Until the baby comes. Anne had to repeat the words in her mind several times before they made any sense. “Jesus,” she said. “You’re pregnant.”
The looks passing across Hilary’s face — understanding, disgust, slight amusement — were subtle, brief, and controlled. “I’m not due for three months,” she said. “Alan’s going to get us a place by then. He knows some people squatting in Jersey City.”
Anne couldn’t think of what to say, despite knowing that her silence would be taken for acquiescence. She felt like an idiot.
“Don’t worry,” Hilary added kindly, as if to a child. “It’ll be okay.”
For the first time in ages, Anne didn’t know what to do; she wished she had a friend to ask for advice. She’d left home when she wasn’t much older than Hilary, and since then had kept herself aloof, especially from women, who tended to dive into confidences as if they were salvation. Being alone and being aloof were the same as being superior. But maybe this wasn’t the best system.
Out of respect or, more likely, a calculated desire not to provoke her, Alan didn’t return that morning. After breakfast, Anne said, “Let’s go for a walk,” and Hilary nodded.
They headed toward Tompkins Square Park, the spring wind lashing their faces, and Anne pulled her hat down over her ears. Despite the cool weather, all around the park people were having brunch, shopping, walking dogs. The girls wore frayed cords, the boys plaid shirts. From an open window came the smell of pot. In the park kids were playing kickball, and under an enormous elm tree Hare Krishnas were chanting and singing.
Hilary walked along beside her, matching her stride like a dog on a leash.
Now that Anne recognized the girl’s bulk for what it was, her every bodily sign seemed to broadcast pregnancy: hands resting on her stomach, her cheeks even broader, her calm eyes hoarding all internal energy. Things Anne hadn’t even realized were confusing suddenly made sense, which maddened and embarrassed her because actresses were supposed to be observant. So as they walked she asked Hilary every question she could think of. Where was she from, exactly? Why had she left home? Did her parents know where she was? Did they know she was pregnant? Was Alan from her hometown? When exactly was the baby due? How long had she been living on the street before ending up downstairs? What were her plans?
Unruffled, undefensive, Hilary answered each question in turn. She was from a small town between Binghamton and Syracuse. Her mother worked in a grocery store. Her stepfather had sexually abused her and she had run away twice before. She went back because of Alan, who’d promised to protect her, and did. They’d come down to the city just before Christmas and stayed with Alan’s cousin in Brooklyn, where he had a one-bedroom apartment with two roommates, but he’d kicked them out after they had a fight. Then she found an NYU ID and key card on the street and managed to get inside a dorm, where she set up a bed in an unused storage room and passed through the hallways without any trouble, everybody assuming she was a student. Once she was settled, Alan went up to Syracuse to make some money so that when the baby came they’d be ready with an apartment and “stuff like that.” From that melting phrase Anne could tell Hilary was both sentimental about the baby and clueless about what it would involve. During Alan’s absence, Hilary got evicted from the room and had to stay out of shelters, because the security guard was probably calling out a description and “with that Amber alert and everything, it was such a drag,” which is why she’d ended up downstairs. She was sick and tired and just needed to, you know, lie down inside and be warm for a few days. By the time Alan got back she was at Anne’s.
“I told him I’d be all right, and I was,” she finished. “I can take care of myself, but he worries a lot about me.”
“You should’ve told me,” Anne said.
“About what?”
“Everything.”
The girl stared at her. “You didn’t ask,” she pointed out.
“Didn’t ask what? ‘Oh, by the way, are you pregnant?’ ‘Oh, are you on the lam from the police?’ ‘Oh, will some snotty punk kid show up in my kitchen one day?’ ”
The Hare Krishnas turned around at the sound of Anne’s raised voice, and she glared at them until they went back to their routine.
Hilary shook her head angrily. “Alan’s not snotty. Look, we’re both real clean. We don’t make a mess. I keep the place okay, right? I know you’ve done a lot. You didn’t have to let me stay. But, I swear, eventually we’ll have a place and money and stuff, and I’ll pay you back, whatever you want.” For the first time, she sounded like a teenager. And once again, she had the knack of saying the right thing at the right time. “Anyway, Anne? Aren’t you a runaway too?”
And of course she was right. But there was no way she could have known it. She was a magician, a diviner. Anne was so freaked out that she shut up and let them stay.
In the weeks to come, Anne told Hilary her own story, how she’d left her home in Montreal at the age of sixteen. She’d met a guy who drove her to Burlington, Vermont, where she got a job waiting tables at a coffee shop and rented a room from the guy’s sister, who thought she was a college student. From Burlington she went to Vancouver; she didn’t like it, but while she was there she fell in with some theater people and decided she wanted to act. She stayed for a year before moving on: Las Vegas, Denver, Chicago. She lived for a year with a guy she’d met in a park, where he was feeding the ducks. He offered her a room if she’d cook his meals, and after six months he told her he loved her, and she believed him. He was a gentleman, and he said he knew she’d been through hard times, that he wanted to treat her with the respect and delicacy she deserved. This was how he talked, using words like delicacy. In all the time she lived with him he never touched her. At the end of the year he proposed, and she said she didn’t think she was ready for marriage yet. He nodded and said he understood, but at midnight he came into her room, got into her bed, and ran his hands up and down her bare back. She sat up and said, “Please don’t do that,” trying to keep her voice high and childish, frail with youth.
“I know your real self,” he said. “I know what you want.”
She ran from the house in her pajamas. It was the first night since she left home that she stayed in a shelter, and she vowed it would be the only one. From then on she never lived with a man. She used them for food, jobs, and transportation, but wouldn’t live with them. When she got to New York, she paid cash for a room at a hostel until the apartment deal with Larry came through. She never counted on anyone but herself.
In the six years she’d been gone, she’d written to her parents three times. The first was to tell them she was fine and not to try to find her. The second was a Christmas card she’d sent from Las Vegas, a drunken, sentimental mistake. The third was just last year. She had woken up in the middle of the night with the eeriest feeling about her mother; it was like having a scary dream that you couldn’t really remember. She was shaking and sweating. She didn’t believe in premonitions or portents, but she was rattled enough to write. She didn’t give a return address, and wasn’t thinking about going home. Too much time had passed and she was a different person now, an adult of her own making. She simply wrote, Mom. I love you. Annie. It wasn’t what any mother would have wanted, but it was something, and it would have to be enough.
“So how come you left?” Hilary said. “I mean, in the first place.”
Anne shrugged.
“Did you ever go back?”
“No.”
The girl sat in the silence, patting her belly. Her eyes were drowsy, implacable.