The Opposite of Loneliness Essays and Stories(32)

I try to remember these months objectively but it’s hard—and around thirty, they started to haunt me. His dimples and his collarbone and his compliments and the way my girlfriends’ parents told my mother they were jealous. Sometimes I’d go months without thinking back, but the what-ifs always seemed to find me, creep up on me when I was lonely or tired or forced home for Christmas. He’d found someone else and I never did. Never even fell in love again. Not really.

*

Jared turned on the radio. All the stations were carols, so we just settled into it. “Winter Wonderland” played as we drove past salted pavement and snowless fields. The Charles was half frozen but the trees on Storrow Drive were still clutching their crinkled leaves.

“How are you doing?” Jared asked as we crossed the Eliot Bridge.

“Okay,” I admitted. “I’m excited to get back to work but feel guilty for feeling that, if you know what I mean.”

“Naw, that’s normal,” he said.

“How would you know?”

“Happened with all my babies.” I shoved him and he smiled, then sobered. “But you’ve been okay, in New York?” I knew New York was a euphemism for “by yourself,” but it was Jared and I didn’t mind him asking.

“Yeah,” I said, pausing to reach a hand back for Emma to squeeze. “I’m still struggling with . . . I’m still hoping that she . . . feels more like she’s mine.”

“Interesting.”

“Not really,” I said, feeling terrible for even articulating it. I pulled up my turtleneck and looked back out at the river. “To be honest, it’s hard because she reminds me a lot of the other baby.”

Jared was silent and kept his eyes on the road.

“It’s been a long time, Audrey.”

“I know,” I said.

“She’s okay. She’s doing fine.”

“I know she is. I know.” I shifted my attention back into the car and sat up. “Look, you’re the big bad Community Outreach Chair, we can just talk about it later.”

“Okay,” he said, shrugging his thin shoulders upward. I waited for him to protest, to insist that we discuss and overanalyze—but instead he started humming “Silent Night.” “Wait till you see this pageant, Audrey, it’s going to be insane. I have this girl playing Mary who we practically had to coax out of her goth clothing. A real sweetheart, don’t get me wrong, and she’s been practicing with the other Jesus all week so if we end up needing to swap in Emma, she’ll be fine.” He turned around to make a face at the baby and got a high-pitched squeal. And I realized he was right to change the subject.

*

I found out I was pregnant in December of my senior year at college. The night before, I’d told Julian I thought I’d gained weight at school. He didn’t say anything, just looked at me with an expression of disgust. But when we went out to dinner the next night, neither of us touched the bread basket. Julian smiled at the waiter when he took it away, taking my hand and pinching at my knuckles.

We bought the test on our way home. It wasn’t the first time. I was skinny then, missing my period a lot, and we always giggled in the car about what to buy along with it.

“I dare you to buy condoms,” I’d say.

“I dare you to buy porn,” he’d tease.

That night Julian chose to buy a bag of Skittles and we shared his peace offering while we waited until I had to pee.

When the test came back positive, we drove back to CVS and bought three more. We made the mistake of telling our parents and everyone seemed to have opinions. The Elks were Catholic and that was pretty much it. Julian wanted to keep it. He told me it wouldn’t matter—that I was what mattered. That he’d love me. That we could get married.

My mother disagreed. My dad was Jewish and my mom was nothing, and to them, pregnancy was a choice.

I was somewhere in between.

“You don’t understand,” I told her that night. “You wish Dad looked at you the way Julian looks at me.” She stopped sorting clothes and let the quiet settle.

“I know,” she said. “If you loved him less, I’d tell you to have it.”

I told her she didn’t make sense. I told her there were options. I told her she was just jealous and heartless and it was my body and he wanted it and I loved him so I had to have it. I had to. She didn’t understand. She was aged and stubborn and she didn’t understand.

That Sunday, Julian and I went for a walk along the reservoir.

“We don’t have to keep it,” he said. “But if you love me, please, don’t kill it.”

So I had it. For him. And we gave our six pounds, fourteen ounces to a couple from New Hampshire on August 19, 1989. They came to pick her up two days after I’d gone into labor. They did it in another room; the literature said it was best not to meet adoptive parents. Julian wanted it open, but I wanted it closed. So we signed our names on dotted lines that even eighteen years wouldn’t undo. No, I do not want my birth child contacting me. No, I do not want the progress reports.

*

The Unitarian Universalist church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was stone and beautiful and surrounded by bumper-stickered cars. It was cold out, and I was worried about Emma, so I pressed her tiny face to my neck as we dashed from Jared’s sedan to the basement’s back door. The place was packed with screaming children dressed like animals and bearded shepherds herding angels upstairs. The basement smelled like attic and the costumes were dated but the energy circling the room was powerful and warm. A rainbow flag hung next to a bulletin board and painted Plato quotes wrapped the room’s upper wall. A girl with a head scarf was buried in her cell phone and Joseph appeared to be flirting with a Wise Man. The moment we entered, Emma started wailing, and the entire tableau seemed to freeze and face us. A gray-haired man in the middle smiled at me and I knew he was the minister even before I saw his robes. He didn’t say anything but held his hands out slightly to his sides, palms out and fingers spread. I nodded back and shifted Emma around so everyone could see.