Another Piece of My Heart (17 page)

Every time I look in my dad’s eyes, I see this massive disappointment, but Andi doesn’t seem to be judging me, and when I was in there getting a scan, and they were rubbing the gel on my stomach, I was embarrassed and ashamed, and I really, really wanted Andi in there with me.

I kept my eyes closed the whole time because I wanted to pretend I was somewhere else. Anywhere else. Going through anything else. I wanted to pretend I was back in third grade, or fifth, Michael and I in the tree house, or going out to Stinson Beach for the day, shrieking with laughter as we jumped the waves.

I thought about that day Michael reached out and touched my hair, and how I was left with this tremendous loss, and I squeezed my eyes shut in that doctor’s office and didn’t move, not even to wipe away the tears that were streaming down my cheeks.

The thing is, it isn’t going to be okay. My whole life my parents have told me things were going to be okay, and they always have been. Even the divorce, which was awful, ended up being … okay. Dad meeting Andi was pretty fucking awful, and my life isn’t exactly great, but I deal with it.

Andi is a total bitch, but she can sometimes be nice. When she and my dad first got together, she used to do a ton of things with me. I hated that he had a girlfriend, but I liked what she did with me, and all the stuff she bought me. All I’d have to do was pause in a store and pick something up, say how much I loved it, and she’d buy it for me as a surprise.

Things haven’t changed that much, except she can’t buy me anymore. She never could, but for a while she seemed to think it was possible, so I let her.

I know Andi’s not a bad person, I just think she’s pretty fake most of the time. She pretends to like me, pretends to be interested, but I know she’d be much happier if I just disappeared. She loves Sophia, not me. She loves Sophia because she’s well behaved, and pretty, and slim. She looks a lot like Andi, in fact—like the daughter Andi always says she wanted. She looks like what she is: one of the popular girls.

But the real issue I have is that Andi makes everything about herself. Even this pregnancy. I bet she’s thinking that she and my dad could keep this baby. I can see a look in her eye every time we talk about adoption, and I know she’s thinking about it all the time, but she wouldn’t dare say it.

She’d better not say it because there’s no way in hell that would ever happen.

And that’s why I can’t stand her: from the moment she walked into our lives, everything had to revolve around Andi.

If Andi says jump, my dad asks how high. Sophia will do anything she asks. I’m the only one who refuses, who sees what’s really going on. Except … except those times, like today, when she was caring, and it felt real, and genuine. Those are the times when I think I could almost … almost love her.

When she was stroking my arm and put an arm around me afterward as we were walking out the clinic, and pulled me in tight, kissing the side of my head, I wanted to let her enfold me in her arms.

I wanted to believe her when she said it was all going to be okay.

*   *   *

But this isn’t something that’s going to be okay. It never was. Dad kept asking me how I didn’t know, but how are you supposed to know if you’ve never been pregnant?

Also, I had periods pretty much throughout. They were much lighter than normal, but there was still blood, and I had wicked PMS, but I seem to have that all the time anyway.

How was I supposed to know?

Maybe it crossed my mind, but not seriously. It was only hooking up. It wasn’t supposed to lead to … Oh, God. A baby. Yeah, yeah, I know how biology works, but my group and I just hook up for fun, and because we’re bored. It’s just … what everyone does. And the guys always pull out before … well. They say that makes it safe, but obviously
that’s
not true.

I didn’t even think about it as
sex.
It’s not like I particularly enjoy it that much. It’s just something we do. The guys seem to get far more out of it than the girls although Justine says she comes. I don’t know. I don’t think I ever have. I have no idea what it feels like, but I’m pretty sure I’d know if I’d feel something other than wondering when it will be over.

And that’s the other thing. My dad keeps asking me who the father is, but I don’t know. We’ve all had sex with everyone in our group, and sometimes other people. There are a couple of guys who are older who hang out with us, and I’ve done it with them. So has Justine.

I just can’t believe I’m about to have a baby. It doesn’t feel real. Andi’s downstairs now, on the phone to adoption agencies. I looked at the leaflets the doctor gave me but didn’t read them properly.

My dad and Andi are talking about adoption as if it’s decided. They have decided I’m not going to keep this baby, we’re going to find some nice couple who will take this baby and raise it and give it a life filled with love.

But here’s the thing. This is
my
baby. It’s growing inside of me, it’s part of me, and no one else has the right to tell me what to do with my baby.

I may be seventeen now, but I’ll be eighteen by the time the baby comes, and I know I can love this baby. I know that I have so much love to give. All the love that’s pent up that I’ve never been able to let out? The love I used to have for my father before he betrayed me by marrying Andi? I could give it to this baby.

And she would love me back. I already know it’s a girl, and she would love me with all her heart. All children need is for someone to love them and listen to them, and I would do that. I would love her more than anyone else in the world.

I want to keep her.

I’m going to keep my child.

Nineteen

There is nothing in the world Brooke hates more than hearing the words
We need to talk
. They inevitably sound ominous, inevitably remind her of her father calling her in, reprimanding her for something she’s done of which she was entirely unaware. It doesn’t matter if they’re from a lover, a teacher, or her ex-husband. They always fill her with fear.

She knows this is something to do with her daughter. This is
always
something to do with Emily. Up until a few weeks ago, she would have reached for the vodka, drunk herself into oblivion, fed up with the constant crises and dramas that her daughter brings, removing herself from it all, drinking and sleeping the pain away.

But today—for today—she is celebrating sobriety. Forty-three days today. She hadn’t planned on getting sober, had always thought A.A. and rehab was for losers, and anyway, she wasn’t a drunk. She just liked a drink. That didn’t make her an alcoholic—there was a huge difference.

That was before the night she fell.

Forty-four days ago.

At two o’clock one morning Anne, Brooke’s next-door neighbor, heard water running, followed by a loud thump. Unbelievable that Anne was even up, but she was coming back from a fiftieth birthday party that had gone on far later than anyone had planned, was letting herself into her house when she heard the thump coming from the house next door.

Anne had paused; something had told her to check. The lights were on in Brooke’s house, so Anne had rung the bell, and when there was no answer, she had reached behind the heavy iron pot on the doorstep, pulled out the key that was hidden there, and let herself in.

Upstairs, she found the bathwater overflowing, Brooke on the floor, lying unconscious in a pool of her own vomit, with blood gushing from her forehead. She must have fallen while running the bath and cut herself. Whether unconscious from drink, the cut, or both, thank God Anne was there.

Brooke woke up in the hospital with sixteen stitches in her head. She had no recollection of anything, knowing only that this time, she needed help. If that party hadn’t gone on late, if Anne hadn’t happened to be in the driveway, hadn’t happened to hear Brooke fall …

The doctors told her how lucky she was. Had she not been found, she might have died. She needed to get help. And fast. They sent an addiction counselor into her hospital room; by the time she left, she had signed up for the A.A. program at the hospital. Her first meeting was that afternoon.

“Ninety in ninety,” they said. Ninety meetings in ninety days. She got a sponsor—a woman named Maureen who had fifteen years of sobriety: serenity and wisdom poured from her every pore. Brooke’s own newfound sobriety was shaky, but steady.

She still wasn’t sure she wanted to be sober, but she looked around the meetings at all the people who were sober, envied them their lives. She envied them their calm, their wisdom, their positive outlook on life.

When they spoke of where they had come from, the blame, the resentment, the anger, the self-pity, she related. It was where she had been living for years, and it was that, more than anything else, that kept her coming back. She didn’t want to live in a haze of anger and blame anymore. She wanted to see the glass as they seemed to: half-full.

She speaks to Maureen once a day, has been told to call Maureen at any time. Day or night. Whenever she feels alcohol calling, or … for anything at all. Any problems, anytime she doesn’t know what to do.

Right now would be the perfect time to call Maureen. Her ex-husband is coming over because they “need to talk.” Dread has settled around her shoulders like a hair blanket, itchy and uncomfortable, too heavy for her to move.

She looks at the phone but can’t pick up to call Maureen, as much as part of her wants to. Brooke has always felt isolated. She describes herself as a hermit although it wasn’t always like this. When she was young she remembers being sociable and social, remembers loving meeting people, loving building a life.

It was once she was married she started to lose herself, trying to be someone she thought she was supposed to be. She had the not-fitting-in gene, the never-feeling-good-enough trait, the same one she sees in Emily; she sees so much of herself in Emily, it almost breaks her heart.

Ethan was supposed to rescue Brooke, to be her knight in shining armor, but once she was married, the inadequacies, ones she had been able to hide for a while, kicked in full force.

She would stand in the hallways outside Emily’s preschool classroom with a fake smile stuck to her face, neediness emanating from every pore, wanting so badly to join in the conversations about gym programs, or babysitters, or kids’ clothes outlets.

She was barely in her twenties at the time, so much younger than the other mothers, all of who seemed to be in their thirties. But she wanted to be one of them, she wanted them to accept her.

Sometimes she would try to join in, feeling awkward and wrong. She remembers hearing about a playgroup that had started with a selection of other mothers, hearing them plan whose house to meet at next, then talking about a mom’s night out they had held.

Nobody thought to invite her. Even when she was standing there, a polite smile fixed on her face, nobody seemed to notice her. It was around that time she found a glass of wine during “the witching hour” made her feel a whole hell of a lot better.

Everybody
had a glass of wine during the witching hour. Didn’t they? She heard the other mothers laugh about it. Brooke had never been a big drinker so tended to drink the wine quickly, more like water than wine. She refilled. A glass and a half.

The glass and a half became two. For a long time she had two glasses every night. But two crept up to three, crept up to four, and more. Every night.

Everyone did it, she told herself, as she grew adept at hiding the empty bottles of wine, stashing them in the garage under the empty crates, taking them to the recycle bins at the grocery store the next morning.

Ethan would sit and watch her, disapproval etched on his face, but she wasn’t hurting anyone. If anything, she was better when she was a bit … tipsy. More confident, more fun. Looser.

After a while, she stopped being more confident, more fun. She started being angrier, critical, negative. She would look at Emily, so like her when she was young, and feel fury.

“Get it together, Emily!” she’d shriek. “Lose weight, for Christ’s sake! Look at you! Who’d want to date you?” She wouldn’t realize she was holding her stunned daughter by the shoulders, shaking her.

Resentment set in. Why should she help them with their homework? Jesus, she was a mother, not a teacher. It was the school’s job to ensure that her children knew what they were doing, not hers.

Why did she have to make dinner every damned night? She wasn’t a cook. She had other things to do, Goddamnit. No, I didn’t make dinner tonight, you can damn well make something yourself.

Ethan stepped in to fill the void. He’d come home from work to greet the kids off the school bus, trying to contain his mounting sadness that Brooke was already well on her way to being incapacitated.

He’d stop at the market on the way home, buy prepared food, knowing full well there’d be nothing in the fridge, and late at night they would have fights. Ethan would say he would leave if she didn’t stop drinking; she would tell him to leave, knowing that he wouldn’t, until, eventually, he did.

She stopped drinking then. For three weeks. She needed to prove to Ethan, and to herself, that she could. That was her test, for surely an alcoholic—that was what he called her—couldn’t stop drinking for three weeks. An alcoholic couldn’t stop drinking for two days. How could she possibly be an alcoholic?

They went back and forth for a while, until Ethan left. Permanently. Whatever love and affection was left had trickled out by the time he walked out for the last time.

Brooke continues to blame him, to blame everyone else. She is still negative, and critical, and judgmental. Everything to do with Emily is Ethan’s fault, as Brooke is, in her own mind, an exemplary mother. She goes to
most
events at school, doesn’t she? She shows up, mixes and mingles with the other mothers. Surely that’s enough?

When Brooke’s life isn’t good, it is Ethan’s fault. Emily being …
Emily,
is Ethan’s fault. Brooke’s being a single mother who is struggling to get by, despite the generous alimony and child support she gets, is Ethan’s fault.