After an eternity, Piper popped out of the dunes, holding the cup discreetly at her side, blocked from Garrett’s view. “Give me the stick,” she said. He handed it to her and she opened the back door of the car and moved inside. Garrett’s pulse was screaming along like a race car. He was too nervous to pray.
“How long does it say to wait?” she asked.
Garrett didn’t have to check the instructions; he had them memorized. “Three minutes, but no longer than ten.”
Piper checked her watch. Garrett lost all control. He tore open the bag of Doritos and stuffed a handful into his face. He felt like an ogre, a glutton, but he couldn’t help himself. Piper didn’t even seem to notice. Nearly half the bag was gone when Piper stepped from the car. Garrett paused in his eating; his lips burned with spicy salt. Piper emptied the contents of the cup behind the Rover’s back tire.
She smiled at him. The diamond stud in her nose caught the last rays of the setting sun. She waved the stick over him like it was a magic wand, changing his life forever.
“It’s positive,” she said.
The summer was fading fast. It got dark earlier, and there was a chill in the air at night. Garrett read the last two books on his summer reading list; he started running three miles each morning to get ready for soccer. Anything to lend normality to the very abnormal set of circumstances that bore down on him as surely as the impending autumn. Piper wanted to have the baby.
“But why?”
This was the question Garrett had asked over and again for the past three days. Garrett realized he should stop asking, because every time he asked, Piper came up with a more convincing answer. She valued the life inside her, she believed in a woman’s right to choose and her choice was to have the baby, she couldn’t bring herself to destroy a life that had been formed out of her love for Garrett.
Garrett countered with the predictable arguments-they had high school to finish, college to attend, years and years of life experience to acquire before either of them would be remotely capable of raising a child.
“Who said anything about raising a child?” Piper asked.
She wanted to have the child and put it up for adoption. There were thousands of good people in the world who were aching for a baby, she said.
“What about your senior year?” Garrett asked.
“What about it?” she said. “The baby isn’t due until April. I can accelerate my course work, take my exams early and graduate.”
“Yeah,” Garrett said. “But you’ll be pregnant.”
Piper stared at him like he was the stupidest person on earth. “That’s right,” she said.
Being pregnant empowered Piper. From the second she saw the positive result at Smith’s Point, she had transformed before Garrett’s eyes. She stopped being his girlfriend and became someone’s mother. She scared Garrett now, the way religious fanatics scared him. Only Piper’s religion was her body. Her body was changing, producing a hundred thousand new cells every hour, she said. She was desperate to see a doctor, to have an ultrasound and blood tests-but to do this, she needed access to her father’s insurance.
They had to tell their parents, she said and soon. There were only two weeks before Garrett returned to New York.
Garrett read and ran and moped, avoiding Beth and Winnie and Marcus. He moaned internally over his bad luck. He threw the remnants of his box of condoms into the trash. They were doubly useless-Piper didn’t want to have sex anymore. She didn’t want anything to harm the baby. She quit smoking for good, she said, and she began eating a lot of red meat and vegetables, although she was having a hard time keeping food down. Piper was going to have the baby and that was that. Garrett couldn’t believe he had no say in the matter. For the rest of his life, Garrett would have to live with the fact that his child was walking the earth.
Piper insisted on presenting a unified front. She wanted to tell their families together, in one large group. She stopped by one day at lunch, and Garrett entered the kitchen to find her and Beth sitting at the table planning an end-of-the-summer barbecue. Beth seemed energized by the idea. His mother was so predictable-she wanted to keep the last bits of summer alive by filling the house with people.
“You don’t mind that David is coming?” Garrett asked his mother later.
“I cleared the air with David,” Beth said. “I think he should come. He’s been an integral part of the summer.”
There was an understatement. Garrett felt just as he had at the beginning of the summer when his mother announced that she had invited the Ronans for dinner. He didn’t want them to come! If Beth hadn’t invited them in the first place, Garrett wouldn’t be in this gut-wrenching position. They might have had a peaceful summer.
Over the next few days, Garrett watched Beth pull out all the stops. She ordered clams and lobster tails from East Coast Fish, and beer from Cisco Brewery; she bought New York strip steaks; she bought French cheese and summer sausage and baguettes, and a jar of mustard that cost sixteen dollars; she made potato salad and coleslaw and corn pudding. She bought red and yellow tomatoes and made her own pesto. She made peach pie and homemade ice cream. She baked a chocolate cake. She decorated the house with zinnias and gladiolas and huge black-eyed Susans.
“I wish it could always be summer,” Beth said wistfully.
Garrett wondered what Beth would say when she heard the news. He was surprised to find he didn’t care what she thought- there was no way that she could be more distraught about Piper’s pregnancy than he was. He couldn’t wait to get back to New York. In less than a week, his feelings for Piper had changed. His love for her had evaporated, and in its place was fear of her and her plans.
On the evening of the barbecue, the Ronans arrived at six o’clock, the three of them unpiling from the front seat of David’s truck. Winnie and Marcus were already out on the deck drinking Coke and holding hands. Winnie was trying to convince Marcus to eat a clam. Garrett eyed them enviously. They hadn’t been stupid enough to let themselves get pregnant; they had made it through the summer intact. It wasn’t fair-except that Garrett knew they would both be supportive when they heard the news, far more supportive than Garrett would have been under the reverse circumstances. First Garrett shuddered at the idea of Winnie bearing Marcus’s child, then he shuddered at his own flawed character. He deserved a life of nasty surprises, he decided, and he steeled himself for what was to come.
The dinner went smoothly. David and Beth shared a big bottle of Whale’s Tale Ale, Winnie talked to Peyton about what it was like to start high school. Piper held on to Garrett’s hand and beamed benignly at everyone, in a fantastic imitation of the Virgin Mary. She said very little and ate even less-just a tomato and a tiny piece of steak. Beth noticed right away. Garrett wasn’t surprised; his mother always noticed when someone wasn’t eating.
“Are you okay, Piper?” Beth asked, as she began to clear the table. “You barely ate a thing and you’ve been so quiet. This isn’t like you.”
Piper squeezed Garrett’s hand under the table. Here it comes, he thought. All hell is about to break loose. He wished for a final time that God would step in and save him.
“Thank you for noticing, Mrs. Newton,” Piper said, in a loud, attention-seeking voice. “I didn’t eat very much because I feel sick.”
“I didn’t realize you were sick,” Beth said. “That’s too bad.”
“No, it’s good,” Piper said. “I feel sick because I’m pregnant.”
Winnie let out a shriek. Everyone else was silent. Garrett stared at his plate-a mixed pool of juices from the steak and tomatoes, a few kernels of corn, a smudge of pesto. After what he considered to be a reasonable amount of time for this bombshell to detonate in each diner’s mind, he glanced up. Someone was going to have to say something. One of the adults?Beth had retaken her seat without so much as a creak or a whisper, and now she sat with a stack of dirty plates in front of her, a totally blank look on her face, the way she must look, Garrett thought, when she first wakes up in the morning and she can’t quite place where she is or where she’s been. David was inspecting his glass of wine as though an insect or a small piece of cork were floating on the surface. He was so intent on this task that Garrett thought he hadn’t heard; however, a few seconds later, he was the first to speak. When he did, it wasn’t to Piper at all, but to Beth, across the table.