The last Saturday night in April no one was working. Jill was having Dan over—to make him dinner and tell him. Katie had a date. I was painting my bathroom purple. Between us, we had more or less a book to write and one to grade before next weekend, but we had, I guess, more pressing things to take care of. Jill was having a baby apparently. Katie was finding a husband. I had predicted that things were going to get more rather than less crazy at the end of this semester, and if I wanted the bathroom painted, I had to do it right away. It was that quiet right before a thunderstorm when you sit on the front porch watching it close in, soaking everything it crosses, unable to work up the energy or desire to move inside. It was coming, but there was nothing I could do about it.
Student Life folks are fond of saying that you do your best learning in college outside the classroom (I was an RA as an undergrad). What I had learned about personal narrative over those couple days was that as long as it’s boring and mundane, it feels like it belongs to you, but the moment something happens, the moment it starts to look like a book or a movie, it stops feeling like your own. Suddenly, you have only the epic options of literature at your disposal instead of the boring but limitless ones you’re used to. On most Saturday nights, Jill could go out, she could stay home and rent a movie, she could grade, she could read, she could go to the library, she could do countless boring random things, but that night, she had only a few, dramatic options—she could become a mother or have an abortion; she could make Daniel be a father or lose him to fear and bad timing.
For Katie, life was always like this. She thought the author of her personal narrative was God and considered her lows and highs part of the Grand Plan. So tonight’s date, a setup, a friend of a friend, a guy she had not yet met, was already either (a) the love of her eternal life or (b) someone else sent to help her find the love of her eternal life. Which is a lot of pressure for a first, blind date. We were on the phone, finished with what she should wear—denim skirt, white T-shirt, cardigan (cute, casual but not too casual, layered for a range of temperatures)—and on to what she knew about him already.
“Dionne says he’s cute, but Jenny thinks he’s weird looking. She has strange taste though.”
“What does he do?” I asked, hoping he was out of college. The undergrads hadn’t been working out lately.
“Dental school, first year. He’s twenty-four. Also,” she added very reluctantly, “he’s a Yankee fan.” Not dating Yankee fans is my number two rule of dating. Katie knows this but doesn’t care yet. Later, when he’s no good, she will admit that dating a Yankee fan is stupid, careless even. Truly, this is foolproof relationship advice.
His name was Chris, her second Chris of the month, which I knew would make him hard to track regardless of what happened on the date (good date or bad, he and the other Chris would remain a topic of conversation for at least six weeks). He went to church in a different ward. He had already been on dates with Annabelle, Alison, Kelly, and Dionne, the woman who set them up in the first place (the rule against dating one’s friends’ ex-boyfriends—my number one rule of dating—does not apply in Katie’s world; a guy may not be in the plans for you because he may be in the plans for someone else).
“Anyway, we’ll see. Annabelle really didn’t like him, but she was still hung up on Josh, and they got back together the night after she went out with Chris, so he might be fine. Dionne said he’s really nice.” She was not very excited, not holding out high hopes for this one, I could tell. For Katie, like for most of us I suppose, dating is work rather than pleasure. She likes to shop for clothes for dates, likes to talk about dates good and bad, likes to talk to and about boys on the phone—it’s just the actual dating she doesn’t care for. Being friends with Katie is like being in eighth grade again.
“What are you doing tonight?” she asked.
“Painting the bathroom.”
“Finally.” I’d been musing out loud about a purple bathroom since January. “Should I come by when I get home?”
“Sure. I’ll be up.”
“When are you going to write?”
“I’ll start tomorrow.”
“Me too,” she said. “After church. Ugh.”
“Ugh,” I agreed. For me though, it’s all anticipation. I dread starting, but once I get writing, it will be fine I know. Katie is happy to do the research, but the actual during of the writing process drives her mad.
“I guess I better go,” she said. “Good luck painting. Wish me luck with Chris.”
“Good luck with Chris,” I said. “I hope he’s not really a Yankee fan.”
“Thanks. I’ll see you later.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.” I’d gotten purple paint on the phone. And the rug. And was considering the relative advisability of using nail polish remover on either when the phone rang again. It was Jill. Of course.
“I’m sautéing fish,” she said, preludeless. “How long?”
“What kind?”
“Halibut.”
“In what?”
“That’s the next question.”
“I’d do about two minutes on one side then another five or ten or so, covered, on the other side. Until it looks done in the middle of the thick part.”
“What am I sautéing it in?” she asked.
“Butter? Lemon? Some white wine maybe?” It was out of my mouth before I paused to consider that wine wasn’t good for the maybe-baby and then that, really, the alcohol cooks off anyway. But enough? I had no idea. “Uh, let’s say butter, lemon juice, and garlic.”
“Sounds good. What about potatoes?”
“What kind?”
“Those little red ones.”
“Nice. How about roasting?”
“How.” More statement than question. She was down to shorthand.
“Chunk them. Salt, pepper, little bit of olive oil. 375ish. Stir often. Till they’re done.”
“Excellent. I am also having salad and bread. And I bought a cheesecake.”
“Very fancy,” I said. “You can knock me up anytime.”
“Tell me everything will be okay,” said Jill.
“Everything will be okay,” I said. “He’s a good guy. He’ll be well fed. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Lull, lull. Quiet before storm. Unknowing before unknowing. The kind of calm you only have when you stop to realize that you are not panicked—something you never do unless you have just been or are about to be. Status quo on borrowed time. No one ever really knows what’s going to happen next, but we’re rarely so acutely aware of that fact because usually it doesn’t matter yet. That night, the future had come strangely near. I sat on the lid of my toilet, getting used to purple paint on the walls, waiting patiently for everything in my life to change.
Katie came over at ten-thirty, bearing what she calls popcorn, but which is actually popcorn mixed with that gross glazed oriental snack mix you scoop out of plastic bins in the bulk section of the grocery store. Some holdover from growing up in Hawaii. She loves it. I just pick out the popcorn.
“So, how was it?”
“Mmm,” she said, very noncommittal, by which she meant that it did not go well, but she wasn’t ready to say so in case she was wrong and fell in love with him later. She gave me a highly typical play-by-play. Nice enough, cute enough, smart enough, but not overly impressive on any front. He talked a lot about mouths and teeth, to be expected I guess, but still a little alarming. He did his mission in Canada (a wussy mission, in my opinion, though it was evidently chosen for him by God, so who am I to say), his undergrad at Rutgers, his childhood in northern New Jersey.
“Doesn’t that get him off the hook for being a Yankee fan? I mean he’s from there. Everyone roots for the team where they’re from.”
“Root for the Mets,” I said. “What else?”
“He taught high school chemistry for a year before dental school and hated it,” she offered.
“Teaching’s not for everyone,” I said, though I am suspicious of people who don’t like to teach. On the other hand, I’m not teaching high school chemistry and would rather die, so I really can’t judge.
“His favorite author is Sports Illustrated.” She tried and failed to offer this with a straight face. “He didn’t know George Eliot. He didn’t even know Charlotte Brontë had any sisters.” Katie is obsessed with all three Brontës, but we are snotty about literature and know it.
“I can’t think of the last textbook I read on dental care,” I offered.
“Yeah, but then I told him that a friend of mine was unmarried and pregnant, and he wanted to know why I was friends with her, and I said I was already friends with her before she got pregnant, and he said why wasn’t I doing something to stop her, and I said my friends’ sex lives are really none of my business, and he said they were and got really annoyed.”
I didn’t say anything. It was a deal breaker, and we both knew it. Though in his defense, obviously, it was totally our business.
Meanwhile at Jill’s, no one was eating anything. All of that beautiful dinner just being pushed around on plates. When Dan got there, she opened the door and told him right away. She couldn’t wait. She’d been making herself sick about it. They talked for seeming days. Then she kicked him out, put everything in Tupperwares, and came over. No sense letting all that food go to waste. Not that we were much interested in eating either. It was late, and we were two hours into popcorn with nasty Asian snack mix.
“He said no,” she said, which communicated nearly nothing.
“What do you mean, honey?” Katie prompted, arm around her overgently.
“He said no. He said . . . no.” She looked dazed. She’d been crying. I couldn’t think what she might have asked him to which Daniel could possibly have answered a straight yes or no.
“He doesn’t want to be a father right now. He doesn’t want a baby. He came over. I told him I was pregnant. He looked . . . surprised, but not mad, not unhappy. He said ‘wow’ a lot. He asked when I found out and when I would be due—he kept using this weird conditional tense right from the start. He did not ask if I were sure, which is good because that’s a stupid, cliché thing to ask. He did not ask if I were sure it was his, which is good because that’s even worse. He said ‘wow’ some more. He said, ‘What are your thoughts?’ He was being really nice, but he wasn’t talking much, and so finally I just said, ‘Daniel, I don’t think I want an abortion. I think I want to have the baby,’ and he said, ‘Okay. I want to have an abortion.’ ” She stopped and looked up at us to make sure that our faces mirrored the incredulity in hers. They did.
“But he can’t have an abortion.” Katie started with the obvious. “He’s not pregnant.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t want to be a father,” Jill explained. “He doesn’t want us to have a baby. He wants us to have an abortion.”
“So what did you say?”
“Well, I was really upset and really hurt and very sad that he didn’t want to be part of this kid’s life and very sad that he was willing to just let me go like that, but I was at least sort of prepared for this answer. I had a speech. I forgot most of it when the time came, but basically I was like, ‘Okay, well, thanks, why don’t you think about it for a while and get back to me about what role you would like to play, like none or just a little or what . . .’ But he was shaking his head like I didn’t get it, and he said, ‘No, I don’t want you to have our baby but I wouldn’t be part of its life. I don’t want you to have our baby. I want to get an abortion.’ ”
“That’s not his decision,” Katie whispered.
“That’s what I said.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Why not? Just because it’s not my body? It’s my baby.’ ”