I had just reached for a pillow. Then I paused. Looked at Pamela. “What?”
Pamela’s voice was softer now. “My period’s two weeks late.”
I think I stopped breathing. Elizabeth was staring.
“You think … you’re pregnant?” Liz asked.
“I … I don’t know.” Pamela swallowed.
I let go of the pillow and leaned back, studying her face. “But … but you said you were using condoms!” My heart was pounding.
“We were. Well, most of the time.”
I didn’t want to hear this. “Most of the time?”
“Well, except for a couple of times during rehearsals. I’d hardly had any time for Tim, and he was feeling left out.… But it was still five days from the middle of my period!”
“Five days!” I exclaimed. “But, Pamela, sometimes your period isn’t regular!”
She sucked in her breath and it sounded shaky. “Don’t make me feel worse,” she pleaded.
I wanted to grab her and shake her. I wanted to hug her. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.
“Maybe it’s just all the tension and everything from the musical,” Liz said quickly. “You have been under a lot of stress, Pamela. And all that strenuous dancing. My periods are off sometimes when I’m upset.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself,” Pamela said. “But … two weeks?”
I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She seemed so tiny all of a sudden, like a little girl. How could a little girl be having a little baby? It was as though we were back in sixth grade when I’d first met Pamela Jones, and she had blond hair so long she could sit on it. She could sing and dance and got to play Rosebud, the leading role, in the class play. All I got to be was a “bramble bush with branches thick,” and I was so jealous. I sure wasn’t jealous now.
“Have you said anything to Tim?” I asked.
“Not yet. He’s miserable enough with that cold. I don’t want to worry him about this.”
“You’re right,” I said. “You could start getting it at any time, and it would be all this worry for nothing.” But even I didn’t believe it.
“If … what if I am …?” She stopped as though she couldn’t even say the word. Her voice was even softer than before.
“Well, it won’t change anything between you and me and Liz, you know that. Gwen, either.”
“Don’t tell Gwen,” said Pamela.
“Why not?” I asked. “We’re not telling anybody, but if we did, why not Gwen?”
“Just because.” Pamela fidgeted with a hole in the knee of her jeans. “She’s so smart and …”
“But she’s had intercourse!” Elizabeth said. I always laugh when Liz says intercourse instead of sex. But it didn’t seem funny now.
“I don’t want Gwen to know because she’s too smart to get pregnant,” said Pamela.
“Stupidity and carelessness aren’t necessarily the same,” I told her. “But even if you are pregnant, and that’s a big ‘if,’ Pamela, it’s your story to tell, not ours.”
“Thanks,” said Pamela, and her voice was shaky again.
“Listen.” I studied her for a moment. “Why don’t you just buy a pregnancy test kit and …”
“No!” cried Pamela. “I’m not ready for that!”
“Let’s watch a movie,” said Liz.
We put in a DVD and moved to the couch, sitting side by side, Pamela between us. I don’t know if any of us really watched or what. All I could think about was Pamela, and I felt sick to my stomach.
For the next week I felt as though I wanted to call Pamela every fifteen minutes to see if her period had started yet. I thought about her when I was supposed to be studying for an exam. I worried about her when I should have been writing a feature story.
I e-mailed her about trivial things so that if she’d happened to have started her period and forgotten to tell me, she’d think of it then. Nothing.
At school Pamela went around with a drawn look on her face. She wasn’t throwing up. She didn’t say she was nauseated. She just looked thinner, was quieter at lunch, distracted when we went to Starbucks after school. Every once in a while she would laugh loudly at something somebody said, as though she were just tuning in occasionally and had to let us know. She even seemed more distant from Tim, I noticed, when they were together.
On Saturday she called.
“I told Tim last night,” she said.
“Told him that …?”
“That I’m over three weeks late. He wanted to have sex, and I just didn’t feel like it, so I … I told him.”
“What did he say, Pamela?”
“What could he say? All the right things, of course. That maybe it was just stress, but that if I was pregnant, he’d be here for me. But what does it really mean, Alice—‘I’ll be here for you’? For what, exactly? He can’t have the baby for me, can he?”
“He’s trying to be supportive, Pamela.” I didn’t even like to hear the word baby.
She was crying now. “I know. I could tell he was upset. Shocked, even. Oh, he kissed me and told me not to worry, that he loved me no matter what, but … we’re both scared. Why did this have to happen to us, Alice? Jill and Justin have been having sex forever, and she’s not pregnant!”
“Don’t you think it’s time to take a pregnancy test? Do you know how soon it would tell?” I asked.
There was a tremulous little sigh at the other end of the line. “I’m too scared to find out.”
“But if you’re not pregnant, Pamela, you could stop all this worrying and waiting!”
“Will you come with me to buy one? You and Liz?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said.
Ironic that we celebrated Mother’s Day that Sunday. Next year, maybe, I’d be sending a Happy Mother’s Day to a Friend card to Pamela, and I couldn’t bear to think about it.
I’d already bought a gift for Sylvia, though, and when Dad said we were going to take her to a buffet brunch at the Crowne Plaza, I tucked it in my bag and climbed into the backseat with Les.
It’s impossible to be serious and moody if Les isn’t. First of all, Sylvia still wasn’t “mom” to us, but here we were, celebrating Mother’s Day. And second, it felt weird to be sitting in the backseat with Lester, like young kids on an outing with their parents.
And suddenly Lester whined, “Are we there yet?”
Sylvia’s tinkling laughter filled the car, and I could see Dad’s grin in the rearview mirror. But before either of them could respond, Les said, “Alice is making faces at me, Dad!”
I jumped in with, “He started it!”
“She’s over on my side! Make her move, Dad!” Les continued.
“Huh-uh!” I croaked. “Here’s the line, and you’re way over where you’re not supposed to be!”
“One more word out of either of you, and it’s no dessert, and that’s final,” Dad said.
We were still laughing when we entered the restaurant.
I liked that we looked like a family, though. Liked that I was beginning to feel that Sylvia was family too. At the buffet table Sylvia asked for sour cream, then got distracted and walked on. When the server came back with the little container, he gave it to me and I liked that he said, “Would you give this to your mom?”
After the meal, when we were having coffee, I slipped a card across the table. “Happy Mama’s Day,” I said.
Sylvia gave me a surprised smile. “Well, thank you, Alice!” she said, and opened it. Inside was a gift certificate for one pet grooming session at Fur and Feathers for Annabelle: hair trimmed, coat brushed, claws filed, teeth brushed, ears cleaned—the works.
If Sylvia remembered the bitter words I’d spoken last November about her cat—our cat—she didn’t show it. She just gave me a full smile, and her eyes were warm and friendly. “This means a lot,” she said. And it did.
16
Tears
On Monday, two days before my birthday, Pamela, Liz, and I went to the CVS store after school
, moving woodenly down the aisle of sanitary products, condoms, lubricants, ointments, and finally—pregnancy test kits.
I didn’t want to be doing this! We should be looking at college catalogs! Summer sandals! At sunscreen and sunglasses! We should be planning parties and raft trips and bike rides and picnics, not thinking about baby clothes in nine months. Eight months!
But it was hard not to think about babies. The end of each aisle had a little bouquet of spring flowers on it. The gift wrap featured baby chicks and bunnies. Advertising signs placed here and there were done up in yellow, pink, and blue.
When we found the test kits, Pamela said, “Keep an eye out at each end of the row, will you? All I need is for someone from school to see me. Or for a neighbor to tell Dad.”
I moved to one end of the aisle and stared at remedies for yeast infections. Liz moved to tampons at the other end.
It took longer than we thought, because Pamela wanted to read the directions for each test kit before she finally chose one. We covered for her at the cash register, too, to make sure no one we knew was around. But when we got outside and I asked Pamela where she wanted to take the test, she said, “I’m not going to do it yet, because maybe I just didn’t ovulate this month, with all the tension. Maybe I’ve just skipped a period. I’ll wait one more week, and then I’ll do it.”
“Any morning sickness or anything?” I asked.
“No, just a little queasy sometimes, but I think that’s because I’m not sleeping very well.”
Isn’t that the same as nausea? I wondered, but I didn’t push it. We left her at the corner of her street, then Liz and I walked slowly home.
I thought of all the times we’d taken this same walk, on this same sidewalk, with no other worries than whether or not you were supposed to close your eyes when you kissed. When the future stretched endlessly before us—high school, college, on and on. And now, for one of us, maybe, this huge detour… .
Finally Liz said, “If, like we promised, we don’t tell anyone … and something happens to Pamela …”
“Don’t even think it!” I said.
By Tuesday morning I thought I was going to be sick. Scenes kept running through my head: Pamela telling her dad and Meredith; Tim facing his folks; the accusations, the tears, the lectures, the anger.… It wasn’t just Pamela and Tim’s lives that would be disrupted, but their families’ as well.
But maybe Pamela wasn’t pregnant! Maybe she was … maybe she wasn’t … maybe she was… .
“What’s with you?” Gwen asked Pam at lunch when she didn’t finish her turkey wrap. “You usually eat yours and bum a pickle off me too!”
Pamela faked a laugh. “Watching my weight,” she said.
“Yeah. Right, skinny gal. You don’t want that oatmeal cookie? I’ll take it.”
I changed the subject. “How’s Molly? Anyone check on her lately?”
“Looking good, as far as I can tell,” said Gwen. “Her mom said her blood tests definitely showed improvement. New combination of drugs, I guess.”
“Well, at least something’s going right for one of us,” Pamela said as the bell rang, and I saw Gwen studying her closely.
After school Liz and I sat out on the new screened porch behind our family room. The azalea bushes were in bloom, the grass was thick and green, the first bumblebee of the season was buzzing slowly around outside the screen, and a light breeze blew through from the southeast, hypnotically caressing our faces.
“Do you think … if she is pregnant … she’s eating okay?” Liz asked me. “Have you noticed if she drinks milk with lunch?”
I shook my head.
“I mean, is she supposed to be taking vitamins or anything?”
“You’re asking me?” I said.
We were quiet some more.
“Is it possible she’s already taken the test and just doesn’t want to tell us?” I said aloud. And then, answering my own question, “With Pamela, anything’s possible.”
“Maybe we should set up a doctor’s appointment and just take her there by force,” Liz said.
“Yeah. Right.”
“We could tell her there’s someone we want her to meet.”
“And then he tells her to climb up on the table and put her feet in the stirrups?” I turned my head suddenly and listened. “Was that the doorbell?”
I got up and went back through the family room, the kitchen, the hallway, and opened the front door. There was Pamela, holding the test kit.
“Are you alone?” she asked as I pulled her inside.
“Liz is here, that’s all,” I told her.
“I guess … I’m ready,” said Pamela.
I got Liz, and the three of us went upstairs. We sat together in my bedroom—Pamela and me on the bed, Liz on the desk chair.
“Do you have a paper cup?” Pamela asked.
I went to the bathroom and brought one back. Pamela went over the instructions again: “I’m supposed to pee in this cup, then put this dipstick in for five to ten seconds… .” She suddenly handed the instruction sheet to me. “I’m too nervous. You read it.”
“‘Immerse the dipstick in the collected urine for five to ten seconds,’” I read. “‘A minute or two later you will see “pregnant” or “not pregnant” on the stick.’”
“I’ll time it,” said Liz, looking at her watch.
For fifteen seconds or so Pamela just sat on the bed holding the cup. But finally she squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and went into the bathroom.
It seemed to be taking too long.
“Think we should go in there?” Liz asked.
Then we heard the door open and Pamela’s footsteps in the hall. She was holding the half cup of urine, and she carefully placed it on my desk, a tissue beside it. “I’ll do it in here,” she said. “I want you guys to be with me.”
She unwrapped the dipstick, then stuck it in the urine. “Count,” she said.
“One … two … three …,” Liz began, looking again at her watch. At the count of ten Pamela took out the stick and laid it on the tissue. We gathered around.
“How long did it say, Alice?” Pamela asked.
I looked at the instructions again. “A minute or two.”
I tried to remember when I had been this nervous, this uncomfortable, this terrified. We were staring at the dipstick as though it were some alien life-form that would suddenly start pulsating or breathing or beeping.
“It’s starting to show,” said Liz, and we all leaned forward as the letters became more visible.
And finally there it was. Pregnant, it read.
Pamela sat down on the bed again and cried.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the stick. Maybe we had just missed it. Maybe the not was yet to come. But it didn’t.
We sat down on either side of Pamela and let her cry. Babies were supposed to be happy occasions! How did this get so mixed up?
“H-he even said he’d marry m-me if it happened,” Pamela wept.
Liz couldn’t help herself. “But you guys are only seventeen!” she said.
Pamela violently shook her head. “I didn’t want it to be like this. I don’t want a guy marrying me because I’m pregnant. I’m not sure I even want to marry at all. I know I don’t want this baby. And yet …” Her face screwed up again. “It … it’s T-Tim’s!”
We just sat there and stroked her hand. Her back.
When the tears stopped a second time, Pamela said, “Sometimes tests are wrong, you know! This could be a false positive. Maybe I should go back and buy a kit that just shows a plus or a minus. Or changes color or something. I mean, shouldn’t you always get a second opinion?”
The doorbell rang and we all froze.
“It couldn’t be Dad or Sylvia,” I said. “Unless they lost their key.” I stood up and went to the window. “It must be Gwen! It’s her brother’s car.”
I was afraid that Pamela would tell me not to let her in, but Pamela just sat there on the bed like a wad of wet tissue, so I wen
t downstairs and opened the door.
Gwen’s good at reading faces. She just cocked her head and studied me. “I called Pamela’s and no one answered,” she said. “I called Liz’s and her mom said she was over here. So I decided to drive Bill’s car over and see what the heck is going on.”
“Pamela’s upstairs. Come on up,” I told her.
As Gwen followed behind, she asked, “Is this something I’m not supposed to know?”
“Yeah,” I said, and smiled a little over my shoulder. “Because you’re too perfect and too smart to ever let this happen to you. But I think Pamela’s accepting visitors now.”
Gwen still looked puzzled. But when she entered my bedroom, she took it all in—the opened test kit on the floor, the cup of urine on my desk, the dipstick. And Pamela, forlorn and tearstained on the bed.
“Oh, girl!” Gwen said, and put an arm around her.
And then, Gwen the Practical took over. She pulled up the desk chair and sat facing Pamela. “Okay, what’s the plan?” she asked.
“Go to a convent, what else?” Pamela said grimly.
“Have you told Tim?”
“Yes. He knows I’m late. But he doesn’t know this.”
“What about your dad? Have you said anything to him or Meredith?”
“They’d kill me.”
“Now listen, Pamela,” said Gwen, taking her hand and gripping it hard. “You’ve got choices, you know. You don’t have to decide anything right now. Got that? You don’t even have to decide anything this week. Promise me—promise me—you won’t do something stupid, like eat a whole box of Ex-Lax or jump off a roof or swallow a bottle of pills.”
“I’m too tired to do anything but sleep,” said Pamela.
“You will tell Tim, though, won’t you? He needs to know.”
“Yes.”
“How did you get over here?”
“Walked. I just want to take a nap.”
“Then c’mon, I’ll drive you home,” Gwen told her.
We all hugged Pamela, and then they left.
I looked at Liz. “I don’t want Pamela there by herself,” I said. “I’m calling Tim.”
When he answered—and fortunately, he answered—I said, “Pamela needs you, Tim. She’s at home.” And I didn’t have to explain.