Moments In Time (16 page)

The girl—a child, really, she couldn’t have been older than Colleen—was the first of the group to be called. “Mommy,” she had whispered in terror. Her mother had seemed to focus on a point slightly higher than her daughter’s face, unable to meet her eyes as she helped her to her feet. The image of the girl, so young and so obviously terrified as she gripped tightly to her mother’s hand, remained in Maggie’s sight even as the two followed the nurse through the door and disappeared.

The only sounds were an occasional sniff from the crying woman, the rustle of pages turning as Lindy quietly flipped through a magazine, the ticking of the clock. Occasionally the phone would ring, a door would close with a muffled sound from somewhere in the building. The room began to take on the stifling atmosphere of an airless tomb.

“Who am I kidding?” Maggie said aloud to no one in particular. Every eye in the room turned as she stood up. “I need more time to think about this.”

The young receptionist looked up from her paperwork and sighed. She’d seen this happen a half-dozen times a day. They think they want to do it, then they don’t want to do it after they get here, so they leave and go outside for twenty minutes, recall all the reasons that brought them here in the first place, then come back in, some more reluctantly than others. She peered at Maggie over the ledge of the window that separated her desk from the waiting room and said dispassionately, “Ms. Callahan, if you want this procedure—”

“I don’t know what I want.” And with that she was out the door.

Maggie sat in the car, crying softly, Lindy’s arms around her. “I just can’t do this. It goes against everything I’ve ever
believed in. Right at this minute I hate J.D. more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my life. And the thought of having to tell my family makes me physically sick. But I just can’t do it.”

“What will you do then?” Lindy asked with the gentlest concern.

“I don’t know,” she sobbed wearily. “I don’t know.”

14

H
ER FACE FLUSHED SCARLET AT THE RECOLLECTION,
and she
fretted with her wedding ring unconsciously. What a singularly terrible day that had been. Even now, so removed from it by time, she felt the same knot of fear and unc
ertainty rise within her. How d
i
f
ferent it all would have been had that one day ended differently.

“Maggie?” Hilary had tapped her knee with her stack of cards. “I said, you must have been dying to take him home and show him off. After all, he was quite a catch.”

“Not to my parents,” Maggie replied, her reverie having been disrupted by the sound of her name. How had they gotten back onto the subject of her family? What had she missed? “As far as my father was concerned,
rock musician
was a contradiction in terms. They were all long-haired subversive drug addicts.”

“Not a music lover, I take it?” Hilary looked amused.

“Oh, he loves music,” J.D. chuckled, annoying his wife with his good-natured response, “what he considers music, anyway. My father-in-law is of the opinion that no music of any merit has been written since 1947. Maggie hid me from him for months, you know.”

“That’s not quite true,” she protested.

“Of course, it’s true,” he said, grinning, pleased he’d gotten a visible rise out of her. “You couldn’t bring yourself to tell them about me until you had absolutely no choice.”

“I needed a little time to prepare them.” She shrugged.

“Because your father didn’t like rock music?” Hilary inquired.

“It was a little more complicated than that.” Maggie squirmed uneasily.

“Maggie’s parents were very fond of her first husband and were holding out for a reconciliation—” he began.

“You don’t need to bring that up,” she snapped.

“
…
and were very disappointed when that didn’t happen. So she figured that bringing me home would be one more disappointment, that maybe Daddy wouldn’t love her quite so much if he knew she’d taken up with the likes of me.”

“Thank you, Dr. Borders,” she said, glaring.

“Sorry, Mags, but that’s the truth.”

“You have never understood the dynamics in my family,” she told him archly.

“And I’d probably still be waiting for an opportunity to observe them firsthand if you hadn’t gotten pregnant when you did.” He could not resist the temptation to remind her.

“You’re being a jerk,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

“And you’ve been married how many years now?” Hilary asked, obviously amused by the exchange.

“Fifteen glorious years.” He smiled sweetly, placing an arm around Maggie’s shoulders. She froze, resenting the pretense.

“Well, I suppose that qualifies yours as one of the most successful shotgun marriages in the music business,” Hilary noted.

Shotgun marriage. The p
hrase caught Maggie off guard.
I
haven’t heard that expression in eons. And if that’s the worst that comes out tonight, I suppose we’ll be fortunate.

“Well, wait a minute, Hilary,” J.D. had become unexpectedly defensive, “it’s hardly the situation you seem to be implying. Maggie and I had planned to get married
that summer. We’ve never for a moment regretted the way things turned out. Having Jesse when we did was just one more happy event that first year, one more blessing we shared. All of our children have been very much wanted. Especially Jess.”

Maggie’s eyebrows arched slightly, wondering what had prompted a response so openly emotional. She had no way of knowing that the topic had recently been the source of a somewhat tense discussion between J.D. and their firstborn, who had come across an old newspaper clipping, complete with a photograph of J.D. holding a pudgy five-month-old Jesse on the occasion of his parents’ first anniversary. Jesse had been surprisingly upset to learn that he’d been conceived before his parents’ marriage.

J.D. wanted to bite his tongue, knowing his comments were, at that moment, causing certain embarrassment to his son, upstairs in the presence of his siblings and his grandmother. He wondered if Jesse really understood how much his father loved him, how much he’d been wanted. After, of course, the initial shock had worn off. He’d never suspected that Maggie’s telephone theatrics had been prompted by anything q
uite so dramatic…

J
.D. was bounding up the steps that led to the front door of Maggie’s building, whistling a merry tune and juggling two suitcases and a flight bag when the front door opened and Lindy appeared. She had begun to cross the front porch when she noticed his approach.

“Good timing, jerk,” she said sarcastically.

“Nice to see you too, Lindy.” The smile evaporated from his face.

They stood about five feet apart. Lindy glared at him, hands on her hips.

“What’s this all about? Oh, let me guess, Maggie’s pissed off because I stopped calling her. I stopped calling her because she was a bloody bitch every time I tried to talk to her. She’ll be okay, she’ll understand. I’ve something in my pocket that will make her forget how pissed off she was.” He winked confidently.

“It’s what’s in your pocket that started this whole mess.”

“What the hell does that mean?” he asked blankly.

“Ask Maggie.” She turned, headed down off the steps, and crossed the street.

Shaking his head, he started to ring the doorbell, then realized that Lindy had left the door open. He ran up the stairs and into the hallway, set his suitcases down, and started to call to her when he saw her through the open bedroom door. She sat in the middle of the bed, Indian style, forearms resting on her thighs, fingers of both hands clasped together so that her arms formed a big O. Her stillness chilled him to his soul. He walked uncertainly into the room.

“Maggie? Maggie, what is it?”

She turned to look at him with such pain in her eyes that he could not bear the sight. Frightened, he sat down next to her, reached for her.

“What, sweetheart, what’s happened?” Was she ill? Had someone died?

“Don’t touch me.” She leaned away from his outstretched arms, turning her head from him.

He recoiled as if he’d been slapped.

“Maggie, please, tell me what’s wrong, sweetheart.”

“It’s none of your business. Get off my bed. And don’t call me sweetheart.” Her eyes, scarlet from crying, never left her hands.

He stood up and backed away, confused.

“Maggie, what’s wrong with you? Maggie, you can’t possibly have gotten this upset because I stayed over in L.A. a few extra days
…
”

“You can stay wherever you want,” she snapped. “I don’t really care what you do.”

“What the bloody hell has happened here?” he exploded. “Okay, Maggie, you’ve had your little melodrama. You’re scaring the shit out of me, all right? Now let’s act like grownups and you tell me what this is all about and we’ll—”

“Remember in Atlanta,
when I lost my makeup case…
” As she spoke, his eyes fell upon the pamphlets from the
clinic on her dresser. He picked them up and looked them over. He met her eyes. He could barely find his voice.

“Sweet Jesus,” he stared at her. “Did you have an abortion?”

“Not yet,” she whispered.

“Not yet? Don’t you think this is something we should talk about?”

“No. There’s nothing to discuss.” She would not look at him.

“You’re pregnant with my baby and there’s nothing to discuss?” He was dumbfounded, floundering in confusion. This was not the Maggie he knew. What had happened to her?

“When were you going to tell me?” he asked.

“I wasn’t.”

“You don’t think I have a right to know?”

“I didn’t think you’d care.” She couldn’t hold the tears back any longer.

“How can you say that to me? How could you possibly for one minute ever think—”

“No more than I could think you’d have something—or someone—more important waiting for you in L.A.” The full force of her anger lashed at him.

“Oh, I get it. Because I didn’t come back when you’d expected me, you decided there was another woman, is that it?” His voice was cold and harsh, his anger barely controlled, “And so you decided it was over between us. And you decided to abort our child without even telling me.”

“Yes, J.D.,” she replied flatly, not turning her head.

“Oh, and now it’s J.D.”

He reached into his jacket pocket, took something out, and held up his hand so that she could see the small plastic rectangle he held.

“This,” he said, “is what I was doing in L.A. And in Miami. And Dallas. Every spare minute. It was to be a sort of engagement present.”

He looked around the room and walked to the desk, dropped the cassette into the tape deck, and pushed the start
button. The music began, the opening bars of “Sweet, Sweet
Maggie,” the first of eight songs on the tape.

He’d spent all his spare time over the past six weeks writing, working out the pieces of the musical puzzles until they all fit, driving the other members of the band crazy, making them rehearse when they’d rather party, making them record when they’d rather sleep. He could tell by the stunned look on her face that this was a possibility that had never occurred to her.

“Oh, God, Jamey,” sh
e whispered, flushed red with
sudden shame, her eyes filled rapidly.

“I’m going for a walk,” he said quietly as he turned his back and left the room.

He wandered aimlessly, his steps paced by fury, trying to sort out fact from emotion. He was livid that she would lack such basic trust in him, that she would make such an outrageous decision based upon an even more outrageous assumption without even telling him.
What in the name of God
was
going through her mind that she would think this would not matter to me? To assume that my extended stay in California meant there was another woman, as if she was interchangeable with anyone else.

And then there’s the matter of this baby—my baby. Mine and Maggie’s. How could she ever think to dismiss it, to eliminate it and not even tell me?
A rage stronger than he’d ever experienced washed over him, and for a long moment he was lost in it, ignited by it. How co
uld she?…
And the image of her tortured, swollen eyes came to him, and he knew it had been a decision bo
rn
of desperation.

He found himself passing a place that looked vaguely familiar, and he paused to get his bearings. He was drawn to the house behind the fence, realizing suddenly it was the same place Maggie’d shown him once, the same one she said she’d own someday. He stepped up to the fence and leaned over, gazing at the wide expanse of overgrown grass, the ramshackle old building.

In the dying sun, the stucco took on a glow as if it was coming to life before his eyes. An image flashed before him, he and Maggie and this child walking up the long drive,
hand in hand, the three of them. He blinked at the sight of them, and they were gone. He leaned his elbow on the top cross rail of the fence and wept, the anger spilling from him with the tears, and he knew with absolute certainty that if he could forgive her lack of faith, the vision would become reality.

Pulling a handkerchief from his jeans pocket, he dried his face. A calm had settled over him, and he understood she had acted from sheer terror, the fear of having to raise a child alone, a child she feared he would not want.
If I hadn’t been so distracted, so exhausted from trying to tour and record at the same time,
he reproached himself,
I would have realized that something was deeply wrong, maybe I would even have guessed and spared her this agony.

And could I forgive her if she eradicated that tiny surge of life? I could forgive her anything
—
anything. She is everything in this life to me, and that’s the simple fact.

Following the concrete walk that led back to her apartment, he thought of the child. Son or daughter? It would not matter. It was his and it was hers, a blending of them both. Love in its purest form. He realized that not once since having heard her news had he wished it away, and it occurred to him as he crossed the old wooden porch that he wanted their baby, just as he wanted her. He needed to know if she wanted them—father and child—as much.

He came into the bedroom and sat at the bottom of the bed, not looking at her. Finally he said, “When are you scheduled for this little operation?”

“Today.” She could barely utter the one-word response, her throat had suddenly become achingly dry.

“Today?” He turned toward her. “Did you just not go?”

“Oh, I went, all right,” she replied, twisting the tissue in her hands, still unable to make eye contact with him. “I left. I couldn’t do it.”

“Why not?” He wanted her to tell him she wanted the child, needed to hear her say it.

She shook her head slowly side to side. “I was so confused. I could think of twenty good reasons not to have this baby, under the circumstances. I tried to be so rational
about it. I’m not in a position to raise a child alone. My family would be absolutely shattered. Things would be too hard, both for me and for the baby. Everything told me it would be easier to just eliminate the problem and get on with my life. But in my heart, I knew it wasn’t right for me. Something inside wouldn’t let me go through with it.”

“I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell me, Maggie.”