Sari Wilson

Stories

Patriotic Dead (cont'd)

"Are you okay?" Beihl says now.

"I'm pregnant, Biehl."

"No shit," he says. He hugs her. He smells of cigarettes, sweat, and some spice. Lemongrass. It triggers a memory: Biehl's head tilted back, moaning, as smoke blocks the window view.

She moves out of his embrace, choking back tears.

"Is the guy—?"

She thinks of the man with the grey hair. She thinks of him saying "I'm sorry." She laughs.

She hasn't seen him again since that night. She thought of calling him but realized she didn't know his number. Or his address. Twice, she had gone back to the same spot in the park, to the place the girl had gotten hit, and waited many hours. When evening came and she saw the curt smile of a moon appear over the trees on the West Side, she'd turned and walked South back to her neighborhood. Both times, she'd walked all the way home, searching the faces of those she passed. Still, he hadn't appeared. "No," she says. "He's not."

A wave of nausea passes through her. "What am I going to do?"

"There's always the Art Students' League."

"I'm not eighteen anymore."

"Well," he says, fondling the head of a paintbrush. He wants to get back to work. "You do other things, don't you?"

Other things? Proofreading—though it'd been years. How little the artists she works for know of her life. At Planned Parenthood, an earnest young counselor treats her like one of the teenagers she sees all day. Noting Cara's age, that she is single, and supports herself as a freelance artists' model, the counselor warns her to be prepared for the inevitable self-blame. She hands Cara a recycled-looking pamphlet titled "What To Expect From Your D&C."

Cara walks southeast to the subway. It's late October, and chilly. She pulls her leather jacket tightly around her. At the corner of Broome and Grand, she stops at a garbage can and retches up her late lunch: a hardboiled egg and macrobiotic seaweed salad. Her throat burns from the bile. People sidle by, casting the quickest glances they can afford; she clings to the rim of the can and watches a sparrow hop along the gutter. The tiny bird moves its head around but is careful not to look directly at her.

Prefer truth to everything. What the gray-haired man had said.

When she tells her mother, her mother simply says, "Oh, Cora." But she hears new life in her mother's voice. She is thinking that this means Cara will come home. Everyone knows Cara has lived in New York. This should be enough to protect them—her, her mother, the child. Is her mother right? Will she retreat to her hometown when the baby comes? Will she work at the flower shop? The supermarket photo counter? Will she stay on the top floor of the ripe-smelling Prospect Street place? Will she tell stories of her years in New York around dinner tables, when people are sated, melancholy, thinking of what could have been?

"Crap," she says now. The wind tears against her as she walks the rest of the way to the station. She is now a woman who wants a baby. That is the truth.

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© 2009 Sari Wilson