Life (20 page)

Pregnant.

Come on God, stop fooling around. This isn’t funny.

She went to the doctor at the group practice where she’d registered but never needed an appointment before, explained the situation, and asked for another test. Anna was pregnant. “What do you want to do?” asked the doctor—who was a woman—with all the question’s proper reserve and neutrality.

“I want to think.”

“There’s time. But don’t think too long,” warned the woman gently.

Her appointment had been early in the morning. She went into Parentis and worked with thunder in her head, from moment to moment distracted, from moment to moment coming back to the fact, like a raw bereavement:
it is true.
The idea of telling her mother, of telling Sonia, Roz, or anyone, filled her with horror. She went back to Roz Brown’s house. This temporary home had started to feel very strange, now that her days in it were numbered. She saw—as she had not noticed since the first week she moved in—that the taste of the person who had done the decorating was nothing like her own. Oatmeal fitted carpet, spider plants on the pine bookshelves, Indian felt rug with a peacock pattern, nubbly brown covered sofa-bed, matching armchairs… Roz put Shannon to bed and went out with Graham. There was only one person she could bear to talk to. She phoned Spence’s home number in the USA.

“Hi, who is it?” Spence’s own voice, thank God, the urban-cowboy accent she used to think sounded so corny, so silly, before she got to know the American Exchange.

“Hello Spence.”

“Anna! Hey, great to hear your voice. Better than email. How are you?”

“Got some bad news today.”

He gathers himself, far away there. Perhaps his Mom is listening. She hopes not.

“What is it?” He sounded puzzled, but not alarmed.

“I’m pregnant.”

“Oh, shit. You mean, from that night in Essex?”

“Has to be. I don’t know if I told you this, but I don’t have a boyfriend… I’ve not been with anybody else, and remember how the condom came off. It’s not your problem, don’t think that. I just called you because—” She was clinging to the handset, palm sweating and knuckles white. Stupid. Spence would think she was demented, or trying to entrap him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have… I can handle everything, I just—”

“I’m on my way. I’ll call you when I know my flight.”

Clunk.

She stared at the phone. I just wanted someone to talk to.

She came to meet him at Heathrow. She had barely slept since the terrible fact had been confirmed. Every day she went to work and was distracted (from moment to moment). At night she lay in the room that no longer belonged to her, staring into the abyss. She had been to the brink of this pit before, now she was falling, nothing could save her. Spence came out of the crowd, she saw him there shouldering his rucksack like a carefree young world traveler. She tried to smile, what a good friend, coming all this way to hold her hand, after all it was no big deal. Spence dropped his bag, looked at her with shock and pity, and folded her in his arms.

“Ssh baby, it’s okay. Don’t look like that, don’t cry, daddy’s here.”

They took the tube to central London and a train to Leeds. It was a Friday night. He took her out to eat at a Chinese restaurant, then they went back to Roz Brown’s house. It was empty. Roz and Shannon had gone to stay with Graham’s parents for the weekend. They sat together in the alien sitting room, the tv’s blank face in the corner. Anna felt that the whole situation was impossible. Not the pregnancy, that she had to accept, but what was Spence doing here? She couldn’t have made that phone call, how could she have done that, how humiliating, and
why?
She must have dreamed it. He had to be here for some other reason. They’d said nothing yet about her disaster.

“You must be exhausted.” She was thinking of cloying batter-covered pork balls. Had they eaten out together alone before? She couldn’t remember, probably not. The room was like a picture in a cheap magazine. “Do you mind sleeping on the couch?”

Spence took her hand and held it briefly against his cheek. “So you’re pregnant,” he said kindly, reminding her. “I guess this is beyond doubt?”

“You asked that before.”

“What are we going to do? Do you have any liquor? I don’t know about you but I believe a shot of something would help me think.”

She brought the rock-bottom whisky for medicinal purposes (from one of those supermarkets with bars on the windows); poured two glasses. She gave one to Spence and lifted the other to her mouth. The smell disgusted her. She set the glass down with a hollow feeling of dread. That was her first, felt symptom. It is true.

Spence stared at the electric fire. “Actually, I have been thinking for some hours. From the fact that you called me at all—”

“Look, I’m sorry. I
really
shouldn’t have. I was in shock, I wanted someone to talk to, and you were the only one—” She shuddered. “All I can say is, I didn’t know you’d react like that, I’m embarrassed that I got you to come all this way, and I want you to regard this as just a friendly visit. You’re not to blame. It was my own stupid fault. I simply didn’t think about that damn condom. I should have got a morning after course, but I
didn’t think.
” After Charles raped her she’d been convinced she was doomed, but even then she had behaved like a stunned animal. She was shattered by her own helplessness. That other one, the scientist, the competent and clever one was a fake. This was the real Anna: stupid girl, found out, stripped of her false rank.

“Why should you? It never occurred to me that you could be pregnant, until you called. It’s nothing but bad luck.” He was sitting on the floor. A year in underclass North Africa is a long time, he wasn’t yet used to furniture. Deliberately, he got up beside her on the ugly couch and took a swallow of scotch. “Anna, I’m going to go out on a limb here. My guess is you don’t like the idea of getting an abortion.” He felt her startle but she didn’t speak: just went very still.

He took another swallow. “Now I don’t know if this is a religious scruple or if it is personal. But I remember the night we spent together, and though whatever you decide to do is fine by me, if I were the one that was pregnant as a result of all the good loving we’ve shared… Well, I can see that an abortion might not seem…appropriate. Am I on track? Please stop me if I’m making a fool of myself.”

She had begun to cry, tears streaming through that stunned mask.

“Ah, sweetheart.” He could guess what she was going through: Anna’s pride, her privacy, Anna the untouchable. He dug a kleenex out of his pocket and wiped her eyes. “So that’s where we are. It’s not just do you have the money for the op.”

“No,” she whispered.

Spence looked around the room. He thought there was nothing of Anna here, although
what did he know?
What an unreal setting.

“We should get married.”

“What? That’s crazy!”

“I told you, I’ve had time to think. Look, you could get an abortion. We could do the deed and we could live it down, go our separate ways and forget about it: but we don’t want that, deep in our hearts. So you are going to have a baby, and you are going to need someone. How’re you going to continue your doctorate as a single mother? I have no commitments at home, I like the idea of moving to the UK, and I can work for Emerald City anywhere.”

“I could move back in with my parents.”

“Sure. That would be such fun, and then you’d have to combine the commute to Leeds with breastfeeding and colic nights and guilt. You’d never keep it up. Anyway, what about my rights? This is my child as well as yours.”

Now she looked completely blown away, like:
I didn’t know it was loaded.

But it was, baby.

“Spence,
marriage!
”

“It sounds extreme, okay, yeah. But the way we’re fixed, this is a bold and simple solution. The more I think about it the more I like it. I don’t want to hang out with my Mom anymore, and if I moved to another town or another state she’d just be hurt and wouldn’t see the point. If you weren’t pregnant, if I was saying marry me so I can stay in the UK, I bet you’d do it. We’re friends, we trust each other. I’m domesticated. It will be fine.”

“We can’t leap into this—”

“We got no choice. The train’s already left, and we’re on it.” He gave her a quizzical smile. “You afraid we’re not sexually compatible or something?”

Anna pressed her hands against her temples, saucer-eyed. “Look, Spence, this is very generous of you, and well-meant I’m sure. But things can go wrong, horribly wrong. Marrying someone means
signing things.
It’s
legal.
And there
is
the sexual angle. We love each other, yes, and we had a wonderful night. But that weekend, everybody was telling me that you were gay, well, bisexual obviously, with me anyway: but the way you were talking seemed to support that… Doesn’t it make a difference?”

Spence drained his glass. “Anna, those were dinner party stories.” On second thought, he drained Anna’s as well. Then he stood up. “I am whacked. I bet you are too. Shall we try to share your bed?”

She was on her feet as well: we are like sheep, the way we imitate each other. But trust Anna, she had noticed that she didn’t get an answer. She was waiting. “Anna, I’m not gay.” He stumbled into honesty. “Maybe I don’t know what I am. I’m a Spence. Remember me? The guy who doesn’t care to be like anybody else? I love you. You’re my dearest friend. It will be no trouble to live with you for a while. Or even for the rest of my life.” He took her in his arms, and hugged hard. “D’you feel that?” he whispered. “That’s what you’ve got, baby. Forget about sex, forget about the pregnancy. This is yours. My arms around you, no matter what. I love you.”

The bed was too narrow. After a while he gave up, unrolled his sleeping bag and lay on the floor. He thought of his mother. In
Mutiny on the Bounty,
the Marlon Brando version, after the mutiny someone asks Brando—as Fletcher Christian—is he feeling okay. He’s just destroyed himself, no way back. He says something like…
a distinct desire to be dead, but otherwise no problem.
Spence felt like that. The quixotic gesture, fine: but then what? He was falling.

He called his Mom two days later. He had not told her why he had to rush back to England. Now he informed her, without trying to soften the blow, that he was getting married.
“Whaaat!”
she howled. “Why don’t I know anything about this? First you go to Morocco, I don’t hear from you more than once a month, then you shoot off to England, then you’re getting married.
Why
are you getting married, for heaven’s sake?”

He felt justified in a little pre-emptive brutality, knowing he could not keep Mom out of this. She was soon going to be giving his poor Anna hell, simply by being her warm and wonderful self. “For the best of reasons. You’re going to be a grandparent.”

When he put down the phone he was shaking. “What about all this food!” she’d cried. She had bought food for an army, because Spence was home. The turkey, big fat ragged thing with its breast torn open, sitting in the fridge, Anna’s blank face, like a half-slaughtered animal, staggering on the killing floor… He’d told Mom he was going to live in England (might as well hit her while she was down), and she’d yelled at once,
what about Cesf?
My cat. I have to abandon my cat. My God. He hadn’t thought of that. He shored the breach hurriedly,
I’ll get him over, he can do quarantine.

They went to Manchester. Anna’s parents, forewarned, were charming to their shot-gun son-in-law-to-be, and the thing escalated into a social announcement. The happy couple sat amid the relations, eyes meeting in helpless amazement. He felt like Durer’s rhinoceros, a camelopard at court. Yes, Anna will finish her doctorate, Spence will mind the baby. Out of sheer bravado, because Anna’s sister was needling her about not having the big fat fancy wedding, he found himself saying they would be married in church, the way they had always planned. Yes, in the Holy Catholic church no less. Why the hell not? Have to have the State involved, why not invite the whole axis of evil and have a possibly benign God hovering in the background; go the whole way.

He liked Val, Anna’s mom. She had the soul of a cool-headed administrator, this one: born to make spilt milk look good. He knew she’d perfectly understood the church wedding announcement, and this warmed his heart; he felt he had an ally. He liked this bright-eyed, intense, middle-aged man, who talked to him about Frank Lloyd Wright. (Richard was hoping to make the visitor from Illinois feel at home.) He was shocked at how small the house was and at the state of the neighborhood, but felt that these people had taste: a commodity which in the USA belongs exclusively to the rich, so that rebel souls like Spence’s Mom behaved lifelong as if they were handling stolen goods when they talked about art or filled their rooms with books and highbrow music. Back in Leeds Anna took him to the Goldfish to meet the gang. He worked hard at charming them, and succeeded, even with crotchety Ron (m) and bolshie Meg Methal. Anna’s pregnancy wasn’t common knowledge. Everyone assumed this was a long-term relationship, Anna and Spence kept apart by circumstance, finally coming together. It was easy to wear. Maybe it was true.