Everything After(16)

But when the song ended and we looked at the plus sign on the test, I don’t think either of us felt like the sun had come.

I’m so sorry we didn’t feel differently.

But I want to tell you the truth.





14



Emily looked at the calendar in her phone. She counted to be sure. Seven weeks and two days. That was how long she’d been pregnant so far. She looked at the appointment in her calendar and counted the five days with her finger, touching each one. Somehow, it felt like if she could make it to eight weeks, if she could listen to her baby’s heartbeat, everything would be okay. She knew that wasn’t true. But in her heart it felt real.

She willed it to be real.





xi



Maybe it was the power of suggestion, or the shock or stress of it, but for the next couple of days, my breasts felt painfully heavy and I cried practically whenever anyone looked at me. I’d talked to Ari but wished for nothing more than to be able to talk to my mom, tell her what happened, listen to her advice. Ari said I should tell our dad, but I didn’t. He’d been depressed since our mom died and I left home to go to school. Ari and I were both gone now, and I didn’t want to put this on him, too. At least not yet. Not until I had to.

Your dad slept in my dorm room with me every night. He kept saying it would be okay but never said how.

Three days later, as we were going to bed, I whispered to him: “Should we get married? Should we be a family?”

He stared at the ceiling for a while before he answered slowly. “I think it would be a mistake,” he said. “I’ve been turning it over in my mind for the last few days and . . . I don’t think we should get married because of this. We should get married because we want to get married, because we’re ready to commit ourselves to each other. If this hadn’t happened and I proposed to you tonight, what would you have said?”

I already felt tears pooling in my eyes, but I knew the answer: “I’d have said you were crazy,” I told him, honestly. “That we’re too young. That there’s so much more we have to learn and to figure out. That I love you like mad, but we’ve only known each other for ten months.”

He slid closer to me, and I rested my head on his shoulder. “Yeah,” he said. “So if we get married now, I think we’d be making a mistake. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have this baby, raise this baby, if you want to. And maybe get married later.” He paused. “Do you?” he asked. I didn’t answer, realizing in that moment that he was telling me he didn’t. Trying to think about whether I did. Thinking about what it would mean for me, for him, for both of us, for our lives, for a child’s life, for our music. He clarified, “Do you want to be a mom?”

And I rolled over so my face was hidden in the crook of his neck and sobbed. Because I didn’t. And I felt horrible that I didn’t—like I was betraying biology, like I was betraying society, like I was betraying you, growing inside me.

He held me, and he kissed my forehead and stroked my hair and said it would be okay. But I really had no idea how it would.





15



Emily went to work. She listened as students told her about their anxiety, about their fights with their roommates, about how they missed home. They told her about the racist comments someone made to them in the cafeteria, about how an econ professor called on the men in the class more often than the women. They told her about how they were worried about their friends who drank too much or smoked too much. About being attracted to their TA, about their eating disorders and their depression. She listened, she asked pointed questions, she posed her advice as a “what if?” She tried not to think about what might or might not be happening in her body. She wondered if she was even helping these students. If any of what she said made sense. Or even mattered. She tried not to cry.

Between patients, she would whisper “I love you” and “please be okay” to the cells inside her.

She kept mentally scanning her body for pain or problems. Her back still ached, but other than that, she felt okay.

It’s going to be okay, she kept telling herself. It’s going to be okay.

Even though, deep inside, she was pretty sure it wouldn’t.





xii



Your dad said that I needed to get a blood test, to make sure I really was pregnant, which I thought was ridiculous—I was, the test we took in the bathroom said so, plus I could feel it—but I agreed to go for one. Not on campus, I told him, and not with my regular doctor. So we agreed to go to a clinic.

That weekend Hanukkah was starting, and my dad wanted us to come over for a family Hanukkah dinner—me, Rob, him, and Ari. I knew it wouldn’t be like the Hanukkah parties we had when my mom was alive, but he was trying. And Ari and I were trying, too.

“We can go before dinner at my dad’s,” I said.

So we rented a car, and we drove up the Hudson River to a clinic we’d found on Google.

When we got there, three people with signs were protesting the clinic, which also performed abortions. They were shouting at the women who walked in.

I watched the women cringe, rush past. “I can’t,” I said to him. “I can’t walk in with them shouting at me. Even if that’s not why we’re here, I can’t do it.”