Love Invents Us - Amy Bloom [28]
I tried. We tried. We compromised, we had intercourse with every other body part, we made deals with God as each other’s juices ran down our chins, and we invited disaster every way we could, short of formally announcing that having acted like grown-ups, having done right, we were now entitled, goddammit, to have some big-time fun. On the twentieth day, Huddie and I cut study hall and went to his house. On his narrow bed, with the raw plywood headboard banging steadily into the faded yellow wallpaper, with me murmuring, “No, no, no” and clutching his hard wet back to me, pulling him right through me, until it amazed me to see any part of him still outside my skin, Huddie and I stopped trying to be grown up. After forty-five minutes, we melted down, panting and numb like long-distance runners.
There was no time to shower, which didn’t bother us. We had never taken a shower together. Kids have nowhere to fuck and nowhere to shower. Only adults, cheating and careful, clean up afterwards. We jumped wet and proud into our jeans, and we left his room thick with our scent of damp, salty fur, two puppies playing in a marsh, a smell that dripped from Huddie onto me and the sheet beneath us and seeped back into our skins. Liquid as hot and thick as my own blood ran down my legs for the rest of the day, and I smiled every time I sat down and felt the rough seam of my jeans cut into me. You would have had to shoot us to keep us apart.
By the weekend I knew I was pregnant. I remembered reading about girls my age who delivered and didn’t know they were pregnant until they went into labor. Did their parents really believe that? That these girls felt their breasts change into tender, painful eggs, hot as a fever, felt their bellies slope into firm, enveloping tents around tiny insistent strangers, threw up at the smell of spinach or bacon or coffee, and didn’t know? I knew.
I didn’t want to worry Huddie and I didn’t want to lose him.
I called Max.
“I’m pregnant,” I said. “I think I’m pregnant.”
Max said nothing. His breath was in my ear, thick and smoky; I heard him swallowing.
“Why don’t we get you a test first? Just to make sure.” I heard the flick of his lighter. “Don’t worry, baby girl.” He didn’t say, It’s not my baby, although I knew he knew it wasn’t.
“Okay. Rachel told me she had a test at Planned Parenthood.”
“Who was the boy?” Max had never liked Rachel, and after I told her just a little about what went on, not mentioning the vibrator or the way he put me in the chair naked and just stared at me, she hated him. When we saw him in town, she’d glare at him and mutter, and once she scraped his car with her keys. “Huddie’s so cute,” she said. “He’s disgusting, Elizabeth. It’s sick. We should kill him.”
“Zvi Carnofsky. Anyway, she wasn’t.”
“Fine. Anyway, I didn’t mean Carnofsky. If you don’t want to go to Planned Parenthood, go see a friend of mine. Hilda Ringer. She’s a very good doctor, a lovely woman.”
I didn’t say anything. I’d never made my own doctor’s appointment.
“Do you want me to call for you?”
“No, I can do it. What do I say? Do I say I’m pregnant?”
“No, you ask to see Dr. Ringer and you say you want a pregnancy test and that Mr. Stone suggested you call. I’ll take care of the bill.”
“Will you come with me?” He wouldn’t. People would wonder why he was there with me, and it would cause trouble.
“I don’t think so, baby girl. I think that would be pretty conspicuous. You go and I’ll pick you up afterwards. We can get a bite to eat and wait for the results.”
“Never mind. I’ll go with Rache. I’ll go with someone. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. I won’t do anything conspicuous.” I slammed down the phone. I was furious until I remembered it wasn’t his baby.
I wasn’t happy that I had to wait three more weeks for the abortion, but the counselor at Planned Parenthood told me what I wanted to hear and held my hand when she promised me no pain, “just a little