Mourning Becomes Cassandra (44 page)

Waiters
wasn’t wretched. It wasn’t great, either, but it did rise above the Painful stratum of regional theater and would have gone still higher if not for the hammy understudy. There was a decent-sized audience as well, of whom not more than a third were cast friends and relatives. At several points during the show I felt inappropriate snickers rising, but Joanie refused to look at me, and my enjoyment would have been halved, had I not felt Daniel’s own repressed laughter jiggling the shared armrest.

When the crowd cleared afterward, we let Phyl speak first. She was an indiscriminate musical nut, at least—even owning the
Starlight Express
soundtrack, for Pete’s sake—and had sincerity in her favor.

“Well?” Perry demanded of me, when he’d heard Phyl’s effusions.

I bit my lip. “Not bad, Perry. And parts of it were genuinely inspired and entertaining.” He must have prepared himself for the worst because when Perry heard my lukewarm praise, he let out a whoop and lifted me off the ground. “Don’t get me wrong, though,” I laughed. “It’s no
Cats
.” Seeing
Cats
together as teenagers had been one of our original bonding moments. Fifteen minutes in, we had caught each other’s eye and been unable to stop laughing, to the annoyance of those seated nearby. To this day, if I wanted to make Perry laugh, I had only to say, “The Rum Tum Tugger is a curious cat!”

“Ouch!” said Perry, rumpling my hair. “C’mon—do you all have time for a drink before you hit the road?”

“One,” said Daniel, who had volunteered to drive home. “As it is we’ll be back at 2:00 in the morning.”

The quick drink reassured me of two things: firstly, Perry had no thoughts of Joanie beyond finding her generally attractive; and, secondly, Joanie was aware of this and it ticked her off.

I wasn’t the only one busy observing others. When Perry walked us to our car, he whispered to me, “Still with that James?”

This was neither a new idea nor a welcome one. I had no clue what was going through Daniel’s head, but if it was starting to be noticeable to Phyl and Perry, it was going to be a problem. All I knew was that I did not have the emotional bandwidth to deal with it. Denial is our friend.

“Whatever, Perry,” I scoffed. “That’s the way he looks at every woman who isn’t wall-eyed with a pronounced limp.”

My brother shrugged elaborately. “Suit yourself, Cass. That was just an FYI.”

I sniffed. “Thank you very much, Sherlock Holmes, but I think you’d better stick to dramaturgy.”

The second I held out the little box to her my worst fears were confirmed.

“You don’t need to buy the name brand,” said Nadina irrelevantly, glancing at the pregnancy test box but not taking it from me. “The generic works just fine—they’re trying to get to your emotions. Like the thing is even gonna care that you shelled out five extra bucks to know it’s there. That’s where all that crap starts—designer jeans, where you live, what kind of car you drive—”

“Nadina,” I interrupted. My stomach was clenching up. “Stop already. Why do you think I bought this for you?”

“How the hell would I know?” she shot back. “I’m surprised you don’t do friggin’ random drug tests on me.”

“Are you pregnant?” I whispered. No answer and an averted head. “Did you already take one of these tests?” Nothing. “Does Mike know, or Mark Henneman?” I bit my lip in frustration, wishing I could just grab her by the shoulders and shake some answers out of her.

We were sitting in the Palace kitchen because a bitterly cold rain was falling. I hadn’t even waited for Tuesday, but rather parked outside Camden School and, like a child predator, lured her into the car with promises of cookies and a visit with Benny. No sooner was she done running him around the house like a madman, than I sat her down for cocoa and oatmeal hermits and sprung the box on her.

Present tactics proving ineffective, I changed course slightly. “How have you been feeling? Still pretty tired? When I was pregnant with Min I slept a lot too, but when I wasn’t sleeping, I was eating. I guess that’s why I didn’t recognize what was going on with you. Every…pregnancy is different.”

She unbent slightly, as she usually did when I stopped going for the jugular. “Still tired, but the food is getting better. If I’m not around chicken or broccoli or vinegar or fish it’s okay.”

“The first trimester is usually the worst for all that—you know, the first twelve or so weeks,” I continued cautiously. “By the second trimester I had more energy and my appetite got more normal. How far along do you think you are?”

She shrugged. “My period’s all over the map, so I don’t have a clue. All I know is that I gotta get rid of this puppy fast because the longer you go, the more expensive it is.”

“How—how far along were you the other time this happened?”

“I dunno. Maybe a little over three months.” She gave a nervous laugh. “It took me way longer to figure out that time because I wasn’t tired or nothing, and that was when Mike and I were trashed a lot. I—I haven’t told him this time because everything’s going so well for him. I know he’ll freak out and get all pissed off. I made an appointment for next week, and I’m gonna ask my mom to lend me some money because if I don’t have my half of the rent, Mike is gonna figure it out.”

I noticed I was gripping the edges of the table, white-knuckled, and made a conscious effort to relax my hands. “Money for what?”

Her eyes narrowed. “What do you think? I gotta get rid of this thing. I’m not having any friggin’ baby! And you can’t tell anyone, Cass, because this is my business. I mean it! I’m gonna take care of it, and you can’t go telling Henneman. Promise me.”

“What will you tell your mom?”

“Who the hell cares?” she snapped. “I’ll tell her that Mike’s dad has started charging rent and wants a deposit or something. I might even tell her the truth because Mom would be all for getting rid of the thing.” Did she really feel this indifferent, or was she bluffing to shield herself from my concern? I heard myself breathing shallowly, needing to speak, but afraid of enraging her or shutting her down.
God
, w
hat do I do? What do I say? How can I even get through to her on this? Please let her hear me. Open her heart.

Nadina knew me too well by now. Watching me fret, her brows drew together, and then she went after me. “What? What the hell are you thinking, Cass? I can tell you’ve got some kind of friggin’ sermon to preach, so preach it. Why do you think I didn’t even want to tell you? ʼCause you’re gonna go all friggin’ religious and judgmental on me, like you could even know what it’s like. Mike’s okay now! I’m okay now! I don’t want this fucking everything up!”

“Would you quit cussing at me?” I asked in a tired voice. “If you haven’t noticed by now, you stupid girl, I love you. I don’t do and say things that you don’t like because I like to piss you off. I do and say things that sometimes you don’t like because I care about what happens to you.”

“But what?” Nadina demanded. She crossed her arms over her chest defensively, but I detected a slight softening in her expression.

“What do you mean?”

“But what’s the catch? Spit it out. I know you friggin’ religious types are all against abortion, and don’t I know the thing’s heart is beating and crap like that. You want to say it, say it.”

“I have five things I want to say to you,” I said shakily, holding up my hand. Why I put up my hand I couldn’t say—maybe to stop the flow of her hostility. And what were the five things I had to say to her? I couldn’t even think of one, much less four more. But there were my five fingers raised like a stop sign.

“Your life
matters
.”

My hand was closed now. I felt the heat of tears behind my eyes and reached across the table, laying my hand on her shoulder.

Her breathing was as shallow as mine, and I saw her blink rapidly. It was so silent in the kitchen I could hear Benny on his bed, snuffling to himself. Oblivious to any crisis, to lives hanging in the balance. A sudden memory presented itself to me: that time months ago in church when I thought of God as a dog, an unpredictable dog who had turned on me to tear my life apart. It was all wrong. That should go without saying, of course, but it had taken me all this time to believe it. Nadina’s life mattered, and so did mine.

Your life matters
.

Nor was God like Benny, oblivious, doing His own thing, letting us all go to hell in a handbasket. In that moment, in my passionate desire for Nadina to know that she was loved, that she mattered, I had a glimpse of God’s heart. This was how He felt for her. This was how He felt for that little child growing, unwanted, inside her. This was how He felt for me.

Nadina had to clear her throat several times before she could speak. “How—how can you say my life matters,” she began unsteadily, “when you know having this baby would wreck it?”

This baby. I felt my heart constrict painfully with joy. It had already begun to change in her mind.

“You matter so much,” I said slowly, “to me and—and to the God who made you, that He wants you to live. He wants you to be whole. He wants you to know your life is precious and sacred. To have this baby wouldn’t be about wrecking your life—it would be about healing it. It would come from an understanding of how much you matter, how much each one of us matters. When we…deny life…we deny our own.”

She sighed deeply, burying her hands in her spiky blonde hair. “I don’t know if I believe that. And I can’t believe you do. You, with the dead husband and the dead baby. Didn’t their life matter?”

“They’re okay. Troy and Min are okay. I wasn’t ready to let them go, but I know they’re all right.” I shook my head slowly. “Really, I was more concerned with me, the one who got left behind. I used to wonder, Nadina, why we weren’t all in that car that day. Wouldn’t that have been easier? If we all three died and went on together? I wondered why I wasn’t done on earth yet. I guess one reason must be that I was supposed to talk to you today. To tell you how much you matter.”

She stirred the dregs of her cocoa, thinking. “If I did this—and I’m not saying I will—Mike would friggin’ flip out.”

“He probably would be pretty upset at first,” I conceded, “but you’re not expecting him to raise the baby or support the baby. It would just be dealing with a few months of you being pregnant.”

“He’ll freak,” she said despondently. Then, “I don’t think I could give the baby to some randoms out there.”

“It wouldn’t have to be random. You could use a selective agency or interview couples yourself, pick and choose.”

“They wouldn’t give a shit about me,” she uttered in a low voice. “Not like you do. They would just want the baby, the second they could rip it away. Be all nice to me and kiss my ass until they got what they wanted.”

“That’s not true,” I protested, “they would care about you because they would be so grateful to you. You don’t know—people who can’t have babies go a little berserk. They’d probably want to hear from you every day of the pregnancy, get all the gory details.”

Her voice dropped even lower, but I think I recognized the expletive. “No way. No friggin’ randoms.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” I repeated. “They wouldn’t have to be random. You could know them as well or as little as you like, I imagine. It could be a family here in Bellevue or across the country. People you get to know, or people whose names you don’t even want to learn. This would be your choice. All yours.”

“If—if I got to choose,” said Nadina hesitantly. “I—I— ” She trailed off.

There was a sudden silence in the kitchen. Nadina and I were perfectly still—even Benny seemed to be holding his breath. I could hear the clock ticking, Phyl’s clock with the orange blossoms on it. Outside, a car whizzed by on the wet pavement. Nadina’s words seemed to hang in the air, as if they were painted on a banner unfurling behind a plane, and I looked at them, detached. I-would-choose-you-Cass. Shocking words that, for some inexplicable reason, failed to shock. The banner may as well have read Shop-at-Pendergast-Furniture or Did-you-take-your-vitamins-today?

Twenty months ago, when I came home from that Hot Yoga class, I threw my gym bag in the hallway and called for Min, wondering why she didn’t come running to greet me. “Troy?” I called again. “Did you already put Min down for her nap?” No Troy either, as you well know. Just that blinking light on the answering machine and the hospital asking me to call back immediately.
Oh God, no
. I’ve never been a morbid person, never spent my time imagining worst-case scenarios. Nor was there any reason to suppose the hospital had news of my husband and daughter—it could as easily have been news of my own parents or Max or Raquel while Troy obliviously pushed Min on the swing at the park. But that day when my shaking hand reached for the phone, I already knew what someone dreaded having to tell me. Denial would come later; disbelief would come later; in that moment I knew.

Steadily I gazed at Nadina, the memory of that strange certainty tugging at me. If she had her way, she would choose me. Although I shouldn’t have been able to understand her, although I ought to have been on the floor hyperventilating at the thought, I felt instead an eerie calm. Something clicked into place. Hard to describe, but most like the Troy-and-Min experience. It was as if she were telling me something that found an immediate echo inside me and evoked no surprise.