“How would Michael even know I’m pregnant?” Ann asked Anthony. “And how would he know it was you? I never told him anything.”
“You didn’t have to. He said he overheard you when you called me. You should have been more discreet, Ann.”
“No.” Ann couldn’t think straight anymore. Nobody had been home when she’d spoken to Anthony, right? That was just a few days ago, and she could hardly remember it, couldn’t remember what she’d eaten for breakfast that very morning, what homework she’d turned in and what was late, what her own name was. Her brain was too busy trying to make sense of the messiness of her life. She remembered yelling at Michael and feeling bad about it. She’d been anxious for him to come home after school so she could apologize, tell him she didn’t mean what she’d said, she’d just been so alone, so confused, that she needed to lash out. She was building up the resolve to tell everyone, her parents, Michael, Poppy. Once Michael knew this secret she’d been keeping, he’d understand, right?
“He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t blackmail you. Not Michael.”
“Especially Michael,” Anthony said. His voice was so authoritative she felt as if he were in the same room with her. “What do you know about his life before you met him? He was a street kid, Ann. He learned to get what he wanted. Think about it. He lived with your family for what, not even two years? He just turned eighteen, doesn’t want to go to college. He could work at a McDonald’s the rest of his life or he could hit me up for a load of cash, which is just what he did. He called me at work. Last person in the world I expected to hear from at nine o’clock in the morning. I almost spit out my coffee.”
“He called you? How did he have your number at work?”
“I gave him my card when he worked for me last summer. Told him to stay in touch if he wanted me to write a letter of recommendation. Thought I was doing the kid a favor and look how he repaid me. He had the whole plan figured out. He said he’d say he’s the father and skip town if I’d give him money.”
“No.”
“It’s time for you to open your eyes, Ann. You don’t believe me? He even had a bank account set up. He said he’d keep fifty grand for himself, and then he’d deposit the rest of my money and the bank would automatically send you a check every month. If you don’t believe me I can show you the paperwork he faxed over. Think about it: I can’t set up a bank account for someone else. He needed to do this. It was his plan.”
Ann stared at the dizzying jelly-roll pattern of the quilt on her bed that her mother had made for her as a present when she turned sixteen. They’d driven all over town looking for fabric. Michael set up an account?
“He had me in a vise, Ann. Kid like that, he’s seen people in situations like mine. Part of me admires him, actually. But look: it’s just money. I paid him, and I put money in his little account. You’ll get a thousand bucks every month. That ought to help you get by. He’s gone for good, off to who-knows-where. You won’t see him again. Good riddance.”
It was one thing to imagine never seeing Anthony again, but Michael? He’d been such a constant in her life the past few years. Even though they hadn’t been as close lately, she relied on him, cared for him, loved him in ways she could acknowledge, and ways she had to deny, even to herself. She couldn’t digest what Anthony told her—all she could think about was that Michael was gone, and he’d betrayed her. Anthony kept talking, his words floating like the greasy scum on top of dirty water. Most of what he said was just posturing, but she snapped to attention when he said, “Let’s face it, Ann. This situation is difficult enough. Neither of us want to get dragged into a custody battle.”
“Custody”: that was a word she hadn’t even thought of yet. It made her stomach turn to think of this baby growing inside of her being ripped away, raised by someone like Anthony. “What did you say?”
“If the kid is mine, like you say, you bet I want to raise it. That is, if I didn’t have to keep everything a secret. Practically speaking, I do.”
“All I need to do is take a paternity test.”
“Right. And you know what’ll happen if I’m really the father? I’ll drag you and your family through the mud, take the kid, do whatever I need to do. Listen good, Ann: if you come after me, if you take that test, I’ll be a permanent part of your life, you can bet on that. There won’t be a day you won’t communicate with me.”
Ann held the phone so hard she thought it could melt in her hand. She used to think she could handle anything, but this? This was too much.
“I know what Michael did is hurtful, but you don’t see him clearly. You don’t know the kinds of people I’ve known. He’s had to look out for himself, do whatever it takes to survive. I think he thinks he’s doing you a favor. You’ll keep this a secret.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“Here’s what you do. When you tell your parents, you say Michael’s the dad just like he worked out. He gets something in exchange for lying. Fair’s fair I guess, as unpleasant as it is. He has a price, and I paid it. This sucks for me too, you know.”
“My whole future just blew up. Don’t tell me what sucks for you.”
“I’m basically giving up any opportunity to get to know my child, and I don’t even have proof that it really is mine. You think that’s easy for me?” His cold voice softened for a moment. “Having a kid is hard, but it’s not the end of the world. My boys, they mean the world to me. You saw that. I’d never go back in time and wish they hadn’t been born. I didn’t believe in God until I looked in their eyes. But look, Michael is long gone, and I can be long gone, too, if that’s what’s best. You just play along. You’re independent, I can see that. That’s why I liked you. You raise the kid the way you want. Your parents will help, you know that. Or you put it up for adoption for some nice family. The money in that account will still be yours, and you’ll get it a month at a time so we don’t raise any eyebrows.”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s not to know? The way I look at it, and probably the way Michael does, too, is that he’s doing us both a favor.”
All the rest was a blur. His insistence that this was simple appealed to her, it did. She needed a check to appear every month, just like Anthony had said it would. It sounded like there was so much money that it would never run out.
Ann still had so many questions about what Michael had done. It didn’t feel right to her. But she needed a narrative, a story. So, when her father burst into her bedroom demanding to know what Michael had “done” to her, that was the story she told. “Oh, Ann,” he said, racked with disappointment. “How could you let this happen?”
If he’d responded differently and said something less inadvertently hurtful, she might not have stuck to it with as much tenacity.
WORD SPREAD AROUND SCHOOL like a brush fire. Ann wasn’t the first kid at Riverside to get pregnant, that was for sure, but she was Ed Gordon’s kid, a straight-A student, the kind of girl who, a year ago, might have been the one to spread rumors about other teen pregnancies. The worst part was seeing that look on her teachers’ faces, many of whom were her dad’s friends. They’d been to the house for potlucks and barbecues, knew her mom, had watched Ann grow up. Such a shame, they seemed to say every time they saw her walk into the classroom, their eyes on her stomach. Even her mom’s friend Dawn, who was like an aunt to her, seemed to disapprove.
Her pregnancy became public as her college acceptance letters arrived. She was waitlisted at Harvard, which, under normal circumstances, would have been a big deal—maybe it would mean heartbreak, maybe it would change her life forever. Now it was just a stone dropping through water. Only Amherst sent a rejection. She could have gone to college out East after all: Boston College wanted her. So did Northeastern and Vassar. Vassar even offered her a scholarship. Ann insisted she could still go. “How?” her mother asked. “Honey, a baby is a lot of work. You have no idea.”
Poppy rallied to Ann’s side. She called the admissions offices, pretending she was Ann. Sorry, she said, while tears streamed down Ann’s face, I’m taking advantage of other offers. Ann grudgingly enrolled at the achingly familiar University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. She had practically lived on campus her entire life. She’d even attended the day care there; now, in addition to her application, she was filling out forms for her own child to be taken care of while she attended classes.
This radical change in plans might have crushed her if she didn’t have bigger worries than school. She worried her father might never look at her the same way again, worried that Michael might have gotten into some trouble (why should she worry about Michael?), worried when she overheard some girls talking about snorting coke with Poppy in Mike Lassiter’s Pontiac Firebird during lunch. There was so much worry, and then she’d read she could stress the fetus, who’d already been exposed to so much of her anxiety that she was certain he or she was doomed to become a mental case.
And then, one day at school, between second and third period, just outside Mrs. Chalmer’s door … what was that? She almost dropped her books. A flutter deep inside her. A literal flutter, light and quick. Her classmates rushed past her, late for class. Kathy Landuski put on lipstick. Ben Johnson gave Marcus Rose a high five. The bell rang, shrill and loud. There it was again. The baby! Before, the baby meant the end of her future, her youth, her life as she’d known it. Now the baby was more than an idea. It was real, alive and kicking. It was hers.
This gave her a new appreciation for her mom, wise now because she’d also once been pregnant and given birth. She took off work to drive Ann to her appointments, reminded her to take the horse-pill-sized vitamins, and sewed elastic panels into Ann’s jeans. She and her friends had started a baby quilt. Connie held her hand as the technician spread the wand over the gooey junk on her stomach. There on the screen, like a black-and-white etching, she saw the round C of a spine. A skull. Fingers and toes. The technician measured the circumference of the baby’s head, counted the ventricles of his heart. “I’m not supposed to say this, but your baby is perfect,” she said. She confirmed what Ann intuitively knew: a boy. She was having a boy, and the boy was sucking his thumb. This news seemed to please Ed. He’d been supportive, although Ann could tell he blamed himself for not being more attentive to what he thought had been happening right under his roof. She could also tell that Ed missed Michael. Ann had heard her parents arguing about whether or not to try harder to find him. “He’s eighteen now,” Connie said. “He’s not a missing child; he’s not even a runaway. Ed, let him go. I can forgive him for getting Ann pregnant, but I can’t forgive him for leaving. I just can’t.”
Now there was this new boy to focus on, growing so fast and so hard that Ann would sometimes double over from the pain of spreading muscles and stretching skin as she moved into her third trimester. Once the news settled in at school, kids watched Ann’s growing belly with blatant interest. She’d liked being the center of attention before; now she wanted to escape all the sideways glances and outright stares, the classmates who dared ask if they could touch her impossibly swollen belly, the kid who sat next to her in chemistry who noticed a tiny elbow glide from one side of her stomach to the other and shouted, “Holy shit!” She didn’t care anymore about being popular or admired. It was so freeing to care only about this constant companion twisting, hiccuping, kicking, and swimming inside her.
Her body was the bell, and the baby the clapper.