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Nope, she would just announce, “I’m pregnant,” and have faith they’d be happy for her.
Caleb was different. She wouldn’t tell him when he called or she responded to his e-mails, but in person, it would be hard not to. Fortunately, he was out of the country, as he often was, so she hadn’t had to make an excuse to avoid seeing him.
She didn’t know what he’d say, whether he’d understand or would try to talk her out of a decision she’d already made. He was less predictable than her dad or her sister.
Part of her wanted to tell him. He’d been the most amazing friend she’d ever had, and had been since the second week of their freshman year of college.
Laurel still remembered the first time she’d seen him. Their dorm at Pacific Lutheran University had a rec room in the basement, complete with a Ping-Pong table and a dozen sagging sofas and chairs too grungy even for the local thrift store. She had wandered down, feeling shy but acting on faith that, since nobody here knew her, if she forced herself to pretend to be outgoing she might actually be popular. A bunch of kids were draped on the sofas, one reading and nodding in time to music that played through her headphones, some arguing about whether any curriculum should be required—how funny that she remembered that—and two boys played Ping-Pong.
One of those two was in her intro to psych class. They’d sat next to each other and exchanged a few words, so she felt comfortable pausing to watch the game. Until the second boy aced his serve and taunted the guy she knew, then grinned at her. She looked at him, he looked at her and… It wasn’t true love at first sight, even though the girlfriends she made in the weeks to come believed through all four years that she had a crush on Caleb Manes. What they’d done was fall into like. There was a connection. They were instant friends, this tall, lanky boy with curly dark hair and electric-blue eyes and former high school nerd Laurel Woodall, in those days carrying an extra twenty-five pounds.
She could talk to Caleb; he really listened. And he talked to her, telling her stuff no guy ever had before. They advised each other through girlfriends and boyfriends, first kisses and breakups. He’d slipped a note into her hand when all the seniors in their graduation robes milled like sheep impervious to attempts to herd them into order. She had waved and smiled at her dad, snapping pictures, then peeked at the note.
Friends forever, it said.
She’d felt a tiny glow of warmth and relief at his reassurance that somehow they would stay connected even though they were going in different directions. Caleb had signed up for the Peace Corps and was going to bum around Europe with a buddy until he had to report for training. She had a summer job lined up and was heading to law school at the University of Washington come fall.
But…friends forever. Of course they would be.
They almost hadn’t been. The irony was, she’d been the one who tried to shut him out, along with all her other friends. But Caleb hadn’t let her, a fact that to this day still filled her with misgiving and relief and probably a dozen other emotions mixed into a brew as murky as folk cures for hangovers: weird looking, vile tasting, not so easy on the stomach, but in the end, settling in there.
They’d never been quite as close as when they could drop by each other’s dorm rooms and later apartments at PLU. But that would have happened anyway. By the time he came back from Ecuador, she hadn’t seen him in two years. They were adults, embarked on careers, or at least—in her case—a job. He’d become engaged once, although the wedding had kept getting postponed and never did happen. Once his import business took off, Caleb had bought a house on Vashon Island, a twenty-minute ferry ride plus a half-hour drive from her north Seattle neighborhood. She saw him maybe once a month. Sometimes less.
They were casual friends, Laurel concluded, refusing to listen to any dissenting voices. She had no obligation to tell him anything.
It had taken her so long to work up the courage to ask Matt to donate sperm, her most fertile time of the month had come and gone. So now she had a month to second-guess herself, suffer daily panic attacks and pray that he and Sheila didn’t change their minds. Laurel didn’t think they would, but that fear had to be part of those panic attacks that hit her unpredictably.
She’d be sitting on the Metro bus she took every morning to work at the downtown law firm, hip to hip with some old lady gripping her purse and shooting glares at everyone who walked down the aisle, or some guy in cornrows blasting rap from headphones and bobbing in time. She’d be minding her own business, looking out the window and seeing the cross streets pass, wishing she’d had time for a second cup of coffee. She’d vowed to save her money and not stop every day at the Tully’s on the corner where she got off, but maybe today…
And it would hit her, a tsunami of doubt and fear, heralded by no warning. The cold constricted her breathing, raised goose bumps that traveled down her arms and then her legs. She would be paralyzed in place, gripped by the shock and the power of the current, aware of light above, but unable to swim to it.
Laurel knew panic, had once recognized the trigger. But she’d gotten better, so much better, until now. This time, she didn’t understand.
She wanted a baby. She wasn’t afraid of having one, of being able to cope as a single mother. She had complete faith she could do it.
Matt and Sheila might back out. But if they did, she still had her list. Or she would pick a donor from one of those trumped-up profiles and buy sperm. There were other ways.
Was Matt the wrong choice? At the question, her anxiety ratcheted up a notch, but she couldn’t think why. Like a mantra, she repeated to herself: he’s smart, good-looking, nice, healthy. Everything she wanted her child’s father to be.
Was she afraid of problems down the line? Her child being hurt because Matt wasn’t really interested in being a father? Or worse, Matt deciding to contest Laurel for custody? Claiming her to be unfit?
In her calmer moments, she knew he’d never do anything like that. He was a friend. That’s why she’d asked him. Anyway, Sheila wouldn’t want to raise his child with another woman as her own. She’d been worried already that Laurel would seek too much involvement from Matt in the baby’s life.
Was she scared about the procedure? Laurel did hate annual exams, but she liked the woman doctor she saw at the Women’s Health Clinic. She trusted her to be gentle and as unobtrusive as possible. While it was happening, veiled from the doctor by the white sheet, she would close her eyes and think, A baby. Soon, soon, I’ll feel movement inside, and my belly will swell and you’ll hear my voice. She wasn’t afraid.
But she was, of something. She just didn’t know what.
If she stayed very still, the wave would slowly ebb away, leaving her sitting on the bus, her stop still to come, her seatmate unaware of the terror that had swept over her. She would sag the slightest bit in relief, perhaps lean her head against the thick glass of the window, the cool smooth surface more comforting than a hug.
Soon, soon. Then I won’t be afraid.
She hated being afraid, feeling vulnerable, and refused to surrender to these panic attacks in any way.
Her period came on time, to the day when she’d expected it. Her last in a year or more, she hoped. She intended to breast-feed, and she knew that often delayed the resumption of menstruation, sometimes for six months or more after delivery.
Of course, she might not get pregnant the first month. There were no guarantees. She wouldn’t get discouraged. She could afford the additional procedures.
But she wasn’t sure she could bear the panic attacks, day after day, for another month. Or one after that.
They didn’t come when she was home alone, thank goodness. She didn’t like it when the wind scratched the branches of the maple against her bedroom window at night, or when the house settled and creaked. When she heard a cough outside, late, or the clatter of a garbage can as if someone had brushed it. She was a woman who lived alone in a city that was safer than many, but still a city, so of course she had those anxieties. The important part was, they no longer paralyzed her.
It was the idea of getting pregnant that did. Something about her plan wasn’t quite right. Maybe it was only the unconventional way, the impersonality. Not how a young woman dreamed of conceiving her first child.
Once it was done, Laurel was convinced, she’d be okay.
Just today, she’d talked to Matt. She hadn’t seen him or Sheila in the two weeks since she’d had dinner at their house and asked them for the ultimate favor. But she called legal aid, where Matt still worked and said, “Just wanted to say hi.”
“Hey.” He sounded distracted. “Got a doozy today. Landlord from hell. Mildewed, sagging ceiling collapsed and badly hurt a toddler. A few rats fell with the ceiling. Sounds Third World, doesn’t it?”
“At the very least. Will the child be okay?”
“Doctor thinks so. But I’m going to nail the landlord’s hide to the wall.”
“You go get ’em.” Laurel felt a momentary pang for the days when she’d imagined that someday she, too, would be a crusading attorney.
“We still on?”
There was something in his voice. Lack of enthusiasm? Hope that they weren’t still on? Or was her paranoia reading shades of gray into a casual question?
“Yep. Two more weeks.”
She heard a muffled voice.
“Listen. Got to go. We’ll talk again?”
“Next week,” Laurel promised.
Disquiet made her chest feel hollow. Had she ruined a friendship she valued by asking this of Matt? Or would everything be fine, once it was done?
She turned back to her computer and made herself concentrate on the will she was writing. She worked as a paralegal for a firm of attorneys, but most often with Malcolm Hern, whose scrawled notes about the clients’ wishes she peered at frequently.
Nonetheless, she was relieved when five o’clock came and she could shut down her computer, don her raincoat, grab her purse and join the other flunkies leaving. This was one of the few times a day she was glad not to have her law degree. If she was working here as an attorney, there’d be no five o’clock departures for her. Nope, she’d be putting in sixty- or seventy-hour workweeks. She couldn’t be a single parent.
The elevator moved slowly, even after it was full, stopping at nearly every floor between the thirty-fifth, where her firm was located, and the ground floor. She hated being pressed against strangers this way, and always chose a corner if she could get into one. Even so, the man behind her had nearly full-body contact with her and his breath stirred the hair at her nape. Her relief when the light flashed on L and the elevator dinged and the doors slid open was profound. Still, she had to wait for others to exit ahead of her, had to suffer more jostling.
Laurel joined the exodus into the marble lobby, heading for the rotating glass doors. She hadn’t gone more than a few steps when a man fell into step with her.
“Can I offer the lady a ride home?”
“Caleb!” she exclaimed in delight. “You’re back in town.”
He wrapped a long arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze even as they kept walking. “Yep. Good trip. How are you?”
Oh, planning to get myself impregnated two weeks from tomorrow. Having daily panic attacks.
“I’m good. Can I offer you dinner?”
“I was planning to take you out.”
“I have beef stroganoff simmering in my Crock-Pot as we speak.”
“Deal.”
His smile was as amazing as ever although the effect was somewhat different now that he was a man rather than a boy. Most of his travels took him to Central and South America, which meant he was perpetually tanned, paler laugh lines fanning out from his blue, blue eyes. But the dimple still deepened in one cheek whenever he offered his beguiling, lopsided grin.
Caleb wore his hair longer than did most of the attorneys and businessmen in the lobby, not ponytail length, just a little shaggy, the curls making it constantly disheveled. He’d filled out a little in the years since college, but was still lean, and at a couple of inches over six feet he towered over her five foot four or so. Laurel was always aware of women’s heads turning when she was with him, not just because he was handsome, although he was. He had that indefinable quality that in an actor or public speaker would be labeled charisma. He exuded some kind of life force, perhaps a belief in himself that drew the stares.
And she was in trouble, she realized suddenly. Was she going to try to get through the evening without telling him what she was up to?
If she kept silent, he’d be hurt later, and for good reason. They’d always told each other everything important.
Everything but what she’d thought and felt when she’d been brutally raped during her first and only year of law school. That single subject was taboo. Only in her rape support group could she talk about that day, because every woman there understood in a way no man ever would.
Okay, this she’d tell him. She didn’t like explaining herself, hated the idea of having to tell him to butt out, it was none of his business. But secrecy would bother him more, she knew it would.
Typical Caleb, he’d found a parking spot on the street not half a block from the Drohman Tower where she worked. Nobody found street parking at this time of day downtown.
Nobody but Caleb, charmed as always.
“How was your trip?” she asked, once he’d pulled out into traffic.
“Really good. Haiti is always depressing. The poverty.” He shook his head. “But I’m excited about the cooperative we’ve got going there. Not just drum art, although the artisans in the group are making some wall sculptures that are different from the more common ones. But we’ve added a guy who makes the most extraordinary stone sculptures. Wait’ll you see them.”
In college, Caleb had been determined to work for a humanitarian organization like Save the Children. But during his time in Ecuador with the Peace Corps, he’d had what he’d described as a revelation. Outside aid wasn’t the key, self-sufficiency was. Every country in Latin and South America had unique, beautiful crafts that would bring high prices from Americans if they were made accessible to them. Instead of just buying from artists, he helped organize cooperatives, often village- and even region-wide with profit sharing. Some were comprised only of women, many of whom had lost their husbands to war.
Caleb had started with a tiny store on University Avenue in Seattle, expanding it within a year and adding a second two years later in Portland. Now he had another in upscale Bellevue and a fourth in Tacoma, with a fifth planned for San Francisco. He also put out a catalog and sold through a Web site. He made a good living but passed on profits to the artisans in the cooperatives on a scale that stunned Haitians and Guatemalans who were accustomed to getting pennies for work that sold for a hundred dollars in the United States.
Caleb loved what he did and what he’d accomplished. Every time she saw him, Laurel felt an ache of regret and disappointment in herself. Her dreams had been as vivid as his, and now where was she? Working a nine-to-five job, getting through each day as well as she could.
Choosing to become a mother was the first decision she’d made in a long time that looked ahead, that said, I have hope. Maybe, just maybe, Caleb would be glad for her.
Traffic on I-5 was stop-and-go. Laurel could have gotten home nearly as fast on the bus that ambled down Eastlake and through the University District. But she didn’t care if the traffic ever opened up. It was wonderful just to be sitting next to Caleb, hearing him talk about the wretchedness he’d seen side by side with the need to create something beautiful. He spoke with admiration of the warmth of community he saw down there and felt Americans had lost, but he also told her about glorious Caribbean beaches littered with bits of Styrofoam and hypodermic needles, about the children and the politics and the disease. He was passionate, angry, awed—and still able to believe he could make a difference.
A few times she’d imagined traveling with him, seeing with her own eyes everything he described. Once he’d tentatively suggested she join him on a trip to Honduras and Guatemala. He’d talked about monkeys leaping through branches above crumbling Mayan ruins, patient women weaving all day long to provide for their families, sunshine and darting fish in coral reefs.
But by then, all Laurel had to buttress herself from the world was her routine. The safety of eating the same cereal every morning, sitting in the same chair at the table, catching the bus at the same time, knowing the faces of the other riders at her stop. She hadn’t been able to imagine herself catching a plane, going to a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language, taking a boat upriver to places without cars or telephones, to a place where her own life didn’t make sense. So she’d made an excuse. He’d looked at her for a grave moment with eyes that saw more than she wanted them to and he hadn’t asked again.
Laurel lived in a neighborhood off Lake City Way in north Seattle that had been built in the thirties and forties. The houses were modest but charming, wood-framed, owned mainly by young families. Hers was the anomaly, a homely 1950s addition with a flat roof, a one-car garage made of cinder blocks and a chain-link fence. She’d been lucky to be able to afford it with her father’s help. So far, her budget hadn’t allowed anything that could be called remodeling, but the chain-link fence was disappearing beneath the honeysuckle and climbing roses and clematis she’d planted along it, and she’d painted the formerly street-sign-yellow garage a more unobtrusive coffee-brown. Trellises and more climbers were masking its ugly facade.
Inside, she’d torn up the shag carpets to expose oak floors that needed refinishing but were still beautiful; however, she was living with 1950s-era plywood and veneer kitchen and bathroom cabinets, aluminum-frame windows that dripped and a shower so tiny and dark it gave her claustrophobia.
Caleb parked on the street and commented on the shoots coming up in her garden.
“I planted a bunch of bulbs last fall. Mostly hyacinths and daffodils.”
“Did I tell you that you inspired me?” he said, as she unlocked the door. “I planted a couple hundred tulips in October. With my luck, the moles have eaten them, but I tried.”
She laughed, not showing her astonishment at his choice of words. She had inspired him?
Comfortable in her house, he found the corkscrew in a drawer and opened a bottle of wine while she changed into jeans, a sweater and slip-on shoes, then put on water to boil for noodles.
“So,” Caleb said, “enough about me. Tell me about your life.”
He always put it that way, as if she had a life.
Today, Laurel thought with a tinge of defiance, she’d prove that she did.
“I’ve decided to have a baby.”
He swore, and she saw that he’d poured wine on the counter. He grabbed the sponge, mopped up, then handed her a glass.
“You didn’t just tell me you’re pregnant.”
“No, I told you I’m going to get pregnant.”
His eyes narrowed. “Just like that.”
“It happens really quickly,” she assured him.
“And usually requires a woman and a man.”
“You know I can’t… I don’t want…”
What she could have sworn was anger faded from his face. “I know. So you’re—what?—planning to find a donor?”
“I already have.” She busied herself dumping noodles into the now-boiling water. “You know Matt Baker? My friend from legal aid?”
Caleb’s tone was careful, controlled. “Isn’t he married?”
“Yes, that’s the beauty of it. I already spend a lot of time at their house. They have great kids. I’m Madison’s godmother. So it’ll give my child a sort of extended family.” Beginning to cut up broccoli, she hurried on. “I thought of going the anonymous-donor route, but that made me nervous. It’s like, every guy who donates is a future Nobel Prize winner. Brilliant, of course, handsome, athletic, a Ph.D. candidate in something or other. I mean, what are the odds? Some of them have to be ordinary. Or worse than ordinary. Schmucks. I wanted my baby’s father to be somebody…” Somebody, in another life, I might have loved.
Standing there in the kitchen, the knife poised above a clump of broccoli, she thought, But Matt isn’t.
Well, she did love him, of course. But not…not that way. He wasn’t anybody who ever would have attracted her, not even before. Was that the problem?
Caleb muttered a word she couldn’t quite catch. “I didn’t know you were thinking about anything like this.”
“It’s been just the past few months.”
