Shadows and Lies (24 page)

“And you felt terribly guilty,” I said with dawning comprehension.

“Yes,” Barbara said. “And we were divorced six months later. He couldn’t forgive me, and we couldn’t work out our problems. He thought that since I had had an abortion, I didn’t deserve to be able to see my living children. I thought at the time that he was right.”

“But you did get to see us,” I pressed. “I remember seeing you a few times up till I was about seven. What was that all about?”

“A few months after our divorce, I think your father felt the strain of raising three girls by himself, so he started calling me and talking to me. He told me that he wanted to get back together, that he’d had time to think. So I started coming over, and we would have dinner all together, and I’d stay late, but I wouldn’t have sex with your father. I thought that that would just muddy things up. We had real issues to iron out.”

Nancy fiddled with her napkin, obviously uncomfortable about what she was about to tell me next. “One night, he –,”and she paused, gathering her courage, it seemed. “He pushed himself on me, and when I told him no, he got very angry with me.”

“Did he hit you?” I asked with growing horror.

“He slapped me,” she admitted. “I left. That was the last time I was ever alone with your father.”

“I see,” I said, trying to digest the fact that my father had slapped a woman who hadn’t wanted to have sex with him. It was shocking, it was unbelievable, and yet I couldn’t disbelieve it.

“He allowed me to see you girls once a month after that, and I did. I never missed a visit. He married Nancy a year later.” A tear slid down Barbara’s cheek. “She was very opposed to my continued presence in your girls’ life. Lindsay and Vanessa both sent me letters saying that they no longer wanted to see me. Lindsay told me later that Nancy made them write those letters. But it didn’t matter. I was cut off from all three of you.”

“Oh,” I said, my anger drained by these revelations. “And there was nothing you could do about this legally, because you had rescinded your custody rights,” I said, more to myself than to her.

“Yes,” she said, looking relieved that I understood.

But I didn’t. “When Lindsay had told you what was going on, she was 18. The custody order no longer applied to her. Why didn’t you do as a mother should and get her out of there?”

“I told you,” Barbara said firmly. “I thought she could protect you and Vanessa.”

“But you let her down,” I accused. “She came to you looking for a rescue and you told her to keep her chin up and look on the bright side of things.” I struggled then with tears of my own. “You abandoned her twice.”

“She was the oldest. She should have been strong,” Barbara pressed, stubbornly sticking to her story.

“She was being systematically abused and the one time she cries out for help she’s told to shut up and be strong,” I said in a choked voice. “Well, guess what? She did what she was told. She shut up and she tried to be strong. Only she’s built a wall around herself and hides behind it because she thinks that no one cares. Because her own mother didn’t care,” I bit out.

“Carrie,” Barbara said severely. “You have no right to judge me.”

“Yes I do,” I said gravely, getting up from the table and throwing my napkin down on my plate. “I have every right to judge you – not about the abortion or the affair, but definitely for what you did to Lindsay, and especially because you don’t even see your actions as being wrong. And they were.”

I pulled some money out of my wallet and let it flutter down onto the table. “There’s my half of the bill,” I said. I didn’t want to owe Barbara anything. “I’m not going to be able talk to you for a while. Don’t contact me.”

“But I’m your mother, Carrie. I’m trying to start over. I want a fresh start,” she implored me, standing also. This time she didn’t notice that people were staring at us.

My heart was frighteningly cold towards her. “I’m not the balm for your conscience, and I told you before: I don’t need a mother anymore.”

Dear Dad,

You are a user. As long as you are being taken care of, as long as you have hot meals and a warm bed with a willing body in it, then you are happy, but you never give anything in return. Barbara told me her side of everything, you see. I’ve been asking questions, and from what she describes, when you and she got a divorce, you never once looked at yourself in a mirror and asked, ‘What did I do that might have contributed to my wife’s having sought out the companionship of another man?’ You must have just absolved yourself of any responsibility, because you did to Nancy the same as you did to Barbara.

I understand that men are very different creatures than women. I know they communicate differently. Women are nurturers, men are fixers. But you never fixed anything, either physically or emotionally. You let everything in your family’s lives crumble down around them, but you never cared as long as you had your basic needs seen to.

And don’t think I’m swallowing everything that Barbara says willy-nilly. I’m comparing what she says to my own knowledge of you, to Lindsay and Vanessa’s memories and to bits and pieces of family gossip that I have heard over the years. And you know what? What I hear just makes me even angrier with you, to the point that it sickens me that you are my father. I am uncovering your secrets; I’m washing away the veneer of righteousness that you’ve held up in front of yourself all these years. You painted Barbara as the villain, calling her IT. You are as much a villain as she ever was, you are as much in the wrong, and I think you’re a goddamned hypocrite.

With Much Confusion,

Your Daughter

So much for going to Barbara for advice. I certainly wasn’t about to tell her that I was pregnant now. In my state of mind at that moment I didn’t think she deserved to know that she was going to have a grandchild. And she was going to have one. My own words kept echoing in my head: It had been Barbara’s responsibility to take care of us, to protect us, to live up to her responsibility owed to us as our parent.

I know there are a lot of people out there who aren’t going to agree with this, but at that moment, I knew that the embryo inside of me was alive. I was responsible for him or her. I had had sex, I was a parent-to-be now, and it was my responsibility to take care of and protect my child, whether it was from a horrible person or my own fears.

I knew I needed help though. I knew it in my bones that I could not go through pregnancy and birth and everything that came afterwards all by myself, with only Genny knowing and busy with her new life. Ideally Sean would one day be in the picture, but who knew when it would be safe enough for the FBI to let him out of whatever hole they’d stuck him in, and who knew if by then Sean would even remember me.

So after several days of fretting, I summoned up my courage and I decided to tell Judy first. After all, her first child had been born out of wedlock; she had to understand.

“I’m pregnant,” I told her at her house.

We were sitting by her sliding glass door, the sun streaming in warm and bright. It was mid-December and cold outside, so Judy fixed me a mug of hot chocolate before we sat down. Judy choked on her mug of chocolate as I uttered my news, but she managed to swallow past the stuff, and looked at me with such grave disappointment in her eyes.

My heart broke at that moment.

“You aren’t,” she said, with such dismay in her voice that my eyes grew unfocused with unshed tears of shame. “Please tell me you’re just joking.”

I couldn’t though, and she started to cry. “Oh, Carrie. I thought you were so much smarter than that. Didn’t I tell you what happened to me? Didn’t you listen?”

“I listened,” I whispered in a choked voice.

“Oh, God,” Judy said, putting her hands in her face. “Oh, God.” She looked at me, and then looked away.

“I’ve decided to keep it,” I said quietly, getting up and putting my still full mug in the sink.

Judy raised her head from her hands, her dark eyes following me as I walked. “My mother wouldn’t let me get an abortion,” she said, her voice shaking with emotion. “It was 1966. It was a sin and illegal, but Carrie, getting pregnant at 17 ruined my life! I ended up married to a boy who left us the day after I brought our baby home from the hospital! Don’t make any rash decisions. Just go home and we’ll both think about this, okay?”

I shook my head. “I’ve been thinking about this for eight weeks now,” I said quietly but firmly. “I’m not having an abortion. What I want is your support, and if you can give it, your help.”

Judy got up. “Carrie, I – I can’t look at you right now. I’m not angry with you, but I’m just so disappointed.” She pointed at her front door. “I think you should leave, okay? You need to just go and let me get used to this. And try to get your head on straight, okay?”

She wasn’t listening to me, and I didn’t say anything else. I couldn’t. I’d never been kicked out of Judy’s house before. My own fear of what my family would say came roaring to the forefront. If Judy, who was a mentally-balanced person and loved me like I was her own, couldn’t even look at me because she was so disappointed, how would Nancy take it?

I was so upset that I puked right there in Judy’s next door neighbor’s bushes. It didn’t make me feel any better, just disgusted with myself and with the taste in my mouth. But I had to get this done. I had to tell everybody today and get it over with. If I didn’t, I knew I’d probably get an ulcer, which would no doubt be bad for the baby.

For my baby.

My parent’s house looked horrible as usual and was in desperate need of a good scrubbing. It looked as if they’d lost their office space, so everything from their business, including all of Dad’s tools and other accumulated junk, was now strewn all over the inside and outside of the house. I had to pick a path up to the front door, and after Nancy let me in, I had to pick my way over to the couch and move some stuff out of the way so that I could sit down. Nancy sat down in her preferred chair, an ugly orange thing Dad had picked up off the curb a few years back.

She was watching reruns of Bonanza, which reminded me right away of Sean and his truck, which had been a Chevy Bonanza. Shaking my head to stop myself from going too far down that emotionally explosive train of thought, I took a deep breath and studied Nancy. I figured I couldn’t have picked a better time to talk to her about such a delicate topic. Old TV shows mellowed Nancy right down, probably because they reminded her of her childhood, before the stresses and mistakes of adulthood swallowed her soul whole.

“Where’s Dad?” I asked lightly.

“He’s out on a job,” Nancy replied casually. “Do you want a sandwich? It’s almost lunch time.”

I shook my head. Food was the last thing my stomach needed at that moment, though I was glad she made the offer. It meant that she was definitely in a good mood. “Maybe a little later,” I said nervously. “I have something I want to tell you first.”

Nancy hit the mute button on the TV’s remote control and gave me her whole attention. “What’s wrong?” she asked immediately.

I wanted to shout out, “I’m pregnant!” and then run away, but I couldn’t be so bold, not after the way Judy had reacted, so I said hesitantly, “I’ve made somewhat of a mistake – a big mistake – and there’s some consequences – some big consequences – the kind that I thought you should know about, since it will affect – not necessarily adversely – but it will affect you, and everyone else in the family.”

Nancy’s brows knit together and she leaned forward. “What kind of mistake?” she asked gravely.

I began to sweat under the intensity of her stare. I smiled nervously. “You’re going to be a grandmother!” I exclaimed, my voice cracking. I waited for an explosion.

“Where’s the father?” Nancy asked in a deadpan voice.

I was taken aback by her lack of reaction but answered anyways. “He’s gone. I don’t know where he is.”

Nancy drummed her fingers thoughtfully on the arm of her ugly chair. “You should track him down. He needs to take responsibility, you know.”

I opened my mouth to say something about the fact that I couldn’t do that, but Nancy cut me off. “Or did he leave knowing you were knocked up?” she asked bluntly.

“No,” I said. “He disappeared before I even knew.”

Nancy grunted a reply and then turned back to watch her television show at full volume.

I sat stunned for a few moments by her lack of reaction. It was definitely not a natural response. “Why aren’t you getting angry?” I asked, thoroughly confused. “Why aren’t you calling me a whore or a lesbian or something?”

Nancy was quiet for a while, as if weighing whether or not to tell me something. Then she dropped a bomb on me. “I was pregnant once too,” she said quietly.

My eyes just about bugged out of my head. “When? Before you married Dad?”

She shook her head, not taking her eyes off her show. “No. When you were about ten years old.”

I swallowed and felt like history was repeating itself. “Did you have an affair?” I asked, thinking of Barbara.

“No,” Nancy said vehemently. “It was your father’s. It was an accident, a mistake, the kind with big consequences,” she said, quoting me from earlier. “The kind that changes everybody’s lives forever.”

I shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t have a younger sibling,” I pointed out quietly.

Nancy’s hands, which lay on her lap, turned into fists. “I had an abortion before I was two months gone. Your father doesn’t know.”

My God, I thought. History had repeated itself.

“Why?” I asked in a hoarse whisper.

Nancy sighed and glanced in my direction. She gestured towards to the house around us. “Would you want to bring a child into this? I know I’m a bad mother. Your father isn’t a good parent either. We live in a dump, and we never have any money because your father throws it all away. I knew I shouldn’t have a child. I knew your father wouldn’t want to me have an abortion, either. So that’s why I’m not angry. That’s why I’m not calling you a whore, even though I’ve done so before. It obviously didn’t have the desired effect, since here you are.”

“Oh,” was all I could say to that. So she’d been calling me a whore in the hopes that I wouldn’t turn into one? That was classic Nancy for sure.