“Okay,” Theo said.
“I was a twenty-three-year-old dancer whose husband was all but living on the West Coast. There was no place in my life at that time for a child. I wanted to terminate the pregnancy.”
“Get an abortion?” Theo said.
“Get an abortion. But my husband talked me out of it. He wanted the baby. It’s going to be great!’ he said. “We’re starting a family!’ He convinced me to leave school, which I did, and in return I asked him to leave the project in California and take a project closer to home. So he did. He took a project in Philadelphia and he was less than two hours away by train. He was home every weekend. He walked with me in Central Park, he took me to see Aida at the Met, he went out in the middle of the night to get me watermelon from the Korean deli.” Antoinette tightened her fists and brought them to her ears, like she was trying to block out an awful sound.
“Then what happened?” Theo asked. Here was Antoinette’s history, her real history, that even his mother might not know.
“One day when I was pretty far along, seven months or so, I found myself down at Penn Station, and I decided to surprise him. I got on the Metroliner and walked from the train station to his hotel. The front desk clerk knew I was his pregnant wife. He gave me a key to his room; he was happy to do it.”
Theo felt like he was standing on a cliff where he was drawn to the edge, yet afraid of falling. “And?” he said.
“And I walked in on him having sex with two women. Monica, who was his consulting partner and another woman, their client. The three of them were so… involved with each other, they didn’t even notice me standing there until finally I thought to scream. They all noticed that.”
Antoinette was openly weeping, wandering the room like she was looking for something. A tissue, maybe. She disappeared into the bathroom and emerged with a hand towel.
“His name was Darren.” Antoinette blew her nose into the towel. “I haven’t spoken that name in over twenty years. Darren Riley.”
“You still use his last name,” Theo said.
“I loved my husband. I loved him desperately. He was one of those special people who everybody loves-men, women, dogs, babies. He was charming, dynamic, funny. And that was his downfall. Women fell over themselves for him, they allowed themselves to be degraded. Monica later told me that there had been other threesomes, in other cities, in California, and before that, even.”
Theo thought he might vomit. He grabbed a pillow and pressed it to his crotch. “What did you do?” he asked.
“I went back to New York, alone. Darren didn’t bother trying to get me back. I guess he knew he blew it. He gave me a quick divorce and lots of money. But it was like he didn’t even try. He didn’t apologize, and suddenly it seemed he didn’t want the baby after all. When she was born, I couldn’t make myself feel anything but anger. I couldn’t feel any love for her; I couldn’t even give her a name.”
“So what happened?”
“I tried to kill myself. I took pills. My neighbor found me unconscious, the baby screaming in her crib. I hadn’t fed her in, like, twelve hours. Social services took the baby away and by the time I was released from the hospital I realized I couldn’t raise her. I didn’t want to raise her.” Antoinette pressed her thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose and threw the towel into the corner of the room. “What has stayed with me after so many years is how Darren made me love that child and then he stole that love away. It is the cruelest thing I’ve ever known anyone to do.” After a few seconds, Antoinette straightened into perfect posture. “After the baby was gone, I moved away and started over.”
“You came here?” Theo said.
“I constructed a life that allowed me to survive day to day. Minimal interaction, no one to care about but myself. Here in the woods on this island thirty miles out to sea. This is it, Theo. This is my life.”
She retreated into the bathroom. Theo dressed quietly; it was past time for him to go, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave. No information for months, and now a deluge.
“So now you think you’re pregnant again?”
She stood with her hands on either side of the sink, staring into the mirror. She nodded.
Here was the one thing that Theo had been afraid of ever since he knew enough to be afraid of it, and now he wasn’t afraid at all, he was excited. Thrilled. Antoinette, pregnant.
“It’s okay,” he said. “If you’re pregnant, it’s okay.”
“It’s anything but okay,” Antoinette said. “God is punishing me.”
“For what?”
“For you,” Antoinette said. “For sleeping with an eighteen-year-old.”
“I want to have a baby with you,” Theo said.
“No, you don’t. We’ll do what’s easiest for both of us. If I’m pregnant, I’ll have an abortion.”
“But I love you! I’ve been trying to tell you I love you for weeks, but it’s like you don’t hear me.”
“I hear you,” she said.
“But you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you,” she said.
“But you don’t love me back.”
“There’s no way to make you understand. You’re too young. And so you’re just going to have to trust me, Theo.” She walked toward him and took hold of his face, her hand resting exactly on the spot where she had slapped him, only now she was gentle, as gentle as if he were a baby himself, and he saw that her eyes were filled with something, and he let himself believe that it might be love.
There was a day or two of reflection. Theo marveled at the power of his own body; he’d created another human being. He ran through scheme after scheme, one more unlikely than the next. He and Antoinette marrying, raising the child. Theo would graduate from high school in a year. He would forgo college and work for his father. Or, if his parents disowned him, he and Antoinette and the baby would move off-island. To California. France. South Africa.
In the evenings, Theo tried to get Antoinette to talk about her past some more, but she wouldn’t. Sometimes she was upbeat, and when he arrived she’d be sitting on the built-in benches of her deck with a glass of chardonnay and a book. Other days he found her in the bedroom with the shades drawn, and when he knocked on the door or tousled her hair, she opened one eye and murmured, “Go away, Theo. Go home to your mother.”
Then, on the first of August, a day when his job at the airport had been particularly hellish-all the July people leaving, the August people arriving- she showed him the pregnancy test. It was one of the evenings when she was out on the deck. She poured him a glass of wine, and they sat quietly listening to the birds in the surrounding trees, and then she went into the bedroom and came back with a white plastic stick with two purple stripes. Antoinette held it out to him, turning it in the fading light as though he might want to inspect its authenticity.
“Well,” he said. “Now what?”
“I’ve made an appointment off-island for the Tuesday after Labor Day,” she said. “An appointment for an abortion. That gives me four weeks to think it over.”
“Don’t have an abortion,” Theo said. “Please.”
“I don’t see any options,” Antoinette said. “You, my dear, are in no position to think about being a father. Not at eighteen.”
He no longer felt eighteen, and he said so.
“Well, then, what about Kayla?” Antoinette said. “This will devastate her. Your mother’s one of my few friends in this world, and I’m not prepared to destroy her, or the rest of your family, for that matter.”
“What my mother thought didn’t seem to bother you before,” Theo said.
“It bothers me now. I’ve crossed a line.” She looked at him with genuine sadness. “I’m sorry, Theo. I’m sorry for starting all this.”
“Why did you, then?” he said. “If you don’t love me, I mean?”