1987

Dappled sunlight. Cool in the shade. Pine straw over red clay—last year’s needles. Two hawks danced in the air; a reel came to mind. Alison stopped and shielded her eyes from the sun to watch them. She’d been back two weeks and hadn’t managed to find the right time to tell Wade about the pregnancy. Twice, she’d called him, intending to say the words. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. Nor could she do it when he arrived at her house, a single rose in his hand, asking her to dinner.

Ahead of her, Wade set his usual brisk pace along this familiar, narrow stretch of trail. He saw no need to attend to any particular curve or footfall; he hadn’t noticed, as she had, the water sluicing through the rocks, fast, below the first falls. A late snow in the spring and summer thunderstorms had, at last, brought the creek level back to normal. Wade strode on, always with his eyes on where he was going: the top of the mountain, summa cum laude, partner in the firm. The pull to be good enough, to follow him, almost irresistible.

And yet there were the wide waters of the Clyde calling; there was Vic. There was this baby. Alison’s heart felt stretched as wide as the Atlantic, pulled almost to the point of breaking.

Wade’s footfalls marked a brisk time, metronomic, driven by an unnamed, unacknowledged fear that if he stilled, he’d fall behind. Never catch his father or older brothers. No: catching wasn’t good enough. He must surpass. He must claim what was his. As Alison watched him ahead, she had no sense of this lack that drove him. She knew only that she wanted to be worthy of him.

He rounded a curve, became invisible to her when she rose, suddenly flushed. She shifted her pack, slid out the water bottle, the scent of her orange in the pack immediate, irresistible.

Usually, they saved the snack for the top. On this afternoon, Alison hunched, back against an oak; she dug her thumbnail into the flesh of the fruit, juice spurting. Thumb to mouth, the suck of sweetness, rip of orange-flesh, eyes closed, bite in, take the nourishment. As though she was an infant again, the sensation of an immediately satisfied need.

Wade arrived, suddenly, a darker and more solid shadow than the trees. “Why’d you stop?”

She opened her eyes. Above him, just one hawk swooped and swirled on the air. She shook her head. “I was …” heat rose into her face. A clump of orange flesh clung to her cheek. She wanted to stick out her tongue and draw it in. “The orange.” She held it up. “I couldn’t wait.”

“You okay?” He plucked off the piece of fruit on her cheek, put it into his own mouth.

“I’m fine,” she said.

He bent to kiss her. More than once before, he’d found some secret, sometimes risky, space for them: the balcony of a closed restaurant after a festival, at the edge of a parking lot, a hidden grassy space at the edge of a trail. She never questioned how he was able to find such places. She did not like the risk. She did not tell him this. She wanted to please him. The pull to do this was not the same as wanting Vic. It was something subterranean within her that gathered power from living in the darkness.

“I would have stopped with you.” He grinned at her.

They stood in the middle of the trail as he licked the juice from her chin. This time, she pressed him away, protective of the life within.

“Wade. Too public.”

He slid his hand under her t-shirt.

“Someone could come. Seriously.”

He squeezed her breast, then pulled back. “Let’s keep moving, then.”

“I’ll catch you up.”

He shook his head, turned, began to walk on.

She stared at the orange. The appeal had disappeared. She thought he might have noticed something by then. She felt so different. As he moved further down the trail, she was caught by the notion that he would never return to her.

“Wade,” she called.

When he turned, a slant of sun caught his jaw, strong and sure; his nose, long and straight and perfect; his fine, thin lips; his eyebrows drawn together. He raised them, hopefully.

She lifted her hand, shielding her eyes again. “I’m pregnant.”

Hawk-cry, overhead. Dappled sun. Rustle in the leaves. Shush of the water. Perhaps it was only a second or two. It seemed much longer.

“Pregnant?” As though she might have meant something else. As though she’d chosen the wrong word. “When? How?”

“A few weeks ago. You were there.” She smiled. It shouldn’t have been that much of a shock. They’d taken risks. Calculated, but still, risks.

“Okay.” He took two steps towards her, glanced at her stomach. He stepped away, his face unreadable.

Her belly clenched. What if he said the same as Vic—that she shouldn’t have this child? The air closed in. She felt small.

He came to her, took her hand. “Everything will be fine,” he said, giving her hand a small squeeze.

He did not slow his pace as they walked on, side by side, to the summit, sat in the sun, shared their food, looking out at the waves of mountains reaching as far as they could see.

“I need to think,” he said. “Do the right thing.”

He called the next day. “A heavy caseload,” he said.

The day after that, he was under pressure. She should be sure to take care of herself. He had to concentrate.

She called her favorite professor, Dr. Mindon, to get the key to the studio, even though she wasn’t taking summer classes. When she wasn’t at work, she was there, building, shaping, hands helping her avoid the wordless terror of being left like Mary. On the fifth day of this, she took herself to lunch at her favorite restaurant, turning the pages of The New Yorker as she ate. Four young women took the booth next to her. They did not hold hands or kiss, but she felt sure they were couples. Lovely. To have that would be lovely. She wanted to leave her seat, slide in beside them, become part of their community.

Was it too late to call Vic, change her mind?

What about the blank space that would be on her child’s birth certificate? The stamp of illegitimacy?

This battled within her when Wade pulled into her driveway the next morning. His face at the back door, holding a dozen red roses. He kissed her hand. Went down on one knee. “Will you marry me?”

In that moment, there seemed to be only one right response. “Yes.”

~

Having decided, Wade wanted it done soon. He picked a date in early September. A small ceremony, he said. This suited Alison. She could invite a couple of friends from school. They didn’t need a long honeymoon, Wade said. A weekend would suffice. They’d save money. Maybe after the baby came, they’d have a longer holiday, he said.

~

Invitations ordered, addressed, resting on Wade’s kitchen counter. Alison could neither make herself mail them, nor ask him to do it. She told herself that it was because she wanted him to do it. Proof that he truly wanted this, that he didn’t feel she’d trapped him. Proof that he wanted her.

There was another thing not done: Vic.

Alison called her. Vic’s voice floated down the line, bright and clear at first, and then, when Alison said they’d set a date, a gasp or a stifled cry came down the line.

“You’re marrying him?” A tinge of anger. “Okay.”

“Vic? I’m sorry. I just. This baby.” Her free hand rubbed her flat stomach.

“Aye. The bairn. Of course.” The clearing of her throat.

“Vic? I.” She wanted to explain, to have words that would make it all make sense.

“Alison, I was half out the door when you rang. I hope you’ll be happy.”

The click of the line. The release. Alison held the receiver in the air. Perhaps she should call back. There was a fleeting notion that there might be another way.

The thunk of a car door closing outside. Wade. The thwack of the screen door.

The phone still in her hand. Footfalls down the hall.

“Hey.” Lip to lip. “We have to mail those invitations.”

“I know.”

He took the receiver from her hand, set it down.

“I’m starved. Let’s go eat.”

Out into his car, the invitations lifted along the way, dropped into the drive-through slot at the post office. A gorgeous late-summer evening. Outdoor seating at dinner. She sat across from Wade, from this beautiful man. She should be grateful.

~

Ten weeks pregnant, she stood in the bridal room at Macy’s, a woman hunched at her feet, pinning, pinning, pinning. She felt like one of those dolls that had sat on her childhood chest of drawers. She thought of Mum, like a doll herself, different costumes for tennis, formals, dinner parties, the beach. Mum, like a doll with a bottle glued to her hand, a wind-up toy whose movements seemed to be hand to mouth, man to man. Alison, there on the pedestal, leaving all that behind.

“Isn’t that just precious,” the lady chirped, now standing, admiring her handiwork.

In the middle of a circle of mirrors, Alison’s hair, shoulders, breasts, hips—all the pieces of the bride, several times over. Inside, a carnival of mirrors with a different set of reflections entirely: gypsy, tinker, thief, bastard. Bless me Father for I am Sin.

She forced her hands to her sides, shoulders back, chest forward. She tried to meet her own eye, wavered at the last minute and met those of the alterations lady.

“Just precious,” she repeated.

Alison felt sure it was only the dress of which she spoke. Perhaps that was enough. Perhaps she could begin by sliding into the costume of respectability.

~

Clouds parting in the September sky. Stepping from the bridal room in the church, skirts fluffed. Down the aisle.

“Who gives this woman in marriage?”

Dad handed her to Wade. At least this time, there was a man to give her away, rather than a blank space, the church having stood in as the sanctifier of the gift of herself from Mary to Adam and Agnes.

Mum, with a new boyfriend, in the front, wearing the mink shawl and the diamond necklace Dad had given her. Alison’s hair, tight against her head. Beads of perspiration began to form under her veil. She wanted to stay under there, safe, hidden.

The minister said the words. The veil lifted. Wade’s lips on hers. They turned to face the crowd, Alison’s arm in the crook of Wade’s elbow. Do they know? Down the aisle they went and through the huge wooden doors, confetti scattering in the air, white against flat blue sky.

The signing of the marriage license, entering the contract, not considering that there might be an unspoken contract: a conjoining of the stories of their lives, and the lives of those who came before them that formed what lay in the dark, secret places of themselves. No ministerial swish of the cloak or wave of a holy book, no voice from the crowd, no man giving or remaining absent could alter that. As they stepped into the limousine that would carry them to the reception, they had made their agreement and were taking the first steps of the dance that was its contents.

That bright day, as she walked away from the altar, the part of her that fell away, unnoticed, was not the part she intended to shed. Instead, she abandoned the parts of herself that connected to Vic, to home, and to the long line of truth that reached for her. For now, she left them all. On the swirling sea of story, she had allowed herself to be swept into a whirlpool, repeating the same things again and again, telling herself it was different. All the while, those abandoned parts of herself froze under, waited for the thaw.

Drink after drink set down, unsipped. A pretense, there at the start. Wade, eager to leave the reception almost as soon as they arrived, to have her for himself.

As she stood behind Wade in the hotel lobby, a few hours’ drive away in a posh little village in the mountains—a gift from Isadora and Charles—she glanced up at the ceiling with its heavy log rafters, two stories above them. She imagined herself from above: this tiny Alison, this wife.

Once upon a time a Beautiful Girl loved a Handsome Boy. This time, they got married.

~

Under the stars after their first conjugal moments in the wedding suite, Wade held her hand. Those long fingers. Those eyes. How had he chosen her? No moon above, no shooting star could have drawn her attention away.

“Alison. If you always look at me that way, I’ll be a happy man.” He took her hand, kissed it. “My beautiful wife.” In her gaze, he felt like a king, seen and adored. As though he had, at long last, found his right place.

In the morning, Wade wanted her before coffee or breakfast, and after. And then he hired bicycles to ride around the village and along the winding roads nearby, returning to the hotel for coffee—decaf for her and the baby—and a snack. Wade stepped away, to the restroom, and when he returned she was spreading butter on her scone.

“You don’t need butter on that,” he said.

“All scones need butter in Scotland,” she joked.

He bent, kissed her cheek, then sat. “We’re not in Scotland,” he said. Under the table, he rubbed her thigh. Already, the part of her that wanted to bite into the cool, creamy, salted goodness began to dissolve. Her stomach clenched. She was only three months pregnant. She’d barely been able to zip her wedding dress, altered for her just a few weeks prior. She set down the knife. Wade took her hands across the table.

“I don’t want you to struggle after the baby,” he said.

“Thanks, Wade,” she said. He was right. Of course, he was right.

~

October: leaves turning, red and orange, like flames climbing the hills around them. Her belly had become round. Her hips broadened. Three meals a day. No cigarettes. No alcohol. Dad had offered congratulations when she’d told him she was pregnant. She decided to call Mum while she cooked dinner.

“That explains things,” Mum said.

“Mum.” Alison sighed.

“I wondered why a man like Wade was marrying you.”

The familiar freezing, letting it wash over her. Pasta in the pot. “How’s Frank?”

“You always change the subject.”

“Yes, Mum. How is he?” Stir, stir.

“Aren’t you afraid?” she asked.

Vegetables into the steamer. “No, Mum. It’s just a pregnancy.”

“But you don’t know what you might be carrying.”

Right to the core. Alison’s chest tightened. She reminded herself that the doctors said everything was fine, that this baby was half Wade’s. “I have to finish making Wade’s dinner.”

“You never want to face anything.”

Steam from the pot. Heat in the face. Sweat and tears when Wade came in. She told him.

“Alison. Stop calling her. Don’t listen. Don’t answer.”

He turned her in his arms, held her.

“She’s my mum.”

~

She wrote to Vic to try to explain. The envelope returned, two weeks later, Not at this address written across it. A mistake, surely. Alison called Vic’s house. Her mum answered, her voice bright when she picked up.

“Ah, Alison,” the voice settled. “I wondered how long it would be.”

“What do you mean? Where is Vic?”

“She’s away.”

“When will she be home?”

“She’s away. For good.”

“Oh.” Alison paused, and in the background, she could hear Vic’s brothers apparently getting ready to go out. “Can I …” Alison wanted her address.

“Alison. Just because she’s,” Mrs. Nagle took a breath. “Just because she’s gay doesn’t mean she. Never mind that. Alison, it’s best you concentrate on your new family, love.” She hung up.

Alison called international directory assistance and got the number for the pub. Vic was gone from there, too.

It took Vic two years to decide to write to Alison. I’m sorry, she wrote. I was hurt. I wanted to leave you the way you left me. I hope you are well, Alison, and that the bairn is, too. I’d love a wee photo. She sent it to the name and address she had, but Alison Keith no longer existed. Alison Earley had not left a forwarding address. Vic, too, retrieved her own letter from her letterbox. She turned towards the kitchen, where her lover sat with a steaming cup of tea. She thought to put the letter in the bin. Instead, though, she went to their bedroom, and tucked it in an old box beneath photos and poems and drawings from what seemed like another life.