Within Arm's Reach (5 page)

I don’t like the sound of the words. They are momentous and stupid and clichéd. “I’m pregnant” is a line right out of every soap opera and sappy movie. And that’s not me, I don’t want to be the girl who has just said that and now waits for the boy’s reaction. I want to explain myself and my situation better. But what else can I say? The language is inadequate. I am trapped by the words, and by this moment. I am that girl, and I am me. And my life has just changed.

Joel says, in a very cautious voice, “Are you sure?”

I nod in the darkness. I can’t speak.

“Are you one hundred percent certain? I mean, did you take one of those over-the-counter tests, or did you go to the doctor? Because those home tests aren’t reliable.”

“I went to the doctor. I’m almost three months.”

Joel is lying on his back beside me. He has not moved. Still, his voice seems to come from farther away than the next pillow. “Are you sure it’s mine?”

“There’s no need to be unkind,” I say. “I don’t want you to be involved. I really don’t. I just thought you should hear the news from me.”

“You’re going to keep it?”

I shift my weight. I raise myself up onto my elbows, so he is already behind me. This is the only answer I have been sure of, from the moment I watched the line on the first pregnancy test turn pink. It seemed, surprisingly, like the only possible choice. “Yes.”

“Yes. Okay . . . yes.” He says the word as if he is trying it out, trying to locate its meaning. “I’m sorry about this,” he says. “I am. But I have to go now. I’ll call you in the morning.”

“You don’t have to call,” I say.

Joel is now sitting on the side of the bed. I am looking at his back.

“You knew, Gracie, didn’t you, that this wasn’t a serious relationship for me? I was trying to get over Margaret. And you never have serious relationships. Everybody knows that.”

“What do you mean, everybody knows that?”

There is fear in Joel’s eyes. He is standing, naked, his shoes in one hand and his socks in the other. His mind is on Margaret. He is wondering what she will say. I wonder if any of the men I have been with have ever given me that much thought, that much power. Probably Grayson did, but he gives everything a lot of thought, so that doesn’t count.

Joel is looking down at the shoes he is holding. He says, in a dazed voice, “I don’t know how this could have happened. I was so careful.”

I want him to leave. I am sitting up in bed, the sheet pulled to my chin so all of my bare skin is covered. That time is over. “
We,
Joel.
We
. And we weren’t always careful.”

But I only half-believe those words as I say them. I know, in the deepest part of me, that this event involved Joel in only the most minimal way. This began in me, and it will come from me. This baby is mine. It’s my path, not his. So I am not surprised that he has chosen to argue the point.

“I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Gracie. I really don’t. I never wanted to have anything to do with your feelings. But this just doesn’t feel like it’s true. I don’t feel like it’s mine. It’s not mine.” His pants are on. He is in the middle of the last sentence and in the middle of pulling his shirt over his head when he leaves the bedroom.

Downstairs I hear the breezy noise of the refrigerator door opening, then the clink of beer bottles before Joel leaves and the house grows dark and empty. Only then do I feel a glimmer of the sweet relief that always comes after a breakup, when I am left blissfully alone. But this time it is only a glimmer, and I am no longer truly alone.

I MAKE my way into the kitchen the next morning with only one thing on my mind: coffee. French roast with three spoonfuls of whole milk. I haven’t had a cup in eight and a half weeks, since I found out I was pregnant. But I need one now, this instant, as soon as possible.

I walk straight to the coffeemaker. When I notice Lila bent over the kitchen table it throws me. I forget that she is staying here. My room-mate is usually a stranger whose name I get off the roommates’ Web site at the
Bergen Record
. I choose a girl who only needs a place for a few months, someone I won’t have to get to know well. One of those girls moved out right before Lila’s housing fell through. It’s been years since I’ve seen my sister in her pajamas. In our normal routine we used to meet for lunch or a movie; we only saw each other fully awake and out of choice. Running into my sister in my own home at odd hours of the day and night is new and strange.

“Come look at these pictures,” she says. “Gram must have left them the other day. They were in an envelope with our names on it under one of the magnets on the refrigerator. Did you see them there?”

Only when the coffeemaker is warm under my fingertips and the hot liquid is beginning to splash into the empty pot do I join her at the table to see what she is talking about. Lined up in front of the sugar bowl are three photographs of Lila and me as little girls. I was probably seven, Lila five, but we were close to the same size and weight. The three pictures appeared to be taken in the course of one afternoon. We were on a hillside wearing winter coats. There was no snow, only waving grass.

The first picture shows us posed, standing back to back, arms crossed over our chests, our hair whipping past each other’s faces. We were clearly under orders to smile, and had ended up with awkward half-mouthed grimaces. If you looked closely, past the puffiness of our parkas, you could see our elbows digging into each other’s sides. We were each trying to bring the other down either by calling uncle first, or by getting yelled at by Mom for ruining the picture.

The other two photos show us playing. I was running, fists and body clenched, uphill, while Lila ran past me downhill, her arms stretched out like airplane wings, her mouth a wide O. In the third photo we played dead. We lay on our backs, arms and legs splayed, eyes squeezed shut.

“I can’t remember that day,” Lila says. “Do you?”

“No.”

Lila is still bent over at the waist, studying the photographs as if looking for hidden clues. “I can’t stand it when I can’t remember something. What good is a photographic memory if I can’t remember days from my own life?”

Our parents had submitted us to a battery of psychological tests when we were in grade school: IQ, personality tests, aptitude exams, etc. They had never told us the results of the tests, which was good, because Lila and I were fiercely competitive and cruel to each other up until I left for college. We might not have survived the knowledge of who had a greater IQ. The only thing our parents did tell us after the testing had concluded was that I had an aptitude for reading and writing, and that Lila had a photographic memory. Lila and I have both been struggling under the weight of these ordinary gifts ever since. I think we both wondered if they were true, or whether we had forced them to be true simply because of how we labeled ink blots and matched vocabulary words in some mustached psychologist’s rec room when we were nine and eleven years old.

Lila picks up the photographs and puts them back in the envelope. “Did Mom call here last night?”

“No. Why would she?”

“Gram was in a car accident yesterday afternoon.”

I hear her, but the words don’t make sense, so I push them away with questions. “What do you mean? Is she okay? She’s fine, right?”

“I don’t actually know the details. She got into a fender bender in front of the Municipal Building and Dad brought her in. She needed a few stitches, and the doctor thought she might have had a tiny stroke while driving, which would have caused the accident. But there’s no way to prove that, and she was perfectly clear-headed with me. She’s fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“I saw her.”

“Thank God.”

I picture Gram behind the wheel of a car careening out of control. I see her eyes widen with fear, and my own fill with tears. I don’t want to cry. My sister is not someone you want to cry in front of. I’m not sure she has ever cried, herself. She must have when we were little, but not that I can remember. I pull at the belt on my bathrobe. If I keep talking maybe I will be able to get rid of this picture of Gram hurt. I say, “Are you going to get mad at me if I tell you something?”

“What kind of something.”

“I want to tell you this one thing.”

“I won’t listen to your boy problems.”

“I’m pregnant. I told Joel last night.”

Lila turns her head and looks back at me, still with her searching squint. “You’re pregnant
again
?”

I try not to sound defensive. The tears are sitting behind my eyes, waiting for any opportunity to pour out. “Yes. I’m keeping the baby this time.”

“I should have told them to tie your tubes when I took you to that clinic. Why are you telling me this? You know I don’t want to hear things like this!”

I breathe slowly, in order to calm us both down. I don’t have the energy to deal with her anger. Lila has inherited a tsunami-like rage from our mother, who inherited it from her father. Lila is aware of the trait, and its path down our family tree, and it infuriates her. She concentrates on remaining very calm. Over time she has created a clinical, cool personality that harnesses all emotions underneath. But her demeanor is not a completely successful roadblock. When she is surprised, as I have surprised her just now, her control can blow away as easily as a thin piece of paper on a windowsill.

When Lila becomes angry, all logic, rationality, kindness, and volume control are lost. I have never been so hurt as I have been beneath the hard-driving, pointed, obliterating sleet of my mother’s and sister’s words. My father and I have tiptoed around them from day one, careful not to offend, or provoke, or, in Lila’s case, surprise. I have misstepped this morning. I should have put some thought into how I would tell her.

But Lila catches herself in time. Her slow breathing matches mine. We face each other. Lila is two inches taller than me, so I gaze slightly up, she looks slightly down. I can see the corollaries running through her mind: I’m not married, I’m not in love with Joel, I’ll have to tell Mom, Dad, and Gram, I don’t make enough money, I have a problem with commitment.

“Does Gram know?” Lila asks.

This almost makes me laugh. How could she think I’d be anywhere near ready, or able, to tell Gram that I am pregnant with an out-of-wedlock baby?

“Of course not.”

“Have you lost your mind?” My sister sounds curious.

The smell of the coffee, steaming, waiting for me across the room, makes my eyes fill with tears. I want it so bad.

I had an abortion five boyfriends and two and a half years ago. Three-quarters of the women my age that I know have had at least one. The trip to the abortion clinic (preferably one several towns away from where you live) is a massive silent rite of passage among white, well-educated girls of my generation. It is a careful, deeply held secret even the bigmouthed among us don’t discuss. Of the hundreds of Dear Abby letters I’ve received, only a handful have touched on the topic of abortion, and none have asked my advice on how to recover from one. This is a godsend, as I do not know the answer. My physical recovery was fine; the emotional recovery was a different matter. I was left with an emptiness inside me, and a very Catholic ache that told me I had sinned.

Maybe Lila and Joel are right to be upset with me. Maybe I’m self-destructive. Maybe I wanted this. Maybe on some level I had, despite a semi-consistent regimen of Ortho-Novum pills and Trojan ribbed condoms, tried to get pregnant. Maybe my body knew that this was my only path to redemption and decided, without consulting my brain, to go for it. I believe in my decision to keep this baby, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s necessarily the right decision, or that I recognize the girl who made it.

My sister raises her eyebrows. She has no use for ambiguity, vagueness, or long pauses. When something confuses her, she wants an answer. She is waiting; wanting to understand why I would veer so sharply off my life’s path. She wants to match up the sister in her memory—the one she’s known from early childhood to this Sunday morning—with the girl who stands before her now with the big, unwelcome news.

I wish I could help her. I always want to help Lila, although usually it ends up working the other way around. “Maybe I have lost my mind,” I say, as calmly as possible.

Then I turn my back to her and putter around the kitchen, trying to compose myself, trying to stay away from the coffee, trying to figure out where I am going to find the strength to stand behind this decision for another ten minutes, then for the remainder of this day, then for the rest of my life.

LILA

Two days after Gracie tells me she’s pregnant I catch her sneaking some guy out of her bed and out the back door. It is five in the morning. I’m barely conscious, huddled over a cup of coffee in the kitchen. I’m scheduled to be at the hospital by six.

I haven’t turned any lights on because I find it’s best to ease myself into the day. I am not a morning person. I feel I have been deeply wronged every time I have to wake up before seven A.M. It is probably for this reason—because I am already on the defensive—that at first the noise in the center of the house scares me. I straighten up and take a step toward the steak knives. I think: Burglar, rapist, six o’clock news, please don’t hurt me.

But then the noise draws out and separates into two sets of footsteps. I don’t bother to reach for the knives. I realize what is going on. No one is breaking in. Someone is breaking out.

I hear Gracie whisper, “The third step.” But he doesn’t hear her in time, and the third step gives a sharp whine. They both freeze for a moment, are silent, and then start again. She leads him not through the kitchen, which is directly under the bedroom I’m staying in, but through the dining room to the back door. My sister is good at this. At the door I catch a glimpse of him while they kiss good-bye. I’ve never seen him before. He’s a black guy, really skinny, holding his sneakers in his hand. Then the door is carefully, silently opened, and he is gone.

This pisses me off. It’s five fucking A.M., and all I wanted was a little peace and quiet with my coffee. But Gracie can’t help herself. Even when she isn’t trying, she’s throwing her life in my face, trying to make me share it with her. And the truth is, as she very well knows, I’m not interested. We used to understand each other, before I moved in here. We had a nice balance. We respected each other’s differences and we didn’t push too far. But when I moved in with Gracie, all balance was lost.

I think, If only I hadn’t lost my housing and been forced to stay here.

If only Gracie had kept her mouth shut. And her legs.

If only I could have slept until a civilized hour this morning. If only there wasn’t so much I had to do.

Gracie walks back through the kitchen and sees me holding my cup of coffee in the shadows. We give each other a good once-over. I see that she’s still half-asleep. Her face has that mushy look it gets after she’s been laid.

“Please lay off the self-righteous stare, Lila. I don’t need that.”

“I don’t think you can read my expression, Gracie. We’re standing in the dark.”

There is a sharp clack as Gracie flicks the switch and the room explodes in light. I cover my eyes with my free hand.

“I was just trying to feel good,” she says. “I wanted to have a little fun. Just a little. Is that so awful?”

I am so tired the skin on my face hurts. When was the last time I felt good? Or had fun? “Why don’t you run out to the corner,” I say, “I’m sure there’s still a wino or two hanging around that you can bring home and fuck. That would be fun.”

Something in Gracie’s face flattens out and grows hard, like a frozen pond in the dead of winter. She hesitates, but then shoots back. “At least I’m not some kind of half-assed virgin who refuses to even
attempt
to experience life.”

There’s not much to say on either side after that.

We end this fight like we did when we were little girls, with a staring match. Editor Boy, one of Gracie’s boyfriends who actually hung around for a while, used to say that both Gracie and I were experts in giving silent deadly looks, but that our styles were different. Gracie’s look says that she knows more than you do, but she’ll keep her vast superiority to herself because to do otherwise would be rude. I, on the other hand, specialize in the fuck-off, if-looks-could-kill approach.

My sister and I stare each other down in the bright light of the kitchen. The window over the sink shows a black sky and not another soul awake or a bulb lit anywhere in Ramsey. We are alone in this room, in this house, in this new day. Blue and brown eyes locked.

You don’t know anything about anything.

Fuck you. You don’t know me.

I break first, because I have to leave for work. I have responsibilities. I dump the cold coffee in the sink, grab my bag, and slam out the back door without a word.

I SPEND most of my morning at the hospital looking to regain my rhythm. I go through the motions of being a cool, competent doctor-in-training. I phone in lab requests, swab up blood, hold back pieces of skin and tissue so the attending physician can look inside the patient and determine the extent of the damage. In the middle of the morning my attending has to step away, so he allows me to stitch up a minor arm wound without supervision. The patient, a balding, pudgy man who is on the verge of tears, asks for a local anesthetic.

“An injection of lidocaine will hurt more than the stitches,” I tell him. “Just let me sew the cut up quickly, and you’ll see that you don’t need the shot.”

“I don’t believe you.” This grown man is actually pouting. “I want the shot.”

“Fine. It’s your arm.” I pick up the syringe, making no attempt to keep it low and hidden the way the doctors tell you to. Let this jerk see exactly what he’s getting.

“Shit, you’re not going to just stab that thing into me, are you? Hold on now, maybe I want the real doctor to come back.”

Someone leans in behind me; there is a familiar, breathy voice in my ear. “Let me help, sir.” Pushy, perfect Belinda offers her toothy smile to the patient. “You shouldn’t let yourself get so anxious. There doesn’t need to be any pain.”

I wonder how Belinda’s hair can smell like strawberries during her eighteenth consecutive hour in the hospital. The man smiles back at Belinda. His eyes glaze over. He is apparently wooed by her smell and her dyed blond hair and her one-size-too-small white jacket. “Please,” he says. “I want her to do it. Not you.”

I shake my head and hand over the needle. Belinda has turned this moment into another battle in the long war between us, and I’m in no mood to fight. During the first two years of medical school I was consistently ranked number one in the class, while she was number two. She senses that the title is now up for grabs and moves in for the kill every chance she gets. I have to admire her tenacity.

“How’s your grandmother?” she asks over her shoulder.

“She’s fine,” I say, and leave the room. Of course, it was Belinda who had been sent to find me with the news that Gram was in the ER. I hadn’t believed her at first. I thought she’d taken a left turn toward really twisted and had made up a lie about my grandmother to try to steal away the patient I was working on. When I realized she was telling the truth, that Gram had been in an accident, I’d gotten upset, and I still can’t stand that Belinda saw me that way. I can’t stand to hear her mention Gram out loud now. I want to keep the rivalry between us all business, all about school.

The first two years of medical school took place in the classroom, which meant a lot of straight memorization. I aced every exam. I barely had to study. I went home while everyone else flocked to the library. My teachers held me up in class as an example. I enjoyed my special status to the hilt. I accepted that being number one meant being a loner. I kept the door to my dorm room closed to chatty people walking down the hall. I gave other students smug looks when I walked out of exams twenty minutes early. I lapped up every last bit of my professors’ praise. I consciously enjoyed each moment in the classroom, each semester that I was on top of my game and in my element.

But those days are over. We’re in the second half of medical school now and this part is termed “hands-on” experience. There are no more classes, no more books, and few exams. My days of easy excellence have ended. I am in the middle of my medicine rotation. My classmates walk around the hospital with circles under their eyes, complaining about how tired they are, how overworked they are, how overwhelmed they are. We are on call every third night, which means we have to spend the night at the hospital. The students are supposed to sleep on the rickety bunk beds tucked into various corners of the hospital, but no one ever actually sleeps. We make rounds with our assigned attending doctor, seeing every patient that comes into the hospital who isn’t clearly a surgical or neurological case. As part of a medical team, we assess each patient, take a history, diagnose, and give a prognosis.

This rotation is a lot of hours, but that’s not what bothers me. I don’t mind missing sleep. I like seeing how far I can push my body and mind. After three days of little rest, my personal worries go away, and there is nothing but the work at hand. But what does bother me, and what I do mind, are the people.

The hospital is teeming with them. Everywhere you turn there are doctors, medical students, nurses, nurses’ aides, nurse practitioners, anesthesiologists, specialists. Everyone has their specific job and they get in one another’s way despite the rigid hierarchy that has to be followed. The hospital system is based on education and seniority, so that even if you have the skills and the knowledge, you can’t apply either until you’ve spent a few years following some middle-aged attending around kissing butt. You have to say the right things, and act deferential to the right people. You can’t even find peace with the nurses, who think they know much more than the lowly medical students, and who, when the workload slows, want to chat and bond and talk about their lives and my life until I want to throw myself out of the nearest window.

The patients I can tolerate, because with them at least I can use my mind. I check their symptoms against what I have memorized. I consider the possible illness, the possible treatments, the possible complications. But still, there is no purity in the work because I am not allowed to do much, and because far too often the doctor sends me out of the sickroom to speak to the patient’s family. This is the worst possible assignment, because with few exceptions the families are a mess. It doesn’t matter if they are in the hospital because their ten-year-old is having his tonsils out or because their father is having an emergency triple bypass. The hysteria is always there. I see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices. People know that while they are at the hospital someone in the rooms around them is bound to die, and they seem to believe that if they speak loudly and often and shed tears, there will be a better chance of their loved one being spared.

I suppose I always knew on some level that I wasn’t crazy about people. I never had many friends, and I avoided crowded situations like bars and parties. I chose to live in student housing among people who didn’t like me because I was left alone. But still, I never consciously thought about the idea that I might be a misanthrope. It’s not the kind of personality trait one wants to attribute to oneself. And I had never come face-to-face with that possibility until forty hours after my fight with Gracie, when I had spent two straight days in the hospital without ever having one moment alone.

I am on my way to the bathroom, mostly so I can lock the door to the stall and sit down on the toilet and close my eyes. But someone follows me. It is a woman I have just spent twenty minutes calming down, whose son suffered a concussion and broke his leg skateboarding.

“Miss,” the mother says. “He doesn’t recognize me. He’s not talking. Are you sure he’s going to be okay?”

“Your son is asleep,” I say. “He doesn’t recognize you and he’s not talking because he’s asleep. We gave him pain medication and it made him drowsy, as I told you before. Can you understand that?” I speak slowly, because I want her to hear me this time. She seems a little slow.

“He just doesn’t seem right,” she says.

I am at the door to the bathroom. I have to get rid of this woman.

I say, “Your son was drunk when he fell off his skateboard onto his head. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. It was an idiotic thing to do. So you’re correct. He’s not right.”

The woman puts her hand over her mouth. I put my hand on the door to the bathroom, but something stops me from walking in. I glance around and see my attending, Dr. Lewis, on the opposite side of the hall. He is staring at me as if I’ve just admitted to snorting cocaine during my lunch break.

He rushes over, puts his arm around the woman’s shoulders, and leads her away. I go into the bathroom. When I come out, he is waiting. He is a bald man, my height. He has deep lines across his forehead.

He comes right out with it. “You don’t want to be a doctor, do you, Miss Leary?”

“I was tired,” I say. “I had already spent an adequate amount of time with the woman and her son’s injuries aren’t serious. . . .”

“Serious,” he repeats.

I wonder if there is something in the drinking water at the hospital this afternoon that has knocked a few digits off everyone’s IQ. “Yes,” I say, “serious.”

“I wonder if you are serious, Miss Leary.”

I remain silent, because he is clearly going somewhere with this and there’s no point in my getting in his way.

“I’ve been watching you.” He nods for emphasis. “You have plenty of promise, as you obviously know. You have a sharp mind. But there’s no kindness in you, and that’s a problem. You’re doing well enough now because you’ve been able to coast on the reputation you earned during your class work. But it takes more than intelligence to make it from this day forward. You’ll do well to remember that.” He thumps his fist against his chest and then walks away.