That night the showdown came. It had to. Kay would have burst if it hadn’t. Her emotional pitch was so high that Steve realized there was no putting it off.
Washing supper dishes, she let two of them slip through her unsteady fingers and crash to the floor. In spite of himself, Steve couldn’t help but smile. “The dear things that make up a woman,” he whispered loud enough for her to hear as he gathered up the fragments from every end of the kitchen floor. This reminded him of the day they first “ran into each other” and he had scrambled around to gather up off the ground what she had dropped due to the impact.
But it was Kay who now, on her own, picked up the thread of that thought and said, Alles was ich fallen lasse, dass nimmst du immer auf, du lieber Mensch, du! (“Still trying to pick up the things I’m always dropping, you dear man, you.”)
As she watched his steady hands gather up the broken pieces, she saw in her mind’s eye the trembling hands of the man in coveralls she had taken for an itinerant worker, scrambling around in the leaves beneath the maple trees. That man had seemed so much older than this man, though this one was now bereft of all dark hair. What had made all the difference was the rebirth of hope in him and the impetus it had given him to apply his genius to something he could truly believe in.
That this man should never become a father would be a crime against humanity, she told herself, and I’ve had eleven years to know what I am talking about. He’d be the last one to see it, but having his son or daughter in my womb is like having a bright light for this dark world right here inside me.
“Steve,” she said simply. “Don’t you see why we must have the child I am carrying?”
Steve emptied the shards into the waste basket and stood up straight. He looked at her face, strained with the certainty of her irresistible logic, and shook his head.
“And why is it now ‘must’?”
But Kay was too full and her voice was too near the breaking point to answer him properly. So she just stood there looking at him, blinking hard and nodding slowly up and down before turning back to the last of the dishes. When she was done, Steve moved up to her and gently took hold of her upper arms, turning her around. Then he took her hand in his.
“Come on now, Love. Let’s go into the living room and work this out together right now. We can’t go on this way. Come on.”
Tears were streaming down Kay’s cheeks in earnest. Tenderly Steve led her into the living room and seated her on one end of their loveseat davenport, seating himself almost beside her on the other end, but facing her.
“My darling,” he began. “Can’t you see that it would be insane for a woman of your age and in your condition of health to place your life—and your husband’s life—in such jeopardy? For eleven years of happy married life we have worked so diligently to avoid exactly this dreadful prospect, and now just because of a moment of reckless weakness on my part, should our motives be any different?”
“Yes, Steve, we have been happy together. I can’t imagine how I could have been happier for these eleven years than by being your wife. And you were wonderful to go to all the trouble right from the start to figure out how we could make love safely several times a month without risking my health. But that was eleven years ago. There were no Lena Nybergs back then. What happened to her and Larry was unimaginable back then. But now it has become a priceless blessing even more available to us than it was to them a year ago. It is one of those peacetime miracles of science that you have been inspiring your students to strive for year after year. What was impossible eleven years ago is almost routine now, they tell us. In view of this, how can you ask me to surrender the holy child, our child, who is within me, our own flesh and blood, at this very moment?”
She unbuttoned two buttons lower down on her blouse and reached over to him. Taking his right hand, she drew it into the opening and held it flush against the skin of her womb in total silence.
“Our flesh and blood,” she whispered.
Minutes passed.
“O my angel,” Steve whispered at last. “You are just too beautiful. I can’t bear the thought of losing you.”
He moved in closer to her and took her in his left arm. She was holding the palm of his right hand pinned flat against her womb with her left hand.
“You do realize I am fifty-seven years old. What counsel can a seventy-five-year-old father give his troubled teenage daughter? And what are my chances of living long enough to see her or him out on their own?”
“Very good,” responded Kay faintly. She sensed it was “now or never.” It was the moment for her to give it all she had. She braced herself for the impact she knew her words were going to have on Steve, and then she pronounced her judgment on his position.
“Your maturity is all the more reason why we must have this child. Your life has taught you more than most people learn in ten or a hundred lifetimes, and God has endowed you with a matchless mind and heart. Cecilia has shaped you to find true joy in self-giving. So help me, Steve, you owe it to God, to your fellowman, to Cecilia, to me, and to yourself to transmit that God-given mind and heart to your own offspring before you leave this earth. What hope is there for the world if men like you choose to lie fallow while degenerates reproduce their own kind by the millions? It is the offspring of men and women like you and me who are the hope of the world. And now you want to snuff out that hope, that light, before it even has a chance to dawn? What are you doing?”
Kay had been right. That did jolt Steve. It jolted him right out of himself back into the auditorium of the Reedville High School and to his own address.
“But do we have a right to bring a child into a world that persists in turning every good thing into an evil?” Steve mumbled.
“It goes deeper than that, Steve, and you know it. We should rather be asking if we have a right to deny to the forces of Good and of love in this world a strong and honest advocate. Steve! Think what you are saying! Are you willing to surrender all hope for the triumph of good, of the Kingdom of God, in the world? You keep challenging people wherever you go to confront evil in the world, and you yourself falter before making the small sacrifice now being asked of you. This could be your opportunity to make your most lasting contribution of all. You are a strong and courageous man, Steve, a man of faith.”
She nestled in even closer to him.
“Imagine the potential for good whose fate is lying squarely in your hands at this very moment. And look, just look at when it all came about. Just look at when it happened!”
Kay was done. She had nothing more to say. It was all in Steve’s lap now.
Her last words stung him, though he wasn’t sure quite why. She was clearly making a connection he had not yet made. “Look at it. Look at when it happened!” she had said. Look at what?
They held each other tightly in their arms, his hand still resting on her warm womb.
The picture was gelling in his mind. When had this baby been conceived? On the same occasion on which he had challenged everyone to seize the initiative in the fight against evil, especially in its peaceful guises! That is exactly when he had planted the seed in her womb, the seed that was now their child. The Reedville challenge had withered and died, bearing fruit only in the Eriksens. The Pearson challenge had immediately borne fruit in Kay’s womb. But was it also destined to wither and die, and not just to wither and die, but to be killed in her womb? Kay was telling him that to kill it would be worse by far than to let it die. In her mind, aborting their baby was the equivalent of conceding to the enemy, of giving up any claim to integrity in offering the world a better way.
Long minutes ticked by. At stake now was more than health, more than age, more than marital happiness. At stake now was life itself, the very basis of Steve’s hard-won sanity. It was wrong to tempt God, but it was wronger by far to fail to rise to life’s challenges. It was wrong to cower from the truth, but it was wronger by far to live in contradiction to known truths. Steve had challenged his audience at Reedville to a life of self-giving love in all circumstances as the only hope for the world and the only source of lasting happiness for anyone, especially for the affluent like themselves. This was his chance to live up to his own challenge. Self-giving love! He was looking it straight in the face.
Ruthlessly, as was his manner, he drove himself to the only possible decision. The signs of his inner struggle united Kay’s heart with his in these moments of eloquent silence.
At last he tightened his embrace of her and said, “Thank you, my love. We are in the hands of greater forces than ourselves. What else can we do but give our baby a chance to live? I shall have to be braver than you.”
In the morning he called Dr. Pederson’s office and canceled their appointment for the following week.
The trial had begun.