Life and Other Inconveniences(60)

My mother’s face flashed before me, smiling, her freckles and pretty red hair blowing in the wind. The smell of her, always so comforting. The way we’d held hands and she’d let me wear her rings on my thumb.

This baby would be a piece of her, too. Her grandchild. Granddaughter, because I suddenly knew it was a girl. I believed in a woman’s right to choose. I knew this could be over in a day. I knew life would be a lot easier if I followed the plan of college, staying in Genevieve’s good graces, not becoming a teenage mother.

And I knew with abrupt certainty that I was choosing this baby. This clump of cells, this little zygote, had my mother in its DNA.

I loved Jason. I wanted a family with him, though I’d always thought it would be at least seven or ten years down the road. I’d always wanted kids, ever since I was about thirteen and started babysitting. Jason wanted them, too. Just a few weeks before, we’d gone out for breakfast, and the server’s name was Meghan, and he’d said what a nice name that would be if we had a daughter someday.

I went into the bedroom. “Positive,” I said, and Jason looked like he was about to burst into tears.

“Okay,” he whispered. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to keep it,” I said.

Jason closed his eyes. “Your call, obviously.” Not exactly a reassuring answer.

“We can do this,” I said more firmly. “It’s a few years ahead of schedule, but we can do this.”

He grimaced a little, then fixed his face. “Yeah. We can. You’re right. We love each other, and we . . . well, we’ll figure it out, I guess.”

At that moment, though, sitting on my bed with Jason, our combined ages making us all of thirty-six, I was naive and selfish and right. Having Riley would turn out to be the best thing I ever did, and ever would do.

When Genevieve came home, Jason and I sat down with her in the formal living room and told her. She ordered Jason out of her house and, within the hour, cut me off and kicked me out. We told Courtney and Robert, and they were dismayed, betrayed and disappointed in both of us (me especially, those pesky eggs of mine seeming to bear more blame than Jason’s sperm).

We talked about me going with Jason to the University of New England, but Courtney asked who’d pay my tuition, sliding Robert a murderous look when he opened his mouth. It didn’t make a lot of sense, she said, and Jason nodded. Better if he went to college so he could support us.

“You can stay here, I guess,” Jason said. “Take some classes, have my mom help you out.” Courtney didn’t have a job outside of homemaker, and now her only child was leaving for school. I looked at her hopefully.

“No,” she said, her chirpy voice suddenly hard. “I’m sorry, I have to agree with Genevieve. You took this chance, Emma, and now you have to pay the piper.”

I took the chance. I had to pay. Jason’s life would be pretty much the same, it seemed. Four days before, Courtney had told me I felt like I was her daughter when she took me for a pedicure. Of course, four days ago, she thought I was heir to a considerable fortune.

So I called Pop and told him the news in a whisper. “Guess you better live with me,” he said, his voice gruff. That was all, but it was so much.

“I’ll come out to Chicago all the time,” Jason said. And once it was settled, he returned to being his uncomplicated, happy self. “College seems so stupid, but I guess I’m not much good for you two without a career.”

Besides, his mother had insisted he finish school. Insisted. And Jason rarely disappointed his parents. Knocking me up was bad enough. Dropping out of college before he started (or at any time) wasn’t going to happen.

The fact that I’d had to put college on the back burner wasn’t discussed.

So Jason flew me out to Chicago, told Pop he’d support me and the baby, already had a job lined up on campus, thanked him for taking care of us and didn’t seem to mind the fact that Pop said not one word to him.

We held each other and sobbed when it was time for him to leave. “I miss you both already,” he said, and I knew he meant it.

But already I was growing up. I wanted Jason to live up to his promises, but there was a tiny kernel of knowledge in my soul, and it told me I was just another single mother about to be disappointed by the baby daddy.

I ignored it. I had to. As I grew bigger and more awkward, when stretch marks made it look like I’d survived a werewolf attack, when the baby pressed against my sciatic nerve and I could barely sit on the stool the grocery store provided, I had to think Jason would come through. We’d be a couple. We’d make it. The picture of our happy future cradled me when the lady at the community college told me that my check bounced, when the store manager yelled at me because I dropped a bottle of corn syrup and it broke, and he made me clean it up, even though I could hardly bend over because I was nine months pregnant, when my car broke down on the highway and no one stopped to help.

Later, I’d think long and hard about the selflessness and heroism of girls and women who go through pregnancy and give up their babies for adoption. Later, I’d realize I had no business having a baby without the means to support her, without any real knowledge of what it took to raise a child or even keep one alive. Later, I’d know the odds of Jason and me being a married couple were almost nonexistent.

When she was born two weeks early, my poor grandfather was at my side, trying not to see too much—Jason was at Miller and Ashley’s wedding.