The Abortionist's Daughter (6 page)

“What, you think I’ll show the pictures to someone?”

“Uh,
yeah,
” said Megan. “Frankly.”

“They’d never leave my possession.”

“What about when your mom goes on the computer?”

“What do you think a password’s for? You don’t trust me,” he said.

“That’s right,” she said. “Not with a digital camera. God, what happens if someday I want to run for Congress?”

“Are you planning to run for Congress?”

“Who knows? Who
cares
? God, I’m sixteen. I don’t need photographs in cyberspace. You could lose them. You’re not the most organized person, you know.”

Bill thought about this. “Okay then,” he said, “we don’t ever download anything. You can delete everything yourself. No pictures, no files, nothing.”

“Then why do it at all?”

“Because it turns me on,” he said gruffly.

Megan eyed the camera warily, as though it were a loyal pet that would automatically have sided with Bill. Wanting to capitalize on her hesitation, Bill took a picture of his unmade bed, showed it to her on the screen, then told her to push the delete button. She pushed it. The picture disappeared.

She bet her mother had never done anything like this.

“This is
really
kinky,” she said, unbuttoning her jeans.

“We’re consenting adults.”

“Not adults,” she pointed out.

“Lie down,” he told her. “Not there. Over here. Good. Oh,” he breathed. “Wow.”

He adjusted the shutters so that slivers of light fell across her hips. She turned her head away from him. She could feel the hairs rise on her lower back, and for a brief moment she imagined the photograph as it might appear if printed: her skin pale below her bikini line, the downy blond hair, the mole just south of her navel, shaped like California.

“Turn,” he said. “Good. Now don’t move.”

That night he took sixty-five pictures, all of Megan in various stages of undress. After the first dozen or so clicks, she found herself able to look straight into the lens. She turned herself in ways that she thought might be suggestive, like kneeling with her back to the camera and looking over her shoulder. She sat cross-legged. When she told Bill it was her turn with the camera, he shyly agreed, but it wasn’t much fun. His hard-on just looked like a lumpy little sausage on the screen.

“Now we’re finished,” she said. “Now I delete. You tell anybody about this and you’re dead meat, by the way.”

“You are so fucking sexy,” said Bill.

—————

In the meantime Megan had graduated from condoms to birth control pills, which she got at the local Planned Parenthood and only after they assured her they would not tell her mother. As a result of the Pill, her acne cleared up; as a result of her acne clearing up, her grades went up and her running times went down and her sleep habits stabilized. She and Diana began fighting less and less—although to say that they were “getting along” would be an exaggeration. Megan never volunteered anything, and still gave vague, noncommittal answers when Diana probed. “Are you and Bill having intercourse?” Diana might ask, to which Megan would reply, “Mom, I know how to take care of myself,
if and when
I decide to have sex.” (It wasn’t a lie.) And Diana, who if Megan were a patient rather than a daughter would have asked the question again and again, directly, until she got a definitive answer, let the matter go. Theirs was a fragile peace.

One summer night Bill handed her a small box that he had wrapped in childish dinosaur paper. Megan, who loved dangly earrings, suppressed her excitement. But when she opened the box and lifted the cotton batting, she found two small green pills.

“Where’d you get these?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Bill. “Are you interested?”

“I don’t know,” said Megan. Up until now she’d only smoked a little pot, which merely made her hungry and thus resulted in severe sugar hangovers the next morning. She’d heard about ecstasy mostly from word of mouth: how it made you fall in love with the entire world, how it could make you so thirsty you could drown yourself.

Like anyone her age, she was curious. “Have you done this before?”

“I have.” Bill spoke very thoughtfully, as though someone had just asked him if he’d ever considered the meaning of life. “It’s a nice, friendly drug.”

“How do you feel the next day?”

“Perfect.”

Megan thought for a moment. “Okay,” she said.

And so that night they took the pills. Megan felt good, but not as good as she’d expected to feel, after all she’d heard. They listened to music in Megan’s room, went out for some food, and ended up at Bill’s house, watching old videos of Bill as a toddler. Megan thought the first five minutes were cute but soon grew bored. It was a hot night, and she went outside to his backyard for some air. Crickets chirped loudly, and white hydrangeas bloomed like soft luminescent faces at the yard’s edge. Next door, in the neighbors’ backyard, there was a swimming pool. Moonlight bounced off the surface. The house was dark.

She went back inside and found Bill fumbling with his camera. “Where are your neighbors?” she asked.

“Up in Steamboat,” he replied. “Let’s play with the camera again.”

“Oh, that is getting so cheesy,” sighed Megan. “I’ve got a better idea.” She went outside and kicked off her flip-flops and ran through the dry grass to the side of the pool. Quickly she pulled off her tank top and stepped out of her shorts. Then, after swishing her foot through the water, she slipped quietly into the pool.

“Come on,” she sang in a low voice, sculling in the middle.

But Bill, for whatever reason, couldn’t be persuaded. He went and got a blanket from his house and came back and spread it on a patch of grass near the hydrangeas and sat down and waited. After a while she hoisted herself out of the pool and ran naked and laughing across the lawn to the blanket.

“Oh, put that thing away, Bill,” she said, collapsing beside him.

Bill ran his fingertips up and down her thighs. She lay back and shivered in the night air.

“No,” he said. “Sit up.”

“Oh, Bill,” she sighed. “You’ve really gotten kind of obsessed, you know.”

Bill knelt on the grass, about three feet away from her. She sat up on her elbows. Her hair was wet, and she leaned back and pointed her toes. Suddenly a star streaked across the sky. Then another, and another. Bill took a picture.

“It’s too dark, you know,” she told him.

Bill scrambled to a new angle. Suddenly Megan felt very tired. She imagined herself on a beach by a turquoise sea, and lifted her head to the warm tropical sun. Then she lay back down, and stretched her hands above her head, and turned her head to one side. Someone would bring her a piña colada. Wild parrots would squawk. Dark men would walk the beach, offering rainbow hammocks.

She was sailing across the equator when Bill lay down beside her.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.

She heard herself murmur something about the pictures.

“Trust me,” he whispered.

Or so she would later recall.

—————

During junior year things were on again, off again with Bill. He had a jealous streak that both irritated and flattered her, but in the end he would come around with flowers and tears and maybe a hit of ecstasy or two, and they would reconcile. By the fall of her senior year, though, Megan was looking for change. Harshly critical of herself for devoting so much time and energy to a boy, she threw herself into college applications. Her dream was to get as far away from town as possible—Princeton, to begin with, and then points east: France, Italy, Budapest, Moscow. The only thing wrong with this plan was that her parents approved of it.

That fall she served as editor in chief of the school newspaper, under the tutelage of a young language arts teacher named Michael Malone. Often they worked late together in the small room on the third floor, subsisting on PowerBars and Cokes. One evening he suggested that they get a latte.

It was a warm evening in late October, and they sat at an outside table at a nearby espresso vendor. Mr. Malone rolled up his sleeves and leaned back and crossed his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. He was contemplating something important, Megan assumed, but then, out of the blue, he said her name.

Startled, Megan said, “What?”

Mr. Malone smiled. “Megan Thompson,” he said again. “What do you plan to do with your life, Megan Thompson?”

The question caught Megan off guard. She knew where she wanted to go, but not what she wanted to do.

“Medicine, law?” he asked. “Journalism, business?”

“Well,” Megan began. “Well, I don’t know.”

Mr. Malone chuckled at this. Although still in his twenties, his face had craggy lines when he smiled. A tuft of dark hair sprouted from the collar of his denim shirt.

Megan didn’t like it when people chuckled at her. “How about you?” she asked. “What do you plan to do with
your
life?”

He tipped his head back and laughed loudly. “Touché,” he said.

Megan relaxed. She was about to tell him she wasn’t looking much further than acceptance letters at the moment, when Bill happened to walk by with a group of friends. He almost didn’t notice them, but when he did, he executed an exaggerated about-face.

“What’s this?” he exclaimed. “Student and teacher having coffee together? Just kidding!” he laughed. “Like it matters these days. Hey,” he said to Megan, “I’ll see you tonight?”

“I don’t know,” said Megan. “We’re under deadline.”

“Sounds sexy,” said Bill. “Come over afterward. In case you’re wondering,” he told Mr. Malone, “we’ve been going out for two years, you know.”

Michael Malone held up his hands. “Wasn’t wondering,” he said.

Bill excused himself—he backed away, coyly leveling his index fingers at Megan, like pistols—and Megan and Michael Malone returned to the high school, where they did, in fact, work through the dinner hour. The room was cramped, with two desks pushed together, and because he had grown suddenly quiet, Megan wondered if he was angry with her for something. The tension continued to mount until Michael Malone finally stood up to get something from the file cabinet (just behind Megan’s chair); softly he traced a line across the nape of her neck before opening the file drawer.

“You’re making me nervous, Megan,” he said quietly.

Megan didn’t need much more than that. The impetus was not her parents, as it was when she first slept with Bill; it was Bill himself, who needed to be told, if not in words, that he could stake no claim on her. As Mr. Malone closed the drawer, she set her pencil down and lifted her hand, and one thing led to another and they didn’t bother turning out the light or locking the door or even making their way out from between the desk and the file cabinet onto a cleaner part of the carpet.

“I want to feel your knees shake,” he whispered, just before entering her.

It was a one-time thing; what would later amaze Megan was the ease with which they continued on in their assigned roles: Michael Malone as adviser, Megan as editor. This must be how grown-ups manage it, she thought, reflecting on television shows where everyone slept with everyone else. It’s not at all difficult. And the situation pleased her; it proved something to her, although just what, she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She knew it had a lot to do with Bill, though. She never told him about Mr. Malone, but she made a point of letting him grow suspicious, which made her feel at once very powerful and very, very Machiavellian in her young ways.

—————

But by the year’s end she forced herself to admit that things with her high school boyfriend were, in fact, over. Just after midnight on New Year’s, Megan officially broke things off. Seated cross-legged on her bed, she explained that with college on the horizon, she didn’t want to be tied down anymore. (Bill had applied to Princeton as well, though he had no chance, as far as she could tell.) Regardless of what happened with Princeton, she said, they’d be better off making independent decisions. She did not expect him to take the news well; still, she was surprised by his response, which was silence.

“Say something,” she finally said.

Bill, sitting in the swivel chair by her desk, just looked at her blankly.

“Look, I’m sorry,” she went on. “I really care about you, but I think it’s time we went our separate ways. What do you think?” She hated herself for asking that—she didn’t care what he thought, frankly, but he was being so quiet and she just wanted to
get him to talk.

Finally he began swiveling back and forth. “What do I think? What do you
think
I think? You’re the only person I’ve ever loved, Megan.”

“There will be others,” she offered.

“Oh, that’s helpful.”

“We can still be friends.”
Lame.

Bill stood up. “If you think we can still be friends, then you, my dear, are seriously out of touch with reality. In fact, you are stupid in a way I never could have imagined.”

The words, pretentious as they were, stung. “I’m just trying to make things easy,” she said.

“Well, guess what, Megan,” he said, pronouncing it
Megg-Ann.
“You’re failing big time. Tell me something, though. Did you fuck that guy Malone?”

She told him no, she did not fuck that guy Malone.

“And I should believe you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t lie.”

Bill regarded her with what seemed to be liquid hate. “Well, good,” he said. “I’m glad to hear that. I wouldn’t want to think that I spent the last twenty-four months of my life fucking a liar.”

Now Megan stood up nervously and folded her arms across her chest. “Maybe you should leave now.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” he said, although he didn’t move. Awkwardly she leaned around him and pushed the door open, and he finally walked out. Downstairs in the front hallway, she asked him if he was going to be all right.
LamelameLAME.

Bill grinned. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “Just dandy. Happy New Year, Megan Thompson.” And with that he slung his jacket over his shoulder and opened the front door and walked down the rock path to the sidewalk.