As if electrocuted by a hidden truth, his posture became rigid, and he stared into her eyes. “Is this why you still refuse to go to college?” he asked.
Why was it impossible to focus on the pregnancy? Izzy wondered. Was it so hard to accept the fact that she had gotten pregnant because they had spent a fair amount of her senior year having sex and that now the obvious problems of this pregnancy needed to be addressed, one way or the other? Did they need to bring other elements into this already combustible situation, just to see how they might interact?
“It has nothing to do with that,” she replied, removing her hands from his face, remembering that they were in public. “I never wanted to go to college, I’ve told you a million times. You thought I should go to college, but I never considered it. The baby is just our own singular bad luck.”
“Okay, okay, fine,” he said, waving her off. “Okay, let’s just think.” He paused. He reached into the backpack at his feet and produced a greeting card envelope. “I got you a graduation card,” he said, holding it out for her.
She slapped it out of his hand. “The baby, Hal. Jesus. Can we talk about the baby?”
“Is it a boy or a girl?” he asked, his face so open and sad.
Once again, she felt dizzy. It was so strange, how tenderness and mania could exist in one imperfect body.
“I have no idea,” she said. “I think it’s too early for anything like that.”
“What do we do, then?” he asked, and Izzy was relieved to see that he was finally addressing the issue, the elephant in the womb.
“I know what I want to do,” she said, “but what do we want to do?” She wanted, the minute the first test came back positive, to find some way to keep the baby, to raise the baby, to transform her unbelievably dim life into something beautiful because of this baby. But to say that out loud, to say it to Mr. Jackson, to Hal, seemed beyond her. She could not remember the last time she had asked for something and been anything other than disappointed. This time, she would keep her intentions hidden and see if they were granted as if by magic.
“That’s unfair,” he said. “Why can’t we just talk about what we want to do, honestly?”
“We can. I just want you to go first.”
Mr. Jackson looked down at the card again, lying in the grass at their feet. It was as if the answer was written on the inside of that card. “There’s fifty dollars in there for you,” he said.
“C’mon now.”
“I’m just saying we need to remember to get it before we leave,” he said. He stared out at the empty park, a pathetic excuse for a park, just a few benches, lots of trees, and a walking trail that had not been kept in walking order. They had met here dozens of times over the past year, one time, though not the time that created this baby, having sex on this very bench in the middle of the night. The recklessness of their actions, Izzy now considered; how had they not expected some kind of reckoning?
“All things considered,” Mr. Jackson finally said, drawing out each word, searching her face for emotion or guidance, “we should probably think really hard about . . .” He paused and took a deep breath. “We should probably think about not . . .” He again looked for any sign from her, but she was good at this, was as skilled as a robot at hiding her emotions. “Well, we should probably just go ahead . . . and just have this fucking baby, I guess.”
It was the least romantic, least touching way that the sentiment could have been delivered, but Izzy, at this point, was willing to accept it in any form. She did not need a heartfelt and life-affirming speech about their destiny together. She needed this baby, for reasons she was still hoping to understand. She needed this baby, and he had given it to her, again.
She kissed him, pressed her body as close to him as physics would allow, holding on to that kiss as if to keep any possible reconsiderations at bay. She let that kiss linger, forgetting, or really just ignoring, the fact that they were in public and they were a secret couple. Or perhaps that didn’t matter anymore, the secrecy. Pretty soon, she would be showing and he would be holding her hand in public and things would simply take care of themselves. She felt, in that quick moment, her entire life bend and shift by such a number of degrees that she felt nauseous from the new possibilities. She was, fuck it, as happy as she might ever be.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
“Let’s go see a movie,” she said, bending down to pick up the graduation card. She ripped it open and, without reading the card, produced the two twenties and single ten. “I’ll pay for it,” she offered, still smiling.