The Weight of Small Things (16 page)

29

C
orrie stood in her bathroom, staring at the stick she’d peed on, watching it turn from white to blue. She compared the color on the stick to the one on the box, then compared it again. Definitely blue . . . definitely pregnant.

She sat on the edge of the bathtub, clutching the stick in her hand.

Pregnant . . . she was pregnant. After all the years, all the waiting, all the heartbreaks, she, Corrie Ann Philips, was with child.

For a long minute, she simply sat with the fact, the undeniable fact, of a new life in her womb. A baby . . . a tiny boy or girl, the child she had always wanted. Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks and she stared again and again at the stick in her hand. Pregnant!

And then, like a wave, panic overtook her. She was pregnant . . . but whose baby was it?

She walked into the bedroom and stared at the calendar. The date of her last period seven weeks before. Her trip to California two weeks after. Her homecoming to Mark.

She stopped abruptly. She didn’t even know what to ask God for.

Her knees buckled beneath her and she sank to the floor, still clutching the stick. Sitting on the tile floor, she wept until she felt sick. Then she rose unsteadily, walked to the phone, and called Bryn. Five minutes later she was at Bob’s, falling into Bryn’s arms.

“Oh my God, Corrie! That’s great!”

Bryn threw her arms around her friend and hugged her tight.

“I can’t believe it! Finally! You’re going to have a baby and I’m going to have a baby, and they’ll grow up together and be best friends.”

“Bryn . . .”

“Seriously, how perfect is this? I can’t believe we’re both going to have babies!”

“Bryn, wait.”

Corrie pulled away from Bryn and took a step back.

“What’s wrong?” Bryn asked.

“I don’t know . . . I mean, what if the baby is Daniel’s?”

“Oh!” Bryn’s face fell. “Oh God, honey, I didn’t even think of that. Oh . . . do you think it could be?”

She pulled Corrie by the hand to the couch and sat beside her.

“I don’t know,” Corrie said. “Maybe. The timing is right.”

Corrie slumped on the couch, cradling her head in her hands.

“I just don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know.”

Bryn held her hand while Corrie cried again.

“What am I going to do?” Corrie said, over and over. “What am I going to do?”

Finally, she sniffed and leaned her head against Bryn’s shoulder.

“What you’re going to do is have a baby,” Bryn said firmly. “You’re going to have
Mark’s
baby, and that’s all there is to it.”

Corrie raised her head to stare at her friend.

“But what if it’s not Mark’s baby?” she asked.

“It is,” Bryn insisted. “It is Mark’s baby. It should be Mark’s baby. It has to be Mark’s baby. So it
will
be Mark’s baby!”

“But . . .”

“Look.” Bryn held Corrie’s hands tightly. “For all we know, for all anyone knows, this baby is Mark’s. No one ever has to know anything else.”

“I can’t do that!” Corrie cried. “If it’s Daniel’s, I can’t just pass it off as Mark’s. I can’t!”

“Why not?” Bryn asked. “You guys were talking about adoption. That baby wouldn’t have been biologically either of yours. What does it matter, really, who the father is? I mean, the biological father. Mark will be this baby’s father. He will love this baby, and he never has to know it might be Daniel’s. Seriously, Corrie . . . why does he ever have to know?”

“And what if the baby comes out with red hair and blue eyes?” Corrie said.

“Well, Maya has reddish hair,” Bryn reasoned. “And Sarah has blue eyes. So it’s there on both sides, right?”

Corrie simply shook her head and cried again.

“I can’t do that,” she wept. “It’s bad enough I cheated on him. I can’t pass Daniel’s baby off as his. I can’t.”

“Shhh,” Bryn crooned. “You don’t have to decide anything right now. It’s going to be okay.”

“How is it going to be okay?”

Corrie rose and began pacing the living room. It was a beautiful Saturday in October and Bob had taken the boys to the park.

“It will be okay,” Bryn insisted. “We’ll figure it out.”

“How?” Corrie demanded. “I can’t tell Mark I’m pregnant if the baby isn’t his. I can’t do that to him. God, Bryn, he’d be so hurt.”

“All right, let’s look at the options.”

Bryn counted on her fingers. “First, you have the baby and don’t ever say a word about Daniel. Everybody’s happy. Second, you have the baby and tell Mark it might not be his. And you lose your husband and hurt him and hurt the baby, too. Because God, Corrie, Mark was meant to be a dad! He’ll be such a great dad.”

“I know,” Corrie said softly. “He’d be a wonderful dad. But—”

“But nothing,” Bryn continued. “You have two choices. Plan A, everybody’s happy. Plan B, nobody’s happy.”

“There’s another choice.” Corrie’s voice broke.

Bryn sat in silence for a long minute, watching her friend pace.

“Yes,” she finally said, very softly. “You could terminate the pregnancy.”

Corrie stopped pacing and stared into Bryn’s face, then collapsed on the couch again in tears.

“I can’t,” she cried. “I can’t do that again.”

Bryn patted her hand, making small hushing noises. Then she paused.

“What do you mean, ‘again’?”

Corrie leaned back on the couch and hugged a throw pillow. She was silent for a while, then took a deep breath.

“When Daniel left all those years ago, I was pregnant.” Her voice was so low, Bryn had to strain to hear her.

“I couldn’t do it,” Corrie continued. “I couldn’t have the baby on my own. I just couldn’t. So I . . .”

“Oh, honey.” Bryn’s voice was soothing, soft. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have helped. You know I would have done anything for you.”

“I know.” Corrie covered her face with her hands. “But you were going through your own stuff then. That was the first time you and Paul broke up. And I just . . . I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t tell anyone.”

“Oh Corrie, I’m so sorry.”

Corrie cried again, her hands over her face.

“Was it really awful?” Bryn asked, thinking back a few weeks to when she had considered terminating her pregnancy. She shivered.

Corrie only nodded and cried.

“And I know that’s why I couldn’t get pregnant,” she whispered finally. “God was punishing me. And now . . .”

“Okay, honey, that’s just crazy. You know that, right? That is not how the universe works. If everyone who’d done something stupid or wrong couldn’t have children, the human race would have ended eons ago.”

Corrie shook her head.

“And now it’s like God’s testing me,” she said. “Like he’s just waiting to see if I’ll kill this baby, too.”

Bryn wrapped her arms around Corrie’s shaking shoulders. “Hush now,” she crooned. “It’s going to be fine.”

They sat for a while in silence, Corrie crying and Bryn patting her back.

“All right,” Bryn said finally. “So you can’t terminate the pregnancy. That’s good. Because, honey, you were meant to be a mother. You’re going to be a great mother.

“So, we’re back to Plan A or Plan B. I vote for Plan A. Have the baby. Assume it’s Mark’s. Let it be Mark’s. And forget about Daniel. You and I both know he’s not father material. He’s got no more dad potential than Paul, for Christ’s sake. Mark wants a baby. You want a baby. Have a baby.”

Corrie rose and began pacing the floor again.

“How can I do that?” she asked. “How can I just pretend what happened with Daniel didn’t happen? What if the baby looks just like him?”

“First, even if the baby looks like him, who’s going to know? You will. I will. Nobody else would ever even think about it. Mark’s never met Daniel, right? So how would he know if the kid looks like him?”

Corrie drew a deep, shuddering breath. “I would know,” she whispered.

“But it won’t matter by then,” Bryn said. “The baby will be here. And you will love it, and Mark will love it, and it will be your baby. It will be all right.”

“But what if . . .”

“Honey, you worry too much.”

Corrie stiffened at the expression she’d heard from her mother her entire life.

“Sorry!” Bryn immediately saw the look on her face. “I’m not trying to be like your mom. I’m just saying that right now you are overthinking this. I know it seems like a big deal . . . like a huge deal. But it’s not. I mean, it is, but it doesn’t have to be. Men have been raising other men’s babies for thousands of years. It happens.”

“It is a big deal!” Corrie’s voice rose. “God, Bryn, I know you’re trying to help, but think about this. We’re not living in the Stone Age! What about DNA testing? What if someday the child develops something hereditary, something neither Mark nor I carry? How do I explain that?”

Bryn was quiet for a minute.

“Didn’t you and Daniel donate blood when you were in school?”

Corrie paused and nodded. “We went every two months.”

“Do you remember his blood type?”

“He’s an O, the most valuable type.”

“What’s yours?”

“I’m A.”

“Mark’s?”

“He’s an A, too.”

“Well, then you’ll be okay.” Bryn smiled now.

Corrie simply stared at her.

“Look, what I remember from school is that two As or two Bs can have a baby with type O, because O is a recessive gene. So even if the baby is an O, there’s no reason for Mark to believe he’s not the father.”

Corrie shook her head. “Bryn, it doesn’t matter. I can’t tell Mark this baby is his if it’s not. I just can’t do that. It’s . . . it’s wrong!”

Bryn sat quietly, watching Corrie pace, letting her process her emotions. At last, she said softly, “Well, we know for sure that you are not going to end this pregnancy. Right?”

Corrie paused and nodded, her hand resting on her flat belly, as if protecting the child in her womb from the very thought of termination.

“So, you have to make a choice and you have to make it soon. Either you let Mark believe the baby is his—which it probably is, anyway—or you tell him there’s a chance it’s Daniel’s. Right?”

Corrie nodded again, tears filling her eyes.

“So, let’s look at the possibilities. Say the baby is Mark’s, and you never mention Daniel to him, then everything is fine, right?”

Corrie nodded again.

“Now say the baby is Mark’s, and you tell him about Daniel. What do you think will happen?”

Corrie shook her head. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “He’d probably leave me.”

“And if he leaves you, either you will be left alone to raise this baby or . . . or, God, Corrie, what if he sued for custody? Then you’d lose both Mark and the baby. Could you handle that?”

Corrie sank to the couch and cried, shaking her head.

“Okay,” Bryn continued, holding her hand, “now say the baby is Daniel’s. And say you don’t ever mention it to Mark. Then you two finally have the child you always wanted. Mark will be the baby’s father, and you will both be happy. Right?”

Corrie didn’t reply.

“Now,” Bryn said, “say the baby is Daniel’s and you do tell Mark. Do you think he’ll stay with you and raise another man’s kid?”

“I don’t know,” Corrie said. “Probably not.”

“So either way, if you tell Mark about Daniel, you will end up losing your marriage, your home, and a father for your baby. Does that seem fair?”

“But what if Daniel comes back?” Corrie said, shaking her head. “He’s not stupid, Bryn. He knows how to count on a calendar. And he’ll know the baby could be his.”

“We’ll just have to keep him from knowing you’re pregnant,” Bryn said. “At least until after the baby is born. Then we’ll just wait a couple months and tell him, and he’ll think it has to be Mark’s.”

“Oh God,” Corrie cried. “This is not my life! It’s like I’m living in a soap opera. I can’t believe we are even talking about this.”

“I know.” Bryn hugged her friend tightly. “I know just how you feel. I felt like that a few weeks ago. But you know what? It will be okay. I promise, Corrie. I promise it will all work out.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“Maybe not,” Bryn agreed. “Maybe I can’t promise that it will be easy. But I will be right here with you. And I think it will be okay.”

“Bob would have to lie to Daniel,” Corrie said softly. “They’re still friends. They talk. How the hell am I supposed to ask him to lie about the baby’s birthday? This won’t work, Bryn. It can’t work.”

Bryn drew a deep breath and took Corrie’s chin in her hand, looking straight into her eyes.

“Listen,” she said firmly, “Bob already knows you slept with Daniel.”

“Oh God!” Corrie’s eyes widened, her cheeks reddened. “You told him?”

“No,” Bryn said. “He figured it out from the way Daniel was talking. But, honey, Bob loves you. He knows you’re supposed to be with Mark. And he is really pissed off at Daniel. He won’t tell him the truth.”

Corrie simply shook her head, which ached now.

“He might be mad at Daniel,” she said. “But I don’t think he would ever lie about something like this. I mean, this is Bob we’re talking about. He
insisted
that you tell Paul about the baby, right? He’s a freaking counselor, Bryn. His job is to help people. He won’t just be all, ‘Oh, sure, we won’t tell Daniel that he has a child in the world.’ He won’t just say, ‘Sure, Corrie, lie to your husband about your baby’s paternity.’ You should know that as well as I do.”

“Well,” Bryn said firmly, “then we won’t tell Bob you’re pregnant for a couple more weeks, not until it’s past time that Daniel could be the father. If your baby comes a couple weeks early, that’s not unusual at all. My doctor told me babies hardly ever come on their due dates.”