The Beach Quilt (8 page)

“So, I thought, well, I can justify spending forty dollars on a pair of mint green jeans if I use them as a neutral and not only as an accent. That way I get, like, twenty outfits instead of maybe only ten. Right? Sarah, did you hear a word I said?”

Cordelia frowned at her friend, who was sitting across from her on the second bed in her room.

“I have something to tell you,” Sarah said.

I was right,
Cordelia thought
. She didn't hear a word I said
. “Okay. What?”

“It's pretty big.”

Cordelia regarded Sarah closely. She couldn't read her friend's expression and there was something tentative in her tone of voice. And she had been so—well, so weird—these past few weeks.

“What?” she said. “The suspense is killing me.”

Sarah took a deep breath and said, “I'm pregnant.”

Pretty big? This was colossal! Cordelia felt sick to her stomach, and tears seemed to spring from her eyes; if she had been wearing her glasses she was sure they would be wet.

“Oh, God, Sarah,” she gasped. “Are you sure?”

Sarah nodded.

“Oh, God,” she said again, “what are you going to do?” Congratulations, Cordelia felt sure, were not in order, not in this case. Sarah couldn't have wanted this, she simply couldn't have!

“I'm going to have the baby,” Sarah said simply.

“And then what?” Cordelia asked, aware that there was an odd tone of pleading in her voice. “Are you going to keep it? I mean, him or her?”

“Yes. My parents agreed. I'll—I mean, we'll—live with them.”

“Is . . . is Justin the . . .”

“Yes. Who else would it be?”

“I'm sorry.”

“He offered to marry me.”

“Oh.” Cordelia really didn't know what to make of that. Maybe Justin wasn't such a bad guy after all. But . . .

“And I said no.”

Cordelia nodded. She was still not entirely sure she wasn't having a particularly vivid nightmare. She wiped at her cheeks to clear them of the tears. “You're so young!”

“Well,” Sarah replied sharply, “there's nothing I can do about that.”

“But what about college? We wanted to go to the same college. What about our plans?”
Was that a childish and self-centered question?
Cordelia wondered. Probably, but she
was
childish and self-centered, so what? And suddenly her best friend was leaving her. . . .

Sarah looked down at her hands, resting flat on her knees. “I don't know.”

Neither girl spoke for some time. Cordelia couldn't imagine what Sarah was feeling, but she knew for sure that what she, Cordelia, was feeling was bruised and beaten.

“I can't believe this is happening,” she said finally. “Not to you of all people.”
And,
Cordelia added silently,
not to me.

Sarah laughed, but it was not a pleasant laugh. “Why not to me? I'm just like everyone else after all. Nothing special. Definitely not smarter.”

“Don't say that.”

“Well, it's true, isn't it?” Sarah snapped. “If I was smart, I wouldn't be in this mess, would I?”

Cordelia felt that whatever she might say right then would probably be wrong. She didn't like feeling so confused, so out of her depth. It made her feel as if she were on the verge of a panic attack. She had never had one, but she knew they could be seriously frightening.

“Do you know if the baby is a boy or a girl?” she asked after some time. It seemed like a neutral question, but what did she know. This was all violently new to her; this was the sort of reality that wrenched you from your safe and comfortable place in the world and threw you into a place that was dangerous and irritating.

“Not yet,” Sarah said.

“Do you want to know?”

Sarah shrugged. “I haven't thought about it.”

“Oh. How do you feel?”

Sarah laughed a bit again. “Fine. I'm not sick, you know. Just—” Her voice broke.

Just pregnant,
Cordelia said to herself.
Just going to have a baby. Just going to be a teenage mother.
No, there was no
just
about it.

“I'll help you, you know,” she said then. “With the baby, I mean. I'll do anything I can.”

Sarah put her head in her hands and began to weep, long, deep sobs that tore at Cordelia's heart. She wanted to call out for her mother, for Sarah's mother, for anyone who could make it all stop, make this new and dreadful reality go away.

But she knew that no one could work such magic.

Hesitatingly, Cordelia crossed the room and sat next to Sarah on the bed. Sarah had never really been comfortable with demonstrations of affection. Cordelia remembered the time when they were little, maybe in kindergarten. They were in the public playground, and she had taken Sarah's hand like all the other little girls were taking the hands of their best friends. But Sarah had yanked her hand away. Cordelia had burst out crying. All these years later, she couldn't remember how they had gotten past that unhappy moment, but somehow Cordelia had come to understand that Sarah didn't really like to be hugged and kissed like so many other girls did. It didn't mean that she didn't feel love; it just meant that she could be awkward expressing it.

Now, Cordelia took a chance and put her arm around her friend's shoulder anyway. Maybe, with the old reality so exploded, Sarah would welcome the gesture.

She did. Sarah slumped against Cordelia, and after a time her sobs quieted. And Cordelia realized that in the space of a few moments she had become the strong one, the comforter, in their relationship.

Sarah looked at her reflection in the mirror over her dresser. She didn't
look
pregnant. Her stomach and breasts were as flat as they ever were. It was so hard to believe there was a very tiny life growing inside her.

She turned away from the mirror, embarrassed by her own gaze. She had woken that morning to a feeling of intense resentment toward her unborn child. She had been horrified by the ferocity of those feelings and ashamed. She knew that this resentment was misplaced. No, worse, it was morally wrong. You could rarely say to another person, “It's all your fault that my life is a mess,” and be right. How much more ridiculous was it to say that to an unborn child? The baby hadn't even been conceived when she had agreed to go to bed with Justin!

The baby, her baby, was the only completely innocent one in this entire mess and should never be made to pay for the mistakes of the adults. When a child was made to suffer for sins he had not committed, well, that was called child abuse, and it was absolutely and entirely intolerable.

Sarah felt sure that even Justin would admit that. He was not a bad person. He had even offered to marry her. But, for all his good nature, he was a coward.

She put her face in her hands, ashamed in her own presence. How could she have agreed to have sex with someone with such a weak character? It was disgusting. It was that “smart women making stupid choices” syndrome all over again. Would women ever break that pattern of self-sabotage and destruction?

Of course not. Women were human. Humans were seriously flawed. Sarah had never been in doubt of that.

She thought back to the first time she and Justin had had sex. It had almost happened before, but she had always pulled back at very nearly the last minute. Justin had always been so patient, so nice about it. At least, he had pretended to be. And then, when she had finally said yes, okay, it was Justin who had said no, let's wait until next time. And the next time they were together at his apartment he had brought in flowers from the grocery store and had lit a few half-burned-down candles and had even offered her a glass of white wine. She had said no to the wine but had been touched by his efforts to make the night romantic. And then, he had been so attentive....

Now, the memories of that night brought only embarrassment. Cheap flowers, old candles, and wine offered to an underage girl hadn't meant romance at all. They certainly hadn't meant love.

Sarah lifted her face from her hands and with a sigh continued to dress for school.

You reap what you sow. Sarah thought about those words as she pulled a sweatshirt over her head. The effect was the result of the cause. The pregnancy was her responsibility; she was its cause. So was the pregnancy also a punishment of some sort? Or was that superstitious thinking? If so, where had it come from? She had never succumbed to superstitious thinking before.

You made your bed; now lie in it. Was that sort of the same thing? You made a choice, so whatever the result of that choice, it was yours to own and survive.

Sarah reached for her backpack and checked that it contained the books she would need for that day's classes. Such a mundane activity, when her entire world was spinning out of control!

She wasn't sure she had ever felt real guilt in her life before now. Sure, she had felt sorry on occasion, like when she disobeyed her parents (that had only happened once that she could recall) or the time she had tripped that girl in second grade (it had been an accident, Sarah hadn't seen her coming, so she hadn't brought her foot out of the aisle and back under her desk), but not real guilt like she felt now. She knew how hugely her pregnancy would affect her parents' lives. And she was so, so grateful to them for having accepted it the way that they had. But at the same time, she was so, so ashamed to be causing them such trouble.

“Sarah! Breakfast is ready!”

Sarah cringed. How strange it felt, her mother making her breakfast as if she were still a child. But of course she was still a child, one who would be making breakfast for her own child before long.

She had absolutely no appetite, but for the baby's sake, for
her
baby's sake, Sarah went down to the kitchen and cleared her plate.

Jack and Cordelia had left for school, Jack at six thirty, in his car, and Cordelia some time later, on the school bus. Adelaide sat alone at the kitchen table. Her head ached. She had taken three ibuprofen and had drunk a second cup of coffee, but the pain persisted. Well, of course it persisted. Its origins weren't physical. No amount of stimulants or anti-inflammatory medications were going to budge a pain that had its source in her heart.

Adelaide was in awe of Cindy's relatively calm acceptance of her daughter's situation. She wished that
she
could be so sanguine. But that was impossible because the news had sent her headlong into her own tumultuous, largely secret past.

At the age of seventeen, Adelaide had gotten pregnant.

To say that she hadn't had parental support would be an understatement. Her parents had been furious that she had “screwed up” and were completely unwilling to disrupt their own lives to raise a grandchild. To be fair, they were in their mid-fifties at the time, still working hard to build a good retirement nest egg, and enjoying a healthy social life, which included travel with other couples whose own teenage daughters were definitely
not
pregnant.

Adelaide had barely graduated from high school when she learned the devastating truth. It had come as a sickening shock. She had been looking forward to starting college in the fall. She had lined up a good summer job as an administrative assistant in a local accounting firm to boost her savings. And now, everything was ruined.

Her boyfriend, on his way to Harvard that autumn and already planning a career in international journalism, had wanted nothing to do with the baby. In fact, he had offered to pay for an abortion. After dumping her, of course. An abortion was something Adelaide's mother also had encouraged.

Thinking back, Adelaide realized that she wasn't sure her father ever knew that his wife had been urging their daughter to have an abortion. He wasn't the type of man to talk about “feminine” things. In fact, he hadn't said a word directly to her during those awful months of the pregnancy, other than “Good morning,” “Where's your mother?” and “Good night.” Safe verbal offerings that couldn't be misinterpreted or misunderstood even by the most emotionally distraught person.

Adelaide had felt she had no choice but to go through with the pregnancy and arrange to give the baby up for adoption.

It had been very,
very
odd, carrying a child she would never come to know as a person. It had been very,
very
difficult. At times, she had felt frantic for the baby to be gone on his or her way to the adoptive family. At other times, she had thought, wildly, that she would abandon her plans for a “normal” life and run away to raise the baby on her own, far from the condemning eyes of her parents.

And during those long months, people would ask her questions, innocuous in themselves, that made her feel as if she had been hit by a brick. “Oh, are you having a boy or girl?” “Have you chosen a name yet?” “Do you have the nursery set up?” And all she could do was to shrug and shake her head and silently answer: “There is no future here. What you're looking at when you see me is soon to become the irretrievable past. The baby is going to be someone else's future. He or she will be someone else's child to name and to nurture.”

It had almost driven her mad.

She had hardly left the house in the final months of the pregnancy, so miserable was she, so desperate to hide herself away from probing questions and curious looks, and worse, the pity she suspected too many people felt for her. The pity she felt she didn't deserve.

In the end, of course, she had toughed it out and survived. And after the baby had been born and taken away, Adelaide had begun her college career, a semester late and more determined than ever to succeed in building a life for herself.

But over twenty years later, she was still wondering if her decision had been a selfish one. Of course, to some extent it had been, but it also had been made in the baby's best interest, too. Or, what Adelaide deemed would be in his best interest.
His
best interest. Though she hadn't wanted to know the sex of the child, she had found out when a chatty nurse let the bit of information slip. This had upset her terribly. She had felt that the less she knew about the child, the easier it would be to let him go.

Adelaide sighed and rubbed her temples though she knew the attempt to ease the pain was futile. These thoughts and memories would come, and she had learned that it was better to let them visit without protest.

So many times over the years Adelaide had been tempted to search for her baby's father. She wondered if Michael Baker had succeeded in becoming a journalist of renown. She had never come across his name in print, but then again, she wasn't entirely familiar with international news sources.

But each time the curiosity had arisen, she had asked herself what good it would do to know that her baby's father had married, fathered children, gotten divorced, and then remarried to someone significantly younger. What good would it do to learn that he had won a prestigious prize for his work and written a best-selling book? What would any of that information gain her? The answer was—nothing. Michael Baker hadn't wanted anything to do with her or the baby all those years ago. He certainly wouldn't want anything to do with either of them now.
Leave it be, Adelaide,
she had told herself.
Leave it be.

It was better that Michael Baker forever remain a figure of Adelaide's long buried past. Except when he came vividly to mind, like he had now, with the news of Sarah's pregnancy.

Slowly, Adelaide got up from the table. She would go back to bed for a while. She was very, very tired.