Perfect Little World(3)

“What if you specifically told people that the vase was just a vase and not a work of art?”

Mr. Jackson’s eyes seemed touched with sorrow, as if he understood exactly what she meant, and he seemed reluctant to say what came next. He continued to look at her, the silence growing palpable. “Even then, Izzy,” he finally said, his shoulders softly shrugging, “I’m sorry to say that it would still be art.”

It was then that she fell in love with him, the tenderness of his answer. In that moment, the future spilled out around her: she would become his secret lover; they would spend most of the entire year wrapped around each other; she would now be pregnant with his child.


“I’m pregnant,” she said to Mr. Jackson, who had been sipping from a nostalgic glass bottle of grape soda. He went out of his way to find things that tasted better because they were rare. In response, he took the half-full bottle of soda and hurled it into the grass in front of them, the bottle breaking heavily into two pieces.

“That’s not good, Izzy,” he said, his head twisting to the side as if suddenly embarrassed, one of the warning signs that intense anger might follow.

“I know it’s not good,” Izzy told him, a little angry at his response. She had expected this, but she had hoped, deep down, that he would embrace her, tell her it would all be okay, and that they would be a happy family, the three of them. Hope, goddamn, she hated it, that tiny sliver of light that you believed could fill your heart. “I know it’s not good,” she repeated, “which is why I’m telling you, because the two of us made this happen, and now we need to figure out what to do.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. The desperation and the cliché of it.

“I’m as sure as you can be without getting other people involved,” she said. Five pregnancy tests, all stolen from the drugstore because they were more expensive than anything that depressing should ever be. Let the people who wanted a baby pay for them.

He was twitching like a cornered animal. Even now she felt a tenderness for him. She touched his shoulder, and with that, the slightest pressure against his body, he cracked open and began to cry, deep sobs like someone had dropped a boulder onto his chest. Izzy dropped her graduation cap and placed her hands on his face, willing him the strength to recover. It was confusing, she decided, which one of them needed more help. The point, she had realized quite some time ago, was that both of them needed help and how wonderful and lucky it would be if each could be the one who could save the other.

Mr. Jackson composed himself. His moods were a constantly shifting weather pattern. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m making this about me, I understand that.”

“It’s okay, Hal,” she said. “I understand.”

As if electrocuted by a hidden truth, his posture became rigid, and he stared into her eyes. “Is this why you still refuse to go to college?” he asked.

Why was it impossible to focus on the pregnancy? Izzy wondered. Was it so hard to accept the fact that she had gotten pregnant because they had spent a fair amount of her senior year having sex and that now the obvious problems of this pregnancy needed to be addressed, one way or the other? Did they need to bring other elements into this already combustible situation, just to see how they might interact?

“It has nothing to do with that,” she replied, removing her hands from his face, remembering that they were in public. “I never wanted to go to college, I’ve told you a million times. You thought I should go to college, but I never considered it. The baby is just our own singular bad luck.”

“Okay, okay, fine,” he said, waving her off. “Okay, let’s just think.” He paused. He reached into the backpack at his feet and produced a greeting card envelope. “I got you a graduation card,” he said, holding it out for her.

She slapped it out of his hand. “The baby, Hal. Jesus. Can we talk about the baby?”

“Is it a boy or a girl?” he asked, his face so open and sad.

Once again, she felt dizzy. It was so strange, how tenderness and mania could exist in one imperfect body.

“I have no idea,” she said. “I think it’s too early for anything like that.”

“What do we do, then?” he asked, and Izzy was relieved to see that he was finally addressing the issue, the elephant in the womb.

“I know what I want to do,” she said, “but what do we want to do?” She wanted, the minute the first test came back positive, to find some way to keep the baby, to raise the baby, to transform her unbelievably dim life into something beautiful because of this baby. But to say that out loud, to say it to Mr. Jackson, to Hal, seemed beyond her. She could not remember the last time she had asked for something and been anything other than disappointed. This time, she would keep her intentions hidden and see if they were granted as if by magic.

“That’s unfair,” he said. “Why can’t we just talk about what we want to do, honestly?”

“We can. I just want you to go first.”

Mr. Jackson looked down at the card again, lying in the grass at their feet. It was as if the answer was written on the inside of that card. “There’s fifty dollars in there for you,” he said.

“C’mon now.”

“I’m just saying we need to remember to get it before we leave,” he said. He stared out at the empty park, a pathetic excuse for a park, just a few benches, lots of trees, and a walking trail that had not been kept in walking order. They had met here dozens of times over the past year, one time, though not the time that created this baby, having sex on this very bench in the middle of the night. The recklessness of their actions, Izzy now considered; how had they not expected some kind of reckoning?