Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [95]
I was rattled by the word choice in this context. All these years, I have harbored dark, middle-of-the-night fears that I was the unwanted surprise child. But my mother was unmarried and pregnant in 1972, just a few months short of Roe v. Wade. If she’d been able, would she have made the capital-C Choice not to have Bethany? Would she have married my dad at all?
“You say that you didn’t have as many choices back when you were my age,” I said. “Maybe that was a positive thing. I feel completely paralyzed by all the possibilities.”
I’m not crazy for feeling this way, you know. I’ve read several studies for Think suggesting that more choices make people less happy. Why? Because there will always be more opportunities passed up than taken up. Ergo, as our options expand, so do our desires—and unmet desires in particular. And didn’t we establish in Buddhism 101 that desiring begets suffering?
And yet, even with science and religion on my side, I was fully aware of how self-centered I sounded. But I was not sufficiently ashamed to shut up.
“Should I say yes to Marcus and move to Princeton? Should I say yes and stay in New York and do the long-distance thing until he graduates? Should I say no but move to Princeton to be with him, anyway? Or say no, stay in New York, and try the long-distance thing again? Say no, stay in New York, and not try the long-distance thing again? Or should I just leave New York altogether and get a job as a waitress in, I don’t know, London?”
“London?” my mom asked. “Why London?” I noticed then that her hairline was damp around the temples, and that her complexion was pinker than it had been before.
“Why not London? Why not Lisbon? Or Lincoln, Nebraska? That’s my point! By choosing one option, I’m closing myself off to all the others that might be even better. I’m afraid of making the wrong decision. I’m afraid that the mistakes I make now in my twenties will lead to decades of regret.”
I paused before asking, “How did you know you made the right decision at the time?”
Note the switch from “choice” to “decision.”
“I didn’t!”
She punctuated her point by punching the air-conditioner button.
I wanted her to elaborate here and say something inspiring, something about taking a huge leap of faith and never looking back, about how growing up means caring about and committing to something greater than oneself, and about how much she values our family, which is why, despite Bethany’s Signs, she has no intention of ever leaving it. I wanted her to rescind her declaration of neutrality and provide some hard-earned maternal wisdom regarding the specific decisions I have to make. That would have been a nice and comforting conclusion to this unsettling journey home.
But it didn’t work out that way.
“I’m overheating here,” she panted, craning her neck toward the rush of cold air coming out the vents. “I have to stop at this WaWa and get a bottle of water. Get yourself a cup of coffee. It’s the best in town….”
My mouth dropped open. “What?! You don’t buy your coffee at the Wally D’s/Papa D’s right up the road?!”
My mom gasped and clasped both hands to her mouth: busted.
“To tell you the truth,” I said, “I always thought the coffee at Wally D’s/Papa D’s tasted like ass.”
I had said this in the hope of providing some much-needed levity. It worked. She laughed.
“I wouldn’t have put it in the same way,” she whispered, “but I agree.”
As she rolled into the WaWa parking lot, I said, “I won’t tell Bethany if you won’t.”
She extended her hand, and we shook on it. “It’ll be our little secret,” she said conspiratorially. “And while we’re on the subject of secrets, it would be best if you didn’t tell Bethany that you know she was conceived out of wedlock….”
“It’s a touchy subject for her,” I said, repeating my dad’s words. “Best left untouched.”
“Exactly!” my mother said brightly.
And as we stepped around bent cigarette butts, shriveled straw wrappers, and cast-away scratch ’n’ lose games in the parking lot, I felt strangely unburdened, if still indecisive. Unless my mother suddenly confirmed the