Family Ties (21 page)

Ted took out their old Monopoly board then, and the four young people played until two A.M., and Annie went to bed long before they were finished. But it was easy to see that the evening had been a success. And Paul had fit in too. Annie liked him. And she liked Tom too. And whatever happened, or didn’t, she felt like they could be friends.

Paul and Ted left the apartment after the Monopoly game. Liz decided to spend the night with Kate and Annie, and the two sisters wound up talking in Kate’s bedroom until nearly three. Liz told her what had happened with Jean-Louis. Liz wasn’t too upset, although she admitted she was disappointed in him, and herself: with Jean-Louis for cheating and lying to her, and with herself for picking another loser. She swore she’d never do it again, and Kate hoped for her sake that it was true.

Ted and Paul shared a cab when they left Annie’s, and Paul dropped Ted off at his apartment. It was too late to call Pattie, and he didn’t want to stay there anyway. He had enjoyed the evening with his family and their friends. And he liked sleeping in his own bed for a change. He was sound asleep when Pattie called him the next morning, and it took him a few minutes to wake up and make sense.

“Where were you last night?” She sounded frantic and hurt. “I was worried about you all night.”

“I was with my aunt and sisters and my sister’s boyfriend. We played charades and Monopoly, and it got late,” he said sleepily.

“You could have called.”

“I didn’t want to wake you up.” And besides, he had been having fun and didn’t want to call her.

“I need to see you right away,” she said in a quiet voice.

“Is something wrong?”

She refused to discuss it on the phone, and he said he could be there in about an hour after he got dressed. It wasn’t an emergency, and the kids weren’t hurt. He had breakfast with one of his roommates before he left, and he got to Pattie’s apartment two hours later. He saw that she looked tense and pale. She looked sick.

“What’s up?” He was expecting her to give him hell about the night before. She had a chip on her shoulder about his family and didn’t want him spending time with them. He expected to hear about that but not what she said. What she said next hit him harder than a punch in the solar plexus.

“I’m pregnant.” For a moment he only stared at her, and said not a word. He had no idea what to say. This was a first for him.

“Oh my God,” the words came out of him like a small gasp of air. He was going to ask her how that had happened, but he knew. He had tried to use a condom every time, but sometimes she wouldn’t let him. She said they irritated her, and it felt so much better without them. He had been such a fool. “Shit, Pattie. What are we going to do?” He knew what they had to do, but he had never been in this situation before. He had always been careful, and his ex-girlfriend had been extremely responsible, and on the pill. Pattie had told him right from the beginning that she wasn’t. But he had magically hoped that at her age she wouldn’t get pregnant as easily. Apparently that wasn’t true.

“What do you mean, what are we going to do? Have the baby, of course. Are you kidding? I’m not going to have an abortion at my age. We might never get another chance. Besides, this is our baby, our flesh and blood, the product of our love.” Pattie said it as though it were obvious and she expected him to agree with her.

“No, it’s not,” he said, sounding angry. “It’s a product of our being stupid and sloppy. I was careless, and so were you. That’s not love, Pattie, it’s lust.”

“Are you saying you don’t love me?” she said, clinging to him with tears in her eyes. “How can you say something like that to me? I’m carrying our child.”

“What about the morning-after pill?” he asked her. “I hear that really works.” He had heard about it from one of his roommates. He swore by it; he and his girlfriend had used it several times. You had to take it within seventy-two hours of unprotected sex. “How pregnant are you?” he asked.

“I’m three weeks late.” That meant she was five weeks pregnant.

“Why didn’t you say something before now?” He was beginning to think she had done it on purpose, and he felt trapped.

“I thought you’d be happy, Ted,” she said, bursting into tears. “We’d have wanted it sooner or later. What difference does it make if we do it now?”

“Are you kidding? I’m in law school. I have no money and no job. I live off what’s left of an insurance policy my parents left me, and it’s almost gone. My aunt helps me out. How do you think I’m going to support a child, or even take care of one? I’m years away from making a decent living, and you can hardly support the kids you have. What’s our life going to be like with a baby? What will your kids think? I can’t finish law school and support you and a kid. And we’re not even married. This is an accident. A mistake. This isn’t a baby. It’s a disaster. It’s a tragedy for both of us, and it would be for the kid. You
have
to have an abortion or give it up for adoption,” he said, his face right up against hers. “We have no other choice!”

“Those aren’t options,” she spat back at him. “We can get married. You can get a job. I’m not giving up our baby, and I’m warning you, if you try to make me, I’ll kill the baby and myself!”

“Stop threatening me!” he roared at her with the full measure of his fury and frustration. She was destroying his life. One stupid mistake was going to demolish everything he had struggled for and built. It wasn’t fair.

“I’m having this baby,” she said quietly, suddenly in total control. “You can do whatever you want, but I’m having our child.” He nodded at her. He had gotten the message loud and clear.

“I need to think,” he said just as quietly, and walked out. He slammed the door behind him and ran down the stairs into the cold air.

Upstairs, in the apartment, after he left, Pattie sat on the couch and smiled.

Chapter 16

N
obody heard from Ted for the next few days. He didn’t call Pattie or show up at her place. He didn’t take her calls or answer her texts. He never thanked Annie for dinner, which was unusual for him, and it worried her. She knew that he was in a delicate situation with an unstable woman, although she knew nothing of the pregnancy. But Annie didn’t want to hound him, so she waited to hear from him. And finally after three days of total silence, he called his sister Liz. She was surprised to hear his voice, and he sounded terrible. She knew instantly that something was seriously wrong.

“Can I see you for lunch?” he asked her in a hoarse croak. He had been hiding out in his apartment for three days and drinking too much.

“Sure,” Lizzie answered immediately.

He picked her up at her office at noon, and they went to a salad bar nearby. She picked at her lettuce without dressing, and Ted ate nothing at all. He told her about Pattie, that she was pregnant, and he didn’t know what to do.

“She won’t have an abortion, or give it up for adoption, and she says if I do anything other than congratulate her, she’ll kill herself and the baby. I don’t want a baby, Lizzie. I’m a child myself. Or I feel like one anyway. I’m not old enough to have kids. I was such a fucking fool,” he said, and his sister smiled ruefully.

“That seems to be the operative word. Can you reason with her at all?” He shook his head and looked dismal.

“She was threatening suicide even before she got pregnant. She said that if I ever leave her, she’d kill herself. Now she’ll kill herself and the baby.”

“She needs therapy. Badly. Teddy, she’s blackmailing you. That’s what this is. You can’t force her not to have the baby. And I guess you’d have to pay her some support for the baby. But she can’t force you to be with her and participate if that’s not what you want too.”

“I can’t just walk out on her. It’s my kid too. If she won’t get rid of it, then I have to be there and carry the load with her.”

“That’s not fair to you,” Liz said firmly. She hated what this woman was doing to her brother.

“I have a responsibility here. To both of them. Whether I like it or not.”

“Are you in love with her?” Liz was watching him closely, wondering what he’d say.

“I don’t know. She drives me insane. I get near her and my body goes nuts. She’s like a drug. I don’t know if that’s love.”

“It sounds like sex addiction to me. She probably did that to you on purpose to keep you hooked.”

“Well, I’m paying a hell of a price for it. A kid is forever. I can’t let her kill herself, Liz.”

“I don’t think she will. People who threaten usually don’t. She wants you to stick around.”

“I have no other choice.” He looked so innocent as he said it, and so sad.

“What are you going to tell Annie?” Lizzie wondered aloud.

“Nothing right now. She’d go crazy.”

“Maybe not. She has a cool head in a crisis. And she’ll figure it out sooner or later. You can’t hide a kid forever.”

“I’ll have to drop out of law school after this semester.” Liz hated to see him do that, and she knew how much it meant to him. It was his dream, and he had worked so hard for it till now.

“Don’t do anything yet. Besides, you never know, she could have a miscarriage. At her age, that’s a higher risk.”

“I hope I get that lucky.” He felt guilty as he said it, but he didn’t want a child. He was totally clear on that. “I haven’t talked to her since she told me.”

“She knows she’s got you by the throat.” It was an age-old way to catch a man, and she had. Lizzie hated her for it and wished there was something she could do to help her brother. But there was nothing anyone could do right now. Except give him moral support. The rest was in Pattie’s hands. And God’s.

Ted called Pattie that night. It was the first time he had spoken to her in three days. And all she did was sob when he called. He felt terrible and tried to comfort her on the phone, and she begged him to come over. He felt as though he had to, so he dressed and went over to her apartment. She was calm when he got there and very loving. She begged him to go to bed with her and just hold her, and then she started to arouse him. He didn’t want to make love to her, it seemed so wrong right now, given everything he was feeling. But as she held him and caressed him, she overcame his objections, and he wound up making love to her anyway. It was tender and sweet and passionate, and she clung to him afterward and talked about their baby. It made him want to cry.

They made love again, as they always did, and when Ted left the next morning, he felt beaten. Pattie had won. The baby had won. And he was the loser in all this. And that morning before he left, she asked him about getting married. He said he didn’t want to. She said it wasn’t fair to the baby to have it out of wedlock. She was a decent woman, and she’d been married when she had the others. All he could do was say he would think about it. He didn’t want her threatening suicide again. He didn’t have the strength to deal with it. And he was starting classes again that day. He could hardly think straight as he walked to the law school with his head down. He wanted a bolt of lightning to come down and kill him. It would have been so much simpler. The last thing he wanted was a baby. And Pattie called him incessantly between classes. She wanted constant reassurance. All he could think of, as he went to the library to work on his computer, was that it felt like someone had ripped his guts out and flushed his life down the toilet. She sent him an e-mail while he was at the library, and he promised to be there for dinner.

*  *  *

By the end of the week, Annie hadn’t heard from Ted or Tom Jefferson, either. Tom had promised to call her about dinner, and she never heard from him after his Sunday-night dinner with her family at the apartment. She wondered if it had unnerved him. His silence spoke volumes, and she didn’t want to pursue him.

It was another week later when he called her from Hong Kong and apologized for not calling sooner.

“I’m so sorry. I had no phone service or e-mail. I’ve been in a southern province of China for ten days. I just got to Hong Kong. They sent me on a story. It’s been a wild-goose chase.” She was so relieved to hear from him that she sounded ebullient on the phone.

“I thought we’d scared you off.”

“Don’t be silly. They sent me off the next morning, and I didn’t have time to call you. Sometimes my life gets a little crazy.” It was what had cost him his marriage. His ex-wife had wanted a full-time husband at home, and he was never going to be that person. He wanted Annie to know that now, right from the beginning, or even before anything started.

“Don’t worry, my life gets pretty crazy too. Although I don’t wind up in China or Hong Kong. When are you coming back?”

“Hopefully tomorrow or the next day. How about dinner on Saturday night?”

“I’d love it.” She told him then that she hadn’t heard from Ted since that dinner either, and she was worried about him.

“Maybe he’s having love troubles.”

“I suspect you’re right. And I think he just started classes. I just worry about that woman he’s involved with.” It was comforting to share her concerns with Tom.

“There’s nothing you can do about it,” Tom reminded her. “He has to work it out for himself.”

“I know. He’s such an innocent though. And I don’t trust that woman. She’s almost as old as I am.”

“It’ll be a good lesson for him,” Tom said calmly.

“If he survives it.”

“He will. We all do. We pay a price for our mistakes, and we learn the lessons. Sometimes at a high price. I knew I was marrying the wrong woman when I got married. I went through with it anyway, and it just got worse over time. At least you were spared that.”

“I’ve made my share of mistakes too,” Annie admitted. Maybe living like a nun was one of them. But she couldn’t have handled more than she had on her plate. Dealing with three kids at her age had been enough. And now she was comfortable with her monastic life.

“You look like you’ve done okay to me. That’s a great family you raised. Your sister would be proud of you.” It brought tears to her eyes when he said it.

He told her about China then, and the story he was covering. There was a new prime minister, and he had gone over to do an interview with him, about his foreign policies and a trade commission he was setting up. It struck her that Tom led a very grown-up life and was at the hub of world events. She was trying to get contractors to come in on time, and moving walls around to keep her clients happy. Her world was a lot smaller than his. But she loved what she did. It had given her great satisfaction for years. She had always secretly hoped that Kate would get interested in architecture too, and she could have formed a partnership with her in later years, but her artistic talents had found other avenues.