“But those are things they don’t have any control over,” Samantha pointed out. “Whereas this is a situation you can control.”
“I’ve made up my mind,” I said quietly. Samantha was undeterred.
“Think about bringing a child into the world with no father,” she said.
“I know,” I told her, holding up my hand before she could say anything else. “I’ve thought about this. I know it’s not ideal. It’s not what I’d want, if I could choose”
“But you can choose,” said Samantha. “Think about everything you’re going to have to manage by yourself. How every single responsibility is going to be on your shoulders. Are you really ready for that? And is it fair to have a baby if you’re not?”
“But think of all the other women who do it!”
“What, like welfare mothers? Teenage girls?”
“Sure! Them! There’s lots of women who have babies, and the babies’ fathers aren’t around, and they’re managing.”
“Cannie,” said Samantha, “that’s no kind of life. Living hand-to-mouth…”
“I’ve got some money,” I said, sounding sullen even to my own ears.
Samantha took a sip of coffee. “Is this about Bruce? About holding on to Bruce?”
I looked down at my clasped hands, at the wadded-up napkin between them. “No,” I said. “I mean, I guess it involves that… somewhat by default… but it’s not like I set out to get pregnant so I could get my hooks back in him.”
Samantha raised her eyebrows. “Not even subconsciously?”
I shuddered. “God, I hope my subconscious isn’t as unenlightened as that!”
“Enlightenment has nothing to do with it. Maybe, deep down, some part of you was hoping… or is hoping… that once Bruce finds out, he’ll come back to you.”
“I’m not going to tell him,” I said.
“How can you not tell him?” she demanded.
“Why should I?” I shot back. “He’s moved on, he’s found somebody else, he doesn’t want to be involved with me, or my life, so why should I tell him? I don’t need his money, and I don’t want whatever scraps of attention he’d feel obligated to throw me”
“But what about the baby? Doesn’t the baby deserve to have a father in its life?”
“Come on, Samantha. This is Bruce we’re talking about. Big, dopey Bruce? Bruce with the ponytail and the ‘Legalize It’ bumper sticker…”
“He’s a good guy, Cannie. He’d probably be a really good father.”
I bit my lip. This part hurt to admit or even to think about, but it was probably the truth. Bruce had been a camp counselor for years. Kids loved him, ponytail or not, dopiness or not, dope or not. Every time I’d seen him with his cousins or his former campers they were always vying with each other to sit next to him at dinner, or play basketball with him, or have him help them with their homework. Even when our relationship was at its worst, I never doubted that he’d be a wonderful father.
Samantha was shaking her head. “I don’t know, Cannie. I just don’t know.” She gave me a long, sober look. “He’s going to find out, you know.”
“How? We don’t know any of the same people anymore… he lives so far away…”
“Oh, he’ll find out. I’ve seen enough soap operas to guarantee you that. You’ll run into him somewhere… he’ll hear something about you… he’ll find out. He will.”
I shrugged, trying to look brave. “So he finds out I’m pregnant. It doesn’t mean I have to tell him that it’s his. Let him think I was sleeping around on him.” Even though I felt struck through with grief at the thought that Bruce would ever have cause to think that. “Let him think I went to a sperm bank. The point is, he doesn’t have to know.” I looked at Samantha. “And you don’t have to tell him.”
“Cannie, don’t you think he’s got a right to know? He’s going to be a father”
“No, he’s not”
“Well, there’s going to be a child born that’s his. What if he wants to be a father? What if he sues you for custody?”
“Okay, I saw that Sally Jessy, too”
“I’m serious,” said Samantha. “He could do that, you know.”
“Oh, please.” I shrugged, trying to look less worried than I was. “Bruce can barely keep track of his rolling papers. What would he want with a baby?”
Samantha shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Or maybe he’d think that a child needs… you know… a male role model.”
“So I’ll let it hang around Tanya,” I joked. Samantha wasn’t laughing. She looked so upset I felt like offering her a hug, until I realized I’d sound just like Tanya at her most Anonymous. “It’s going to be okay,” I said, keeping my voice light, and convincing.
Samantha looked at me. “I hope so,” she said quietly. “I really do.”
“You’re what?” asked Betsy, my editor. To her credit, she recovered a lot faster than Samantha did.
“Pregnant,” I repeated. I was getting a little tired of playing this particular cut on the soundtrack of my life. “With child. Knocked up. Bun in the oven…”
“Oh. Okay. Oh, my. Um” Betsy peered at me from behind her thick glasses. “Congratulations?” she offered tentatively.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Is there, um, going to be a wedding?” she asked.
“Not in the forseeable future, no,” I said briskly. “Will that be a problem?”
“Oh, no, no! Of course not! I mean, of course, the paper would never discriminate, or anything”
I was suddenly very, very tired. “I know,” I said. “And I know it’s going to be weird for people…” “The less explaining you do, the better,” said Betsy. We were in the conference room with the door closed and the shades pulled, which meant I could only see my colleagues from the knees down. I recognized Frank the copy-editor’s beat-up loafers slowing as they made their way to the mailroom, followed closely by Tanisha the photo clerk’s stack-heeled Mary Janes, moving at a ridiculously snail-like pace. I was sure, if I had the full-body view, their heads would all be swiveling toward me, trying to figure out why Betsy and I were in here, whether I was in some kind of trouble, and what the trouble was. I was sure that once they’d made the obligatory stop at their mailboxes, they’d make a sharp right to the desk of Alice, longtime departmental secretary and depository of all things juicy and scandalous. Heck, if someone else were in here with Betsy right now, I’d be doing the exact same thing. It’s the downside of working with people who poke and pry and investigate for a living. You don’t wind up with much of a private life.
“If I were you I wouldn’t say a word,” Betsy said. She was in her forties, a short, quick-witted woman with a shock of white-blond hair who’d lived through sexism, corporate takeovers, budget cutbacks, and half a dozen different editors in chief, all men, and all with their own unique visions of what the Examiner should do. She was a survivor, and my mentor at the paper, and I trusted her to give me good advice.
“Well, eventually I’m going to have to say something”
“Eventually,” she said. “But for now I would say nothing.” She looked at me, not unkindly. “It’s hard, you know,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
“Will you have any… help?”
“If you mean, is Bruce going to ride in on a white horse and marry me, probably not. But my mother and Tanya will help out… and maybe my sister, too.”
Betsy had come prepared. She pulled a copy of the union contract out of her briefcase, then a notebook and a calculator. “Let’s see what we can do for you.”
What she came up with sounded more than fair— six weeks of paid leave after the birth, and if I wanted, six more weeks of unpaid leave after that. Then I’d have to work three days a week to keep my health benefits, but Betsy said she’d be amenable to having me work one of the days from home, as long as I was reachable. She tapped out my new salary-to-be on a calculator. Oof. Worse than I thought it would be… but still livable. At least, that’s what I hoped. How much would day care cost? And baby clothes… and furniture… and food. I saw my carefully maintained nest egg— the one I’d built up, figuring I’d need it someday to pay for a wedding, or maybe a house— dwindling down to nothing before my eyes.
“We’ll work it out,” Betsy told me. “Don’t worry.” She gathered up her papers and sighed. “At least, try not to worry more than you absolutely have to. And let me know if I can help.”
“Eight weeks,” said my gynecologist, in her melodious clipped British voice. “Or perhaps nine.”
“Eight,” I said faintly. It’s hard to be emphatic when you’re flat on your back, with your feet up in stirrups and your legs spread.
Gita Patel— at least, that was the name on the tag clipped on to her lab coat— set her instruments down and slid around on her wheeled stool to face me, as I struggled into a sitting position. She was about my age, I guessed, with shiny black hair pulled into a low bun at the nape of her neck. She wasn’t the one I usually saw in this HMO-run hidey-hole of a doctors’ office, located one level below the street on Delancey, but she had the first available appointment, and, thanks to my mother’s ceaseless chorus of “Have you seen a doctor yet,” I decided not to wait. So far, I thought, it was working out. Dr. Patel had gentle hands, and a pleasant way about her.
“You are feeling well?” she asked.
“Fine. Just a little tired. Well, very tired, actually.”
“No nausea?” Wow. I even loved the way she said “nausea.”
“Not for the last few days.”
“Very well, then. Let us discuss your plans.” She tilted her head ever so slightly toward the waiting room. I admired the discretion of the gesture even as I shook my head.
“No. It’s just me.”
“Very well,” she said again, and handed me some glossy brochures. My HMO’s name was emblazoned at the top. “Little Sprouts” read the title. Ugh. “Helping our members as they begin one of life’s most exciting journeys!” Double ugh.
“Now then. I will see you monthly for the next five months, then every two weeks for your eighth month, and then weekly until it is time to deliver.” She flipped some pages on the calendar. “I am giving you a due date of June 15… understanding, of course, that babies come when they please.”
I left with my purse rattling with bottles of vitamins and folic acid, my head spinning with lists of things I couldn’t eat and things I’d have to buy and calls I’d have to make. Forms to fill out, birthing classes to register for, a fact sheet on episiotomies that I didn’t even want to look at in my current state of mind. It was December, and the weather had finally gotten cold. A brisk wind kicked dried-up leaves into the corners as I walked, my thin jacket wrapped tight around me. I could smell snow in the air. I was tired down to my bones, and my head was spinning, but I had one more stop left.
Fat Class was just getting out when I arrived. I found my classmates, and Dr. K., exiting the Weight and Eating Disorders offices, chatting happily, bundled up in sweaters and winter coats that looked as if they were being worn for the first time that year.
“Cannie!” Dr. K. waved and walked over. He was wearing khakis, a denim shirt, and a tie. No white lab coat, for once. “How have you been?”
“Oh, okay,” I told him. “I’m sorry I missed class. I meant to stop by earlier”
“Why don’t we step into my office,” said Dr. K.
We did. He sat behind his desk, I took the chair opposite, not realizing until I’d sat down that I wasn’t just tired, I was completely exhausted.
“It’s good to see you,” he said again, looking at me expectantly.
I took a deep breath. Get through this, I told myself. Get through this, and you’ll be able to go home and go to sleep.
“I’m going to, um… stay pregnant. So I have to drop out of the program,” I told him. He nodded, as if this was what he’d been waiting to hear.
“I’ll make arrangements for the department to send you a check,” he said. “And we’ll be starting new studies next fall, if you’re still interested.”
“I don’t think I’m going to have a lot of free time,” I said.
He nodded. “Well, we’ll miss you in class. You really bring a certain something.”
“Oh, you’re just saying that”
“No, I’m not. That imitation of the female fat cell you did two weeks ago… you really should think about stand-up.”
I sighed. “Stand-up’s hard. And I’ve got… a lot of things to think about right now.”
Dr. K. reached for a notebook and a pen. “You know, I actually think we might have some kind of nutrition workshop for expectant mothers,” he said, clearing books and papers away, locating his telephone directory. “I mean, since you’ve paid already, you might as well get something… Or, of course, if you just want a refund, we can definitely do that”
He was being so nice. Why was he being so nice to me? “No, that’s okay. I just wanted to say that I had to drop out, and that I’m sorry”
I took a deep breath, looking at him looking at me from across the desk, his eyes so kind. And then I was crying again. What was it about this room, and this poor man, that every time I sat across from him I wound up in tears?
He handed me the Kleenex. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m fine. I’ll be okay I’m sorry”
And then I was crying so hard that I couldn’t speak. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I think this is one of the first-trimester things, where everything makes you cry.” I patted my purse. “I’ve got a list in here somewhere… things you’re supposed to take, things you’re supposed to feel…”
He was reaching over me, pulling a white lab coat off the coat rack.
“Stand up,” he said. I stood up, and he draped the coat over my shoulders. “I want to show you something,” he said. “Come with me.”
He led me into an elevator, then down a hall, through a door marked “Staff Only” and “Keep Out,” through another door marked “Emergency Only! Alarm Will Sound!” But the alarm didn’t sound as he pushed open the door. And suddenly we were outside, on the roof, with the city spilled out beneath our feet.
I could see City Hall. I was practically at eye level with the statue of Billy Penn on top. There was the PECO building, studded with glistening lights… the twin towers of Liberty Place, shining silver… tiny cars, inching down infinitesimal streets. The rows of Christmas lights and neon wreaths marching down Market Street to the waterfront. The Blue Cross RiverRink, with tiny skaters moving in slow circles. And then the Delaware River, and Camden. New Jersey. Bruce. It all looked very far away.