Chapter 7

The first question my mother asked seemed odd, somehow.

“Why isn’t Bob here with you?”

“Bob?” I asked, like an idiot.

“Yes, it seems like any man worth spitting on would have the decency to be with a woman when they tell her parents she’s pregnant with his child.”

“I didn’t tell him I was going to tell you,” I explained.

“So you two don’t communicate well.” My mother was unhappy, so she got in a few digs. That was her personality type. If she didn’t like something (or someone) she’d make scathing remarks about it and make it sound stupid or ridiculous. Her digs in this case were the primary reason I got out of my funk. It brought back memories of my teen years instantly and I went on the defensive.

“We communicate just fine!” I snapped. “You weren’t supposed to find out he was the father. I was going to tell you I didn’t want to marry the father and it was supposed to be a big mystery to you guys.”

“This was his plan?” Another dig.

“No, Mother,” I growled. “He doesn’t even know I’m over here telling you all this!”

“So you just abandoned him, rather than approach this like adults,” she dug.

I stood up.

“If all you’re going to do is pick at me and treat me like you did when I was in high school, I have better places to be,” I said. By now there were no tears left. I was in full combat mode. “Thank you for dinner. Maybe we can do this again in ten years or so.”

I figured I could get in a dig of my own. I wasn’t an expert at it, like she was, but you have to start somewhere.

“You’re not going anywhere,” she said. Her voice was calm, but I could see the strain on her face.

“Look,” I said, still standing. “I know you don’t want this. I know you’re disappointed. But this child isn’t going anywhere. I’m going to have it and raise it and Bob’s going to be right there with me when all that happens. This wasn’t an accident. I wanted to get pregnant and I had to convince him to do his part. Now that I am, though, he is completely dedicated to making this work.”

“Then why isn’t he here with you?” For the first time her voice showed the strain, too.

“You’re not listening to me, Mother. I already told you he doesn’t know I decided to tell you. He knows I’m going to tell you, sooner or later; he just doesn’t know it’s tonight. And I told you I didn’t intend to tell you who the father is. Why would he come to dinner with me for me to tell you something I don’t want you to know he was involved in?”

“Any imbecile could see you were besotted with him,” barked my mother. “I’ve known that for years!” She wrung her hands. I’d heard of this a hundred times, but never actually seen anyone wring their hands. It was kind of surreal. “I even suspected you two were up to no good. I just never thought it would come to this!” she moaned.

“No good?” For some reason I thought that was funny, but I didn’t laugh. It wasn’t that kind of funny. “You call this being up to no good?”

“Well? It’s not very fucking good, is it?” she barked.

“I think it’s the most fabulous thing that’s ever happened to me,” I said, calmly. “I think it’s very, very fucking good.” I moved toward the door.

“Wait!” she yelled. “Please don’t go.”

I turned around.

“What point is there to staying? All we’re doing is yelling at each other. That’s not doing either one of us any good. Why wallow in a protracted bloodletting? Maybe we can talk about it later.”

“Please stay,” groaned my mother. “I’m just flustered. We can talk about this. I just need a minute to think.”

“Of course you’re flustered,” I said. I still have no idea why I said that, but I followed it up with, “You do your thinking and we can talk about it later. I have to tell you, though, there’s not much to talk about. I want this baby. I’m not going to change my mind about that. I’m going to have it and love it and raise it.”

“I understand that part,” she said. “I just don’t understand it.”

She blinked as she realized what she’d just said.

“What I mean is I want to understand,” she said.

“I love him, Mama,” I sighed. “And he loves me, too. That part has been going on for years. I know nobody would approve of that, but I also know I’m never going to try to find some other man to love like that. And it isn’t his fault, either. He resisted for a long time. He kept trying to get me to find a man my own age, who wasn’t my uncle. I even tried that for a while. That’s what Martin was all about. But when Martin asked me to marry him I just knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with him. I loved him ... but not that way.”

“How do you know?” asked Mom. “Marriage is scary at first, but if love is there, then two people can make it work. I was terrified to marry your father, but we worked at it and made it succeed.”

“If I could marry Bob I’d do it in a heartbeat,” I said. “He feels the same way. While I was off at college he encouraged me to be with Martin, but he didn’t date other women. He didn’t date them because he loved me, and he didn’t want to be with other women. I didn’t think about that when all that was going on, but that’s how it was. He encouraged my relationship with Martin, but it ate him up. He sacrificed his own happiness in an effort to ensure mine. And the whole time I kept getting confused because I loved two men at the same time. It was only when one of them asked me to make that relationship permanent that I knew which one I wanted it to be permanent with.”

“So that’s why you went to work for him,” sighed Mom.

“Yes. It’s why I decided to be an architect. We thought that would be the excuse for working together and living together. We couldn’t get married, or live like normal people, but we could be in love. That was enough, then. But I wanted a family, too. Should I have gone on dates with strangers and let one of them impregnate me?”

“No,” came her response. It came very quickly and only then did she actually think about her response. “No,” she said again, more softly.

And that was the first inkling I had that I might not have driven my mother away from me forever.

I did stay there. And we did ... eventually ... have a more civil conversation.

It wasn’t smooth. It went in fits and starts, but after maybe half an hour she started asking the kinds of questions a normal mother asks about her daughter’s normal pregnancy.

She asked if I was getting prenatal care, and when I said I’d been doing that from the start, at her brother’s insistence, she asked me when my due date was.

Then she moaned and groaned that I should have told her sooner.

I reminded her that this was a conversation I hadn’t been avid to have.

“This isn’t so bad, is it?” she asked, sounding almost hurt. “I mean we’re having a good talk now, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” I sighed. “And I’m glad. I was afraid you’d just kick me out and never speak to me again.”

“Why? Just because you got pregnant?”

“Because I got pregnant out of wedlock,” I reminded her.

“Oh, that,” she sniffed. “Well, it would look better if you were married, but all manner of single young women are having babies these days.”

“I don’t care how it looks,” I said. “I’m just happy I get to do it.”

“Yes,” she said. “You’ve said that several times.”

“I just don’t want anybody to think I’m a damsel in distress,” I said. “I don’t need people fawning over me, telling me how much better it would be if I had a man to support me. I do have a man and he will support me. I just can’t tell the world who he is. It’s none of their business anyway.”

She was quiet for a while, and then looked at me, blinking.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” she started. Then it appeared she wasn’t going to tell me, because she didn’t go on.

“Tell me what?” I prodded.

“Do you remember your cousin Beth?”

“Aunt Shelley’s daughter?” I called the woman “Aunt” Shelley, but she wasn’t really my aunt. She was a cousin of some kind. At family reunions, though, the kids called every adult “Aunt” or “Uncle” because it was easier. You couldn’t call them by their first name, like “Mary,” “Curtis,” or the like, because they were adults. Calling someone “Second cousin twice removed Mary” was too cumbersome, and that assumed you could wrap your head around the actual relationship and remember all of them. So we just called every adult (other than Mom and Dad) an aunt or uncle. We called each other “Cousin” if a title was needed, but usually we just used first names, for that. Beth was four or five years older than me, but at reunions, that wasn’t a huge gap. I hadn’t seen her since I was maybe fifteen, but by then she was an adult and didn’t come to reunions. That wasn’t strange. Lots of young adults had other commitments when reunions were held.

“Shelley is your father’s second cousin,” Mom said. How she remembered all this was a mystery.

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said, trying to ward off a confusing geneological lesson. “What about her?”

Again, she hesitated, but then finally spoke. I could hear the emotional release in her voice. She wanted to say this. It was obviously difficult for her, but she wanted to do it. I realized why when she finished. She’d kept a secret for more than a decade and was finally able to tell someone about it.

“Beth had an incest baby,” she whispered. “She had a relationship with a first cousin on her mother’s side.”