“You go,” he says. “I’ll take a shower after.”
“I could wash your back,” she teases, low and sultry.
“Yeah, and my mom would chase you out of here with a giant skillet.” He laughs.
“Okay,” she grumbles. “Don’t be long.”
* * *
When she leaves, I do scooch over and peer out the crack, but Michael’s gone, too. I don’t know what to do, but I figure I’ll wait a bit, at least to make sure the coast is clear. And then I see Michael come back out of the house, and he’s got a bottle of Gatorade under one arm, and he’s holding a big Ziploc bag in the other hand.
He climbs up, dumps the Gatorade and the bag on the pillow, and I’m not nervous at all anymore, because it is just Michael, after all, and this is the tree house I know like the back of my hand, and I don’t feel seventeen and pregnant right now, I feel thirteen and filled with possibility; the feeling that anything is possible with my best friend by my side.
“You picked a good day,” Michael says. “My mom just baked a fresh batch of thin mints.” He opens the bag and hands me a bundle. “You still like them, right?”
I nod. They are still my favorites. I hadn’t expected him to remember. When we were … friends, his mom set a mission to re-create the perfect Thin Mint cookie because she was completely addicted to them and she could never find enough Girl Scout stands to buy them. She’d buy them in bulk whenever anyone was selling them, but she’d eat pretty much a box at a time, so she decided she had to figure out how to make them herself.
Michael and I were her guinea pigs. She’d bring trays and trays out to the tree house, where even her rejects would be hungrily devoured.
Finally, using a chocolate fudge cake mix instead of attempting to make them completely from scratch, she got it. I’ve never been able to eat a Thin Mint cookie without being transported straight back to the tree house, and even though we ate hundreds and hundreds, enough to put me off for life, they remain my favorites.
He remembers.
We don’t say anything for a while. It’s weird in that it isn’t weird. Michael shoves a handful of cookies in his mouth, then grins, looking so like the young boy he used to be I almost want to cry.
He swigs Gatorade, then passes it over to me.
“Great,” I sneer, although I accept it and swig. “Let’s follow a shitload of sugar with a shitload of sugar.”
“You want water? Go get it yourself,” he says, but his voice has no malice in it; it is teasing. Like it used to be. In the old days, I would have gotten it myself. I would have climbed down the ladder and gone through the back door, and Mrs. Flanagan would have insisted I take something else out there, or a blanket in case we got cold.
For years, this house felt more like home than my own. It was the one place I felt safe. No Mom being drunk and shouting. No women who weren’t my mother pretending to be my mother and stealing my dad.
Just a place where I was accepted for me.
I do want water, but I don’t want to get it myself. I don’t want to walk through the door and see Mrs. Flanagan, or have her see me. It has been too long, and I am pregnant, and even though this black cardigan kind of covers it up, she will either think I have put on tons of weight and gotten huge, or she will know that I am pregnant.
Honestly? I don’t know which would be worse.
Usually I love the way I dress. I take pride in the fact that I have a nose stud and several piercings in my ears, that my hair is blue-black and my makeup dramatic. I like getting stares. I ride up the escalator in the mall, staring people down. Sometimes, when girls whisper about me and giggle, I go over and raise my hands like a bat and whoop at them, just to freak them out.
Which it does.
This is not how Mrs. Flanagan knows me. She knows me as a slightly chubby and shy girl, with mousy brown hair, in jeans and sneakers. I don’t want to show her how I’ve grown and grown up. I don’t want to show her my deliberately provocative piercings and dye. I feel, suddenly, ashamed of the way I look.
I do not want Mrs. Flanagan to see my armor. If she has to see me, I want her to see me as the girl she used to know, and because that girl no longer exists, it is better she does not see me at all.
Michael’s eyes flicker to my stomach, and I wonder if he knows.
“I’ll get you water,” he says, and before I can stop him, he jumps up and climbs down the ladder. I wonder if he did it because he wanted to get away because he is uncomfortable with me, but I do not hold on to that thought because I am not uncomfortable in the slightest, and I cannot imagine he feels anything but normal.
When he comes back, I wait for him to ask why I am there, but he doesn’t, and I am grateful.
All those expressions: What’s up? What’s going on? How you doing? seem so trite. And yet I want to tell him, and I’m not sure how to start if he doesn’t ask me how I am.
“I heard you weren’t going to college,” he says eventually, grabbing some pillows and propping them up against the wall, leaning back. His T-shirt rides slightly above the waistband of his jeans. I am shocked to see a tanned, firm stomach, the slightest line of hair running down from his navel. I forget that he is waiting for an answer, and I just stare.
“You’re staring.” He grins.
“You grew up,” I say, but that isn’t what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about the boys I have been hooking up with, any one of who is potentially the father of Bean. They are as pale and stringy as strands of spaghetti. Their bodies skinny and ghostly, their pubic hair stark, dark shocks against the near transparency of their skin.
They are as uncomfortable in their skins as I am in mine. Our couplings are brief, in darkened corners of bedrooms, or in the backs of cars—sometimes outside in a park or on a beach.
The only clothes removed are the clothes necessary to facilitate sex. Or blow jobs. Or whatever it is you are doing. It is one of the things that makes it okay for me: I do not have to reveal my body. I do not have to risk anyone’s laughing at me, or noticing that one of my boobs is higher than the other, that my stomach is round, that my thighs rub together.
Sometimes, if I’m at the doctor’s office, or in a place where there are a stack of magazines, I will pick up something like Cosmopolitan, and when I read about sex, and orgasms, and positions, I am bemused at what it is they are talking about.
None of it is about me, that much I can tell you. Not that it feels bad. It feels great when they’re inside me, but better is when they hold me. Better is the feeling of being loved, even if only for a few minutes.
Even if they are these skinny, awkward, inexperienced boys, better is the feeling of being loved.
Michael doesn’t look like those boys. I am staring because he looks … like a man. The line of hair tracing down looks like an invitation, and I am startled, stunned, to feel a jolt of lust.
I look away, quickly, as Michael just grins.
“Would you just cover yourself up?” I mumble belligerently, to hide my … discomfort? Lust? NO! Not lust. Not with Michael. That wouldn’t be possible … Would it?
“What? It’s a stomach, for God’s sake.” He is still grinning.
“It’s just … inappropriate,” I say.
“Fine, Miss Prude.” He pulls the T-shirt down. “There. Happy?”
I shrug.
“So. College. You should go.”
“I will,” I say. “I’m just figuring out what I want to do. Also, remember, I’m the youngest in the grade. Really, I should be going into my senior year now.”
“Yeah. I forgot you’re a secret genius.”
“Not anymore.” I shrug. Which is true.
“So what are you thinking? English?” he continues.
“Ha. No. I mean, sometimes, but I’m really interested in art school.”
Michael nods, thinking. “Yeah,” he says finally. “I could see that. You were always really creative.”
There is another silence.
“So. That … Jenna. Is s
he your girlfriend?” There is a sneer in my voice that I hadn’t intended. “Is she nice?” I add quickly, in more of a normal voice, just so he doesn’t think I’m jealous or anything.
“We’re just … friends.”
“With benefits?”
He shrugs. “Is there any other kind of female friendship?”
“Uh, yeah.” I roll my eyes. “Actually there is.”
His face grows serious. “You’re right. I’m sorry. You know what, Em?”
My heart does a tiny sentimental flip when he calls me Em. It is so thoughtless, so natural, that I forget we haven’t spoken in years, and that we are supposed to ignore each other when we pass in the hallways.
“I fucking miss you.”
My heart turns over.
“But you’re just so fucking weird. I mean, you’re not, okay? I know you’re not really weird, but you don’t do yourself any favors by wearing all this black and these piercings and stuff. This whole emo goth thing just makes everyone want to avoid you, so no one knows the cool person you are.”
A million things run through my head, the first being to tell him to go screw himself, but as I open my mouth to shoot something back, something mean, something that will take the hurt of what he just said and give it right back to him, a lump rises, and from nowhere a sob comes out, and suddenly I am sobbing, and I am so embarrassed I want to die.
And I can’t stop.
Twenty-three
“Oh, Jesus, Em.” Michael sits up and comes to sit next to me. He doesn’t put his arm around me or anything, but he takes hold of my little finger, and he sits, just holding my finger as I cry, and after a while he stretches out his T-shirt and holds it out, and I look down at it confused, hiccuping, and he tells me to blow my nose, which I do.
Which, by the way, is really gross, but he just lets it fall and we sit there as my hiccuping becomes slower and the jagged intakes of breath become less, then I am just slumped, exhausted.
“I’m really sorry,” he says. “I did not mean to upset you like that. I never should have said you’re weird. You’re not weird, okay? I didn’t mean it.”
“It’s fine. I mean, that’s not why I was crying.”
“Oh. Okay.”
And I want him to ask me why I’m crying so I can tell him, even though I don’t really know, other than I am overwhelmed, and scared, and as much as I want Bean, I know my life is never going to be the same again, and honestly, I can’t even think about school right now because my future has never looked so uncertain or terrifying.
I shake my head in disbelief. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I was crying?”
“Do you want me to?” he says carefully, dipping his head and looking up at me nervously.
“Jeez, Michael. You’re still weird, too. You may be this big handsome jock with muscles and golden skin, but I know better. You’re still the weird geeky kid. I bet you still have all those Star Trek pins you bought on eBay.”
“Totally!” He feigns shock. “They are my most prized possessions.” And then he grins. “You said I was handsome!”
“Oh, shut up. I bet Jenna doesn’t know about your secret Trekiness.”
“She wouldn’t understand. So why were you crying?”
* * *
I think about making this some big dramatic moment, but it doesn’t feel dramatic as I pull my cardigan tightly over my stomach to show off my bump, Michael takes a sharp intake of breath, and when I look up, I see he knows.
“That stinks,” he says. “And it’s kind of awesome, too.”
“I know!” I breathe. “That’s exactly it, right? It stinks, and it terrifies me, and I can’t believe I’m having a baby, and then I can’t believe I have a life growing inside me, and I’m going to be a mom!”
Michael is staring at my stomach.
“You want to touch it?” I ask tentatively.
“Can I?”
I take his hand and lay it on my belly, keeping my hand on top of his, and wouldn’t you know it, at that moment, the Bean takes a lazy tumble, like a slow somersault, and both of us not only feel it, but you can see my stomach move, a big wave of movement from left to right.
“She’s rocking,” I say.
“And rolling,” he says, and he is as awed and overcome as I am, and the moment is swiftly broken as his phone starts buzzing. He picks it up, frowning, then turns it off, chucking it to the other side of the tree house.
“Jenna?”
“Yeah. Wondering where I am.”
“Do you have to go?” I look away, so he doesn’t see how very much I want him to stay, how very much I need him to stay.
“No. I don’t,” he says, and this time when he lies back and fires questions at me, I don’t ask him to pull his T-shirt down, and I answer everything, and we move through all the questions about the pregnancy, and what I’m going to do, and how I’m going to tell my parents that no, actually, I’m not going to be putting my child up for adoption as they believe they can convince me to do but am going to raise her myself.
“Thank God.” Michael exhales loudly. “You can’t give your baby away. No fucking way. That kid will grow up knowing he wasn’t wanted from the get-go, and you never get over rejection like that.”
“It’s a ‘she,’” I say quietly, knowing Michael is talking about himself.
“She. He. Whatever. The point being you are totally doing the right thing, keeping this baby, and don’t let anyone tell you different.”
I nod once, to show that I understand, I get it, I know where this is coming from, then we move on to school, friends, life, and what the hell we are all going to grow up to be.
And the reason I don’t ask Michael to pull his T-shirt down after it has ridden up yet again is not because I am ogling his stomach, but because it’s no longer relevant. For while he may now be this big bronzed god at the high school, his handsome features morph during the time I am there, and when I look at him, all I see is my gawky, geeky, former best friend.
“We should do this more often,” I say after dusk has fallen, and we both climb down from the tree house, a good four hours having passed. “This was just like the old days.”
“I’m off to school in a couple of days,” he says. “And I probably won’t be back until Thanksgiving.”
“Right.” The disappointment floods my voice. Of course he’s going away. I was so caught up in my pleasure at rediscovering our friendship, I had forgotten. Everyone’s going away. Except me.
“I’ll write, Em,” he says. “Swear.”
“Thumb swear?” which was this stupid thing we did as kids when we decided pinkie swears were just too girly.
“Thumb swear.” He grins, holding out his thumb and pressing it hard against mine.
I don’t know how to say good-bye. We stand there, and he wishes me luck, and then he pulls me in for a tight hug, except it isn’t that tight because my stomach is in the way, and he says, “You better call it Michael if it’s a boy.”
“It’s not a boy,” I say.
“Michaela then,” he says, and the next thing you know, he’s let me go and run off to the house with just a final wave, and I walk back home feeling something I haven’t felt in years.
Happy.
Twenty-four
Andi is the one trying to be upbeat, trying to pretend that there is something fun about this process: meeting the couple she had picked out online, a couple who lives six hours away, who have flown in to try to persuade Emily that she should pick them; that they, above all others, would be the perfect people to give her baby a home she cannot give it.
It has been the hardest thing she has yet had to do, but Ethan has left her with little choice. Each time she looks at a prospective adoptive mother, she sees herself. Each time she reads about them, she is reading about herself.
Adeline and Greg Blackman have been married for seven years. He is a real estate developer, she is a professional musician—a violinist—which is, she writes, the perfect job for a mother because
she can accept or decline engagements at will.
They have many pictures on the adoption agency’s website. Adeline is Asian, pretty, and petite, and Greg tall, with kind eyes. They look like they would be good parents. They have spent too many years and too much money doing IVF treatments before making the final decision to adopt.
Adeline has an older brother, and Greg is from a family of seven children. They had always dreamed of a large family but have now realized that they would be equally blessed to have even one child.
They like reading, and animals—a chocolate Lab called Mudston features in several of the pictures—and are both avid cooks. They are blessed to have a large house, with two acres, in a neighborhood where there are lots of children. The inference, Andi couldn’t help but feel, is that they can give this poor, blue-collar, possibly child of an alcoholic a home and a life that it would not otherwise have had.
Well, Andi thought. They were perhaps right about only one thing, although Emily seems to have stayed away from the alcohol.
People like us, Andi kept thinking, do not give babies away. People like us, like Adeline, forty-one, and Greg, forty-six, and Andi, forty-two, and Ethan, forty-six, give gorgeous homes to babies that need them.
We feed them organic gourmet baby food that we steam and purée ourselves, scooping it into ice-cube trays for easy access later. We clothe them in the cutest outfits ever from Baby Gap, and enroll them in Gymboree classes before they can even walk.
We decorate their nurseries with the finest furnishings money can buy, the plushest toys, the heaviest curtains to ensure not a crack of light filters through the windows when our beloved darlings go down for a nap in the middle of a sunlit day.
We are the people who raise the babies that no one wants. We are the people who, if we are unlucky enough to have a seventeen-year-old daughter who becomes pregnant, step in as the grandparents du jour and raise the child as our own.
* * *
Adeline and Greg; Andi and Ethan. They are almost interchangeable. And the pain of getting to know them, realizing how alike they are, is almost unbearable for Andi.
This should be Ethan and her, raising this child. In years past, it could have been Ethan and her, looking for a baby. If Ethan had agreed to adoption, this would have been Ethan and her.