“You don’t wanna go in. It’s messy.”
“You think I don’t know that already?”
“C’mon, Mama, what you need?”
“I don’t need anything. I just want to see my son.”
“I been busy,” he said.
She scoffed. “Busy. I know you’re still thinkin’ about that Turner girl. You just like your daddy. Can’t let the past be the past.” She touched his cheek. “Look, what’s done is done. You got yourself in this mess and you should be on your knees thanking God for getting you out of it. Don’t everybody get another chance, you know that?”
“Yes,” he said.
“What you need to do is come to church,” she said. “If you’d listened to the Word a little more, maybe none of this would’ve happened.”
Luke leaned against the doorframe. He hadn’t meant to get his parents involved but he needed the money quickly, and part of him had hoped that they would scold him for even considering aborting the baby and refuse to give him a dollar. Then he would’ve returned to Nadia, hangdog, his hands thrown up, and told her that he’d tried his best but couldn’t find the money and maybe they should take a moment and think this over. But his parents, who didn’t drink or swear or even watch rated-R movies, had helped Nadia kill his baby. He had asked them to.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll try to make it.”
—
IN OCEANSIDE, seasons blended together into year-round sunshine, but fall came regardless: cheerful welcome messages now flashed on Oceanside High’s electronic marquee, and backpacks and binders had been pushed to the front of Walmart. Nadia had received e-mails from the University of Michigan informing her of orientation. She tried to swallow her nervousness each time she passed those generic back-to-school images framed in red and orange leaves. In Oceanside, leaves didn’t burst into red and orange; they withered and faded into a pale green that filled the gutters and lined the streets. But for the first time in her life, by the time the trees hung empty, she would be living somewhere else.
The Sunday before she left for Michigan, Upper Room took up a love offering to send her on her way. She was the first one in the congregation to earn an academic scholarship to a big university, but it didn’t cover everything. She would need little things—like a real winter coat—so the pastor asked Nadia and her father to stand at the altar with an empty paint bucket by their feet. Second John tossed in his cigarette money; he’d promised his wife he’d cut back anyway. Sister Willis gave the cash she’d set aside for her Powerball ticket and whispered to Magdalena Price that her numbers better not win that week. Even the Mothers tossed in a few dollars, long used to stretching Social Security checks like watered-down dish soap. Nadia had been so distracted by member after member who rose to give that she almost didn’t notice Luke at first, sitting in the back pew. He wore a gray suit that dug into his shoulders and when her eyes flicked to his, her father’s arm around her shoulders felt tighter.
After service, while her father stood in the receiving line to thank the pastor, she felt Luke sidle up behind her in the lobby.
“Can we talk?” Luke asked.
She nodded, following him past the congregation gathering in the lobby, out the front door, and around the church to the garden in the back. Violet African daisies bunched around the fountain and a bitter-leafed acacia spread over the stone bench where Luke sat, stretching out his bad leg. She lowered herself beside him.
“Heard you got in a wreck,” he said.
“Months ago,” she said.
“You okay?”
She hated his fake concern. She pushed herself to her feet.
“I don’t have the money,” she said.
“What?”
“The offering. My dad has it. But I’ll pay you back.”
“Nadia—”
“Six hundred, right? I’d hate for you to feel like you ever did me any favors.”
“I’m sorry.” Luke glanced over his shoulder, then leaned toward her, lowering his voice. “I couldn’t go to that clinic. If someone had seen me—”
“So you didn’t give a shit if someone saw me?”
“It’s different. You’re not the pastor’s kid.”
“I needed you,” she said. “And you left me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, softer. “I didn’t want to.”
“Well, you did—”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t want to kill our baby.”
She would later imagine their baby growing up. Baby takes his first steps. Baby throws his bottle across the room. Baby learns to jump. Always Baby, although sometimes she wondered what she would’ve named him. Luke, after his father, or Robert, after her own. She even thought of more distant family names, like her mother’s father, Israel, but she couldn’t imagine a baby bearing the heaviness of that name, its biblical sternness. So Baby he remained, even though in her mind, he grew into a boy, a teenager, a man. After Luke had said, for the first time, “our baby”—not the baby, not it—she couldn’t help wondering who Baby would’ve become.
That night, the Flying Bridge was mostly empty, except for fishermen sharing a round at the bar, their thick backs hunched in flannel. She pushed through the front door, toward the booth in the back where Aubrey was waiting. Sometimes she thought about telling Aubrey everything, about Luke, about the abortion. She imagined the two of them in a dark room, how she would take a shaky breath and confess, how Aubrey would tell her that she had been forgiven. Sometimes she wondered if this was what had drawn her to Aubrey. If some small part of her thought that by gathering near to Aubrey—with her purity ring and her good heart—she would somehow be absolved. She would close her eyes and feel Aubrey’s hand on her forehead, all of her sins lifting out of her body.
“What’s wrong?” Aubrey said, as soon as Nadia sat.
Maybe Nadia could tell her how she hadn’t been ready to be a mother, to forfeit her future, how she couldn’t imagine how she could live any longer trapped in a house that only reminded her of her mother. How she’d thought she and Luke had both agreed it would be for the best, but how she hadn’t really cared because she was granted the right to be selfish this one time, wasn’t she? She would be the one sharing her body with a whole new person, so she should get to decide, right? But then Luke’s face today when he’d told her that he’d wanted the baby—not the baby, our baby—which had gutted her, since she’d never imagined that he might. What young man did? He was supposed to be relieved that he’d been freed of his responsibilities, that she had handled the difficult part and resolved their problem. But maybe Luke was horrified by what she’d done. Maybe he’d left her at the clinic because he couldn’t even stand to look at her after.
She could tell Aubrey all of this, and Aubrey would understand. Or she wouldn’t. Her face would fall the way Luke’s had—in horror, in disgust—and she would back away from the booth, unable to conceive of how anyone could kill a poor, defenseless baby. Or she would say she understood, but her smiles would tighten, never quite reaching her eyes, and she would call less and less until they stopped talking altogether. She would disappear, like everyone eventually did.
Nadia pushed away from the booth, suddenly feeling trapped. She wandered to the pool table, tracing her hand along the green felt. Her father had taught her how to shoot pool when she was young. He’d brought her to his commanding officer’s house for a Christmas party, and while his friends drank spiked eggnog, he’d spent the evening in the back with her, teaching her how to shoot pool. After, they’d driven home slowly, circling through neighborhoods to look at the Christmas lights. Despite her pleading, her father never bothered to put up Christmas lights at their house, but he still drove her around to show her the beautiful designs other people had created.
“Do you play?” Aubrey asked. When Nadia shook her head, she said, “Wanna learn?”
“You play pool?”