Looking for Jane (51)
She rakes a hand through her hair and looks at the test result half a dozen more times, willing it to spontaneously change as the blood drains from her face.
The front door clatters open, echoing down the hall.
“Heya!” Susan calls.
Nancy swallows with difficulty. “Hi—” Her voice cracks and she clears her throat. “Hi, Sue!”
Knowing there’s nothing more to be gained from staring at the damned test, Nancy gathers the contents back into the paper pharmacy bag and wrenches open the bathroom door. She should go say hi to Susan, but she can’t handle talking to anyone right now, so she darts across the hall into her bedroom and locks the door, flopping herself down on the edge of the bed. She’s about to toss the paper bag with its incriminating contents into her wicker garbage bin when, glancing down, she spots a piece of bright red shiny plastic wedged between the nightstand and the wall. Nancy reaches to fish it out and, as she does so, recognizes it as a condom wrapper. Len must have missed the garbage when he tossed it. As she holds it between her fingers, it screams at her like an accusation.
She throws it into the garbage along with the pregnancy test, covering the evidence of her premarital transgressions. But covering it up isn’t enough. She needs it erased. She needs it to be undone. She won’t tell Len. She doesn’t want to tell anyone. If she keeps it a secret, maybe she can pretend that it never happened at all.
Clara’s words come unbidden to her mind from the day she called Nancy, asking her to come with her to the abortion. No one ever needs to know…
Nancy has just lain back on the pillows when the pink phone on her bedside table rings next to her ear. She ignores it, but after two rings, Susan’s muffled voice drifts down the hall from the kitchen. A moment later, her roommate calls her name.
“Nance! It’s your mom!”
Nancy groans. Not now. She opens her mouth to yell to Susan that she’ll call her mother back when she remembers it’s Saturday; they’re having lunch together today. She glances at the clock on her bedside table. They’re supposed to be meeting in one hour.
“Ugh, shit,” she mutters. “Okay! Thanks!” She sits up and lets out a long breath before picking up the receiver. “Hey, Mum.”
“Hello, dear.” Her mother’s sugary voice makes her want to weep right now. “How are you?”
“I’m, uh, I’m okay. Yeah. Just, you know, working on school stuff. How are you? How’s Dad?”
“Well, that’s actually why I’m calling. I’m feeling quite under the weather today and I’m afraid I must cancel our lunch.”
A wave of relief washes over Nancy, but when it recedes, guilt rushes in to replace it. “I’m sorry to hear you’re not feeling well.”
“Oh, it’s just my head, you know. The migraines.”
She’s suffered from them since Nancy was little. Nancy remembers twirling in a new Easter dress, her mother admiring the lace detailing even as she held a cold cloth to her forehead, insisting she was well enough to go with Nancy and her father to Easter mass. Without really registering what she’s doing, Nancy places a hand on her stomach as her mind wanders toward Margaret, and what she might have dressed her in if things had turned out differently.
Once the shock of the Big Lie sank in last spring, she spent the next few weeks trying to decide what, if anything, to do with the information she now possessed. After some exhausting soul-searching and weighing the pros and cons, Nancy determined that it wasn’t worth pursuing her birth mother. She had no idea how she would even begin trying to locate her. And she didn’t plan on telling her parents what she had found. Oddly, she couldn’t bear the thought of them feeling as though she had betrayed them, even though they were the ones who had been lying to her all along. Loyalty is a complicated thing.
“Nancy? Are you there, dear?”
“Yeah, Mum. Hi. Sorry. I spaced out for a second there.”
“Are you okay?”
Nancy pinches her lips shut. She knew even before she took the pregnancy test that she didn’t want a baby right now, but the confirmation has thrown a nasty wrench into her thoughts that weren’t there yesterday, or even an hour ago. She thinks about what she knows from the secret box in her mother’s dresser drawer. How much her parents wanted a child, the lengths they went to in order to adopt her. That there are people so desperate for children that they’ll do almost anything to have one.
What if Nancy had this baby, and gave it up for adoption? It could be a dream come true for a loving couple like her parents. But what if she regretted it, like her birth mother did? She considers Margaret’s note. What if Nancy spent the rest of her life grieving and trying to find her long-lost child?
And that’s when it hits her like it never has before. She gets it now, what Margaret Roberts must have gone through, the terror she likely felt when she found out she was pregnant so young, and out of wedlock. Times were different then. Girls didn’t have options.
No, Mum. I am very much not okay.
The tears have started now. She’s on the verge of telling her mother everything. All of it. She’s sick of carrying it around. It’s too heavy and its sharp corners cut into her skin when she least expects it. But what if her mother wants her to keep the baby? What then?
And she’s just so good at keeping secrets. What’s one more?