Twelve
Barbara got to the Morning Star Café on Second Avenue, just above Fiftieth, before her daughter, Arla, got there. She took a booth near the window, facing the street, and said yes to a cup of coffee when the waiter stopped by. Barbara scanned the menu to pass the time, but knew she’d be getting a Virginia ham and cheddar omelette. Arla, she was betting, would have only coffee.
Barbara glanced at the photos on the wall. A lot of famous people had dropped by the Morning Star over the years. There were a couple of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who Barbara was pretty sure had lived in the neighborhood before his death in 2007. She’d seen him once, a couple of blocks north of here, but didn’t say anything, even though she was a fan. You were always seeing somebody famous in New York and were expected to be cool about it.
She’d checked the menu, scanned the walls. Fidgety. Getting out her phone seemed the next logical step. Barbara had mixed feelings about meeting with her daughter this morning. She had reason to believe Arla’d been seeing a therapist lately, although Arla had not come right out and admitted it when Barbara asked. But Barbara knew Arla had a multitude of issues she was struggling to come to terms with. There’d been an eating disorder for a while there, but that seemed to be under control. When Arla was in her midteens, she’d gone through a cutting period, marking her arms with a razor. That one really had Barbara worried, but that, too, had passed.
Barbara was aware that whatever the issue, Arla was inclined to trace it back to her mother. She was, after all, the root of all of Arla’s problems.
Well, fuck, Barbara thought. I was never exactly June Cleaver.
When Barbara found herself pregnant at eighteen, she was already working on a career in journalism. As a kid, inspired by watching reruns of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (she wasn’t old enough to have seen it when it first came on), Barbara wanted to be Mary Richards. She wanted to work in news. And Mary showed how an independent woman could make it, after all.
When she was barely seventeen, she had landed a reporting gig at the Staten Island Advance, winning over the editors by showing up day after day with unsolicited stories about interesting people in the borough. They were good. They saw that the kid could produce. They took her on despite her young age and lack of a journalism degree.
Who needed a piece of paper to frame and hang on the wall? You went out, you asked people questions, you observed, you wrote it down. When someone wouldn’t tell you what you wanted to know, you found someone else who would. You kept asking until you got an answer. How tricky was that? You needed to go to school for four years to figure that out?
Barbara threw herself into her work from the very beginning. The proverbial printer’s ink ran through her veins. She was covering murders and gang wars and plane crashes and political scandals when she was no older than first-year journalism students.
She was having the time of her life.
Until she found out she was pregnant.
Getting knocked up was definitely not part of the plan. At first, she was in denial. She couldn’t believe that it had happened. The home pregnancy test had to be wrong. So she did nothing, told no one.
But there comes a point when what you refuse to believe becomes painfully obvious.
So when her tummy began to ever so slightly bulge, she found the courage to find the man who’d gotten her pregnant. He deserved to know, right? Barbara figured there was a chance he’d even want to know. Okay, maybe that was being too hopeful. The guy was going to be shocked, no doubt about it. Especially considering that they hadn’t even known each other until they’d had sex, and hadn’t exactly been a couple since.
They hadn’t even seen each other since.
It had been, Barbara was willing to concede, a night of very bad decisions.
Starting with going to a party at NYU given by a former high school friend who, unlike Barbara, had pursued higher education. More bad decisions followed. She smoked a little too much weed, drank a little too much gin. And then, going over to chat up that older guy in the corner. That was the big one.
He was no longer a student, having gotten his MBA a few years earlier. He’d tagged along with some girl who knew the host of the party.
So why was he all alone in the corner?
A shrug. Some guy was going on about having to leave because he played in a band and they had a late-night gig in SoHo. She left with him.
“The bitch,” Barbara said.
Later, she wasn’t entirely clear how events had progressed. They’d had more to drink. It was possible there’d been a walk. And then they’d ended up in someone’s dorm. On a bed. Barbara remembered some fumbling with a condom, but hadn’t paid all that much attention when the guy said, “Uh-oh.”
In a few weeks, she’d have an idea what had alarmed him.
While some of the events from that night were foggy, Barbara knew there was no one else up for the role of father of her child. Sure, she’d gone to bed with other guys. But the last time she’d had sex before that evening had been a good (or bad, depending on how you looked at it) six months.
Other things she was sure of? What he looked like, and a first name. She asked the friend who’d thrown the party if she knew the guy’s surname. No special reason, she said. Just, you know, wondering.
She found him.
Broke the news.
He said, “I have no idea who you are.”
The way he said it, it almost sounded like he was telling the truth. Barbara refreshed his memory with every detail she could remember.
“Sorry,” the guy said. “Honest to God, I don’t ever remember meeting you. How long ago was this? I don’t even remember being at that party.”
“Yeah, well, we were both kind of flying.”
“Maybe you were,” he said. “Not me.”
Barbara couldn’t decide what to do. Go after him? Demand a blood test?
And of course, there was one other option.
But again, Barbara was paralyzed with indecision, and did nothing. By the time she found the strength to tell her parents, it was too late to end the pregnancy. Barbara’s mother and father—fucking saints, that’s what they were—didn’t judge. Oh sure, they wanted to know about this man, and Barbara told them she’d talked to him, that he refused to accept responsibility, and had moved to Colorado or Wyoming and gone into real estate. It wasn’t worth the time to pursue him, she said.
Okay, they said. These things happen, they said. No sense ranting and raving. What’s done is done. Let’s figure out what to do.
Give the baby up for adoption, Barbara decided. I’m not cut out to be a parent.
Well, okay, sure, that’s a possibility, her mother said. But that is my future grandchild you’re talking about. If you’re absolutely determined that you do not want to raise this child, well, your
