On the Edge of Dangerous Things (Dangerous Things Trilogy Book 1) (8 page)

Thirteen

In her apartment in Trenton, Hester had sat at her kitchen table until dark. Was there a way out of her dilemma? If she was pregnant again, she was screwed. She had no answers, no game plan, no one to talk to about the mess she might have gotten herself into for the second time in her life. Her mother wasn’t there to say, like she used to, “Hester, honey, you’ll get through this.” But that was before the abortion, before that night the infirmary nurse called her parents to inform them their daughter was bleeding badly and was being rushed to a hospital. The nurse gave them no further details, so they sped down the turnpike and were at Hester’s bedside in an hour.

When she finally recovered enough to talk, she confessed to her father she’d had an abortion. The word dumbfounded him. He stood before her, mute with anger, his penetrating eyes boring through her. Finally, he said coldly, “What you did is unforgivable. You murdered your own baby; you killed our grandchild. I cannot forgive you.”

Hester couldn’t look at him, so she looked to her mother, who kept her eyes on Hester’s father. He turned away from Hester and faced his wife and whispered harshly, “I told you naming her Hester was a bad idea. She’s turned out to be a worse sinner than the Hester in that stupid novel you always loved so much. I can’t for the life of me see why you insisted on naming our daughter after a character like that.”

“Honey, I didn’t,” Hester’s mother pleaded. “Hester means star, it’s a good…” But her father wasn’t listening to her mother; he was walking out of the room. Her mother touched Hester’s shoulder, but quickly withdrew her hand when her daughter burst into tears and cried, “Mom, what am I going to do?”

“I don’t know, Hester.” Her mother lowered her head, turned, and left. Not one word of solace for her desperate, sorry child.

Her father’s rejection, her mother’s silence, it was more than Hester could bear. The bond between them broken, Hester’s shame took on a frightful shape. She wanted to run away and hide from them and never see them again. Never. But she’d lost so much blood she was near death. Her parents took her home and cared for her. Her mother cried in front of Hester at the drop of a hat without explanation, and her father avoided being in the same room with her. Then, when her father knew she wouldn’t die, he asked her to leave. If she went back to college, it would be without any help from them. They weren’t going to pay for their daughter to go somewhere and fornicate and then murder the innocent child she’d conceived. They were good Catholics, they had raised her better than that and didn’t like what their eldest daughter had done, not one bit.

Eventually, her parents moved to California to be away from her and near her sister, the good daughter, the one who hadn’t aborted their first grandchild.

There was no one from work she could call either, because back in the 70’s if anyone at Sourland High found out she was pregnant out of wedlock, she’d lose her job. So she sat there on the verge of crying, staring at the light coming from the street lamp. It almost seemed saner to her to go into the bathroom and get a razor and slit her wrists than to sit there alone in the dark and sob. How she’d struggled all these years to accept her solitude, to hold back her desolation! And here she was on the verge of giving into it, of hurting herself. She whispered a Hail Mary and somehow found the nerve to call Al.

“Hey, Al, it’s me.”

“Hester, what do you want? It’s the middle of the night.”

“It’s around midnight.”

“Well, it’s late.” She could tell by the sound of his voice he wasn’t thrilled she’d called.

“I had to talk to you.”

“I just saw you eight hours ago at school. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Why?” Now he sounded completely annoyed.

“Because it’s important.”

“What could be so important that you didn’t tell me about it today and now you can’t wait till tomorrow to tell me? Huh, Hester, what could be that important?”

Al’s angry tone of voice bristled in Hester’s ear. She had been down this road before with Arty wanting her and then not wanting her. But she was older and she thought wiser now. And she was sure Al was the right man for her, and for this child. She had to make this work, but the anger rising up in her scared the hell out of her. She took a deep breath and tried to stay calm.

“What could be so important, Al, is that I missed my period.”

“You what?” His voice cracked.

“I missed my period is what.” She fought the impulse to be sarcastic, but she hated the way he sounded so…shocked. What did he have to be shocked about? Wasn’t he the one who put his penis into her vagina before he said one word about birth control? Oh, this was all going down the tubes. He was her vice principal, her boss, and knew as well as she did, it was unacceptable for teachers to have babies out of wedlock. It was board policy. There was no way out, Hester had to get him to marry her and deal with the fact that she really didn’t know him all that well. What she did know was that he was very into her physically, but not into talking to her and confiding in her. This hurt her, but she couldn’t let him know that. Everything had to go right this time; she would never have another abortion. Never.

“Al, I’m scared,” she said, and that was the truth.

He didn’t say anything.

“Did you hear me?” She knew it was a stupid question.

Again, silence. Now what? Hester was close to breaking down, and she didn’t want to in front of Al. She hung up.

For two weeks they didn’t speak, not even at work. Hester sat through a half a dozen stupid meetings with Al in charge, talking about plan books, final evaluations, graduation duties, parent conferences, the poor condition of the faculty lounge, the new procedures for fire drills next fall. It was torture. Then school was over and Hester was more of mess than she’d ever been. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. She unplugged her phone and locked it in the trunk of her car to stop herself from calling Al. One minute she thought
, he can go to hell. I can take care of myself, the baby too. I’ll go off somewhere where nobody knows me, start over, just the baby and me.

The next minute, though, Hester was mired in grief. How lonely she’d be for Al. How their baby would grow up like a weed without a good father. Her heart rapped wildly on the inside wall of her chest,
don’t give up, don’t give up
.

When she didn’t think she could make it through another night or day, Hester woke up with cramps and her sheets were wet with blood.

She was elated. She cleaned everything up, went to her car, and got the phone out of the trunk. She was about to call Al and tell him, everything’s okay, honey, I got my period, when her thinking began to go along a different line.

How long would he have gone without finding out how I was doing? Without trying to help me? If I really was pregnant, and he’d totally neglected me, I could’ve gotten him fired.

She hung the phone back on the kitchen wall and didn’t call Al. Each day that passed and the phone didn’t ring made Hester more resolute in her silence and madder at herself for falling for another loser, another man who knew how to chew women up and spit them out.

Then on the last day of June, Hester heard a knock on her door. She opened it. Al, who was entirely too dressed up for the hot summer morning, didn’t smile.

“I’ve been trying to call you.”

Hester thought,
what an effing lie
, but for some insane reason said, “Oh really, well, my phone must be broken.”

“There’s something I want to ask you. May I come in?”

She stepped back and let him pass. He smelled of lime scented aftershave and perspiration.

“Hester, how are you feeling? How’s everything going?”

She knew what he meant by “everything.” It ticked her off, him being all ambiguous, not having the balls to utter the word, pregnancy. He might as well have said, how’s the weather? She looked him in the eye and said, “Great. Everything is just great.”

She sounded annoyed on purpose. She wanted him to squirm, to be ashamed of himself for neglecting her. She looked at him long and hard, and started to go soft inside. His skin was golden and moist, like he’d just come off the beach. His dark brown eyes peered directly into hers. The slight cleft in his chin looked deeper, his lips fuller, more inviting than ever. She watched them move and listened in disbelief to the words they formed. 

“Hester, things could work out between us. We have an attraction to each other, and I’m sure we can build on that.”

“Al, what exactly are you saying?”

He glanced down at the floor then back up into her eyes. “I’ll be a good father to our baby. I want our baby to be legitimate.”

Legitimate
…the word made Hester want to keel over with joy.

Al took a breath and continued, “This summer. As soon as possible. Will you marry me?”

Alexander Murphy wanted to be a good father to their baby, to make everything legitimate, to marry her! She turned away. Wringing her hands, she prayed for guidance. She wanted to marry Al more than anything. She didn’t know what to say since there really wasn’t a baby anymore. If she told him that, he’d leave, and she’d never have this chance again. Nasty thoughts popped into her head.
He didn’t say he loves me. Didn’t say a goddamn thing about how he feels. It’s damage control. He’s only looking out for himself.

But that was as far as Hester’s negative thinking went. She turned and faced him. She’d tell him the truth. She’d gotten her period.

But he was staring at her intently. His face was flushed. She was so attracted to him, to his beautiful face, his strong, beautiful body. In his eyes she could see how vulnerable he was. At this moment he was more like her than any man she’d ever met.

The word leapt from her heart to her lips. She spat the single syllable out more forcefully than she intended, “Yes.” It hung in the silent air between them before fluttering away like a wounded moth.

Nothing happened for several minutes. Then Al stepped forward and kissed her. His lips softly touched hers. How sweet they tasted. She wanted this man. She did not want to be alone, and lonely, again.

Al made short order of getting Hester’s clothes off. When she was naked, he held her by the waist at arm’s length in front of him. His eyes took her in. “I love your body, your breasts.” He moved his hands to her breasts, and he gripped them like they were two balloons he was trying to pop. Then he let go and stripped off his clothes and pushed Hester not-too-gently down on the sofa. He was on top of her, in her, his hands beneath her buttocks raising her up and into just the right spot. Hester whispered, “Yes, yes, yes,” as she felt Al about to come. But as soon as it was over, she was disgusted with herself. She wasn’t going to lie to this man for another minute. “Al, I have to tell you the…”

“Shush,” he whispered, “Hester Randall, we’re getting married right away. No arguments.” He was still on top of her, and he pressed his forehead into hers in such an intimate and sincere way, she couldn’t ruin it.

Al got off the couch, picked his suit pants up, and pulled a small black box from one of the pockets. He was naked, his penis still erect. He handed Hester the box. In it was a thin gold band with a diamond so small it was hard to see. Hester didn’t want to be petty about it, but as elated as she was about marrying Al, this token of his intentions sorely disappointed her. Nevertheless, she put the ring on her finger, which made it look even smaller.

Almost immediately, Hester, uncharacteristically, thought a rather selfish thought,
what if this pathetic little ring gets lost before the wedding? Al will have to take me shopping, and in front of the sales person and me, he’ll have to buy a ring that is much more suitable for the wife of the vice principal of Sourland High School.

The problem of the too-small ring, along with the other larger problem of the lie, Hester solved two weeks later with another stroke-of-genius lie—an absolutely necessary one, Hester told herself.

After Al and she booked the banquet hall at the country club with a sizeable non-refundable deposit, mailed the invitations, took her dress to the seamstress, and rented a large apartment near the high school, she called him up at school to tell him the bad news.

She was crying genuine tears because it was truly tormenting her to have such a falsehood between them.

“I’m so upset, Al. It started with cramps and I just started bleeding. It got bad, and, Al, I passed the fetus.”

“What do you mean, you ‘passed the fetus’?”

“Into the toilet. Our baby went into the toilet.”

“Hester, call an ambulance!”

“No, Al, I can’t. It was just a blob,” she told him in a voice wracked with what was true sorrow because she was thinking of her baby that wound up in the garbage can, “a huge blob of nothing. I stopped bleeding right away after I passed it. It was awful, though, and I felt so bad, so I reached into the toilet to touch it, and…Al, my ring slipped off my finger. I tried to get it, but I couldn’t find it, and it was making me sick feeling around in all of that blood. Al, I’m so sorry, I just flushed everything down.”