“What is it, honey?”
“I, I, I didn’t want to call you,” she cried. “I didn’t. I wasn’t going to. Really, I wasn’t ever going to tell you.”
“What?”
“I, I can’t,” she said, and then the connection was broken.
In the dark of the room Eric wondered what to do. Should he call her back or just wait until morning? Should he tell her that she’d be better off with Drew, whom she loved and who both loved and needed her?
The cell phone moaned again.
“Hello.”
“I’m pregnant,” she said in a controlled voice. “I told the doctor that I’d only had unprotected sex a day after my period, and he said that sometimes healthy sperm lives on for a week or more waiting for ovulation.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me?” he asked, biding for time.
“I called Drew. I asked him what I should do.”
“What did he say?”
“He said to come out to Connecticut, that we could get married and he’d raise the baby as his.” She wailed then, crying so loudly that Eric had to hold the phone away from his ear.
It was nine months from Eric’s sixteenth birthday. He would graduate from high school before then. And he would soon be a father. The graduation, his child’s birth — he imagined both of these scenes in the hollow skull of his drawing.
“Eric?”
“Will your baby need you to love its father?” he asked.
“What?”
“A baby needs love, right?” Eric said. “He needs his mother to love him and his father, and he needs his mother and father to love each other.”
“I’ll die if you leave me, Eric.”
“Then why did you call Drew?”
“I’m scared,” she said. “I’m scared and that’s something you don’t understand. I can’t explain it to you because you’re never afraid. Drew understands because he always is.”
Eric realized that the emotion he felt the most often with Christie was shame. He was ashamed because she was like a used textbook for him, something to learn from but not to keep. She studied him so closely that she saw things in him that he never considered. And she shared her knowledge without holding back. She was selfless and transparent, almost invisible to him.
Like air, he thought.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she moaned. “Having a baby with no money and no husband. Loving Drew and needing you so deep inside. Do you want me to give the baby up?”
“For adoption?”
“Abortion.”
Eric remembered what Branwyn had said about Elton, Tommy’s father: Elton had the choice to be with me or not and Tommy didn’t. I couldn’t ask Tommy if he minded if I didn’t have him and if he didn’t have a life to live. No sunshine or sandy beaches. Tommy didn’t even know what a sandy beach was.
“No,” Eric said. “You shouldn’t do that. I mean, the baby needs a life, and Drew wants to love both you and the baby.”
“What about you?” Christie asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I want to have this baby with you,” she said.
“Then we’ll have our baby and raise him to be a man.”
“Or a woman,” Christie added. Her voice was now bright and filled with hope.
Eric wondered what Drew would think when he realized that he was the backup just in case Eric said no.
“Go to sleep, Christie,” Eric said. “I’ll come over in the morning.”
“When?”
“At nine.”
“What about school?”
“I’ll skip it for one day. We can go to the doctor together. And talk about having our baby.”
“I love you,” she said.
“And I love both of you.”
By that time Minas Nolan was leaving for work at ten to seven every morning. He rarely made it home before eleven. He was sleeping four hours a night and did not take vacations or even weekends off. The only time that he and Eric saw each other was between six and ten to seven, when they’d have breakfast together and share the New York Times. It was a day-old paper, but they didn’t mind. Reading together was their ritual; the news had little to do with it.
Ahn would also get up to make and serve their breakfast. Minas had rye toast and marmalade with a poached egg and air-dried German beef. Eric had oatmeal with toasted almonds, golden raisins, brown sugar, and cream. Most of their time together was spent eating and reading. Now and then Minas would mention something he found fascinating in the paper or an anecdote from the previous day at work. Eric, for his part, listened or, at most, asked for clarification on a detail or a word. He never tried to have a full-blown conversation because when the clock on the wall said 6:50, Minas Nolan stood up, bussed his dishes, took his briefcase from the floor next to the door, and left no matter what was happening at breakfast or in the world according to the Times.
But that day was different.
Eric couldn’t go back to sleep after his talk with Christie. He restrung his fiberglass tennis racket in the garage and then looked over his school papers. Eric was an excellent student. His comprehension of math was pure and intuitional; his memory for facts was a point of pride for his teachers. He didn’t need to check his work, but he had to do something.
“Did you love my mother?” Eric asked Minas at six forty-two.
“Of course I did,” Minas replied. The once-handsome man was now graying and haggard. “I loved her very much.”
“What about Mama Branwyn?”
Minas’s throat constricted, and his mind traveled back to the night she asked him for a kiss. He folded his newspaper, reached to place it on the table, but he wasn’t looking and so dropped the Times to the floor.
“Branwyn,” he said.
They had not discussed the mother of Eric’s heart since before the day Eric found that green fish on the beach at Malibu.
Eric placed his hands palms down on the table. All of the manliness and beauty that was once his father’s had now been absorbed into the boy’s features.
Ahn walked in with their final cup of tea. She could see the confrontation in their eyes, so she silently placed the solid silver platter between them and then left to eavesdrop from the pantry.
“Branwyn,” Dr. Nolan said again. “Yes... yes, I loved her very, very much. She saved me when your mother died.”
“Did she love you, Dad?”
“I... I don’t think she loved me the way I loved her,” he said. “But that didn’t ever seem to matter. The way Branwyn felt about people, she could give everything inside her to you even if you weren’t her first choice or even somebody she could love.”
“Were we people she loved?” Eric asked. He’d forgotten about Christie by then.
“I think so,” his father said. “It wasn’t hard with Branwyn like it was with other women.”
“What do you mean?” Eric asked softly.
“Other women I’d known wanted something you couldn’t see or touch or even say. They called it love, but it was more like a game the way I saw it. One night I asked Branwyn if she loved me, and she said that she fell in love with me every night that I carried her up the stairs to our room. When she said that, I felt like a kid. I kissed her and she laughed at me...” Minas got lost in the memory.
“What is it, Dad?”
“I asked her to marry me, but she said no. I asked her all the time, but the answer was always the same.”
“You think that was because she didn’t love you?”
“No. It had to do with Tommy,” Minas said. “Tommy’s father was alive, and she didn’t want her boy to feel his loss with our marriage.”
It was time for Minas to leave.
“Have I neglected you, Eric?”
In his mind Eric saw his father rising up and walking toward the door. He was supposed to be leaving, but he was not.