Experiment in Terror 03 Dead Sky Morning (21 page)

“Yuck, Dex. Yuck,” I said again for emphasis, leaning back in my seat and staring him down like some disapproving mother figure.

Dex didn’t say anything. He looked chagrined but it was wearing off as he gazed at the bottle, like he was trying to Jean Grey it into a ball of fire or something. I didn’t even know if he was listening to me. I guess it didn’t matter. He must have known he didn’t handle it very well.

Not that I would have handled it well, had I been in his situation. Only I wouldn’t have been able to drink the problem away.

He wasn’t saying anything so I reached across the table and put my hand lightly on top of his. Just for a moment. He jumped and slowly moved his eyes over to meet mine.

“So, is this good news or bad news?” I asked as compassionately as possible. I wanted to be supportive for him, no matter what my own feelings were. It was no small thing to ask of myself but Dex, despite his actions the night before, deserved it. At least, I was going to try.

He chuckled wryly, shaking his head. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know, Dex. I really don’t.”

He sighed and reached for the bottle. He took a gulp that was big enough for him to choke on. When he regained control of his throat, he gave me a frank look.

“This is bad news.”

“For you or for Jenn?”

“I think for both of us. Definitely for me. And I thought definitely for her.”

“You thought? Did she change her mind?”

He shrugged and pulled out another cigarette. I hoped he wouldn’t hesitate too much longer. He was drunk, he was open and this was the only time I was going to get him to talk.

“I don’t know,” he said, lighting his cigarette, the stick bobbing up and down between his lips. “I guess she got thinking.”

“Didn’t you? I mean, when you found out?”

“Yeah. I got thinking. I got thinking about a lot of things.”

“Such as?” Oh please Dex, don’t make this as difficult as pulling teeth.

He didn’t say anything for a beat or two, just took a couple of drags on his cigarette. The alcohol allowed me to be more patient than usual. I waited, hands folded across the table, making sure I never lost the expectant look on my face.

Finally he said, “I got thinking about how I’m not ready to be a dad. How I’ll never be ready to be a dad. How…retarded the word dad sounds. How can I be a dad? I’d be the worst dad in the world. I’d fuck up that kid, whatever kid, so badly…I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. So there’s that. That’s the unselfish part. And then there is the selfish part. The part that says, I don’t want to fucking deal with that shit. If I had a kid…my life would change so much.”

“Maybe for the better?” I said, playing the Devil’s Advocate.

He shook his head. “No. Not with us.”

“But…your life
is
going to change so much.”

My words seemed to hit him like the pile of bricks I felt earlier. He cringed, just for a moment, and sucked back on that cigarette like it was the only thing keeping him sane. It might have been.

“I know. And I thought…I thought maybe it wouldn’t have to.”

“She was going to have an abortion?”

He nodded uneasily, maybe unsure of how I would react. It was a hard topic to talk about in this divided country.

“We had decided that if she was pregnant, she could just take the…abortion pill, I guess. I don’t know the name. Or we would just go to a clinic. She didn’t want a kid screwing up her career, or her body, I should say. As much as I didn’t want one screwing up our relationship.”

Huh. He was more worried about a baby screwing up their relationship than anything else. That was interesting. I wasn’t sure in what way yet.

“And then…”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged with effort. “Something happened. She told me last night when she found out that she wanted to keep it. And that if I didn’t want to have any part in it, I didn’t have to. She didn’t need me. If I’m not 100% in it, then I am not needed.”

We both seemed to mull that part over.

“And you told her you still wanted the abortion?”

“Well. Yeah. I mean, I’m not pressuring her. It’s her body, she can do what she wants. I will support her no matter what she chooses. But you know…I just don’t know why she changed her mind. I would have thought finding out for sure would have, you know, cemented her fears even more. But then she just…switched. Just like that. One extreme to the other.”

“An abortion isn’t an easy thing to deal with,” I offered quietly. “It can ruin you in ways you never thought.”

“Mmhmmm, and how would you know?” he said asked, pursing his lips defensively.

I wasn’t sure if I should say the truth right now or not, but I had nothing to lose. Dex had everything to lose here.

“Because I had one.”

The truth felt like it was laden with iron. And it was something I had never told anyone else. I never told Ada, had never told my friends, never told my boyfriend, never told my parents. It had been inside me all this time, tucked away deep.

Dex’s eyes widened, and then softened at the vulnerability I knew I couldn’t help but exude. There was no hiding it now.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

“No one knows.”

He swallowed hard and put out the cigarette on the table. We watched the ash spew out from the twisting butt.

“When was this? Sorry if I’m being too...”

“No, it’s fine. I think…I think it would be good for me to talk about it. It was with Mason, ironically.”

“The jackfuck who cheated on you?” he asked, holding out the bottle for me.

“Yeah,” I said grabbing it and taking a sip. I coughed. “The one. And only.”

“Only guy as in only jackfuck who fucked you over, only love or only guy you slept with?”

“All three.”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway…I was careless. I was on the pill too but it was during a time my stomach was acting up…I was throwing up sometimes because of this and that and you know. I guess one day it didn’t stick in time.”

I felt weird to talk about it because to talk about it was to remember it. I told him about the day I found out. This was before I found out Mason was cheating on me, as if that made a difference in the long run. I had missed my period, which was abnormal since I was on the pill, and it came as regularly as a clock. To the hour even. Naturally, my first thought was to freak out. I didn’t tell Mason, even after I took three at–home pregnancy tests, different brands. I hid the used sticks with their stupid plus signs deep in the toilet paper rolls in the wastebasket so no one would know. I didn’t want to tell him in case he thought I planned it or blamed me somehow.

It was just too big of an issue for my life to handle. Already I could barely handle going to class, I could barely handle living in a dorm, away from home, even with my roommate Gemma. I had dreams, the same dreams I still had. To have a baby would fuck everything up. I had plans. And deep down inside, as much as I knew I was in love with Mason, part of me knew that we weren’t going to be together forever. It’s like I already knew he was going to cheat on me. I wasn’t going to be like one of those girls who has a baby just to keep the guy. I knew enough of those girls in high school.

I guess that was one reason to find Jenn’s decision commendable. She was going to go through with it no matter what Dex said or felt.

I told Dex about booking the appointment by myself and being so scared to death about it. I mean, so scared. I didn’t for a moment doubt my decision, as drastic as it was. I didn’t think that what I was doing was wrong. I knew where my morals were. That wasn’t the problem. I just didn’t want to go through such a scary, painful procedure alone. The fact that I was alone said so much. Even though I could have brought a number of people to come with me, I needed to keep this to myself. I was too afraid of what others might think.

It was horrible, to say the least. I’ve blocked out most of it, or maybe time has gotten rid of the feeling. It’s like when you break your arm or something. You know you were in pain and you remember the feeling of being in pain but that actual feeling is gone. This was the same kind of thing. I know it was painful beyond words and kept me doubled up in the bathroom for a week straight after. Gemma just thought it was my stomach, so she didn’t suspect anything. If she had asked, I was pretty sure I would have caved in and told her, just to get it off my chest. But she didn’t and then it became a thing of the past. Another ghost to be locked away, along with the drugs, and the accident and the family psychologist.

And then the dreams would come. I dreamed about the baby, what it would have and could have been. About maybe finding some essence of happiness in my life, about having something there to love unconditionally, something that may have validated myself. I wondered what he or she would have looked like and what they would have done with their life.

There was a lot of guilt. Sometimes it would sneak up on me. I didn’t feel like God was judging me but that I was judging myself without even realizing it. That my subconscious, my soul, was tallying this act up for some future retribution. Maybe I’d fail a test, maybe I’d get cheated on, maybe I’d feel alone for the rest of my life all because deep down inside, I thought I should be punished.

I babbled on to Dex about this for who knows how long. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t light another cigarette or touch the Jack Daniels. He just stared at me. Not intrusively, just…involved.

When I was done, he said asked, “Do you regret it?”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t. Because I think everything happens for a reason and I think we need to go through shit sometimes to strengthen ourselves for whatever happens down the line. I think it made me stronger. It at least made me realize a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

“Like…it’s OK to depend on people. That I don’t have to go alone through everything. That keeping people at a distance and hiding everything can hurt more than letting them in.”

The words hung in the air like the tiny bugs that flitted above the lantern’s glow. Dex could have been wincing; the way his brow had come together looked furtive and uncomfortable.

“Are you glad you told me?” he asked, his voice lower, gruffer. His eyes darted the expanse of mine in rapid twitches.

“Yes,” I said strongly. Honestly. “Are you glad you told me?”

He seemed to think about that. “Yeah. I am.”

That warmed my chest more than the Jack Daniels ever could. This heat radiated from my heart.

“So, what are you going to do?”

“What the fuck can I do?”

“Are you going to marry her?” I asked softly. I had only a second of pure, blissful ignorance before he answered. Was I ready for the truth?

He locked his eyes on mine. “I don’t know. I will
if
I have to.”

A wave of relief. It was better than a yes. But still…

“Do you want to?”

He rubbed his chin scruff with his hand, more of a nervous gesture than one to signify he was thinking deeply about it.

“I’d rather not.”

I almost laughed at that, at the glib way he said it, as if he would rather not have sushi for dinner instead of pizza.

“Why are you with her then? Do you even love her?”

This would have been another question for truth or dare had the bigger one not preyed on my thoughts in the last past 24 hours. I thought I had dug at it earlier with the “I Have Never” game but we both skirted the issue on that. From day one, from the moment I heard Dex talk about Jenn, I always picked up on something. Something that was off about their relationship. I know it’s wrong to speculate on something you have no business in. How can we really know what goes on behind closed doors? It reminded me of a line in
Rear Window
, “That’s a secret private world you’re looking into there.” People do a lot of things in private that they couldn’t possibly explain in public.

But, I just didn’t get their relationship, at least not from the end I was looking in from. He never really seemed to care that much about her and it didn’t seem she cared that much about him. I had never met Jenn, but other than being a hot babe (Robo Babe, Baberaham Lincoln, etc) there just didn’t seem to be enough to keep someone as complex and neurotic as Dex interested. And therefore, I had to ask. It had been picking at me for too long.

He looked put off by the question. I didn’t blame him. I was almost being rude by asking that. But I had to know. I didn’t care if he thought it was none of my business.

He took his time. Making me wait while he scratched slowly at his sideburns and let his eyes roam the dark forest in a wayward manner, as if he thought he might find an answer lying out there, or at least something to distract him from one.

“I think we should probably turn in,” he finally said in his most simple tone.

I just stared at him in response, coaxing him with my eyes. He was avoiding them still. If I could just look into him, I would know. Even if he hid it all, I would know. I was looking that hard.

“I don’t get it,” I said, feeling a bit defeated despite the revelations at hand. All of this thanks to a spooky island forest and a bottle of whisky.