Perfect Little World(10)
She had not heard from Hal since the night of graduation. All she had to go on were the imperfect rumors in town, but she was willing to settle for these as long as they had the slightest hint of truth. The police, apparently, had paid him a visit that same night, thanks to the wallet he’d left in the theater. It seemed either he had the charges dismissed or he was given probation, more people were saying probation. Her name was never mentioned and she was both relieved and slightly surprised by this fact; it was strange how, in such a small town, everyone seemed to know your business and yet Izzy had been carrying on an affair with her art teacher and was pregnant with his child and not a single person was the wiser. It was a testament to her cautiousness or her simple invisibility.
Hal was now spending the rest of the summer in the Northeast; his parents had sent him away to a facility to recuperate once again. She waited for a letter from him, a phone call, but none came. Either he was so dulled with medicine that he had forgotten about her or, more likely, he was ashamed of everything, the fight, the pregnancy, the affair, and he was trying to make her, the constant reminder of his bad decisions, disappear. She wanted to hear his voice, to have some reassurance that he cared for her. And, though it was crass and she did not want to think about it too much, she would have appreciated some gesture on his part, even if it was merely financial, that would help her get through this pregnancy, to show that he understood his complicit role in her current predicament. Was it so awful to hope that, having been impregnated by the wealthiest bachelor in town, Izzy could at least have the luxury of not going elbow deep in pig carcasses all summer? But there was only silence where there was once Hal, and so she focused on the baby, thinking about it all the time, hoping that it would not make itself known before she was ready to reveal it.
The next day Izzy woke up to hear her father in the kitchen, banging around for something to eat that would soak up the alcohol from the night before. She looked at her clock and saw that it was six o’clock in the morning; she pulled the covers over her head and wallowed in her misery. A few minutes later, her father walked into the room, eating a Pop-Tart, shaking her exposed foot to wake her.
“Dad, please. I need sleep,” she said.
“When did you get home?” he asked.
“Late.”
“I didn’t even notice you come in,” he replied. He had been passed out in his easy chair, the TV volume eight clicks too loud, when she crept into the house. Ever since her mother died, her father had slept on the couch, in the easy chair, or sometimes on the front porch when it was warm enough. The bedroom had turned into his closet, a place he entered only to change clothes.
“Well, you got something in the mail,” he said, tossing a letter onto the bed. “Return address is some city in Massachusetts. Who you know in Massachusetts?”
Izzy quickly propped herself up in the bed, staring at the envelope. There was no name on the return address, but she knew it was Hal. The morning sickness turned into a solid chunk of stone, a temporary relief.
“It’s just a friend. She’s at a camp up there,” Izzy said. Her father, true to form, asked no further questions. With her father out of her room, Izzy still held the secret of her pregnancy within her.
She opened the letter, ripping the envelope nearly in half, which momentarily distracted her, as if she’d ruined a keepsake. Inside the envelope were two sheets of unlined white paper, with Hal’s messy half-cursive, half-print handwriting in blue ink. When Izzy was eight, her mother taught her, forced her actually, to speed-read because of her love for John F. Kennedy, who was a proponent of speed-reading. Even though Izzy found it to be less than what her mother had promised, the practice was now ingrained, and it took Izzy a considerable amount of time to adjust, to slow down and subvocalize and actually consider what Hal was telling her, no matter how painful it might be.
She had read the letter five times now and it did not change, which tore out something tiny and perfect in Izzy’s heart. He loved her. He said this five times in the letter. He loved her more than anyone or anything else in the world. He was getting help and, though he had to be realistic about his situation, he thought it was going to help him function more easily in the world. He would be better to her, he promised. He wanted, and this lodged in her throat as she sounded it out, to marry her sometime in the near future, when he had proven to her that he was a good person. He had talked to his doctors and in his support meetings and he was pleased that they tentatively agreed with his assertions that Izzy was good for him, despite the age difference and the unfortunate circumstances of how they met. He would like to marry her and take his trust fund and go somewhere far from Tennessee and live happily with her for the rest of their lives. This was all on the first page and Izzy wished she could frame it or consume it or tattoo it on her skin. But. But there was that motherfucking second page.
He did not want Izzy to have the baby. He was not ready for kids, would probably never be able to handle the pressures of raising a child or, god help us, children. He wanted her, Izzy, and only her. He hoped that she trusted him and loved him enough to know that this was the right decision. They could be together, forever, but he could not handle the disappointment of how things had become ruined. Would she please agree to this? Would she write him back and let him know what was in her heart, if she understood how much he loved her and wanted everything to be good and perfect? He signed it With Love because of course he would, because who wouldn’t say it again at the end after using it so frequently throughout the letter?