The Atlas of Love

by Laurie Frankel

  Katie came over at ten-thirty, bearing what she calls popcorn, but which is actually popcorn mixed with that gross glazed oriental snack mix you scoop out of plastic bins in the bulk section of the grocery store. Some holdover from growing up in Hawaii. She loves it. I just pick out the popcorn.

  “So, how was it?”

  “Mmm,” she said, very noncommittal, by which she meant that it did not go well, but she wasn’t ready to say so in case she was wrong and fell in love with him later. She gave me a highly typical play-by-play. Nice enough, cute enough, smart enough, but not overly impressive on any front. He talked a lot about mouths and teeth, to be expected I guess, but still a little alarming. He did his mission in Canada (a wussy mission, in my opinion, though it was evidently chosen for him by God, so who am I to say), his undergrad at Rutgers, his childhood in northern New Jersey.

  “Doesn’t that get him off the hook for being a Yankee fan? I mean he’s from there. Everyone roots for the team where they’re from.”

  “Root for the Mets,” I said. “What else?”

  “He taught high school chemistry for a year before dental school and hated it,” she offered.

  “Teaching’s not for everyone,” I said, though I am suspicious of people who don’t like to teach. On the other hand, I’m not teaching high school chemistry and would rather die, so I really can’t judge.

  “His favorite author is Sports Illustrated.” She tried and failed to offer this with a straight face. “He didn’t know George Eliot. He didn’t even know Charlotte Brontë had any sisters.” Katie is obsessed with all three Brontës, but we are snotty about literature and know it.

  “I can’t think of the last textbook I read on dental care,” I offered.

  “Yeah, but then I told him that a friend of mine was unmarried and pregnant, and he wanted to know why I was friends with her, and I said I was already friends with her before she got pregnant, and he said why wasn’t I doing something to stop her, and I said my friends’ sex lives are really none of my business, and he said they were and got really annoyed.”

  I didn’t say anything. It was a deal breaker, and we both knew it. Though in his defense, obviously, it was totally our business.

  Meanwhile at Jill’s, no one was eating anything. All of that beautiful dinner just being pushed around on plates. When Dan got there, she opened the door and told him right away. She couldn’t wait. She’d been making herself sick about it. They talked for seeming days. Then she kicked him out, put everything in Tupperwares, and came over. No sense letting all that food go to waste. Not that we were much interested in eating either. It was late, and we were two hours into popcorn with nasty Asian snack mix.

  “He said no,” she said, which communicated nearly nothing.

  “What do you mean, honey?” Katie prompted, arm around her overgently.

  “He said no. He said . . . no.” She looked dazed. She’d been crying. I couldn’t think what she might have asked him to which Daniel could possibly have answered a straight yes or no.

  “He doesn’t want to be a father right now. He doesn’t want a baby. He came over. I told him I was pregnant. He looked . . . surprised, but not mad, not unhappy. He said ‘wow’ a lot. He asked when I found out and when I would be due—he kept using this weird conditional tense right from the start. He did not ask if I were sure, which is good because that’s a stupid, cliché thing to ask. He did not ask if I were sure it was his, which is good because that’s even worse. He said ‘wow’ some more. He said, ‘What are your thoughts?’ He was being really nice, but he wasn’t talking much, and so finally I just said, ‘Daniel, I don’t think I want an abortion. I think I want to have the baby,’ and he said, ‘Okay. I want to have an abortion.’ ” She stopped and looked up at us to make sure that our faces mirrored the incredulity in hers. They did.

  “But he can’t have an abortion.” Katie started with the obvious. “He’s not pregnant.”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t want to be a father,” Jill explained. “He doesn’t want us to have a baby. He wants us to have an abortion.”

  “So what did you say?”

  “Well, I was really upset and really hurt and very sad that he didn’t want to be part of this kid’s life and very sad that he was willing to just let me go like that, but I was at least sort of prepared for this answer. I had a speech. I forgot most of it when the time came, but basically I was like, ‘Okay, well, thanks, why don’t you think about it for a while and get back to me about what role you would like to play, like none or just a little or what . . .’ But he was shaking his head like I didn’t get it, and he said, ‘No, I don’t want you to have our baby but I wouldn’t be part of its life. I don’t want you to have our baby. I want to get an abortion.’ ”

  “That’s not his decision,” Katie whispered.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘Why not? Just because it’s not my body? It’s my baby.’ ”

  Seven

  On Sunday, we retreated to our own apartments and our own computers and our own piles of books and wrote. It’s funny that you can do that—just turn off the part of your brain that’s in emotional crisis and turn on the part that thinks about the role of the reader in Dante’s Inferno and let that one take over completely for a little while. It is nice to have days when you wake up and write, and seventeen hours later you go to bed, and in between you wander around the house a few times and eat leftovers for about five minutes standing over your computer and mainline water and otherwise write and write and write. By midweek though, I was ready for fresh air, ready for human contact, ready to find out what other people thought was important in the world (it probably wasn’t the reader in Dante’s Inferno). So on Wednesday, I went to grade and caffeinate at Joe Bar. And it was there that I ran into Daniel.

  Daniel looked worse than three days cooped up writing. Daniel looked like he hadn’t eaten or slept since Saturday. He was sitting outside, wrapped in far too many clothes for newly May warmth and sunshine, slunk down into a faded, once black, hooded sweatshirt, staring at an open—blank—notebook. He looked miserable. Even through the window, even in the glaring sunshine, he looked spent and very sad.

  “Hey,” I said gently, handing him a fresh cup of coffee and sitting down.

  He looked up and smiled a “hey” that seemed full of relief, I suppose, that I was still talking to him but also maybe surprise that the world was still going round out there.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  He snorted. “I think you know.”

  “Yeah. How are you holding up?”

  “Not well, actually. That talk did not go well.”

  “Have you talked to her since?”

  “Why don’t you know that?”

  “We’ve been writing for a few days.”

  “I haven’t,” he said. “I don’t know who should call.”

  “Uh, you?” I said. As in duh. As in obviously obviously you. How is that not clear?

  “What? To apologize?”

  “To talk more?”

  “I said I’d think about it some more and call her when I figured something out. She said she’d do the same. I haven’t figured anything out, so it seems stupid for me to call.”

  “Are you mad at her?” I was getting mad at him.

  “No,” he said, but he didn’t sound sure. And then exasperated, plaintive, almost whining, “I don’t want to have a baby, Janey.”

  “I gathered,” I said. “But it seems like you might be having one anyway, so that’s evidently not the decision anymore.”

  “Abortion is legal. It’s safe. There’s a Planned Parenthood within walking distance for godsake. It’s not killing a baby. You don’t think so. Jill doesn’t think so. She’s pro-choice—”

  “Yeah, and I think she’s choosing to have the baby,” I interrupted.

  “But why is that only her choice?” he demanded. He had clearly been thinking this over and over for the last thre
e days, having this conversation in his head, concluded for sure that he was right. And I just looked at him and couldn’t say anything because I was sure he knew the answer. “I mean yes, right, it’s her body,” he continued, taking in my face. “That’s why I can’t force her to have the baby. That’s why it’s not fair for the government to decide for her just because she gets pregnant. But that’s not why she gets to choose to have it. That’s a different question. If I wanted to be a father and she wanted to get an abortion, there’d be no question. Her body, her choice. Now I’m saying I don’t want to be a father right now. I’m graduating from college in a week, Janey. I don’t have a job. I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I do know I want to take the summer off and go to San Francisco with my band. I do know that having a baby wouldn’t feel magical or wondrous. It would feel like I was being punished. It would feel like I was giving up everything. It would destroy the future I have in my mind where ten years from now I have a career I’m good at and a wife I love and children I planned and chose. It would erase that future. I would be resentful and angry and scared. I would feel forced into it. This isn’t what I want right now. I should be able to choose something else. It’s not my fault.” He got shriller and more animated, more sure, more upset as he talked. He didn’t want a baby. He was twenty. He’d been dating Jill only since January. I understood. How could I not?

  “Okay,” I said softly. “You don’t want a baby. They’ll be okay . . .” Even as I was saying this, I wasn’t sure it was the right thing—I was feeling it out—but he was shaking his head.

  “No, you don’t get it,” he said, impatient. “I don’t want to desert my baby. I don’t want to desert Jill. I don’t even want to break up with her. And I don’t want to go around my whole life knowing I abandoned my family and they’re out there—this kid is out there—without me. I want it to not be this way. I want to undo it. I want it to go away.”

  “I don’t think you can have that,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he grunted sarcastically. “If only there were some safe and legal procedure to put a stop to this situation before it became an unwanted child.”

  “It’s not an unwanted child,” I pointed out carefully. “Jill wants it.”

  “But I don’t,” he said. “It’s not like we would have tried to get pregnant. We wouldn’t have. If we’d discussed it, we’d have said now is not a good time so let’s wait. And what’s killing me is we could go back there. We could wait. We could give this relationship a chance and have children when we decide to, when it’s our decision, both of us. It wouldn’t even be hard. But she won’t. And I’m the bad guy for wanting to make her. It’s a mistake. That’s all.”

  “Mistakes happen though,” I said. “Then you have to step up and take responsibility.”

  “I am.” He was almost yelling. “I am taking responsibility. I will pay for the abortion. I will go with her and hold her hand. I will be with her while she recovers. I will be with her while she’s sad. I’ll be sad too. We’ll be sad together. It’s not like this is so easy for me. We’ll get through this. We’ll move on. That is taking responsibility, not doing what she wants just because she wants it.”

  “I think she wants this baby,” I tried to explain gently.

  “It’s not a baby!” He looked at me, incredulous, a little wild-eyed. “You know how I know? Because I had you for Intro to Comp and her for a girlfriend. Plus several courses in biology.”

  “You choose no. She chooses yes. And it’s her yes vote, so I guess that trumps your no.” I shrugged helplessly and said nothing for a while, just sat with him quietly hoping that would help. “I’m really sorry,” I added lamely. I was too. Sorry and torn. And not certain. Dan’s arguments were compelling, the more so because he was being responsible. He was being honest. He sounded like he might be right. But I still didn’t think he was.

  “I’ll talk to her,” I offered. “I don’t think she understands your position. Meantime though, you should think about what you want to do when she decides not to have an abortion. Because I think that’s what she’s going to decide. And I think it’s going to be her decision.” I laid my hand on the back of his hung head for a moment before I left. He didn’t say anything or even look at me or move. Everything suspended for a moment, two. Finally he looked up at me and smiled. “Thanks Janey. I needed to talk. It was good. It’ll be okay.” But in his eyes, I saw that he didn’t know how. And neither did I.

  Eight

  Jason was sitting on the steps reading a clearly for-pleasure novel when I came outside having just handed in my final papers.

  “Done?” He grinned, handing me one of the two iced coffees beside him. He was waiting for me evidently.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “You’re looking pretty postcoital,” he said.

  “You too?”

  “Yup. That obvious?”

  “You wouldn’t smile unless you were done too.” Finishing a school year rivals being in love for best feeling in the world. The jealousy of it knows no bounds, which is why I wouldn’t talk to Jill or Katie for a couple days until they were done too. The sleeplessness and tedium of two straight weeks of reading, writing, grading, and, this semester, panicking, felt far behind. I had a whole summer stretched out before me. That I had slept four hours total in the previous forty-eight, that I started teaching summer session in just a couple weeks, that nothing had been resolved, didn’t matter at the moment. It was May at last. It was warm and bright. I could do anything I wanted, guilt-free, all day. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow barely crept at all. I had survived another April. It was cause for jubilation.

  “I thought you were quitting the latte addiction after grades were in,” I said.

  “April,” he said as if that explained everything. “Besides, it’s not like I’m pregnant.”

  “Mmm,” I said.

  “Mmm? What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. I’m supposed to be surprised you’re not pregnant?”

  “Oh come on, Janey. Tell me. My life is so boring. You have to help me.”

  I scowled at him. Jason and his boyfriend Lucas had been together for seven years. Good—and boring—as married. They lived in Olympia, more than an hour south, which meant I had Jason on my couch when he had to be at school late or early or was too drunk or tired to drive home. Lucas was the head chef at a restaurant in Olympia called Ever After. Very popular. He went to work nearly every day. They paid him a real salary. He read books only for fun. He was our hero. And pretty much as alien to our lives as if he played professional baseball. “Your life is boring,” I admitted finally. “How did you know?”

  “Oh Janey, everyone knows.” He rolled his eyes. I was stunned. I couldn’t imagine how anyone knew. “What’s she going to do? Is she keeping it?” It seemed remarkable to me that everyone was going to be so willing to ask such a stunningly personal, intimate question right out of the box. And the terminology “keeping it” is weird. What’s the opposite of keep?

  “I think she’s going to have a baby,” I said and thrilled a little guiltily at the conspiratorial drama. He gasped, grinned, nattered on beside me. This news had shattered Daniel, the worst news of his life. But it thrilled Jason as it would most people who heard it. It was great gossip. It would prove endlessly, renewably interesting because it wouldn’t end—she’d just get more and more pregnant and then there’d be a baby to discuss. It had the feel of scandal. We all graded half a dozen research papers each semester on the tragedy of unwed mothers. This was like that but without the heartbreak. It was the plot without the tragedy.

  “What did Dan say?” asked Jason. Was telling a betrayal? I didn’t want to gossip—not just because it didn’t seem fair but also because, really, it felt like my life—but I also really wanted to gossip. Two weeks of literary criticism bred a craving to talk about things real. And nothing was more real than this.

  “He’s not so much wanting to be a father.”

  “Too bad?” asked Jas
on. It was a question. Is it too bad?

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess she’s going to do it without him?”

  “He’s leaving her?” Jason gasped.

  I shrugged. “He isn’t leaving her. He just doesn’t want to do this. I don’t know what they’ll do.”

  “What an asshole. Too late to make that decision,” he said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You think he has to be a father if he isn’t ready just because Jill is?”

  “If he wasn’t ready, he shouldn’t have been having sex,” said Jason.

  “Oh that’s bullshit. What are you—Focus on the Family? Besides, that’s easy for you to say. You can have sex all you want, and no one gets pregnant.”

  “Ohmygod, speaking of which, Lucas’s friend Ed called last night to tell us his ex-boyfriend Martin knocked up some girl and is getting married. Stupid fags. No clue how to use birth control . . .” And we were off. Jason moved seamlessly from one bit of gossip to the next, all equally titillating and ridiculous. He was a very close friend of ours. But Jill’s crisis was as removed for him as his boyfriend’s friend’s ex-boyfriend’s poor, knocked-up fiancée. Somehow I wasn’t feeling that distance.

  Nine

  Secondhand sources are never one hundred percent reliable. Firsthand ones, when they are pregnant and in love and borderline hysterical, aren’t always much better. So I might be shaky on some of the details. I do know that Daniel was over at Jill’s nearly every night after I ran into him at the coffee shop, that they talked and talked until neither wanted to talk about it ever again, until they didn’t even want to see each other anymore. They talked and also spent a lot of time not talking and just holding each other and also spent a lot of time having a lot of sex because, at that point, why not? I know that Jill didn’t just ignore his feelings on the matter, that she heard his point of view and deeply considered it, that Daniel didn’t just up and leave, that he heard her viewpoint too, even tried to change his own, that they continued to love each other, that Daniel tried hard to grow up instantaneously those first few weeks after he graduated from college. I know that negotiations took place. I can promise that tears were shed on all sides. Hearts were broken, to be sure, but not recklessly or thoughtlessly, and if I can’t perfectly reproduce those conversations Jill and Daniel had, I can promise that they were had with full hearts.