The Banks of Certain Rivers (18 page)

What the hell. I am getting myself wound up over nothing.

Chris and I share our ride in to school, and he seems chagrined by
the fact that I have not packed any leftovers from his outstanding
batch of pho for my lunch today.

“It’s mostly liquid, Chris,” I say. “The
thing would probably come open in my pack and get all over my stuff.”

There’s no text waiting when we get to school, and there’s
not one before the first bell of the morning, either. I have a strict
no-gadgets-in-class rule for the students, and I adhere to it myself,
so I keep my phone stashed deep in my pack, no matter how much I wish
I could sneak over to check it. The kids’ attitudes today are
not so different from how they were yesterday: a foggy mix of boredom
and shell shock. Isn’t this academic ennui supposed to start a
few weeks later in the school year? At least, as far as I can tell,
there is no audible gossip about Denise Masterson. I try my best to
keep my first period class engaged, and I do manage to score some
points toward the end of the class when I let them know we’ll
be watching a movie tomorrow.

No texts come during any of the early class periods. Now I’m
starting to worry that something might actually be wrong, and,
knowing that she’s going to be driving this morning, I’d
like to be sure that’s not the case.

I know it seems stupid but, was it something I said?

I leave a message at lunchtime, and another during my open afternoon
period. And one more after that for good measure. Good luck on your
test, I say. Drive safe to Lansing. Call me when you get there? Is
everything okay?

Really, is everything okay?

I have an open period in the afternoon, and after setting going over
some homework assignments I check my district email. I’m
surprised to find that, instead of the six or so messages I usually
have waiting for me in there, I have more than eighty, all coming
from a different random Yahoo! email address. Beth Coolidge got
burned and unleashed a virus on the school network by opening
something like this last year, so I delete them all without looking
and make a note to myself to mention it to Cory the next time I see
him.

AP physics serves to lighten my mood. The Ross twins keep straight
faces when I make a few comments about Geiger counters—without
giving away our plans—as a setup for my expected radioactive
student tomorrow. Cross country practice is not so bad either; a
welcome break from a day of stupid anxiety. No punitive sprints are
needed, and the girls and I have a long, easy run through town, down
along the Big Jib River bike path to the waterfront and back. We pass
Lauren’s condo, and I see that her upstairs blinds are closed.

After practice, there’s still nothing waiting on my phone, and
my anxiety begins to tilt toward exasperation.

I run home through another afternoon of glorious, temperate weather.
Dazzling sunshine at my back on the highway north, cool shade
embracing me as I turn through the trees. Sprinting around the last
bend, breathing hard and pushing myself, to the gravel of my drive
and….

Lauren’s car is parked at Carol’s.

This is peculiar. I take a step toward the farmhouse, but stop
myself: maybe she carpooled to Lansing with one of the other nurses?
Two of her coworkers are in the program with her; that would make
sense. I could stop in and see if she’s there, find out just
what in the world is going on, but if she wanted to let me know what
was going on maybe she would have called me back last night and
maybe
I’m feeling just a little pissed off about this right now?

Thinking about it, I don’t feel like I’ve done anything
wrong.

I continue past Carol’s house to my own; Lauren can be
addressed after I’m cleaned up and composed. I take the side
door into my kitchen where I drink some water, looking around for the
canister of Chris’s magic recovery powder. That stuff was
pretty good. I find it in the pantry, on top of his crate of secret
ingredients, and mix myself a batch before going to the living room
to check the answering machine. The glass nearly falls from my hands
when I enter the room, however; Lauren is sitting on my couch,
staring at the floor.

“What…what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be
downstate?”

She’s slouched forward, with her hands folded over her knees,
and her bag is slumped on the floor between her feet.

“I’m late,” she says, in a voice barely loud enough
to hear.

“I would say so. Why are you here and not at your exam? And
does it have anything to do with why you wouldn’t call me—”

“I’m seven days late getting my period. I’ve
basically skipped my period, Neil.”

“Oh,” I say. I sit down on the arm of the couch, with my
back to her. “Oh.”

“That’s why I’m freaking out. That’s why I
didn’t call you back.”

“I see.”

“I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t know what
to say. And when I started to think about everything, I mean, really
think about how this whole thing is, you and me, I really freaked
out. I thought, what am I doing?”

I twist and slide down to take a seat next to her.

“Do you think you’re pregnant?” I ask. Lauren opens
her mouth as if to say something, but she doesn’t. Instead she
leans forward to reach into her bag, pulls out a handful of
chocolate-bar sized foil wrappers, and drops them with a clatter to
the floor in front of her.

“What are those?” I ask.

“Pregnancy tests. I got them from my office. We have boxes full
of them.”

“Have you taken one yet?”

“No.”

“Are you going to?”

“Do you want me to?”

“What are you doing, telling me not to pull out, when you—”

“I was in my safe time, Neil, I was supposed to start any
minute!”

“Jesus,” I say. I’m trying to mentally tally all
our recent unprotected encounters, and I’m losing count. “Why
didn’t you tell me?”

“I was waiting to start! I’ve been a couple days late
before while we’ve been together.”

“This late?”

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to
worry about it. And now…oh, God, I don’t know, I don’t
know! And you know what scares me the most? Do you want to know?”

I’m pretty sure I’m going to find out regardless of what
I say, so I keep quiet.

“Sometimes I feel like you’re more dedicated to a woman
who’s
not even there
than you are to me.”

“Yes, take the test,” I say flatly.

Lauren picks up one of the foil packs and tears it open as she stomps
to the bathroom in the hall. The door stays open. I hear the
trickle of her urination, I hear the toilet flush. I wait, and wait,
and I hear my own blood rushing in my ears. Then another sound: the
sound of a sudden, choking sob, Lauren sobbing, the sound of her feet
running back down my hall, the sound of my front door swinging open
and hitting the wall.

The sound of her car driving away.

I rise to my feet and go to the bathroom, but I already know what I’m
going to find. On the edge of the vanity is a shiny beige plastic
form with the words POSITIVE IF SECOND LINE/SINGLE LINE CONTROL
printed beneath a little window sculpted into the material. I grab it
with shaking hands and hold it up close to my eyes.

The window is painted with two unmistakable blue lines.

Clutching the test, I sink to the edge of the tub, bend over, and put
my head between my knees.

I run to Alan’s
house, barge in without knocking, and head straight to his study.
He’s seated at his desk, reading now, not flying or watching
videos, and he pushes his glasses to his forehead as he peers up at
me.

“You look a little rocky, Neil.”

I pull the test from my jacket pocket and toss it to him, and Alan
lets out a low whistle as he examines it.

“Did Chris get someone in trouble?”

“I got someone in trouble. Lauren is pregnant.”

Alan says nothing. He places the pregnancy test next to his book, and
pushes his chair away from his desk.

“Sit down,” he says. Alan leaves the room and comes back
with a glass of water. “You want a sedative? Klonopin? Kristin
has some. You’re looking pretty—”

“I do not want a fucking sedative! What I want is for this to
have not happened!”

“Well, it did. Unexpected things come to us, Neil. You know
that. Probably better than anyone.”

“Fuck,” I say. “Fuck!”

“Drink,” Alan says, pointing at the glass. “Come
with me.” I down the water and follow him back outside, and we
cross the lawn to Mega-Putt. Alan unlocks a shed with a key from his
pocket, ducks inside, and emerges with a pair of putters. “Come
on,” he says. “Front nine, seven wonders of the ancient
world.” He takes a golf ball from his pocket and delicately
places it at the tee. I’m nearly shaking as I watch him. “Plus
a couple from the new world the classical historians missed. Number
one is the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. It’ll look much better
next spring when I can grow some flowers. You go first.”

“Are you shitting me? This is happening and you want me to play
a fucking game of Putt-Putt?”

“I’m giving you the first turn,” he says calmly.
“Go.”

I shouldn’t be so
stunned by this latest turn of events. I’ve been in this
situation before. Wendy and I dated all through college, with one
moderately bitter, brief interruption suggested by me our junior year
to “see other people” that ended up with us deciding we
were pretty happy seeing each other after not seeing anyone else at
all. We were comfortable, we knew each other’s habits, and,
while we never overtly discussed marriage, we knew without saying it
that we were probably headed in that direction. Probably. It was a
novelty for our friends that we’d been long-distance high
school sweethearts, and it became something we sort of subtly boasted
about. We had about us, perhaps, a mild air of superiority.

Our senior year at Michigan State, against her parents’ wishes
(and with some objection by my mother) we moved into an apartment
together. Our neighborhood was made up of mostly graduate students,
established couples, some even with children, and the friendships we
made with our older neighbors seemed to cement our superior
fantasyland self-image. It was as if we were playing house, playing
grown-ups like we’d skipped over some vast, unnecessary area of
adolescence. We’d never known about it, and never really missed
it.

I was studying physics, and had been accepted into a masters program
in Kyoto, Japan to do research work with the possibility of
continuing for my PhD. Wendy, a linguistics major, was looking into
English teaching programs through the university there. We were
excited—
so excited
—for this adventure, for making
a home overseas and learning a new language and meeting new friends
and building on our superior image of ourselves.

Then, in the early spring, Wendy missed a period too.

She’d been taking the pill since our first clumsy encounters
our senior year in high school when we’d started having sex,
and decided after a few years that she didn’t like how moody it
made her feel. To be honest, I didn’t care for it either, and I
was happy for her to be through with it. She felt her moodiness might
have even been responsible for our brief breakup, and she didn’t
want something like that to happen again. So she quit. After that we
used condoms—usually—and eventually she was fitted for a
diaphragm, which we also used, when we remembered it. Did it fail
some night, or had we simply been lazy? It could have been either.

Everything changed. Everything. Japan was out of the question. Maybe
we could have handled a baby overseas if we were older, if we were
actually as mature as we believed ourselves to be. But we were really
just kids, and didn’t even want to try. Wendy suffered with
terrible morning sickness at first, and missed many of her classes. I
knew I’d need a job, quickly, and found there were some grants
in the state to help with getting a teaching certificate. The state
needed science teachers, and doors opened pretty easily for me in
that direction.

An abortion seemed out of the question too. How could we consider it,
really, when I’d been born to someone in presumably far worse
circumstances? The very fact that I was living made us feel obligated
to deal with the consequences of what we’d done, and the fact
that my parents had gone to the trouble of adopting me and making me
part of their family only strengthened our decision to follow through
with it. Do I think differently about it now? I’m fine with
anyone who needs to make that choice. I just couldn’t have done
it myself back then. Wendy couldn’t have either.

And anyway, I love my son.

My parents were incredibly supportive. Whatever help we needed, they
told us, they’d do what they could. I think they were impressed
that we were going through with having a baby. To us, maybe, after
the reality of it sunk in, it just seemed one more part of our
grown-up illusion.

We drove up to Port Manitou over spring break to tell Wendy’s
parents. Wendy was less nervous about it than I was. We’d
planned the trip weeks before we’d known about the pregnancy,
and Dick and Carol had no idea what was coming. We told them at
dinner the first night. Carol cried, and Dick just stared at me while
Wendy squeezed my hand under the table.

Despite Wendy being pregnant with our child, they still made us sleep
in separate beds that night.

Dick asked me to go for a walk the next morning. He brought a shotgun
along, broken over his shoulder as was his habit on walks we’d
taken in the past. It had never seemed quite so threatening before.

“So what will you be doing for work?” he asked me,
picking his way through some underbrush.

“Teaching,” I said.

“My mother was a teacher, did you know that?”

“I didn’t.”