“Anyway, it wasn’t pretty for a good two months or so. And then…” I could still remember the moment I realized it clearly, walking down the Walgreens aisle to grab some condoms and passing the pregnancy tests and coming to a halt because I hadn’t had a period in ages and I knew, I just knew that I was pregnant. I’d bought a box and taken the first test in the store. Then, when it turned positive, I’d taken another one right after.
“And then?” Edward prompted, softly as though he were interested, not as demanding as usual.
“Then I found out I was pregnant.” There was weight to that statement. It was obvious I didn’t have a kid now, and so there’d be assumptions. I imagined Edward was thinking them through, trying to guess—did she have an abortion? Give it up for adoption? Where was the birth control? It was impossible for him not to form a judgment, and I ached to know what he was thinking so I could judge him back.
But he sat silent, waiting for my tale to unfold.
“It’s funny, I’d imagined saying that before. I don’t know when—in my play. In my fantasies. I didn’t even want kids necessarily, but the notion of being pregnant always held drama. ‘I’m pregnant’, I’d say to the imaginary whomever in my head, and damn, did that get the attention I wanted. It’s a heavy phrase, you know? ‘I’m pregnant.’ ‘I was pregnant.’ You immediately know something intimate about the person—that she’s had sex. Sometimes you even know whom with. And when she doesn’t have a husband or a boyfriend, you start wondering who the father could be, and then you also know that she was careless. That she was irresponsible. That she’s easy.”
Edward looked about to say something, but I waved him away. “Whatever you’re going to say, it’s true. People think those things and sometimes even say them out loud, and it shouldn’t matter what other people think, I know, I know, but those things do matter. Especially when the things they were thinking were true. I was careless. I was irresponsible. I was a slut, and sure, power to a woman if she wants to sleep with lots of men. I’m all for that and fuck everyone who puts her down for that, but that wasn’t who I was in that moment. In that moment, I had carelessly gotten pregnant from something that had made me feel shitty and slutty, and those words people said mattered. Because I was already saying them about myself.”
I’d meandered. None of this was where I’d thought I was headed. The painful part was coming up, but in telling these parts, I remembered they’d been painful too. I remembered it in my muscles, in the way my hip suddenly ached and my shoulders tensed. In the twinge at my neck. These things had lived inside me, stuffed into the fascia of my body, breathing and festering, and all this time I’d thought there was nothing there.
And now? Could I finally let it go?
I’d been silent for several minutes when Edward asked, “Are you sure it was his?”
He didn’t need to frame the question any other way. I knew who he meant, and it was obvious that was where I was going.
“Yes. The dates matched up, and when I did the ultrasound at Planned Parenthood, that matched up too. I’d been on birth control, but I wasn’t always that diligent about taking it, and he was the only one I hadn’t doubled up with a condom.” Which was stupid. Which was why the whole thing had left me feeling stupid.
“Stop judging,” he said, sternly. Also, ironically since that was exactly what I was silently pleading from him. “Stop judging yourself and just let it be what it is.”
“How do you—?”
“It’s written all over your face. I’m not judging you either, for the record, though that shouldn’t matter.”
He’d set his drink down and folded his hands in his lap, and with the way he was angled and the intensity of his stare, I could feel exactly how much of his attention was devoted to me. All of it. Every single speck of focus was on me.
It should have made me feel more exposed.
Somehow it made me feel more safe.
It didn’t make sense. None of it. Why he wanted to know, why he cared. Why he was so rapt. “If you’re not judging, what are you doing?”
A smattering of seconds passed before he answered. “I’m listening.” He startled me with a smile. “Now go on.”
“You’re really that into this? You want to hear what happens next.” I chuckled as I drank my wine.
“I think you want to tell it.” He said it so it was clear when he said think he meant know.
And that knowing made me feel safer too.
I set my glass down. “Well, I immediately got my act together. Stopped the partying, did better in school, took prenatal vitamins. I didn’t know what I wanted to do about it yet, but there was only a couple of weeks until Thanksgiving, and I was going home, and I could talk to my parents about it then. I didn’t know about timelines for abortion so I figured it would be fine to wait until then.”
“Did you expect them to be supportive?”
I shook my head. “It makes me feel guilty to say that when you already detest my father as you do, but it’s honest. He didn’t expect much from his only daughter, but he certainly expected her to stay classy.”
“As fathers do.”
I’d forgotten that he was a father. Or, not forgotten, but the fact hadn’t seemed relevant, and now I realized how relevant it was. His daughter, Genevieve, was as old now as I’d been then. He had to be thinking about her, comparing us.
It took all my strength not to ask him about that. He’d tell me if he wanted me to know, and he’d been right—I wanted to finish what I was telling.
“It turned out it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected.”
“It never is.”
I started to agree then stopped myself. Experience had told me better. “No, sometimes it is. But this time it wasn’t, because I told…” I hesitated. I’d specifically left Hudson’s name out of the first story. He was a prominent businessman, someone who Edward would probably work with eventually if he hadn’t already, and I owed too much to Hudson to be the one to soil his name and turn his past against him.
So I left his name out again.
“I told the guy before I told my parents. The guy who I’d liked. The one who slept with my friend.”
“And you told him the baby was his father’s?”
I nodded. “He decided to claim the baby as his own, and that made telling Warren and Madge a whole hell of a lot easier because who the fuck cared what trouble Celia had made because now she was going to have a very wealthy baby! I mean, it hurt. It hurt knowing their reaction was only what it was because of what it gave them, but at least I didn’t have to get the tight-lipped, cold-shoulder treatment. So, you know. It was going to be okay.”
Edward sat forward, his finger up to stop me. “Hold on a moment—the guy who’d been an ass before now out of the blue decided to claim it was his?”
Up until then, he’d been almost soft—well, soft for Edward—but there was something distinctly biting in his tone.
“He wasn’t always an ass,” I said defensively, knowing that wasn’t the most important part of his question. “But, yes. He stood up for me. We told our parents together.”