guess I should be going,” I said.
“Would you like another test?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I’ll do one at home, I guess, and then I’ll figure out…” I closed my mouth. Truthfully, I didn’t know what I’d figure out.
He pushed the book back toward me. “Would you like to hang onto it? In case you have other questions?”
He was being so nice to me, I thought. Why was he being so nice to me? He was probably some crazy right-to-lifer, I thought meanly, trying to trick me into staying pregnant with the beverage sampler and the free guidebooks.
“Won’t the nurse want it back?” I asked.
“She’s had her babies,” he said lightly. “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. You’re welcome to have it.” He cleared his throat. “With regard to the study,” he began. “If you choose to continue the pregnancy, you won’t be eligible, of course.”
“No thin pills?” I joked.
“They haven’t been approved for use by pregnant women.”
“Then I could be your guinea pig,” I offered, feeling myself teetering on the edge of hysteria. “Maybe I’d have a really skinny baby. That’d be good, right?”
“Whatever you do, just let me know,” he said, tucking a business card inside of the book. “I’ll make sure you get a full refund if you decide not to continue.”
I remembered, very clearly, somewhere in the sheaf of forms I’d filled out the first day, something stating that there would be no refunds allowed. Crazy right-to-lifer, for sure, I thought, and stood up, strapping my backpack over my shoulders.
He looked at me kindly. “Listen, if you want to talk about it… or if you have any other medical questions, I’d be happy to try to help.”
“Thanks,” I muttered. My hand was already on the doorknob.
“Take care of yourself, Cannie,” he said. “And give us a call, either way.”
I nodded again, turned the handle, and hustled out the door.
I made bargains with God the whole way home, the same way I’d invented letters to the Celine Dion fan, poor Mr. Deiffinger, the least of my concerns now. Dear God, if you make me not pregnant I’ll volunteer at the pet shelter and the AIDS hospice and I’ll never write anything nasty about anyone again. I’ll be a better person. I’ll do everything right, I’ll go to synagogue and not just on high holy days, I won’t be so mean and critical, I’ll be nice to Gabby, only please, please, please, don’t let this be happening to me.
I bought two tests at the drugstore on South Street, white cardboard boxes with beaming mothers-to-be on the front, and peed all over my hand doing the first one, I was shaking so hard. By then I was so convinced of the worst that I didn’t need the plus sign on the EPT wand to tell me what Dr. Krushelevansky already had.
“I’m pregnant,” I said to the mirror, and mimed a smile, like the woman on the box.
“Pregnant,” I informed Nifkin later that night, as he bounded all over me and licked my face at Samantha’s house, where I’d stashed him while I was at work. Samantha had two dogs of her own, plus a big, fenced-in yard and a pet door, so the dogs could go in and out as they pleased. Nifkin wasn’t crazy about her dogs, Daisy and Mandy – I suspected that he much preferred the company of people to other pets – but he was a big fan of the premium lamb and rice kibble that Samantha served, and so, on balance, seemed happy to hang out at Sam’s house.
“What did you say?” Samantha called from the kitchen.
“I’m pregnant,” I called back.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I yelled. Nifkin sat on my lap, looking gravely into my eyes.
“You heard me, right?” I whispered. Nifkin licked my nose and curled into my lap.
Samantha came into the living room, wiping her hands. “You were saying?”
“I said, I’m going home for Thanksgiving.”
“Lesbian turkey again?” Samantha wrinkled her nose. “Didn’t you tell me that I was under strict instructions to slap you if you ever mentioned spending another holiday with Tanya again?”
“I’m tired,” I told her. “I’m tired and I want to go home.”
She sat down beside me. “What’s going on, really?”
And I wanted so badly to tell her then, to just turn to her and spill it all out, to tell her, help me, and tell me what to do. But I couldn’t. Not yet. I needed time to think, to know my own mind before the chorus started. I knew the advice she’d give me. It would be the same thing I’d tell her if she were in the same situation: young, single with a great career, knocked up by a guy who wasn’t returning her phone calls. It was a no-brainer, a $500 afternoon in the doctor’s office, a few days of cramps and crying, end of story.
But before I went for the obvious, I wanted some time, even just a few days. I wanted to go home, even if home had long since gone from a happy refuge to something closer to a Sapphic commune.
It wasn’t hard. I called Betsy, who told me to take as much time as I needed. “You’ve got three weeks of vacation, five days you never took from last year, and comp time from New York,” she said, in a message on my machine at home. “Have a happy Thanksgiving, and I’ll see you next week.”
I e-mailed Maxi. “Something has come up… unfortunately, not the thing I might have hoped for,” I wrote. “Bruce is dating a kindergarten teacher. I am brokenhearted and going home to eat dried turkey and let my mother feel sorry for me.”
“Good luck, then,” she’d written back immediately, even though it had to be three in the morning there. “And never mind the teacher. She’s his transition object. They never last. Call or write when you’re home… I’ll be in the States again in the spring.”
I cancelled my haircut, postponed a few telephone interviews, arranged for my neighbors to pick up my papers and my mail. I didn’t call Bruce. If I decided not to stay pregnant, there’d be no reason for him to know. At this stage in our non-relationship, I couldn’t very well imagine him sitting beside me in a clinic tenderly holding my hand. If I did stay pregnant… well, I’d burn that bridge when I came to it, I thought.
I hitched my bicycle rack and mountain bike to the back of my little blue Honda, put Nifkin in his traveling case, and tossed my bag in the trunk. Ready or not, I was going home.
PART THREE. I Go Swimming
TEN
The summer between my junior and senior years at Princeton, I had an interns hip at the Village Vanguard, the oldest and most attitudinous of the alternative newsweeklies in the
