will be okay. That was about all I could say.

  Within five days the test results came in.

  It turned out I was douchebag positive after all.

  Just enough motility and a bunch of other words that blend together into the chant of Asshol
e Asshole Asshole in a ringing chorus in my head.

  In other words: long shot of long shots, I had just enough functional sperm to conceive a child.

  The first call I’d made after the doctor confirmed it wasn’t to Charlotte.

  It was my dad.

  The second the doctor told me the sperm count came back positive—“This is rare, Liam. There is no way to know how long they’ve been active. I hope you’ve been using condoms…”—a series of gears clicked into place in my head. Like a machine being cleaned up and activated, put to good, solid use, it was predestined.

  I knew exactly what to do, step by step.

  Step one: get a good job with benefits.

  Step two: look the part of a responsible father and (eventually, please let her not hate me) husband.

  Step three: go see Charlotte and grovel at her feet for eternity, praying to whatever entity would hear me out and sacrificing goats and chickens in the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s honor in an effort to get her to trust me again.

  Step four: tell the band I have to quit.

  So far, so good. Of all the steps, you’d think number three would be the hardest.

  Step three was coming later, after I finished up with dad. Who was going on about balance sheets and quotas and how glad he was I took some finance classes in college because they needed people with a head for figures.

  My hair was cut shorter than it had been since high school, and the suit was new. Dad said I could get away with wearing a polo with the dealership’s logo on it and nice khaki pants, but I wanted to immerse myself in the part. It wasn’t so much about selling out as it was about taking responsibility. Being in the band, stripping for a living, all that…freedom came with a level of looseness that you can’t live with when you’re raising a kid.

  At least, that was what I thought I was supposed to think.

  I needed to have every external sign of responsibility and commitment going for me, because in a few hours I’d show up at Charlotte’s door and have to ’fess up that it turned out I wasn’t sterile. I wasn’t exactly overflowing with tadpoles, but if all the odds lined up just right, then yes, it was possible for me to be the father of this baby.

  And the last one.

  The one I’d never been around for, even for those short ten weeks it had been inside her.

  Grief has a weird way of showing itself when it comes as a result of facts you learn long after the original event. A baby Charlotte still mourned deeply, in ways I could never understand, had been the catalyst for my dumping her, because it represented betrayal—dishonesty—a massive slap in the face.

  Now it represented something completely different. My own failure to trust her, to question medical science, to look deeper. I’d been a stupid kid who made a knee-jerk decision based on facts. Facts I trusted. And had no reason not to trust.

  Facts that were wrong. Bedrock, conclusively wrong.

  This was so fucking complicated.

  “You look like a young version of your Uncle Jerry,” Dad said, sizing me up. I looked in the glass and realized he was right. Mom’s brother, who had been a champion surfer for ten years before settling down with Aunt Jane, a former model. We saw them once a year and he’d taught me how to surf out in Half Moon Bay, near where they lived in California.

  “That good?”

  “Well, there’s a little of your old man in you.” He added a wink and that fake laugh. “Especially the part that’s good with the ladies.” I tried to imitate his laugh but it died, fast, on my lips.

  If I just followed the rules this time, met society’s expectations for what it means to be a good dad, a good provider, a good partner, then maybe life wouldn’t fall apart.

  Maybe this whole conformity thing wouldn’t be so bad.

  “You seem antsy. What’s up?”

  “Gotta go see Charlotte.”

  His face seemed to collapse a little. “Yeah, about that, son. I’m still completely floored by all this. A baby? How wonderful.” More fakery, though I knew from his sick smile it wasn’t that he was unhappy about the current baby. He and Mom were overjoyed that my sterility had somehow begun to reverse itself. “Overjoyed” would be an understatement. Mom actually bought some baby clothes for her grandchild already on Etsy.

  An unsettled feeling made my stomach flip. I’d told Mom about Charlotte and everything from five years ago, but never my dad.

  “She’s pregnant now, and was pregnant five years ago, and you were supposed to be sterile but now you’re not,” he said quietly, as if restating the truth made it easier to swallow.

  “Right.”

  He shook his head slowly. “Sounds like a cable television movie.”

  “Feels like one, too.”

  A wry smile greeted my words. “But it’s all good. It got you in here. You’re stepping up and being a man.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”

  No matter how great my need to hear those words out of his mouth had been over the years, I’d never changed my life choices simply to hear him say it. This was different. I was choosing to come work for him because I wanted to. I wanted to be more. Better. Solid and dependable, because I wanted that for Charlotte and the baby.

  Our baby.

  I’d fucked it up five years ago, and this time I would line everything up so the odds worked in my favor.

  “Thanks, Dad. Nice Hallmark moment.”

  “I’m going to ruin it by grabbing the newspaper and spending the next thirty minutes on the can.”

  “Yep. Ruined.” He gave me one of those gestures where you make your hand into a gun and he closed his thumb over his index finger.

  Pow.

  Charlotte

  One text. That was it. One text for the past week and while I lived in turmoil and confusion, Liam’s entire representation in my world was a single, ambiguous text.

  “You contact him yet?”

  Maggie. With a four-pack of Jamaican Ginger Beer (non-alcoholic). She rattled the bottles. “Need some? The lady at the health food store swore it was great for morning sickness.”

  “Keep your voice down!” I hissed. She was in my doorway, and so help me God, if a student learned the truth…

  “Sorry!” She pulled one out, screwed the top, and handled the ice-cold bottle to me. I took a very tentative sip.

  “That’s not bad!”

  “Told you. She said it was the best thing for your stomach, but to keep it down to two a day. Then she talked for a while about red raspberry leaf tea and pressure points, and by the time she talked about chakras and Reiki energy fields my eyes had glazed over like a fourth-grader’s decoupage project.”

  My stomach made an ominous bubbling sound. I felt green. And then, just as one of my male resident assistants walked in to turn in a duty report, I let out a belch that rivaled anything you’d hear at a frat party during Rush Week.

  “I’m impressed!” he said, golf clapping.

  I took a tiny bow. It made my head spin. “Jamaican Ginger Beer.”

  “Have to try it some time.”

  Maggie snickered. “Only if you’re a medical miracle, Tim,” she said as he walked down the hall.

  I whacked her with a folder. “It isn’t funny! You’re going to give it away!” Hot, sad tears filled my eyes without warning.

  “I’m sorry. Seriously. I am. I just can’t stop joking.”

  Belch.

  “He was right,” she said, thumbing toward the door. “Impressive.”

  A student’s father appeared, all suit jacket and tight haircut, his back turned to us. Wait. No, not a dad. That ass was a little too fine and high in his well-cut suit, the broad shoulders tapering in. Maybe one of the guys in fundraising and development? Occasionally they trolled Res Life for—

  And then he turned around.

  “Liam?” I exclaimed. “What did you do?”

  “Not one single person recognized me,” he said, looking nervous and composed at the same time. “Not one chick. Guess that means t
his”—he gestured from his chin to his waist—“worked.”

  “You look like a completely different person!”

  “That’s the point. I am a completely different person.”

  Uh oh.

  The short hair made his jaw stand out, muscles taut with nervousness but sculpted around his rugged chin, the lines of his face angular and sure. Liam was tall—taller than me, which was rare when it came to men—and the cut of his suit was the kind you don’t find on the rack at Men’s Wearhouse. He’d dropped a pretty penny on a tailored wool suit, wingtip shoes, cuff links that glittered like diamonds, and an overall look that screamed Successful Businessman.

  Not Cocky Rock Star.

  I wasn’t sure which Liam I liked better.

  “I’ll get going now,” Maggie said, “unless you need me?” One pierced eyebrow crooked up slowly, the glittering gold hoop and post lifting up like a pulley had been activated.

  “No,” I said hoarsely. The ginger beer pooled in my stomach like hot lead. “I’m fine.”

  She rested one hand on Liam’s arm, the contrast between her black fingernails and his blue pinstripes like some metaphor for life. “You hurt her again, that snake won’t be face-fucking a blowup doll.”

  “Maggie!” I gasped.

  Liam’s nervous blue-green eyes kept her gaze, penetrating the tension in the room. He didn’t shake her off, didn’t shift, didn’t move one single muscle.

  “Got it. But you don’t have to worry.”

  Maggie dropped her touch and looked at me. “I’ll be in my office if you need me.” She looked at Liam, hard, green hair pulled back behind her tiny ears. “And she’d better not need me.”

  His curt nod was enough to make her leave.

  “Good friend,” he said with a low, tense sigh.

  “Yes, she is,” was all I could say. And then I added a nasty burp for good measure. “You’re…what are you doing here?”

  “I came to talk to you. Are you working?”

  “Yes. Office hours. Students come and see me and I pretend to help them.”

  “I can pretend for you,” Maggie interrupted. She obviously hadn’t really left, her head peeking in.

  I gave her a death glare. “You were supposed to be gone! I am not dropping everything just because Liam decides to waltz in and—”