Sarah's Choice

by Rebecca St. James

  “You going to take an infant in there?”

  “No, but—”

  “Your dining-out menu is always going to be on a board you read while you’re standing in line with a kid on your hip. And forget sleeping. Do you have any idea how many times a night a newborn wakes up?”

  “Do you?” Sarah heard the irritation in her own voice, and she didn’t quite care.

  “Not from personal experience, but I’ve seen enough post-maternity-leave women drag themselves in here in the morning with bags under their eyes they’d have to check at the counter if they were boarding a flight. And their productivity?” She turned a thumb downward. “In the toilet. Which means no promotions. No raises. No chance that their lives are ever going to get any better.” Megan’s eyes narrowed. “And, Sarah, those women had husbands.”

  “Why don’t you just say it? You think I should have an abortion.”

  “I think you should have an abortion.”

  Again the words she had no plans to say came out: “I can’t see myself doing it.”

  Megan took the chair across from Sarah and reached over the space between them to put her hand on Sarah’s. It was as cool as everything else about her.

  “Number ten on the list: ‘The more you resist something, the more likely it is that it’s exactly what you need.’ ”

  She squeezed Sarah’s hand and almost smiled at her.

  Sarah wilted. “I’m not going to say that doesn’t all make sense, because it does. But last night—”

  “You talked to Matt, didn’t you?”

  “This was after that.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to tell him until you decided what to do.”

  Actually it was Megan who thought that, but Sarah pushed that aside. “This weird thing happened. Just . . . just tell me what you think about it.”

  Megan shrugged and leaned back in her chair, arms folded. “Go for it.”

  “Yesterday at the clinic this woman gave me a card.”

  “Right. The number to call to set up your appointment for the—”

  “No, this wasn’t somebody who worked there. It was this older woman who looked familiar . . . anyway, she handed me a Christmas card and said the Lord was going to give me three visions.”

  Megan broke her own rule and rolled her eyes.

  “That’s what I thought too,” Sarah said. “But last night when I went to bed, I had one.”

  “One what?”

  “A vision. I thought it was a dream. Maybe it was. But it was more real than a dream. And there was this baby—”

  Megan put a hand up. “Okay, stop. You can’t let these religious people get to you. You’re the one who’s always complaining because your mother tries to shove the whole church thing down your throat.”

  “I know. But this—”

  “Was a dream. Like I said, your hormones are totally off the charts. You can’t make a decision like this based on something your messed-up body chemistry tells you. I don’t even go shopping when I have PMS.”

  Sarah stood up. “I have to get to work.”

  “Just think about what I’m saying to you, all right?”

  Sarah wasn’t sure how she could think of anything else unless she got out of there. And right now that was what she had to do, before she melted down all over Megan’s glass-topped desk.

  “Sarah?”

  She stopped, hand on the doorknob. Megan’s voice was low.

  “I admit my motives are partly selfish. I don’t want you to leave Carson. You’re the only friend I have here.”

  Once she was out in the hall, Sarah had to go anyplace but her tiny office where the tasks that were supposed to raise her to a new level would press down on her. That level seemed so far out of reach now, the only place she wanted to go was out.

  She rounded a corner in the labyrinth of cubicles and spotted the glass door exit to the outdoor courtyard. Not even the smokers ventured out there when the temperatures dropped into the single digits, but Sarah headed for it now and let herself out. Frigid air cut into her face and seeped through the sleeves of her sweater, and she had to hug her body with her arms to get her breath. It hung in solid puffs before her as she walked, cold-stiff, to the latticework that shielded the courtyard from the city below.

  Sarah clutched the diamonds of the wood lattice with her fingers and stared through the openings. Buses groaned and passed. Taxis honked and jockeyed for position in the traffic. People crossed the street in overcoats and lamb’s wool scarves pulled over their noses and went about their business because they could. They weren’t trying to make decisions that would haunt them forever like howling wolves, no matter what they chose.

  Heaviness pushed down on Sarah’s shoulders, the same heaviness she felt in the car the day before, when Megan fell silent and she was alone with the choice. Today she could name that heavy thing.

  It was loneliness.

  Sarah pressed her forehead against the frosty wood and let the cold shudder through her. Come to think of it, this pressure, this burden heavy as a load of cement blocks, wasn’t new. She’d felt it with her family, even Denise. It had always been that way with Megan.

  Even with Matt, the sense that she wasn’t connected weighed on her.

  But never long enough for her to give it a name this way. She always managed to shrug it off. Or pretend she could handle it. Or work so hard that surely it would be taken from her.

  Below, the unmistakable sound of a car sliding on ice brought her attention back to the street. Snow was falling again, the thick powdery kind. Her dad called that skiin’ snow. He didn’t even have to ask if she wanted to go to Wilmont Mountain. He just loaded the skis on top of the Jeep and pulled his Cubs cap over his mass of hair so that the waves stuck out like wings, and grinned at her.

  Sarah was the only person in the family who loved the slopes like he did. She was never sure whether she actually enjoyed skiing or just wanted to be alone with him. She mastered the higher, steeper hills because that meant more time together on the lift, dangling their ski-fitted feet and talking about things that only being in midair brought to mind.

  Like the deepening God-questions they could only discuss when her mother wasn’t there to pat her on the head and tell her all she needed was faith.

  His encouraging her to keep talking about love, not rules. To keep asking why not instead of why. To keep praying what was honest. To keep listening.

  It was that last conversation on the lift, just before the diagnosis, that was clearest right now.

  “I know you have to go back to New York, SJ.” He always called her by her initials; he said she’d been businesslike since she was two and that it fit. “But I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you too, Dad.” She remembered now trying to turn sideways to look at him and swaying the lift chair. “But when I finish this degree and get myself established, I am going to help you start your own firm. Enough with working your buns off for somebody else to have it all. I’ll do all your marketing.”

  “You’ve always had big dreams.”

  “This isn’t a dream. You’re talented, Dad, and there’s so much you could do with that.”

  He’d tilted her chin with his gloved fingers. “And you always make me feel like anything is possible.”

  “It is.”

  “We’ll see. I’m still praying about it. Ultimately that decision is up to God—”

  Sarah pulled away from the lattice and folded her arms hard across her chest. It could be anger again. It could be the sharpening cold, but something shivered through her. She started for the door and found she could hardly move for the heaviness and the stiffness and all the other things that kept her from running.

  Maybe coming out here was a stupid move. But it made her recognize one thing. Deciding for yourself was a lonely business.

  And it was a business she’d been in for three long years.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Matt was still putting off calling Sarah after lunch,
although all morning he waited for Cherie to tell him she was on the line. She never was. Every time he came back from the restroom he paused outside Cherie’s cubicle and said, “Any calls for me?” He did it so many times she finally said, “Did you ever think of calling her?”

  “Who?” Matt said.

  “Your girlfriend.”

  “How do you know that’s who I’m waiting for?”

  “Because you sure aren’t anxious to hear from your parents. Who else calls you, Evans?”

  She was right. No one else called him. No one else checked in either to tell him he was a useless excuse for a human being or make him feel like the only human being who could be of any use at all.

  He sank heavily into his desk chair and parked his forehead on the heels of his hands. The chair squeaked as he rocked back and forth.

  “If you don’t get her on the line, Evans, I’m going to.”

  “I don’t know, Cherie—”

  “Carson Creative, right?”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll call.”

  “I’m putting on my headphones so I can’t hear you. You’ve got until the end of the overture to Phantom of the Opera to get this worked out with her.” Cherie’s voice dwindled to a grumble. “If you sigh any harder, you’re going to blow the partition down . . .”

  Matt turned his back on the doorway and tapped Sarah’s name on his cell. He alternated prayers—Please let her pick up. Please just get me to her voice mail. Please let her pick up—

  “Hi,” she said.

  Matt almost cried. He swallowed hard.

  “Hi, Sar. Are you—how are you feeling?”

  “What about you?”

  He stood up, turned around, turned back around. There wasn’t room to pace.

  “How am I feeling?” The honest answer was terrified, but he didn’t think that was what she wanted to hear.

  “I mean . . . have you made a decision?”

  This time it didn’t sound like she really expected an answer, which was a good thing because he didn’t have one. He’d been thinking about nothing else all night and all day, and he knew partly what he wanted to say—but that edge in her voice, that un-Sarah-like bite threw him off balance, just like it had the night before.

  “Don’t make this all my decision, okay?” he said. “We can sit down and talk about it like responsible adults.”

  “I’m not sure we can even do that—”

  “I don’t want you to have an abortion.”

  Her pause was short. “Is that a proposal, then?”

  Matt actually pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it. This could not be his Sarah.

  “I hate sounding like this, Matt,” she said. “But I don’t see what other options there are besides the two I gave you last night. Do you?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her silence this time was long enough for him to rush on.

  “You could have the baby, and we could give it up for adoption.”

  “As simple as that.”

  “I didn’t say it was simple—”

  “I can’t even talk about this with you right now. Just . . . I have to go.”

  The phone went dead. So did Matt. Consider thinking before you open that mouth, his father would say. What a concept.

  He knew he’d sounded like a dolt, and he couldn’t let her go the rest of the day thinking he was—

  His desk phone rang and he grabbed it.

  “Look, I know I sounded like a jerk—”

  “Matt?”

  His mother’s indignant punch of a voice shoved him into his chair. A bad day just got a whole lot worse.

  “Matthew, is that you?”

  “Yeah, Mom. Sorry.”

  “Do you always answer your business phone that way?”

  Only when my life is circling the drain. Matt squeezed the receiver. “Look, Mom, I’m in the middle of something right now.”

  “I think you can take two minutes to tell us whether you’re coming home for Christmas.”

  No matter what words Jolene Evans used, there was a demand tucked into every syllable. Unlike his father, who shot orders like they were coming from an AK-47, his mother had a full arsenal of less obvious weapons, everything from the Evans Family Standard that had to be upheld to her chart of illnesses, most of them imaginary. Today she’d chosen a guilt trip. Matt was a seasoned traveler when it came to his mother’s guilt.

  “Your sisters are both coming,” she said. “If two doctors can get away—well, make that four, because Jarred and Bradley are coming, too, of course—then surely an investment assistant can tear himself away.”

  Matt didn’t even try to interject.

  “Your father wants the whole family together, Matt. He isn’t getting any younger.”

  The man was sixty-one and never missed a day on a tennis court. She was projecting her pseudo illnesses onto him. Matt still didn’t try to poke a stick in the spokes.

  “And we’re giving a party Christmas Eve. We’ve invited some people you should know. We’re grateful to Clay for getting you started, but he doesn’t have the connections your father does.”

  Matt stiffened. “Connections for what?”

  “For better jobs, Matt. Possibly here. Or New York—

  “No.”

  “You’re saying no without giving it a chance.”

  She’d flipped the switch from guilt to accusation. He suddenly didn’t care if she went with fingernails and teeth.

  “I’m saying no to Christmas.”

  “You’re not coming home? Is that what I’m hearing?”

  “That’s what you’re hearing. I can’t do it right now.”

  “You’re going to have to explain that.”

  The light on the phone flashed.

  “I’ve got another call coming in.”

  “You can take five minutes—”

  “No. I can’t.”

  Matt broke the connection and pressed line two.

  “You owe me big-time, Evans,” Cherie croaked.

  “I do,” Matt said.

  That was the first time he had been honest with his mother since . . . ever. He’d charmed her, avoided her, and even lied to her to get out of whatever slot she tried to file him into. But he couldn’t remember ever telling her the truth. For all the good it did. He’d be hearing from his father before the day was out.

  He couldn’t even think about that. The panic that had started to surge through him when Sarah hung up rose in him again. He pressed icy hands against the back of a clammy neck.

  Okay, so blurting out an idea like “Hey, let’s go with adoption” didn’t work. Getting her to see the bright side didn’t either, as if there was one.

  He knew what not to do. But he still had no clue what to do.

  Maybe this was also the first time he’d been honest with himself.

  And the way it cut into him . . . no wonder he’d never done it before.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The next three days seemed less real to Sarah than the vision or the dream or whatever that was she’d experienced in her sleep. Diapering what was supposedly her baby was still bright and real and framed in light in her mind. But the things that posed as reality smeared across her brain like a finger painting.

  She texted Matt after Tuesday’s phone conversation and asked him not to call her again until she contacted him. She missed him, missed them together, missed the way he could reshape the circumstances until they bore no resemblance to anything real. That wouldn’t work this time, and the realization that Matt couldn’t give her any more than that was one layer of pain she couldn’t handle.

  Whether it was that or the saltines she’d just tried to eat, she didn’t know, but the urge she’d learned not to ignore drove her out of her cubicle and down the hall. She barely made it to the nearest bathroom stall, and it wasn’t until she turned to leave it that she realized she hadn’t taken the time to latch the door.

  She nearly slammed right into Audrey.

  She was at
the sink with her back to Sarah, but their eyes met in the mirror as Sarah stumbled across the floor. She considered skipping the hand washing, but since her aim hadn’t been that good . . .

  “Hey,” Sarah said.

  “Hey, Sarah,” Audrey said. She tapped out what appeared to be her second helping of soap from the dispenser.

  Sarah gave up any attempt to cover how miserable she was and splashed water on her face, right on top of her makeup. When she reached for a stiff paper towel, Audrey was still scrubbing. Sarah was surprised her hands didn’t shrivel.

  Okay, awkward. She really ought to say something. She decided on: “I’m sorry if I grossed you out. I just can’t get rid of this bug I’ve had.”

  Sarah caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The words I’m lying might as well have been printed on her forehead.

  Audrey finally dried her hands and headed for the restroom door. Sarah was just about to dive back into the stall when Audrey turned and said, “If you ever need a place to hide, my office has a door.”

  Can I go there right now? Sarah wanted to call after her. But the last person she needed to talk to was the person she was trying to replace. And a pregnant person at that.

  But hiding. That sounded so good. Jennifer invited Sarah out to lunch on Wednesday, and despite her desire to do anything but eat, Sarah accepted. At least they went to a salad place a few blocks down that didn’t reek of fried anything and had no pictures of greasy entrées on the walls. Just like everything else that Jennifer Nolte seemed to choose, it was tastefully understated and cost more per bite than Sarah made in a day.

  “This is on me,” Jennifer said when they were seated with bowls full of things Sarah never would have thought to put on a salad.

  “That’s nice of you,” Sarah said. “But really—”

  “I insist.” Jennifer folded her hands under her chin, sculpted nails gleaming even in the subdued amber light from the wall sconces. “I’m not going to pretend I don’t know how little you’re currently making, but I think we’re about to fix that.”

  Once again, the way Sarah would have felt hearing those words a week ago taunted her like a kindergartner’s tongue. All she could manage to say was a feeble, “We are?”