Blessing in Disguise (38 page)

“Thanks,” she told Kath, “but I’m supposed to be filling out this college ap.” The deadline for admission to Yale was Monday, only four days away, and she hadn’t even started on her essay. But now the reality of her dilemma was sinking in. “God, Kath, I don’t even know for sure if I’ll be
going
to college.” She hadn’t thought it out that far ahead, but now she wondered if she, who would lay down in front of a picket line of Pro-Lifers, would have the guts to end a pregnancy.

“Have you told Con?” Kath asked, bringing her back sharply to the origin of all this.

“Not yet.” Saying it aloud, she wasn’t sure why not. But, then, since that night she’d gone to his house, she and Con had hardly spent any time alone. They were always in a group, hanging out at Tyler’s or Jill’s or Maggie’s, or going out for pizza after school with the gang. Now Hannah wondered if that was because
she
had set it up that way ... or if Con felt uncomfortable being around her. She added, “No point in telling him until I’m absolutely sure.”

“Have you tried one of those, you know, home kits?” Kath asked.

“Yeah, I did.” Hannah bit her lip to keep from crying. “Nothing showed up.”

“Oh, well, then.” The relief in Kath’s voice was tremendous. “I don’t get it, Hannah. If ...”

“They don’t always work,” she interrupted. “That summer I was a temp in that doctor’s office? There was this lady who thought she had a tumor, because she’d taken one of those tests and it came out negative. But the reason her stomach was so big, she was four months pregnant.”

“God, how awful! I’d take the tumor any day. At least then my parents would feel sorry for me instead of wanting to disown me.”

Suddenly Hannah realized who she’d been hiding this from. Not Con. Her parents. Especially her father. “What do you think I’m so flipped out about?” she said. “If I
am
pregnant, my
parents
will have to know. My dad ...” She took a ragged breath. “Oh, Kath, he’s always thought of me as so responsible and capable. I’d feel so stupid. A hopeless basket case.”

“But he’d understand, wouldn’t he?”

“Yeah, I know, he wouldn’t foam at the mouth like my mom would, but he’d ... Oh, Kath, he’d be so
nice
about it. Like when I was five and had to have my tonsils removed. The thing is, I’m not five anymore—but he’ll see me that way.”

Clutching the phone to her ear, Hannah burst into tears. She couldn’t seem to stop herself. It really was like one of those bad movies from the fifties, where a girl gets “in trouble” (they always called it that, like she’d gotten caught cheating on a test, or shoplifting) and she’d as soon be on trial in Nuremberg for Nazi war crimes than to have to confess to her parents that she was knocked up.

Hannah trailed into the bathroom that connected her bedroom to what had once been Ben’s room—even though, with him away in college before she’d even started school, she could barely remember Ben’s being around. Now, listening to the faint shuffling noises coming from what had become Mom’s office, Ben moving stuff around or whatever he was doing, Hannah felt a twinge of annoyance. Why was Ben always coming over? When Mom bugged him to escort her to all her functions, why didn’t he just tell her to get a life?

With her free hand, Hannah reached for a tissue. The box was empty, so she tore off some toilet paper, which disintegrated even as she blew her nose into it. She pictured Kath on the other end of the phone, sprawled on the bed in her room, and wished her friend
were
here. But at the same time, she cringed at the idea of anyone, even her best friend, seeing her like this—slumped on the toilet seat in this ridiculous bathroom Mother had done in rose-colored marble tiles with brass fixtures shaped like spouting fish. With her face all blotchy and swollen, a lump of tattered toilet paper jammed up against her nose to keep it from running, she felt like a bag lady who had somehow wandered into the ladies’ room at the Saint Regis.

“Listen, I’m sure it’ll work out somehow. ...” Kath sounded so miserable in her behalf that Hannah felt a fresh welling of tears threaten to spill over. “If you need anything—anything at all—I’m here.”

“Thanks ... but right now what I need most is a miracle.”

“Yeah, okay, but if Con goes ballistic on you or anything, I’d be happy to kick his butt.” She could hear the grin in Kath’s voice.

“I’m not blaming Con,” Hannah told her. “It wasn’t like he put a gun to my head. Still”—she felt a tiny smile creeping through—“I appreciate the offer.”

“Listen, Hannah ... I gotta go.” Her voice dropped dramatically. “The wardens are at the gate. I wouldn’t want them to hear any of this.”

“Sure, okay. Later?”

“Later.”

After hanging up, Hannah bent over the sink to splash cold water over her face and felt a sharp cramp—not where she would have had one if it had been her period, but high up in her stomach, like a stitch from running too hard. She gasped, and clutched the cold lip of the marble counter, waiting for it to pass.

With the water running, and her breath coming in shallow bursts, the flicker of movement she glimpsed in the medicine-cabinet mirror, and the sound of the door snicking shut—the door opposite the tub that opened onto Benjamin’s old bedroom—barely registered.

By Saturday, Hannah still had not gotten her period, and she was truly beginning to unravel. To take her mind off worrying, she’d plunged into writing her essay for Yale—about the kids from Inwood’s P.S. 152 that she’d tutored after school last year. Then she remembered the application fee. No point in asking Mom—she’d make it plain that any school expenses were Dad’s territory.

Hannah called over at Grace’s, where her father usually hung out on weekends. Bingo. Chris, who picked up the phone, told her Jack was in the shower.

“Tell him I’ll be right over,” she said.

But when she arrived and let herself in, no Dad, and no Grace, either. There was only Chris, hunched in front of his computer screen.

“Hi.” Chris greeted her without looking up.

Hannah recognized the game he was playing, Sim City, where you build this whole simulated city out of graphics and then have to figure out how to run it. What boggled her mind was how kids who could barely chew gum and walk at the same time managed to run an entire city and do a better job of it, probably, than adults. Chris looked good at it, she thought, surprised to see he
was
good at something other than his bad James Dean imitation.

“Where’s my dad?” she asked, beginning to feel annoyed. “Didn’t you
tell
him I was coming?” It felt creepy. being in Grace’s loft without Grace around. Hannah had a sudden desire to throw away the key Grace had given her. She didn’t want to feel like she in any way belonged to this place.

Chris shot her a sheepish look, and shrugged. “Sorry. Guess I forgot.”

Hannah had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming at him.

“He left a few minutes ago,” Chris went on. “And Mom went to buy some stuff at Balducci’s. She’s all freaked out about my grandmother coming to visit ... even though Nana’s staying at my dad’s. She’s planning this whole dinner for Wednesday night. The way she’s acting, you’d think it was the Last Supper.”

Chris turned to her, and in the cavelike darkness of his room his eyes seemed to carry a residue of reflected glow from the screen, his pinched face making her think of a raccoon startled by a flashlight in the midst of a midnight forage.

Hannah looked around, thinking,
God, how can anyone stand to live this way?
Gray light leaked through the partially drawn blinds to reveal an unmade bed with a chair and a dresser next to it heaped with junk—dirty clothes, piles of old comic books, empty Sprite cans, a dusty-looking bike helmet, Walkman headphones tangled amid a slew of smudgy tapes.

Normally, she wouldn’t have noticed or cared, but right now everything was rubbing her the wrong way. Chris looked as if he wanted to talk, but this time she was not going to let herself get sucked into playing big sister. She started to turn away, but the bleak look on Chris’s face somehow caught hold of her.

He’s lonely,
she thought. It struck her that Chris was kind of like herself—pushing people away while at the same time hoping they’d like him anyway.

“You get along with your grandmother?” she asked, finding a narrow edge of his bed where she could perch.

He shrugged, but his eyes softened. “Yeah. She’s different with me than with my mom. We used to do stuff together, like hang out at the cabin she’s got up at this lake. The thing is, now she acts like I’m some kind of orphan.” His gaze drifted about. “Like, when I’m visiting her, she unpacks my suitcase and washes everything before she’ll put it away. Like she thinks my mom doesn’t do the laundry or something.”

“Hey, I know what you mean.
My
grandmother still nags me about brushing my teeth.”

He dropped his head, his elbows braced against his knees, his shoulder blades spiking up under his baggy T-shirt. “With Nana it’s no big deal, but with my mom and dad ...” His voice trailed off, then picked up again with sudden vehemence. “Divorce sucks.”

“Yeah, right up there with acid rain and defoliation of the rain forests.”
And being pregnant.

When he looked up again, she was startled to see the glimmer of tears in his eyes. “Hannah? Can I tell you something?”

“Sure. If you want to.”

“My dad wants me to live with him.”

“What’s new about that? It’s called being drawn and quartered. In medieval times, it was a torture practiced on prisoners and infidels. Nowadays they call it joint custody.”

“No, I mean
really
—like move in with him. Permanently.”

“Does your mom know?” Her voice dropped to a whisper, though no one was around but the two of them.

Chris shook his head, looking more miserable than ever.

Hannah felt slightly sick. How would it be, she wondered, if tomorrow morning over breakfast she were to announce casually to her mother that she was moving in with Daddy?

As sudden and painful as a Band-Aid being ripped off, it dawned on her that her mother probably wouldn’t care all that much. Oh, she’d haul out the box of Kleenex and get weepy, then start with the accusations, laying this huge guilt trip on her about being dumped by everyone she ever cared about, and Daddy only wanting her so he could be one up ... but the truth was that Mom was so busy chasing after antiques and wallpapers and going to her endless benefits that, in the end, she probably wouldn’t care as much as Grace would if it were Chris.

“What do
you
want?” she asked him. “I mean, if this kind of thing was completely up to us kids—which it never is.”

“I don’t know.” Behind him, the computer emitted what sounded like the
squeep
of a cornered mouse. In the dim light, its screen glowed like a huge phosphorescent eye. “What
I
want isn’t going to happen, so I guess it doesn’t really matter.”

“You mean, your mom and dad getting back together?”

“Sort of.” He sounded embarrassed, like a kid who knows he’s too old to believe in Santa Claus but does anyway.

“You want to know what I think?” Hannah was surprised to find that her own misery had receded. “I think the decision shouldn’t be up to you. Not if you’re not sure.”

“But if tell my dad I don’t want to live with him, he’ll feel terrible. He’ll think it’s because I care more about my mom than about him.”

“And your mom—what will
she
think?”

Chris didn’t say anything, just stared down at the dirty tops of his Reeboks.

A hollow, uncomfortable silence settled over them. Oddly, Hannah was sorry for Grace as well. In fact, ever since that night at the cabin when Grace had given her the jacket—which she had scarcely taken off since—her feelings about Grace had seemed more confused than ever.

She found herself rising, and walking over to where Chris sat. She dropped her hand lightly onto his shoulder, gave it a clumsy pat. There was nothing she could say that would make him feel all better. But maybe he just needed to know that someone was on his side.

Someone who knew exactly how he felt.

Hannah was slipping into her leather bomber jacket when Grace walked in the door. Hannah’s heart lurched; then a weird thought snuck into her head. What if she told Grace that she was scared she might be pregnant?

Grace wouldn’t flip out ... and, anyway, Grace’s opinion of her had to be so low already, it couldn’t get too much worse.

God, I can’t believe I’m thinking this.

“Hannah—what a surprise!” Grace’s chin-length hair was all windblown, her cheeks ruddy from the cold. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

Grace breezed past, laden with shopping bags, and Hannah felt the chill of the outdoors waft from her. Hannah’s arms tightened with goosebumps as she watched Grace thunk her groceries down on the kitchen counter.

Okay, now, should she tell her? Before she lost her nerve?

Yeah, but what if she uses it against you somehow? If you had something this juicy on her, wouldn’t you?

Realizing that she probably
would
do something like that only made her feel worse.

“I’m not ... here, that is. I mean, I was just on my way out.” Hannah stumbled over her words, feeling clumsy and shy.

“Oh, well, then ... I won’t keep you.” Grace didn’t sound disappointed—more like maybe she was relieved or something. Hannah felt strangely let down. A few weeks ago, she’d have been happy to know that Grace was finally backing off, but now, well, she felt sort of rejected.

“Maybe I could help you unload some of that stuff first. I’m not in any big hurry.” The words tumbled out before she was fully aware she’d spoken ... and Hannah felt her head give a little jerk, as it did when perfect strangers on the subway spoke to her. Had she really offered to help Grace?

Grace looked astonished, too, Hannah could see. She stared at Hannah over the counter, twirling her key ring on one finger. It made a jangly sound that seemed to keep both of them from focusing too much on Hannah’s startling offer.

“Sure,” she said brightly. “I could use a hand. It’s not all that much stuff, but the fortune I spent, it ought to be a truckload. I swear, the prices at Balducci’s are enough to send any sane person screaming to the nearest A & P. I don’t usually buy groceries there, but my mother is coming for dinner, and ...” She grimaced. “Well, you know how it is.”