Deadline

  Finally Jake dared to look at Janet, with whom he’d shared so many dreams now broken. Not only the dreams for her marriage, but now the dreams for her daughter had become a nightmare. She was looking Jake’s direction, but not at him really. He saw the hurt. Disappointment. Disillusionment. The death of a vision. He felt certain she was wondering how two people who loved each other so much could produce beautiful Carly, the fruit of their love, and see it come down to a day when she hated her own life enough to take it, and hated her father enough to tell him she wanted nothing to do with him.

  Jake knew there was more in Carly than hate. It was because she loved him so much and needed him so profoundly that his abandonment had hurt her so deeply. In some ways, her hatred would be easier to bear than admitting his own neglect.

  The past haunted him. Somehow sitting in this living room, under these conditions, didn’t allow him escape. As much as Janet had been hurt by the betrayal of Jake’s affairs, she’d been willing to forgive and go on. But he had not. To him the final affair was the setting of a new sail. He didn’t expect it to last, and it hadn’t. But it cemented that what he wanted in life was no longer in this marriage and family.

  Over the years he’d fired his share of verbal heavy weaponry at her, the shrapnel digging deep in her flesh and spirit, wounding her. But mostly it hadn’t been smoke and fury, but slow death. The wall between them had gradually risen, cemented by the mortar of indifference, until only a stranger was left on the other side. They’d become tired, lacking the fiery passion to scale the wall and find each other again. But it was especially Jake who’d become tired. And restless.

  Honesty compelled him to divorce Janet, or so he said, and there was some pride that he did it amiably, giving her the best car, her choice of furniture, and half the bank account, and offering her the house, though she elected to move out to the apartment, saying the house would be too much work for her. He’d read trendy books such as Open Marriage and No Fault Divorce, convincing himself he had the right to be happy, the right to get what he wanted out of life. It was all very contemporary. Like anyone with good self-esteem, he just wanted to be true to himself. It would be better for everyone if he was. Really.

  Finney, in his inimitable way, gentle but oh-so-firm, had reminded Jake, “Your marriage vows said nothing about being true to yourself. What they said was, you’d be true to Janet. You committed yourself to her welfare, not your own. That was a sacred commitment. It should govern your decisions. Don’t turn your back on your family.”

  Jake, though, had convinced himself the divorce was the best thing for Janet and Carly. After all, Carly would be much better off with one parent in the home than with two who couldn’t get along, or weren’t compatible, or didn’t share the same life goals. So he’d been told, and so he’d told himself, and so he’d told others. That’s why he so deeply resented the “two-parent families are better” flap with the vice president and Murphy Brown, which was going on right when he was divorcing Janet. He didn’t want to hear that sanctimonious self-righteous gibberish from the right-wing crowd, and he’d shot it down in his column more than once.

  As he sat there on a couch that had once been his, seeing the crushed remains of a wife who had once been his, and hearing through a closed door the hot bitter sobs of a daughter who had once been his, he realized in a moment of breathtaking clarity that everything he had told himself to justify the divorce, no the desertion, had been a lie. All of it. He doubted the realization would last, but here and now it was self-evident.

  “She’s out of the shower now,” Janet said. “Drying her hair. Should be out in a few minutes. I asked her to come back out and talk with us, and to…give you a chance.”

  “Thanks,” Jake replied weakly. “Is she out of danger? I mean, I know you took the razor blades, but you can’t guard her every moment. I’d be glad to stay if I could do anything. I’d stay up all night.”

  Suddenly his face was wet, and Janet was just a blur. “I’d do anything for her, Janet, anything. I’m so sorry.”

  He buried his face in his hands and wept, for the third time Janet could ever remember. The first was on a day they both perpetually pushed from their minds, a day during college when they’d visited a clinic that would forever determine the composition and perhaps the ultimate destiny of their family. The second was at Finney’s funeral, when she’d looked down the row and seen him during the slide presentation. Each time had in common loss and grief. And missed opportunity. This time there was also a heightened sense of failure.

  Jake told himself he would gladly give up every journalism award he’d ever received in exchange for a relationship with his daughter.

  Janet came to his side, his tears pulling her to him. She put her hand on the back of his neck.

  “Oh, Jake.”

  She couldn’t get out more. He felt the flood of her tears spilling on his right pant leg.

  “All those plans we had for our family. We never thought it would turn out like this.”

  Janet hugged Jake, for the first time in perhaps four years. They looked into each others eyes just for a moment. Suddenly Janet noticed a tiny reflected image in Jake’s eyes.

  “Carly!” Janet said, with too much alarm, as if she’d been caught doing something wrong. Jake and Janet quickly drew away from each other.

  Carly looked at them curiously. Then, as if trying to decide whether to maintain or relinquish her anger, the edges of her mouth went into a soft smile.

  “It’s okay. Don’t feel like you’ve been caught. I’m only your daughter.” The smile was weak, but sincere. “I guess the fact that I’m here suggests the two of you did your share of hugging in the past.”

  Janet blushed and gave a contrived look of admonishment, tremendously relieved at Carly’s smile. She hadn’t seen her smile or heard her witty comments for weeks. Jake’s face was red, partly from crying, partly from embarrassment.

  Carly walked forward slowly, making a deliberate choice where to sit. She chose the rocking chair, across the coffee table from the couch where her parents were sitting. Janet started to get up to move to another chair, but Carly said, “No, Mom. Stay where you are. Since this is all about me and my mixed up life, at least I should be able to assign the seating.”

  “Sure, honey.” No one was in the mood to argue with Carly right now.

  “To tell you the truth, it feels good to see my parents sitting near each other. It’s been a very long time.” Her voice broke.

  Janet started to get up again, this time to put her arms around Carly. But she stuck out her arm.

  “No, Mom. I’m okay. Please stay there with him.” Jake noticed she didn’t say “Dad,” and it stung.

  “Well,” Carly was looking at Jake now, “I’m not going to apologize for what I said to you. I’ve felt it for a long time.”

  Jake nodded as if to say “I understand,” thinking it was better not to say the words.

  “But I’ve decided to tell you the truth. The lie didn’t work the way I wanted it to, and no other lie seems as good. So we’ll just give the truth a try and see what happens.”

  Janet and Jake both looked confused.

  “I am pregnant. But I wasn’t raped.”

  Carly waited a moment to let it sink in. “I guess that’s bad news and good news. But I said I was raped because I just didn’t want the blame. Or Michael to get the blame. But when you,” she was looking at Jake, “wanted to put on your guerrilla fatigues and toss hand grenades at potential rapists, the lie got a little too big for me.”

  Both parents had questions, but neither was about to attempt to take the floor.

  “I’ve known I was pregnant for a few weeks. Three days ago we decided to just take care of it. You know what I mean. I assumed I’d have to get you to sign something since I’m under eighteen, like when I had my ears pierced. But we found out we didn’t need your permission. Everything seemed so easy. But I just couldn’t do it. Michael is angry at me. He says if I won’t get the abortio
n, we’re through. He loves me, but he…how did he put it? He’s just not ready to be committed to me, and certainly not ready to have a baby. Of course,” and her already sarcastic voice suddenly turned bitter, “every time we’ve had sex he’s been quick to assure me his commitment is deep and lifelong.

  “So, maybe some of my anger at you”—Carly looked at Jake—“is coming from what I feel about Michael. Right now I think all men are jerks. They say things they don’t mean. They make promises they don’t keep.”

  There was no misinterpreting the last sentence. Jake had not kept his explicit promises made at an altar twenty-four years ago, or the implicit promises to be there every parent makes to his children. All three of them were painfully aware of that.

  “I guess I should explain my decision about the abortion. When I first found out I was pregnant I thought it was my only choice. Isn’t that funny? Prochoice, but I thought there was just one choice. I read all kinds of stuff on the subject. Some I’d collected for a speech on abortion. Some I got from the school clinic. All of it said abortion was okay. Then I pulled out a few of your columns,” Carly said to her father, “and those made me think it was okay too.”

  Jake was surprised she’d seen his columns on this subject, much less saved them. It had been six months since he’d done a column on abortion.

  “Then I talked to a few teachers at school. One said I shouldn’t do anything without talking to Mom, but the other two said I should just get the abortion. One of them offered to drive me to the clinic herself—she’s done it for a few of my friends. She said the clinic owner is a personal friend of hers, and everything is totally professional. She gave me literature from the clinic.”

  Carly held up two bright, attractive brochures she’d brought out from her bedroom.

  “I almost went through with it. But something held me back. I know both of you are prochoice. And I’m prochoice, or at least I was. But something kept haunting me. I have two friends who say abortion is the worse thing they’ve ever done. Both of them say they’ll never do it again. One’s in counseling, and she tried to kill herself. Like I almost did.”

  Carly looked down, as if wondering how to continue. “But there’s something else. Something really strange. I’ve never told anybody about it.”

  Jake and Janet sat forward on the front edge of the couch, bookend parental images.

  “Almost a year ago I was watching the late news on a Saturday night. I never watch it, you know that Mom. But the state volleyball finals had been that day, so I stayed up. Just before sports, they showed a group of people standing outside an abortion clinic. And one of them was holding a Bible. I thought, ‘What a weirdo.’ Then all of a sudden I realized who it was. It was Uncle Finney, and Aunt Sue was right next to him.

  “I was taping the whole news in case I wanted to run back the volleyball clips. So I went back and listened to the abortion clinic part five times. Uncle Finney read something from the Bible, you know that big old herky Bible he used to carry around. Something about how God creates all of us and has a purpose for our lives, and how we shouldn’t kill children just because they’re inconvenient, but we should speak up for people who can’t speak up for themselves, and that’s why they were at the clinic.

  “Well, I still have that videotape. For some reason I saved it. Four nights ago, the night before Michael was going to drive me to get the abortion, I went back and watched it again. Uncle Finney looked right into the camera. It’s as if he was looking right at me. This is going to sound weird but, I swear it was like he was there in the room. I could swear I heard him say my name. ‘Carly’—he had a special way of saying my name, a slight accent like nobody else—‘Carly, please let your baby live.’

  “It freaked me out. I ran it back to see if it was really on the tape. Of course, it wasn’t. I thought I was going crazy. But I couldn’t get it off my mind.”

  Carly looked at her parents to assess their reaction. Janet was wide eyed, Jake slack jawed. It sounded so crazy, but Carly had never been crazy before.

  “That’s when I decided I couldn’t go through with it. No matter how much it messed up my college plans, my volleyball scholarship, and my life in general. I started thinking, what if I had come along at a time that was inconvenient for my parents? Would I want them to kill me? I just couldn’t punish an innocent child for my stupid mistake.”

  Janet and Jake kept their eyes from each other. Jake realized this wasn’t Finney and Sue’s conviction Carly had acted on. It was her own. He felt something toward her he’d never remembered feeling before, not just love, but respect. She seemed less the spoiled and self-indulged girl used to having everything go her way. She’d made a hard decision. The tears that came now were tears of pride in his little girl. But something she’d said mingled pain with the pride, and he suspected Janet’s pain was even deeper.

  “And the truth is, Mom, the suicide note you read was written two days before the abortion was scheduled. You know me. I have to express my thoughts, so I got an early start. I figured after I finished the letter, got the wording just right, then I’d wait till after the abortion and kill myself. I just wanted to turn off all the noise in my head. I was reading the Final Exit book and trying to decide the best method—something that would be painless for me and wouldn’t be too messy for you. There were lots of ideas, but it was hard to choose.”

  Janet turned white as a ghost. “Carly, what are you talking about? What book?”

  “Final Exit. You know, the one written by the head of the Hemlock Society. Hang on a second.”

  She went to her room and got the book, looking at the author’s name as she walked back in.

  “Yeah, Derek Humphrey, that’s it. You know the guy, he’s been on Donahue and Oprah and everybody for years. He helped his wife commit suicide.”

  “What are you doing reading a book like that? Where did you get it?”

  “Checked it out of the school library.”

  “You got it from school?”

  “Well, it’s not like I couldn’t have gotten it somewhere else. I first started reading it at Waldenbooks a few years ago. It had all these different ways you could take your life, page after page—sort of a menu approach. It was a bestseller. Don’t you remember? Your ex-husband knows all about it.”

  “Yeah, I know about it,” Jake said weakly.

  “In fact, you wrote about it. Which is what first made me notice it at Waldenbooks. You remember your column?”

  “Yeah, sort of.” Jake remembered well, but he could feel Janet’s accusing stare and he was trying to wriggle out from under it.

  “See my bookmark? Look familiar?” Carly showed Jake the yellow strip of old newsprint. He recognized it as his column.

  “I quoted it in a speech that got me second place at district. I’ll read your last paragraph:

  While those who resist progress and all that is new and different are sure to take offense at this book, the first amendment says it needs to be available. Those with terminal illnesses, those who are tired of life and feel useless, must be empowered to pursue death with dignity if they so choose. This may not be a path we would choose. But we cannot, we dare not impose our personal values on the rest of society. Some will find in Final Exit an affirming and helpful means of carrying out their own agenda for their lives. We need to support suffering people as they consider all options, including the option of choosing how they wish to leave this world. In their hour of need, we have no right to deprive them of the know-how offered in this book, nor to judge them if they choose to find their relief by exiting this life in the time and way that seems best to them.”

  The words hung in the air, accentuated by the silence.

  “You said that?” Janet finally asked.

  “Not about Carly. Not about a teenager. I meant for older people, for the handicapped or terminally ill.”

  “I was terminally depressed, Dad. I was suffering. All the options seemed so hard. Suicide was the easiest. At first, I decided agains
t razor blades, but I came back to them. At one point I narrowed it down to one particular poison or carbon monoxide—I have the pages marked. Do you want to see…?”

  “No! I don’t want to hear anymore.” Janet jumped up, grabbed the book, and started ripping it to pieces.

  Realizing she’d laid too much on her mom, Carly reached her arm around her, but Janet thought she wanted the book. “No, don’t even touch it.” She threw the mangled book in the fireplace.

  Still hanging out of the book was Jake’s column. Only three feet from the fireplace, he watched the yellow paper, both his sketch and his words, turn brown, then black, and line by line become a puff of smoke that disappeared forever into nothingness.

  “I’m sorry,” Carly said. “I’m sorry I’ve upset both of you. I didn’t finish, and I should have. I wrote the note two days before the abortion was scheduled. Since I canceled the abortion, I haven’t had any thoughts of suicide. Just because I haven’t felt like living doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve a chance to live. Besides, he needs me.”

  Janet stood numbly. All three of them were surprised to see Jake at Carly’s side, his arms around her, tears flowing.

  “We need you too, sweetheart. I need you.” Much as he hurt, it was the closest thing to home Jake had felt for years.

  * * *

  “There is a man I want you to meet, master Finney. His name is Zeke.”

  They hadn’t walked long before Finney saw a coal black face, animated and cut with deep lines of character. The man waved at Zyor.

  “Master Zeke, I would like you to meet Finney. He is a novice.”

  “Welcome to Elyon’s place. May you find eternal rest and pleasure as you live for his glory.”

  Now that the formal greeting was done, Zeke took on a distinctly casual appearance, as if kicking back with old friends. He even slapped Zyor on the back, which seemed to Finney an overly familiar gesture to such an awesome being, but Zyor didn’t seem to mind.