Authors: Dina Silver
One Pink Line (16 page)
“I heard you.”
My posture hadn’t changed, I was too afraid to relax even one muscle. “Do you hate me?” I asked.
More silence.
I figured he wouldn’t initially have much to say. When confronted with a dilemma of any degree, Ethan was always a man of few words, choosing to ponder rather than speak. “I’m so sorry Ethan, I went to a fraternity formal with a friend a couple months ago…,” I started rambling.
“Stop,” he said.
We sat there for a few minutes on the phone, me sniffling like a baby on my end, and him sighing and grunting quietly on his.
“Whose is it?” he finally wondered.
“My friend Kevin’s.”
“Are you two together now?”
“Right now?” I asked.
“No, are you together, are you dating him?”
“No.”
“What are you going to do about the pregnancy?”
Before calling Ethan, I debated whether it was going to be more difficult to tell him I was pregnant, or tell him that I was keeping the baby. I never was able to determine which would be harder until I’d said them both aloud. “I’ve decided to have the baby.”
“You’re having the baby?” his tone made me feel stupid. “And then what, giving it up for adoption?”
I cleared my throat, and scooted to the edge of the couch. “No, I’m keeping the baby. I’ve decided to keep it.”
More silence.
“Wow, well, I guess things have been pretty crazy by you,” he said.
I was trying to prepare the perfect thing to say, but my brain could no longer handle the intricacies of all my declarations. “Ethan, throughout this entire ordeal, telling you has been the hardest thing I’ve had to do. Deciding to keep the baby wasn’t nearly as hard as it was to make this phone call. I have been dreading telling you, please don’t hate me.”
“Why have you been dreading telling me?” he scoffed.
“Why do you think?”
“You tell me, Syd,” his voice was hard, and less tired.
“I just…I never meant to hurt you, or put this wedge between us, but there’s no going back now. And I just don’t want to lose you… and our friendship.”
“Our friendship?” he said mockingly. “That’s a joke.”
“I mean it, Ethan.”
He made a noise that sounded like he was blowing into a Breathalyzer. “Jesus, Syd, you’ve dropped a real bomb here, and I’m not really sure what you expect me to say. This is going to take some time to process,” he snickered. “Sorry, I really just…don’t know how you could have done this.”
I stretched the sleeve of my shirt over my hand and wiped my face. “I understand,” I commented wearily. “I’m so sorry, just please don’t be mad at me forever.”
“What do you want me to do?” he posed the question sternly.
What I truly wanted was for him to come see me, wrap me in his long arms and tell me everything was going to be okay. Because he was the only person who could make me believe it. But there I was, ambushing him on a Saturday morning, telling him I’d not only slept with someone behind his back, but I was pregnant, and keeping this other man’s child. What could I reasonably expect from him? What would I do if the tables were turned? Maybe I would find a tiny shred of maturity in my broken heart to forgive him. But it wouldn’t be easy, and it wouldn’t be quick.
“I know this is going to sound selfish of me, and given the circumstances, I’m not sure I would’ve even stayed on the phone with you this long, if it were you in an equally ugly situation. But having to sacrifice you to have this baby will destroy me, so I hope that in time you can find a way to forgive me.”
His lungs must have been nearly empty from all the laborious sighs. “We’re always going to be friends, I just don’t know about any more than that right now. This is a big deal, Syd, and you are going to have one hell of a year ahead of you.”
“I know.”
He left me hanging on in silence for about ten seconds. “I really need to go, so, thanks for the call,” he said, flippant. “Take care of yourself.”
“I will, Ethan, I’m really…”
“Bye, Syd.” Click.
I lay down on my couch and cried for about twenty minutes with no break. The combination of guilt, missing him, and overactive hormones had gotten to me. Once I was able to calm down, I was grateful for his kindness. I feared the worst, yet Ethan showed his true colors once again. He could have hurled a number of despicable words at me, but he didn’t. He was quiet and respectful, and I deserved none of it. He hadn’t even tried to talk me out of keeping the baby. In fact, simply talking to Ethan and hearing the distance in his voice was the only time I questioned my decision.
My next confession wasn’t going to be as easy. Jenna and I had plans to meet up with Kevin, Rocco, and a bunch of other people for our final night on campus. We’d scheduled a pub-crawl with a biscuits and gravy chaser at this restaurant that was a Purdue institution, and served the most sought after biscuits and gravy in the state of Indiana. It was called Triple XXX, also known as Tri-Chi, and they basically gave you a huge platter of sausage gravy, with two, tiny little buttermilk biscuits buried underneath it.
By the time we’d hit our last pub on the schedule, everyone besides me was hammered. I hadn’t had any time alone with Kevin, and I didn’t want to break the news to him when he was three sheets to the wind, so I decided to see if he’d talk with me in the morning. I managed to interrupt a conversation he was having with two other guys, and pulled him aside while we were waiting for our food.
“So, are you headed out tomorrow?” I asked, and noticed Jenna staring me down. She knew I’d been trying to find a way to get him alone and drop yet one more grenade in someone’s lap. She and I tried to come up with a better way to break the news to him, but he’d been impossible to pin down until then.
“Yeah, I haven’t packed much yet, but I’m hoping to hit the road after lunch, how about you?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow, headed to my sister’s place in the city.”
“Sounds good, we’ll have to hook up, when I’m there for training next month.”
Kevin’s father had gotten him an entry-level position with Arthur Andersen, a management-consulting firm located in Chicago, although he’d eventually be transferred to an office in Los Angeles. He had to go through two months of training to learn how to consult other companies on their failures. I couldn’t help but wonder why those other companies didn’t just do the two months of training with Arthur Andersen themselves.
The fry cook/hostess signaled that our table was ready.
“Hey, do you think we can get together tomorrow, before you leave?” I asked Kevin, trailing behind him.
“What for?” he trudged ahead.
“Maybe a quick lunch, or coffee, or something.”
He shook his head. “Don’t think so Syd. Like I said, I’ve got a ton of packing, and I need to be on the road by one at the latest.”
“Maybe you could just stop by my place then, on your way out of town?”
“Doubt it, squirt.”
I tugged at the back of his navy blue t-shirt. “Can you just come by tomorrow, I want to talk to you about something,” I said as seriously as I could without letting anyone else in the group hear what I was saying.
He turned only his head around, looked down at me, gave me a perplexed look, and then studied my face. “Call me in the morning,” he said and took a seat at the other end of the table.
Jenna made her way over to me. “Did you just tell him?” she asked as we both pulled out rickety wooden chairs from the table and sat down next to each other.
“No, I asked if he’d come by my place in the morning, before he leaves town.”
“And what’d he say?”
“He said to call him in the morning.”
“Oh my,” Jenna said, shaking her head. “One more plate, extra sausage!” she leaned back and shouted to the fry cook.
M
y nerves were in high gear the next morning, so I kept on the pair of sweats that’d I’d slept in, and just threw a cardigan over my white tank top. I’d spent a week trying to find the most civil way to break the news to Kevin, but there was really only one way to say what I had to say. It was a tough thing to sugar coat.
I called him that morning like he asked, and wiped the perspiration off my forehead when I heard a knock at the door two hours later. As I opened it, he was standing there, hands in his pockets, dark circles under his eyes, and not looking nearly as friendly as he did joking with his buddies over a plate of sausage gravy the night before.
“What’s up?” he asked gruffly.
“Come on in,” I gestured and stepped back from the doorway.
“I’ve only got, like, ten minutes,” he said looking around. “What’s up?”
He seemed very uncomfortable and it felt like a rain cloud entered the room with him, you could almost see the fog. His edginess surprised me; I’d expected him to be cold and aloof
after
hearing the news, but not before.
“Can I get you something to drink?”
“No thanks,” he said and sat on the edge of my coffee table.
I looked at him, as he was checking his watch. He was not going to make it easy for me.
“Well,” I started, and had a seat at my dinette set, a few feet away. “I just wanted to talk to you before you left.” He was still looking down. “I have to tell you something,” I swallowed.
“What is it?”
I cupped my hands together, and then unsuccessfully tried to make eye contact with him. “I’m pregnant.”
He let the words dangle before he spoke. “I thought that’s what you were going to say.”
He never looked directly at me, and I was quickly schooled in the meaning of painful silence.
I rubbed my hands on my thighs to wipe off the perspiration. “I’m sorry to lay this on you right before you leave, but I thought you should know’,”
He shook his head slowly. “What are you doing about it?”
“I’m going to keep it,” I answered and kept my gaze focused on him.
He laughed. “Don’t I have any say?” he stood up. “Assuming it’s even mine.”
“It’s yours.”
He started to walk behind the couch towards the door. “So great, you’ve got your little mind all made up, huh? That’s it? ‘Hey Kev, I’m having your baby without your consent…just
thought you should know”
he whispered the last part mockingly.
I had no response.
He shook his head with greater force and continued. “So, you’re saying this is my kid, then we both made the same mistake, right? Why the fuck don’t I get to choose then? Who died and made you in charge of my life? You’ve got some nerve, Syd.”
I had no response.
He began questioning me again, and finally looked at my face. “What do you want from me?”
His eyes were unrecognizable, and his expression filled with rage and detest.
“I don’t want anything from you, Kevin,” I pleaded, as if someone was pointing a gun at me. “We’re friends, we’ve been friends for a long time and I thought you might want to know,” I said softly.
“Well guess what, Syd, I don’t want to know,” his tone grew crueler. “I don’t want to know you, or your kid, okay,” he paused. “So leave me the fuck out of it!”
I watched him snatch his keys off the coffee table and head for the door. I wanted to scream after him. I wanted to clamp onto his bicep, spin him around and look into his eyes. “It’s me, Sydney!” I wanted to shout. “I’m your friend, Kevin. I never meant to hurt you with this, you must know that!”
Instead I said nothing as he shook his head and stormed out.