had raised Lily to be independent and strong, but cavalier? No. Especially not when there were realities to face. ‘Who’ll pay the medical bills?’
‘We have insurance.’
‘With premiums to which I contribute every month,’ Susan pointed out, ‘so the answer is me. I’ll pay the medical bills. What about diapers? And formula?’
‘I’ll breast-feed.’
‘Which is wonderful if it works, but sometimes it doesn’t, in which case you’ll need formula. And what about solid food and clothes? And equipment. They won’t let you leave the hospital without an approved car seat, and do you know what a good stroller costs? No, I don’t still have your old one, because I sold it years ago to buy you a bike. And what about day-care while you’re finishing school? I’d love to stay home with the baby myself, but one of us has to work.’
‘Dad will help,’ Lily said in a small voice.
Yes. Rick would. But was Susan looking forward to asking? Absolutely not.
Lily’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I really want this baby.’
‘You can have a baby, but there’s a better time!’ Susan cried.
‘I am not having an abortion.’
‘No one’s suggesting one.’
‘I already heard my baby’s heartbeat. You should have listened to it, Mom. It was amazing.’
Susan was having trouble accepting that her daughter was pregnant, much less that there was an actual baby alive inside.
‘It has legs and elbows. It has ears, and this week it’s developing vocal cords. I know all this, Mom. I’m doing my homework.’
‘Then I take it,’ Susan said in a voice she couldn’t control, ‘that you read how pregnant teens are at greater risk for complications.’ It was partly her mother’s voice. The rest was that of the failed educator whose crusade had been keeping young girls from doing what she had done. That educator had failed on her own doorstep.
‘I stopped on the way home for the vitamins,’ Lily said meekly. ‘Do you think the baby’s okay?’
As annoyed as she was – as disappointed as she was – a frightened Lily could always reach her. ‘Yes, it’s okay,’ she said. ‘I was just making a point.’
That easily reassured, Lily smiled. ‘Think I’ll have a girl like you did?’ She didn’t seem to need an answer, which was good, since Susan didn’t have one. ‘If it’s a girl, she’s already forming ovaries. And she’s this big.’ She spread her thumb and forefinger several inches apart. ‘My baby can think. Its brain can give signals to its limbs to move. If I could put my finger exactly where it is, it would react to my touch. It’s a real human being. There is no way I could have an abortion.’
‘Please, Lily. Have I asked you to get one?’
‘No, but maybe when you start thinking about it, you will.’
‘Did I abort you?’
‘No, but you’re angry.’
Susan shot a pleading glance at the near-naked tops of the trees. ‘Oh, Lily, I’m so many things beside angry that I can’t begin to explain. We’re at a good place now, but it hasn’t come easy. I’ve had to work twice as hard as most mothers. You, of all people, should know that.’
‘Because I’m a good daughter? Does my being pregnant make me a bad one?’
‘No, sweetheart. No.’ It had nothing to do with good and bad. Susan had argued this with her own mother.
‘But you’re disappointed.’
Try heartbroken. ‘Lily, you’re seventeen.’
‘But this is a baby,’ Lily pleaded.
‘You are a baby,’ Susan cried.
Lily drew herself up and said quietly, ‘No, Mom. I’m not.’
Susan was actually thinking the same thing. No, Lily wasn’t a baby. She would never be a baby again.
The thought brought a sense of loss – loss of childhood? Of innocence? Had her own mother felt that? Susan had no way of knowing. Even in the best of times, they hadn’t talked, certainly not the way Susan and Lily did.
‘Don’t be like Grandma,’ Lily begged, sensing her thoughts.
‘I have never been like Grandma.’
‘I would die if you disowned me.’
‘I would never do that.’
Turning to face her, Lily grabbed her hand and held it to her throat. ‘I need you with me, Mom,’ she said fiercely, then softened. ‘This is our family, and we’re making it bigger. You wanted that, too, I know you did. If things had been different, you’d have had five kids like Kate.’
‘Not five. Three.’
‘Three, then. But see?’ she coaxed. ‘A baby isn’t a bad thing.’
No. Not a bad thing, Susan knew. A baby was never bad. Just life-changing.
‘This is your grandchild,’ Lily tried.
‘Um-hm,’ Susan hummed. ‘I’ll be a grandmother at thirty-six. That is embarrassing.’
‘I think it’s great.’
‘That’s because you’re seventeen and starry-eyed – which is good, sweetheart, because if you aren’t smiling now, you’ll be in trouble down the road. You’ll be alone, Lily. In the past, we’ve had two other pregnant seniors and one pregnant junior. None of them wanted to go to college. Your friends will go to college. They want careers. They won’t be able to relate to being pregnant.’
Lily’s eyes widened with excitement. ‘But see, Mom, that’s not true. That’s the beauty of this.’
Susan made a face. ‘What does that mean?’
‘I’m pregnant.’
‘Cute,’ Kate Mello told her youngest and proceeded to pour dry macaroni into a pot of boiling water. ‘Lissie?’ she yelled upstairs to her second youngest. ‘When are you going? I need that milk.’ She stirred the macaroni and said more to herself than to Mary Kate, who stood beside her at the stove, ‘Why is it that I’m always out of milk lately?’
‘I’m serious, Mom. I’m pregnant.’
Holding the lid in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other, Kate simply touched her forehead to Mary Kate’s
