Chapter 20. Alice #2
“I’m not implying anything. I’m asking a question.”
“No,” Alice shot back. “You’re badgering me.”
Kyle snorted. “Sorry if I find it hard to believe you just forgot you were pregnant.”
Alice buried her face in her hands for a moment of reprieve.
When she looked up again, Kyle expounded upon all the ways she’d obsessively protected her body when she was pregnant with Finn and James.
“You wouldn’t even eat tuna fish!” She half listened as she stared at the painting on the wall behind him—a watercolor of a fishing village her mother had visited once with the nuns.
The night Alice and Kyle returned to the Folly from the hospital after Topher died, she’d noticed the picture had fallen to the floor.
At first, she’d been confused, but then Kyle explained it was probably from the EMTs trying to maneuver Topher’s body down the stairs in the carrier.
She was newly pregnant then, too—Finn a cluster of cells dividing and dividing within her—but filled with a sense of hope for that child that she could not gather here and now.
She thought of what had just transpired at the table—not just Cait’s outburst, but her determination to stand up for herself, however sloppily—and looked at Kyle. “I want to go back to school,” she said.
Kyle’s face settled instantly. “For design?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, exacerbated. “And maybe business.”
“Then do that.”
“I can’t. I mean, I won’t. Not if we have another baby.”
“Of course you can,” Kyle said. “You’re my Alice the Invincible!”
Alice had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. “Do you know how much money we have in the bank at the moment?” she asked him. “Before you’re paid next week?”
Kyle shifted. “More than we had when either of the boys was born, I imagine. We made it work.”
“I made it work,” she said, “for everyone but me.”
“What’s the point in even—”
“And we can’t have three kids in a two-bedroom house. Do you know how much a house even slightly bigger than ours costs in Port Haven these days?”
Kyle cupped her elbows. “These are all problems with a solution,” he said. Then his grip tightened. “There’s a baby coming in nine months, so we need to stop focusing on—”
Alice turned away. She knew he wouldn’t understand what this meant to her, not now, not ever. “I can’t be more than six weeks along,” she said.
Finally, it seemed to click. “Oh,” he said quietly. “Okay. I see.” Then: “We can’t.”
Though he didn’t use the word, the evocation shifted something within her. By saying they couldn’t , he was acknowledging they could . Or she could.
Below them, the chatter in the kitchen stopped. A moment later, it resumed, and so did Kyle. “There are logistics we’ll need to work out, sure. But once the baby’s born, you won’t even remember these things.”
She shot him a look, and he shrank away. His tone enraged her— I’m the man , he seemed to say, the decider, and your feelings are irrelevant . He was trying to talk himself into accepting this.
“Look,” he said more evenly. “You’re in shock. I am, too. And with everything”—he gestured downstairs—“you’re overwhelmed. I told you that earlier. And today’s not helping.”
“I am in shock,” Alice admitted. “But that’s not—”
“I’ll get an extra job. My dad couldn’t afford to send three kids to college on a cop’s salary, but he made it work. So can we.”
Alice shook her head. “No, you don’t understand—”
“And we’ll talk to Dr. Chen about the risk factors. There must be something we can do. I know you’re scared.”
“Stop interrupting me and telling me what I am!” Her head felt like it would explode, and she pinched the space between her eyes. She knew he was upset, but she could not stand to listen to more of his assumptions and false assurances.
Kyle composed himself, but it seemed to take everything in him not to say more.
“I want to keep working,” she said. “I don’t want our lives to go back to sleepless nights, and I don’t want to be changing diapers while trying to figure out how we’ll ever be able to afford to send Finn to college, and—my God, how can you ask this of me?
Why is another kid more important than your wife? ”
Downstairs, someone opened the front door, and James’s voice echoed through the house. “Papa, the raccoon’s back in the garbage!”
Alice headed toward the stairs to see what was happening, but Kyle held her back and called down to James, “Stay away from the raccoon!” A second later, they could hear her father walking out the front door. “I got it,” he yelled.
Kyle turned back to Alice. “I am not saying that this baby is more important than you,” he said.
“But if you want me to go through with the pregnancy, then you are.”
“No, we need to keep you safe, of course. But the sooner we accept what’s actually happening and move forward—”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
Kyle stared at her. “What are you doing?”
Here, the word caught in her throat. She knew that what she was saying—or not saying—was a devastating, heartbreaking thing. For her, but also for Kyle. An attack on his faith, his authority, his fathering. But she couldn’t turn back.
“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this now,” Kyle said.
The memory came to Alice unexpectedly. An article in the—was it Newsday ?
Maybe one of the Catholic publications always arriving in their mailbox for Kyle?
Whichever it was, the article talked about how next year was the Holy Year of Mercy.
And with it, Pope Francis’s offering of absolution to women who’d had an abortion.
She’d thought it a just thing to offer women forgiveness, though she wasn’t sure forgiveness was warranted for her now, considering her intention.
“I want to have it done as quickly as possible,” she said. “Before the… It’s still an embryo. It’s not even a fetus yet. It’s almost like women who go through in vitro and then don’t implant all the—”
“This is implanted—by the hand of God!” Kyle said, struggling to keep his voice down. “And if we left it alone, it would grow into our baby.”
Alice crossed her arms over her chest. She’d been waiting for him to evoke the ultimate higher authority in his attempt to win this argument, and there it was. “Does God intend to kill me?” she said.
“That’s not—”
“I’m almost forty. You may have forgotten about my preeclampsia— at twenty-nine weeks, for James—but I most certainly haven’t. Now our risk— my risk—is close to forty percent.”
Kyle lowered his head.
“You were in the room with Dr. Chen—”
“I know, I know.” Then he looked up and said, “You’re forcing me to choose between you and our child. How can I possibly do that?”
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I’m not asking for your permission. I’m telling you what I’ve decided.” As soon as she said it, a surprising calmness came over her.
“So I have no say. In any of this?”
“No,” she said. “I have to choose between my well-being and the… embryo… I’m choosing me.”
Oh fuck , she thought. That’s my decision .
A flash of certainty but also fear moved through her.
Kyle was used to being the one in charge—at work and at home—and did not seem to register her answer.
A shift in power was unfolding in the fabric of their relationship, and she could see that it was disorienting to them both.
Part of her found it liberating, but another part of her was terrified and mourned the loss of the baby already.
She could cry tears of relief and tears of heartache all at once.
Either way, she was starting to realize, they would be her tears to manage on her own. She could hardly believe it when she looked up at him and heard herself saying, “You’re absolved.”
Kyle looked at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means all you have to do is object”—she paused, straightening her back—“and you don’t have to bear any guilt or responsibility, while still getting what you want.”
“And what is it you think I want?”
“To maintain the moral high ground,” she said. “And to not have another baby.”