“This is why abortion is still legal,” I said anyway.
“No it’s not,” Katie snapped.
“Um, yes. It is.”
“No, not, no it isn’t legal; no this isn’t why.”
“I know what you meant, and this is exactly why.”
“This is a terrible case for abortion.”
“She doesn’t need to make a case.”
“She’s not poor; she’s educated; she’s in a stable relationship—”
“I am poor,” Jill broke in.
“—no one forced her. She had sex ed in school.”
“Yeah, but I probably wasn’t paying attention,” said Jill.
“Abortions are tragic and should not be taken lightly.”
“Are you running for Congress, Katie? Who’s taking this lightly?”
“You guys aren’t helping,” said Jill.
“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” said Katie.
“I can’t believe you’d think we wouldn’t.”
“I can’t believe this is even on the table.”
“The only reason to have a baby,” I said, “is because you want to be a parent. Otherwise, that’s why there is abortion.”
“Or you could try not having sex.”
“I think that ship has sailed,” said Jill.
“Right, because a moratorium on sex is totally reasonable.”
“You should try it sometime, Janey.” Like I have sex all the time. I wish.
“Or even appropriate. It’s not like she’s twelve.”
“Twelve?” said Katie. “That’s the cutoff for you? Twelve?”
“I think we’re getting off topic,” said Jill.
“The reason to have a baby is because you’re pregnant. That’s what pregnant means,” said Katie. “If she didn’t want to have a baby, she should have thought of that before she got pregnant.”
“Who says I don’t want to have a baby?” said Jill.
We stopped and looked at her. We might have forgotten she was there.
“Do you?” we both asked at the same time.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Well, do you want to . . . stop it?” Katie asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to be a mother?” I tried.
“Someday. I think.”
“Now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does Dan?”
She just shrugged. We let the “he probably doesn’t want to be a mother” joke lie there untouched.
“Can we not talk about this right now?” said Jill. “Can we watch a movie instead? Can we do nothing?”
I thought fleetingly of my so-much-work and realized it was not to be. We watched something stupid. Katie and Jill fell asleep on their separate sofas. I threw blankets over each of them and crawled off to my own bed sometime after midnight.
I don’t know how long they’d been up and talking, but by the time I wandered in the next morning, Katie was already on “This is your son or daughter we’re talking about.” I sighed loudly. It wasn’t that I desperately wanted Jill to get an abortion or that I thought she’d make a terrible mother or that I was all about all abortions all the time for everyone. But having a baby because it’s against Katie’s religion to have sex is a stupid reason. And since no one else was going to say it, it had to be me. In movies, on TV, abortion’s usually not even an option, not because of the political implications, simply because if she has an abortion, there’s no story, at least not that one. Abortion is a plot hole. Real people have to make the decision.
“It’s only your son or daughter if you want it to be,” I said, distributing bowls of Cheerios all around. “Only if you let it grow into a baby. Right now, it isn’t a baby. It isn’t anything. It isn’t even a fetus yet.” Jill was crying suddenly, and I couldn’t tell if it was with relief—because this was what she wanted to hear—or disgust, horror, anger, sadness, exhaustion. There were lots of possibilities. In case it was the former though, I kept talking. “If you’re not ready, if Dan’s not ready, you shouldn’t do it. There are lots of good reasons to stop this right here.”
“Like what?”
“Like if you’re going to be resentful. Like if Dan’s going to be resentful. Like if you don’t want to set aside your whole life right now to take care of someone else’s. This is not a part-time gig. You can’t change your mind later. If you can’t take care of it—”
“Why wouldn’t I be able to take care of it?” Jill looked up at me and wondered with wet, hurt eyes.
“I’m saying if. I’m saying if that’s true, you know, you know, it’s not fair. To anyone.”
“It would change my life,” said Jill. An understatement.
“Having a baby would change your entire life,” I agreed.
“No. I mean having an abortion would change my life.”
“Why?”
“Because I would never forget.”
“There are lots of things you never forget.”
“Because what if this is my last chance?”
“To what?”
“To be pregnant.”
“Why would it be your last chance to be pregnant? Clearly you’re fertile.”
“But what if I just don’t ever get pregnant again for whatever reason?”
“If you want to, you will.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Then why would you now?”
“Because it’s already here now. It’s already decided.” I remembered my flash of jealousy from yesterday afternoon, but I remained unconvinced. Indecisiveness is also not a good enough reason to have a baby.
“Indecisiveness is not a good enough reason to have a baby,” I said.
We chewed Cheerios for a little bit and said nothing.
“How would it be? If you had the baby?” Katie ventured after a pause.
“You’re changing the subject,” I accused.
“This is hardly a different subject,” she said.
“I guess I would drop out of school, get a job somewhere, get daycare all day. Work. Raise a baby.” This sounded desperate and miserable, but it wasn’t really. She wasn’t just a child herself. She was not thinking about dropping out of high school. She was not even thinking of dropping out of college. This was a woman who already had a master’s degree. We were talking about a Ph.D. in literature. We were not talking about her having to take a miserable minimum-wage job or two or three. We were talking about giving up the ten-thousand-dollars-a-year deal that is a graduate assistantship in exchange for a real job like normal people get. It had the ring of terrible, but that was someone else’s version of this story.
“What about Dan?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what he’ll want to do.” Katie and I exchanged glances and then let this go. I tried, but I honestly couldn’t even put odds on what Dan would want.
“You could let someone else raise it, put it up for adoption,” Katie offered. That’s such weird phrasing, I thought. Put it up for adoption. Like put it up on an auction pedestal for bidding. Like it’s a vase.