“And how are the wedding plans coming along?” he asked. “Did you decide on a dress yet?”
I didn’t think he really cared which dress I selected. He was just trying to get me to talk.
“Not yet,” I said. “There’s still time. Everything else is in place.” Everything, I thought, except the wedding itself. I could think of no way Vincent and I could possibly get married.
“When do the invitations go out?”
“Not until March,” I said. My chest contracted. I didn’t see how those invitations could ever go out.
He was quiet. After a moment, he put his arm around me. “I’m worried about you, sweetheart,” he said. “When we talked on the phone the last couple of times, and now in person … you seem withdrawn. I think you’re angry with me. Maybe you think I took advantage of your good nature. You’ve been extremely patient and a big support to me. I know it’s been hard on you. If you’re angry, just tell me. Yell or whatever you need to do to clear the air. I wouldn’t blame—”
“I’m not angry. I’m just…” I began to cry softly and he wrapped both his arms around me. Rocked me gently like a child. “I’m just tired and I missed you and it’s been hard not having you here,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “But only a couple more weeks till the doctor I’m covering for is back and then I’m home for good.” He gave me a squeeze. “You really have been strong through all this, Tess,” he said, “and I appreciate it. And soon, you and I will stand up at that altar”—he pointed toward the front of St. Leo’s—“and say ‘I do’ and have the rest of our lives together.”
I pictured the scene at the altar. Standing next to him in my white dress. Maybe the one with the rosettes that my mother loved. Gina by my side. And I suddenly thought of a way to make marrying him a reality. He was home for three days and three nights. I could sleep with him. I knew that went against everything either of us believed in, and yet … I could play on his guilt. Tell him how hard it had been for me, being without him. How desperately I needed him. I could pass this baby off as his. But even as the thought came to me, I knew I couldn’t do it, and the fantasy of our wedding slipped away. I couldn’t go into our marriage with a lie.
I couldn’t go into our marriage at all.
8
I clutched Gina’s hand in the back of the taxi as we rode through an unfamiliar Baltimore neighborhood. It was January third and the Christmas decorations that hung in the air above the street looked tired. The chilly gray day didn’t help. I felt sick with nerves. I only had to get through this day, I told myself, and I could get my life back on track. If I made it through today, wedding invitations would go out as planned in March. I’d buy the dress with the rosettes. Vincent and I would have a future together, the future we’d always planned for. As long as I made it through the horror of today.
The few days with Vincent had not gone well. I hadn’t been able to feign joy over his homecoming and I finally pleaded a headache that simply wouldn’t go away. I was sure our parents talked to each other in hushed, worried voices, wondering what was wrong with me, and Vincent sat on the edge of my bed, gently pressing a cool washcloth to my forehead or rubbing my temples. I didn’t even go with Mimi and Pop to take him back to the train station. By that time, though, I’d made up my mind. I knew what I had to do. It was a terrible, unthinkable sin but it seemed like the only way out of the dilemma I was in.
“It’s going to be all right,” Gina whispered to me now as she squeezed my hand in the back of the taxi. Her palm was as damp with sweat as my own. “It’ll all be over soon. A bad memory.”
I swallowed hard. Gina had been shocked when I finally got up the nerve to tell her I was pregnant.
“Did he rape you?” she’d asked in a horrified whisper. She couldn’t believe I would sleep with a stranger after saving myself for my wedding night all these years.
I shook my head. “I was … intoxicated,” I said. “But he didn’t force me.” I wished I could blame Henry Kraft for what had happened. I only blamed myself.
“You’ve got to get rid of it,” Gina’d said. We’d been sitting in her bedroom, our voices quiet because her mother was down the hall in the living room. I could barely hold my emotions together.
“Get rid of it?” I’d said, shocked. “I can’t believe you’d even suggest that, Gina. It’s a sin, not to mention it’s illegal.”
“It’s illegal but not impossible,” she said. “This girl I sort of know did it. She said it wasn’t so bad. I can find out where you can go to have it done.” She leaned across the space between her twin beds to look hard into my eyes. “Do you really have a choice?” she asked.
“I can’t do that,” I said. Yet what option did I have? I had no husband. The man I was engaged to—kindhearted and loving though he may have been—would never marry me if he knew I was pregnant with another man’s child. There was no way I could tell him what I’d done. It would kill him.
“I think I’ll have to go to one of those homes where you have your baby and put it up for adoption,” I said. “Maybe the church can help me find a home like that? Everything would be hush-hush, and my baby would go to a good family. Have a good life.” My own well-planned good life would be over, but at least I would have done the right thing by my baby.
Gina looked horrified. “Those places are terrible,” she said. “They’ll treat you like trash and you’ll never know what they really did with your baby. Where they really put it. And what will you tell Vincent? If you have an abortion, you get to move on with your life.”
“It’s wrong,” I argued.
“Why are you making this so hard on yourself, honey?” Gina said. “Right now, what you have inside of you is a fetus. Not a baby. It won’t be a baby for months and months.”
I wished I could see things as simply as Gina. We’d been raised in the same church. Made our first communions together. Learned about sin and heaven and hell from the same nuns. Yet somehow, with Gina it never took and she was freer for it. Even with the baby gone, I knew I would never feel free of what I’d done. It was the one thing I would never be able to admit to in confession. I’d carry it with me forever, but at least I could marry the man I loved. We would have other children. Our children.
Gina was able to get the details from Kathy, the girl she “sort of” knew who’d had the abortion, and she made the arrangements for me, even giving me one hundred of the exorbitant two-hundred-dollar fee. “Will it hurt?” I’d asked her.
“Kathy didn’t say,” Gina’d said. “Probably just cramping, but it will be worth it. You’ll have one bad day and then you’ll be free for the rest of your life.”