When You Least Expect It (7 page)

Lainey lifted her head and glanced around. She was still there, in the clinic, in the same exam room she’d been in when she met with the doctor. She was also still wearing the paper gown, although someone had laid a scratchy yellow blanket over her.

Lainey felt a tightness on her arm. She looked and saw there was a Band-Aid there, holding down a cotton ball. She picked at the Band-Aid, but it stuck to her arm hair. There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” Lainey said.

The door opened, and a middle-aged woman with a kind face and short dark hair speckled with gray came in.

“How are you feeling?” the woman asked her. “I’m Rosemary. The nurse had to go see another patient, but she asked me to keep an eye on you. Should I call her back?”

“I’m fine,” Lainey said, not entirely truthfully. She was still pretty woozy. “What happened?”

“You fainted,” Rosemary said. When she smiled at Lainey, the edges of her eyes and mouth creased up like the folds of a fan. “You don’t have to get up right away. Feel free to lie there as long as you want.”

“It’s okay,” Lainey said, swinging her legs off the cot and sitting upright. “You’re not a nurse?”

“No, I’m a volunteer counselor.”

“Are you here to counsel me?” Lainey asked. Her chin lifted defiantly, as though daring Rosemary to try.

“If you want to talk, I’d be happy to listen,” Rosemary said. She gestured toward a task chair that was floating adrift in the middle of the exam room. Lainey shrugged. Rosemary seemed to
take this as acquiescence and sat down, resting both feet flat on the floor and folding her hands in her lap.

“Look. I’ll just tell you up front: I want to have an abortion. You’re not going to talk me out of it,” Lainey said.

Rosemary looked surprised. “I’m not here to talk you out of anything. I support every woman’s right to make choices about her reproductive health.”

“Oh,” Lainey said, her indignation deflating. “Then what do you want to talk about?”

Rosemary smiled. “It doesn’t work that way. I’m here to listen, if you’d like to talk.”

Lainey shrugged again. “There’s no point.”

Rosemary nodded, but didn’t say anything. Lainey waited for some sort of reaction, and when none was forthcoming, she began to talk again, just to fill the silence.

“I don’t want kids. I definitely don’t want one now, and maybe not ever. And besides, my boyfriend is sort of a jerk. He wasn’t always, but lately …” Lainey trailed off. She was pissed at Trav, but even so, she didn’t want to get him in trouble for his illegal steroid use. She picked at the Band-Aid, but it stayed firmly in place.

Rosemary nodded. “Have you discussed your decision with your boyfriend?”

“Yeah. Trust me, this is what he wants, too.”
Not that his opinion counts for anything
, she silently added. She wrapped her arms around herself, pressing them tightly across her stomach. Then, wondering if that would bother the baby, she released them.
Was the baby big enough to feel something like that?
she wondered. It was a weird thought—that pressing her own arms over her own stomach would affect someone else. No, that was stupid. The baby was probably too small to feel anything.

“Do you have a good support system?” Rosemary asked. Lainey must have looked confused, because she added, “Your mother, a sister, a close friend?”

Lainey made an irritated sound in her throat. She didn’t need
a support system; she needed an abortion and a bus ticket to L.A. “Look, just so you know, I don’t really do this.”

“Do what?”

“The touchy-feely, talking-about-my-feelings crap.”

Rosemary laughed. “Okay. I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.

Lainey stood, wanting to change out of the paper gown and into her real clothes, and then to get the hell out of there. “I should get going. Am I all done here?”

“The nurse practitioner is going to want to talk to you to make sure you’re feeling well enough to leave. Then, just make an appointment on the way out,” Rosemary said. She reached into her pocket and handed Lainey a business card. She wrote a phone number on the back. “Call me if you change your mind about wanting to talk.”

“Sure,” Lainey said. She took the business card, fully intending to throw it out as soon as possible.

“I can’t believe you’re pregnant,” Flaca said. She was sitting on a faded floral upholstered chair with her feet propped up on the coffee table, while Lainey painted Flaca’s toenails dark blue.

Flaca Reyes was roughly as wide as she was tall, with massive breasts, long, shiny dark hair, and tattoos covering both arms. Lainey had spent much of her childhood at Flaca’s house, escaping first her parents’ escalating arguments and then, after her dad moved out, her mother’s spiral into alcoholism. Flaca was one of eight siblings, and although she’d complained bitterly about the lack of space and privacy while growing up, Lainey had envied her. Some of the best moments of her childhood were spent sitting at the Reyeses’ kitchen table, eating Mrs. Reyes’s empanadas hot from the pan and listening to the good-natured arguments breaking out between Flaca and her siblings.

Flaca was now living with her fiancé, Luis, a mechanic who fixed up classic cars in his spare time. Flaca’s parents liked to pretend
that the two weren’t actually living together out of wedlock, a fiction Flaca maintained by not allowing Luis to keep anything at the apartment, other than the single dresser drawer he was allotted in their bedroom. Luis was storing all of his belongings at his parents’ house until after their wedding.

“I know,” Lainey said. She looked up from her polishing job. “Do you have anything to eat? I’m starving.”

“I thought you said you felt sick,” Flaca said.

“I do. I’m sick and hungry at the same time, all the time. Isn’t that weird?” Lainey said.

“Angelina was the same way when she was pregnant,” Flaca said. “She’d pig out, throw it all up, and then pig out some more.”

Angelina was Flaca’s oldest sister, and had gained seventy-five pounds when she was pregnant, most of which she never lost after the baby arrived. Lainey shuddered at the thought of that happening to her.

“There’s a box of cereal in the cupboard,” Flaca said. She got up and, hobbling on her heels so as not to smudge her newly polished toes, went into the kitchen to retrieve the box. She came back in the living room and handed it to Lainey, who ripped it open and dumped a small pile of Cap’n Crunch out on the coffee table.

“You’ve definitely decided to have an abortion?” Flaca asked. There was no condemnation in the question. Flaca was Catholic by birth but pragmatic by nature.

“Yes.” Lainey paused. “Something weird happened when I went to the clinic.”

“What?”

“I fainted.”

“Again?” Lainey had accompanied Flaca to the tattoo studio when she was having Luis’s name inked on the back of her neck. The tattoo artist had barely begun, just touching the needle to Flaca’s skin, when Lainey slid off her chair in a dead faint.

Lainey nodded. “They were drawing blood,” she said, shuddering at the memory.

“Damn, girl, what is it with you and needles?”

“I don’t know. I can’t help it,” Lainey said defensively. She shoved a handful of cereal into her mouth.

“You okay?”

Lainey shrugged. “Fine. I mean, still pregnant, but otherwise fine.”

“Do you think it was a sign? You passing out like that?”

“A sign of what?”

“That you should have the baby,” Flaca said. She lifted her heavy eyebrows in a meaningful way.

Lainey snorted. “A sign from God? Please. You know, you should let me tweeze your eyebrows. I keep telling you, it would really make your eyes pop.”

“You know how you feel about needles? That’s how I feel about having my hair ripped out by the roots. And don’t change the subject,” Flaca said. “I really think this could be a sign.”

“I don’t believe in signs.”

“I do. The first time Luis and I went out, there was a huge full moon in the sky, even though it was still light out. I knew then that we were meant to be together.”

“You’re getting married because of a moon?” Lainey teased. She adored Luis and would have killed Flaca if she hadn’t decided to marry him. “You know that’s crazy, right?”

“No it’s not. And it’s not the only reason I’m marrying him. I was just paying attention to the signs that God was trying to tell me something,” Flaca said.

“If God wanted me to keep this baby, he’d send me a winning lottery ticket. Now,
that
would be a sign. And even then, I still wouldn’t want it. The baby, I mean. I’d take the money.”

“I don’t think God works that way.”

“Too bad. I could use the money for my L.A. fund. In fact, it’s too bad you can’t sell babies.”

“Well …,” Flaca said, and bit her lip thoughtfully.

“I was just kidding.”

“I know. But do you remember Crystal Owens? She was a year ahead of us at school.”

“Yeah, sure. She used to go out with Jason Tucker. Remember when he got loaded at that party and tried to stick his hand up my shirt? Crystal got in my face about it, warning me to stay away from her man. As if I’d have any interest in that freak,” Lainey said, with an eye roll. “He was a total troll. They’re not still together, are they?”

“No, they broke up ages ago. But don’t you remember, she got knocked up senior year?”

“That’s right. I’d totally forgotten about that.”

“She gave her baby up for adoption.”

“She did? How did I not know that?” Lainey finished painting Flaca’s nails and capped the bottle of polish with a flourish.

“I think she kept it pretty quiet. Anyway, from what I heard, the family who adopted the baby paid her for it. They even rented her an apartment and paid her bills.”

Lainey stared at her friend. “Seriously? They gave her money?”

Flaca nodded. “I heard she had enough afterward to get a new car,” Flaca said. She wiggled her toes for Lainey to see. “What do you think of this color? Damn, girl, you give the best pedicures.”

Lainey shrugged off the praise. She’d be thrilled to never see the inside of another nail salon. Currently, she was working at one in the mall that was owned and run by a Korean family. Lainey was the only native English speaker employed in the place, and she was pretty sure the other nail technicians talked about her while she was sitting right there. They were always giving her sly, sidewise looks and giggling behind their hands. “Crystal seriously bought a new car?”

“Yeah. It was just one of those little shitty Kias, but still.” Flaca shrugged. “Better than nothing, right?”

Lainey wondered what a new Kia cost. It had to be at least ten
grand, right? That would definitely pay for a bus ticket to Los Angeles, and cover a few months of living expenses if she was careful. Would that be enough time for her to get discovered?

“How much money do you think I could get?”

“I don’t know. Probably a lot. There are a lot of rich people out there who want to adopt. I’ve seen, like, whole episodes on
Oprah
about it. The women have careers or whatever, and by the time they get around to having babies, it’s too late,” Flaca explained.

“So they’re desperate,” Lainey mused. “Desperate enough to pay a lot of money.”

“Definitely,” Flaca agreed. “And you know, the kid would be totally set up for life. It would probably have a nanny and a pony.”

Lainey shrugged this off. She was far more interested in the idea that this pregnancy—which she had, right up until this very moment, seen only as a problem that needed to be dealt with—might actually be an easy way for her to make some money. True, it would mean she’d have to be pregnant for months and months, and would get really fat in the meantime. But that would be temporary. She could lose the weight. Lots of movie stars had babies, and were skinny again a few weeks later.

“How would I find one of these rich, desperate women?” Lainey asked.

“Seriously?” Flaca asked.

“What? It was your idea!”

“But it’s a really big deal. A huge, life-changing deal. A few minutes ago, you were sure you were going to have an abortion.”

“A few minutes ago, I didn’t know having this baby would make me rich,” Lainey retorted.

“But don’t you think it’d be hard to go through a whole pregnancy, feeling the baby kick, and then at the end, hand it over to a couple of complete strangers?” Flaca asked. She shook her head. “I don’t know if I could do that.”

But Lainey was caught up in fantasies of bloated bank balances
and the glamorous new life it would buy her in Los Angeles—meeting movie stars, attending glittering parties, finding a rich guy to fall in love with her. Her entire life would change for the better.

“I don’t think it’d be hard at all,” she said.

Lainey almost lost her nerve when Rosemary answered the phone.

“This is Rosemary,” a familiar, pleasant voice said.

“Yeah, um, you probably don’t remember me, but my name is Lainey. I was at the clinic last week and I passed out when they were taking blood, and you gave me your card.”

“Of course I remember you,” Rosemary said warmly. “How are you, Lainey?”

“I’m okay. I was thinking about not having an abortion after all. But I don’t want to keep the baby, either,” Lainey added quickly, lest Rosemary get it into her head to knit the baby some booties, or whatever it was that old ladies did with their free time.

“You’re considering adoption?” Rosemary asked.

Lainey searched the words and tone for even the merest trace of being judged. But then, deciding there was none, she said, “Yeah, I guess so. But the thing is, I don’t know how to do that.”

“You have several options. I would recommend that you use some sort of intermediary. A lawyer, an adoption agency, even a good not-for-profit group,” Rosemary said.

Lainey did not like the sound of
not-for-profit
.

“I think I want to go through an attorney,” Lainey said, figuring that this was probably how rich people adopted babies. Rich people always had lawyers.

“There are several good adoption attorneys in town, but there’s one in particular that I’ve gotten good feedback on.”

“That would be great,” Lainey said, picking up a pencil to write down the lawyer’s name on an unpaid cable bill.
Mike Jankowski, 555–0400
.