The Pact (28 page)

The muscles of Chris's back gleamed with exertion, and his shoulders blocked Emily's view of the moon as he reared over her. She raised her hips to him, with the uncharitable thought that maybe he could drive the thing out of her, but Chris interpreted this gesture as passion and began to stroke, slow and deep inside her. Her head turned to the side, she could feel him, a battering ram. She felt his hand slip between them-he hated it when she didn't come, too-and she clamped her legs together before she could remember to relax. “Sssh,” he said, so far in her now she could feel an unbearable pressure, as if this person inside her was pushing Chris out of its space.

Suddenly Chris convulsed, and-as she always did when he came apart-she laced her arms and legs tight and held him close. He lay heavily, a stone on her heart, squeezing the air from her lungs, and almost, with it, her secret.

The Planned Parenthood office was conveniently on a bus line that linked Bainbridge with several less affluent communities to the south and east. The waiting room boasted a mix of ethnicities, some single women and some with partners, some with swollen bellies and some crying into their hands, but no one had the look of Emily herself: a rich girl from a bedroom community where things like this did not happen.

“Emily?” The counselor, a nurse practitioner named Stephanie Newell, was calling her back inside. Gathering her coat, Emily followed the nurse into a small, homey room. “Well,” Stephanie said, sitting across from Emily. “You are pregnant. Approximately six weeks, from the looks of things.” She paused, searching Emily's face. “I take it this isn't welcome news.”

“Not exactly,” Emily whispered.

It had not been real, until now. There was always the margin for error with the home pregnancy test, or the possibility that it had all been nothing more than a bad dream. But this-a stranger telling her it was true-was incontrovertible proof.

“Have you told the father?”

Emily noticed, in a hazy, detached way, that no one was using the word baby. “Pregnant,” sure.

“Father,” yes. But just in case, she assumed, there was no need to put a face to something you might not keep. “No,” she said tightly.

“It's your choice,” Stephanie said gently, “but it's easier to go through something like this-no matter which option-with someone beside you.”

“I won't be telling him,” Emily said, her voice firm, realizing as the words came that they were true.

“He's not in the picture.”

“He isn't,” Stephanie pressed, “or you don't want him to be?” Emily turned to the nurse. “I can't have this baby,” she said flatly. “I'm going to college next year.” Stephanie nodded, nonjudgmental. “We offer abortion as one option,” she said. “It costs three hundred twenty-five dollars and you have to pay up front.”

Emily blanched. She figured there would be a cost, but that was an awful lot. She'd have to ask her parents ... or Chris ... and that was impossible.

She rucked the edge of her shirt up and twisted it between her hands. She had spent her entire life being what everyone wanted her to be. The perfect daughter, the budding artist, the best friend, the first love. She had been so busy meeting everyone's expectations, in fact, that it had taken her years to remember exactly why it was all one big farce. She was not perfect, far from it, and what you saw on the outside was not what you really were getting. Deep down, she was dirty, and this was the kind of thing that happened to girls like her.

“Three hundred twenty-five dollars,” she repeated. “All right.” In THE END, it was easy. She initially thought of going to Chris and asking him to help her get the money, but he would ask what it was for, and even if she told him it wasn't something she could talk about, he'd figure it out. There were not many things a seventeen-year-old would need so much cash for, and quick.

So Emily set her clock radio to go off in the middle of the night. She crept downstairs and fumbled in her mother's purse for the checkbook. Ripping off number 688, she made the check out to cash for the total amount, easily forging Melanie's signature. Her mother used her checks only to pay bills, and that was just once a month. By the time Melanie was going crazy trying to remember what check number 688 had been for, the entire procedure would probably be over. The next day after school, Emily asked Chris to drive her to the bank. She had to cash a check for her mother, she said. The teller knew her; in Bainbridge, everyone knew everyone. And Emily had gone home $325 richer.

THE NIGHT BEFORE Emily was scheduled to have the abortion, she and Chris went to the beach at the edge of the lake. For September, it was balmy-Indian summer, the night flung across the sky like sheer gauze, bringing darkness but no weight. Emily could not settle or concentrate; her skin felt too small for her body, and she was convinced she could feel the thing growing inside her. Desperate to push it out of her mind, she threw herself at Chris, kissing him with a fury, so that at one point he leaned back and looked at her quizzically. “What?” she demanded, but he just shook his head. “Nothing,” he murmured. “You just don't seem like you.”

“Who do I seem like?” she asked.

Chris smiled. “My wildest dream,” he said, and buried his hands in her hair. And then all of a sudden he had pulled Emily on top of him, her legs falling open on either side of his hips. “Sit up,” Chris urged, and she did, only to feel him slipping inside her with the change of position. It was too soon. Emily immediately braced her hands on Chris's shoulders, leaning back in an effort to rear away. “Oh, that's good,” Chris murmured, his head turned to the side. Emily froze, and then urged by Chris's palms on her hips, moved tentatively. “You look like a centaur,” he said, andsurprised-she laughed. The movement drove Chris even deeper inside her, making the whole thing worse. They were joking around, just like they used to. They might as well have been wrestling, as they had when they were children, practically siblings. But they weren't wrestling, and they weren't siblings, so it was all right to have sex. Wasn't it?

Emily squeezed her eyes shut, scattering her thoughts. “That would make you the horse,” she said, slightly queasy.

Chris flexed his buttocks. “Giddyap,” he said, and bucked beneath her so that the moon rippled over her shoulder, lying light on her breast.

Afterward, she lay on her side, her head pillowed by Chris's arm and his hand resting on her hip, spooning. This was the part she waited to get to, the part worth suffering through the sex. She had curled up against Chris a million times in her life. Afterward, it was like it had always been, with nothing embarrassing between them.

“Sand,” he suddenly whispered, “is greatly overrated.”

She smiled faintly. “Oh?”

“My ass is rubbed raw,” he admitted.

Emily grinned. “Serves you right,” she said.

“Serves me right? I was doing the chivalrous thing, letting you be on top.” He splayed his palm over her stomach.

Abruptly, Emily sat up, grabbed the nearest piece of clothing-Chris's shirt-and wrapped herself in it to walk along the edge of the lake.

Did Chris have a right to know? Would she be lying, if she did not say anything at all?

If she did tell him, they'd get married. The problem was, she wasn't sure she wanted that. She told herself that it wasn't fair to Chris, who thought he'd be getting a girl who'd never been touched by another man.

But a small, nagging throb at the back of her thoughts said that it wasn't fair to her, either. If she sometimes went home after making love with Chris and vomited for hours; if she sometimes couldn't bear his hands roaming under her bra and panties because it felt more like incest than excitement-could she really spend her whole life married to him?

Emily tossed a pebble into the lake, breaking the smooth surface. It was a strange feeling, knowing that her life would always be intertwined with Chris's-God, it had been since the day she was bornand yet realizing that she was still secretly hoping for an out. Everyone expected Chris and Emily to be together forever, but forever had always seemed a long way off.

She pressed her hand to her stomach. Forever had a real time line, now.

Emily supposed then, that the answer was yes. She could marry Chris. The alternative would be explaining that she cared about him like a sister, like a friend, not necessarily like a wife. And she would see his face whiten, feel his heart crumble in her hands.

She did not love Chris enough to marry him, but she loved him too much to tell him that. Emily blinked at the surface of the lake, rippling deep and ringed with the sounds of crickets. She imagined how easy it would be to walk into that lake, her feet slipping along the silty bottom, until the black water covered her head and weighted down her lungs, sinking her like a stone. She felt Chris walk up behind her and gently slip his arm around her shoulders. “What are you thinking about?”

“Drowning,” she said softly. “Walking in there until it was over my head. Very peaceful.”

“Jesus,” Chris said, clearly startled. “I don't think it would be peaceful at all. I think you'd start thrashing around and try to get to the surface-”

“You would,” Emily said. “Because you're a swimmer.”

“And you?”

She turned in his arms, and laid her head on his chest. “I would just let go,” she said. PERHAPS IT WOULD HAVE gone well, but the physician scheduled the day of Emily's abortion was a man. She lay on the gurney, her legs bent up and revealing, Stephanie beside her. She watched the doctor enter and turn to the sink to wash. The soap slipped between his fingers, greasy and white, exaggerating the size and shape of him. He turned around and smiled at Emily. “Well,” he said, “what have we got here?”

Well. What have we got here?

Then he reached under the gown, just like the other had, after saying that same awful thing, and slid his fingers into her. Emily began to kick, her ankles knocking aside the stirrups, her foot striking the doctor on the side of the head as he cautiously backed away.

“Don't touch me,” she yelled, trying to sit up, curling her hands between her legs and tucking the gown beneath her thighs. She felt Stephanie's hand on her shoulder and turned her face into the counselor's arm. “Don't let him touch me,” she whispered, even after the physician left the room. Stephanie waited until Emily stopped crying, then sat down on the doctor's stool. “Maybe,” she suggested, “it's time to tell the father.”

She would not tell Chris, especially not now. Because as soon as she did, she would have to tell him about this horrible abortion and the doctor and why she couldn't stand to have the man touching her. And why she couldn't stand to have Chris touch her. And why she was not the girl Chris thought she was. As soon as she told him, she'd have made her own bed, and she would have to lie in it-with him.

Eventually, too, she would have to tell her parents. And they'd stare at her in shock-their little girl?

Her fault, because she was having sex now, when she shouldn't. Her fault, because she attracted that disgusting man's attention when she was still so young.

Everyone would find out soon enough, anyway. She was well and neatly trapped, with only one small and hidden exit, so dark and buried that most people never even considered breaching its hatch.

Emily listened to Stephanie, her options counselor, talking and talking for over an hour. Amazing, considering there really were no options at all.

“Can YOU PASS the butter?” Melanie asked, and Michael handed it to her.

“This is good,” Michael said, pointing to his dinner. “Em, honey, you ought to try the chicken.” Emily pressed her fingers to her temples. “I'm not that hungry,” she said. Melanie and Michael exchanged a glance. “You haven't eaten anything all day,” Melanie said.

“How do you know?” Emily shot back. “I could have polished off a whole banquet at school. You weren't there.” She bowed her head. “I need Tylenol,” she murmured.

“Did you see the application from the Sorbonne?” Melanie said. “It came with today's mail.” Emily's fork clattered against her plate. “I'm not going.”

“What's the harm in applying?” Melanie said. She smiled at Emily across the table, clearly misreading her reluctance. “Chris will be just where you left him, when you get home,” she teased. Emily shook her head, her hair flying. “Is that what you think this is? That I can't live without him?” She tamped down the question that burned at the base of her throat: Could she7. Throwing her napkin on top of her plate, she stood. “Just leave me alone!” she cried, running out of the room. Melanie and Michael stared at each other. Then Michael cut a slice of chicken and placed it in his mouth, chewed it. “Well,” he said. “It's the age,” Melanie agreed, and reached for her knife. There WAS A CLEARING down the Class IV road that ran behind the Harte and Gold properties where people left off old stoves and refigerators, bags of thick glass bottles and rusted tin cans. For lack of a better word, it was known in Bainbridge as the Dump, and had served for years as a field for target practice. Chris four-wheeled into the clearing and left Emily sitting on the hood of the Jeep while he set up a gallery of bottles and cans thirty yards away. He loaded the Colt revolver, batting away the flies that buzzed in the sweet, tall grass around the Jeep's tires. Chris snapped the chamber back into place as Emily leaned down to pluck one green stalk and threaded it between her front teeth. He took a Kleenex from his pocket and wadded small balls of it into his ears, then handed it to Emily. “Plugs,” he said, pointing, urging her to do the same. He had just lifted the revolver, braced in both his hands, when he heard Emily's shout. “Wait! You can't just shoot,” she said. “You have to tell me what you're aiming for.” Chris grinned. “Oh, right. So that I can look bad when I miss.” He squinted, shutting one eye, and raised the Colt again. “Blue label, I think it's an apple juice jug.” The first shot was deafeningly loud, and in spite of the tissue Emily clapped her hands over her ears. She didn't see where it went, exactly, but the trees behind the targets rustled. The second shot hit the blue-labeled bottle dead on, the glass exploding against the rough bark of the trees. Emily hopped off the hood of the car. “I want to try,” she said.