There was a gentle tap at the door. “Allie?” Janet said, her voice a whisper. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I told her. “Just a little too much wine. I’ll be right out.” My heart was thudding; my temples were pounding. My purse was in my hands. My hands were in my purse. My new little blue friends were in their bottle. I shook one of them out into my palm, craving the comfort they would give me, the easing-toward-sleep feeling that would take away the scalding hurt, the shame of the way Dave had looked at me.
Nobody knew this—not Janet, not my parents, not anyone—but after Dave and I had been dating for a little over a year, my period, typically regular, had failed to arrive. I was on the pill, and I’d always remembered to take it, but I knew, from my tender br**sts to the way I woke up nauseated by the smell of coffee, what had happened. I’d freaked out and gone to Dave in a panic, watching his face turn pale and his lips tighten until they were almost invisible as I’d laid out the options: I could have the baby and place it for adoption. I could have the baby and raise it myself. Or we could get married.
By then, we’d been seeing each other exclusively for months. The Pablo Neruda girl was gone—or, at least, I’d never seen evidence of another female in his apartment, or on his phone (which I had guiltily checked once). We’d been saying “I love you” and talking, casually, about which neighborhoods we liked, whether we preferred condos in the new high-rises in Washington Square West or a row house in Society Hill or Bella Vista. There had been no explicit promises, we were spending three or four nights a week at my place but not yet living together, we had not plighted our troth nor promised our future, and I would never have tried to trick Dave, or trap him by getting knocked up accidentally on purpose. Still, I’d been confident that, in light of the reality of our situation, he would do the thing he’d been planning on doing, albeit on a somewhat expedited schedule.
Instead of looking happy, though, Dave had pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb and looked everywhere but at me after I’d laid out the news.
“You wouldn’t get an abortion?” he had asked. We were in my walk-up apartment on Arch Street, Dave on my denim-covered couch, me in the armchair I’d inherited from my mother and had slipcovered in a pricy French toile I’d found on Fabric Row. My cute little living room, perfect for two, was in no way big enough for three. Even the thought of dragging a stroller up three flights of stairs left me exhausted. My eat-in kitchen would be just a kitchen if I had to add a high chair; my bathroom had a luxurious shower, with extra showerheads poking out of the walls, but no bathtub. It was all entirely unsuitable for a baby.
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. I was certainly pro-choice in my beliefs—I’d gotten my well-woman checkups and my contraception at Planned Parenthood since I was an undergraduate, and I’d been supporting them with regular, if modest, donations since I’d gotten my job—but in my mind, it was a baby, Dave’s and mine, and I could no more consider aborting it than I could hurting myself, or hurting him.
The silence stretched out until I heard Dave give a slow sigh. “Well, then,” he said, “let’s get hitched.” It was not, needless to say, the proposal of my dreams . . . but Dave was the man of my dreams, and, surely, the life we would build together would be the stuff I had dreamed about, the life I had always wanted, a partnership with a man I adored and admired. I flung my arms around his neck and kissed him and said, “Yes.”
Four weeks later, with a hastily purchased one-karat princess-cut diamond ring on my finger and the memory of the Indomitable Doreen’s stiff smile and my mother’s insulting exuberance at our meet-the-parents-slash-engagement party still crisp and bright in my mind, I’d gone to my obstetrician and learned, during the ultrasound, that there was an egg sac, but no heartbeat. No baby. My body, it seemed, had ended the pregnancy before it really started. He gave me four pills; I went home and took them, then endured the worst cramps and bleeding of my life while Dave fetched me hot-water bottles and shots of brandy. Half-drunk, with my fifth industrial-strength sanitary napkin stuck into my high-waisted cotton briefs, I’d said, “We don’t have to go through with it now, if you don’t want to. I won’t hold you to anything. You’re free.”
“Don’t be crazy,” Dave had said. He’d been so tender as he helped me into the shower. He washed my hair, soaped my body with my favorite vanilla-scented body wash, and then smoothed lotion on my arms and legs before bundling me into a warm towel, putting me into my pajamas, and tucking me into bed. I’d hung my future on that night. Whenever I’d had doubts, whenever he seemed quiet, or moody, or distant, I remembered the smell of vanilla and brandy, and how gentle he’d been, how kind, how he hadn’t considered, even for a minute, the possibility that he could be rid of me.