February - Giants 8 страница

She shrugged. "I had figured he would tell me that. Not in those words, but I wasn't surprised when he said I was pregnant. I had started to accept it at that point. I was scared, but it was like watching a horror movie. You know you're going to jump, you just don't always know when."

The pit of my stomach flexed, and I felt the coffee that I had consumed earlier splash back up my throat. This was too much emotion. I decided that hugging her would probably be the best option, and I hoped that after my small antagonism, she would accept my embrace. She did, and as I leaned down and wrapped my arms around her, I was shocked to find that she was shivering. We were talking in the middle of the night in the middle of fucking winter, I chastised myself internally. She was shaking and pregnant. Fuck, I needed to stop being a jerk and realize that this was no longer about me.

"We need to get you home. Get warm," I told her.

She nodded into the hug. "I'll go soon. I just wanted to make sure you knew what the situation was and were okay with it."

I nodded. I bit my lip, thinking about the next step in this. "I... uh, we... do you want to?.... Keep?"

Jasmine understood what I meant. Our broken English had made a new language called 'freezing and scared shitless maybe-parent' speak. She held her hand up in the air to signal her understanding and to draw me into silence.

"I have no idea what I want to do. If I had known one hundred percent, I would have already gotten that taken care of and you would have never had to know. I do things like that by myself," she told me, and though she didn't say what it was, she was transparent. If she had been sure of her decision, she would have gotten the abortion already and she wouldn't have let me in on this little piece of knowledge. Jasmine always involved as few people as possible, to distinctly avoid making a scene the way we had just then. This expression significantly deviated from her own established norm. She shifted her weight from side to side. "I don't know what I want to do yet. I told you because I needed you to know. But this is my body, Frank. As much as I want you to know, you need to realize that I am the one to really make the decision in the end. We can discuss, and I want to discuss, but it will be me having the final word because it's me doing this."

I opened my mouth and took a deep, startled breath. My lungs froze in the cold air, and I saw Jasmine shaking again. I let go of my thoughts, my confused and angry thoughts, and focused my attention on her. I wanted to tell her that if she did decide to get an abortion, I would go with her. Of course I would. I would go and hold her hand and take care of her afterwards and everything. I wanted to prove my own responsibility, and place it over my own inadequacy at that moment. As much as this was a part of me now and my world, it could slip through my fingers.

"Okay," I told her. "Never mind. We can talk about this later. We just need to get you home."

I rushed beside her and put my arm on the small of her back. I was delicate in touching her this time. Would I have been before if I didn't know she was actually holding something so deep inside herself?

She began to walk ahead of me and rejected my arm around her. "It's okay, Frank. You go home. I can get there myself."

"What? But I thought?"

"I can get there myself," she repeated sternly. She kept walking, and then looking over her shoulder, in a slightly softer tone of voice said. "We will talk tomorrow. I promise you that. But let me go now, okay? I will see you later."

She didn't wait for me to respond, she just kept walking. And I did what I had to do - I let her go. I couldn't force her to stay with me or to follow her home and make sure she got there okay anymore than I had the right over to the being inside of her. I knew she was right. It was her body and it was ultimately her life that a baby would affect more. It was her right to choose and all of that other rhetoric. I agreed with all of that whole heartedly and I did not support anything but that full autonomy. We had discussed this before, years ago, on the bed in her apartment and I knew I had not changed my stance from those abstract terms and logical arguments.

But it still hurt, watching her walk away. It hurt so much knowing that we had fucked up so badly, even though we tried not to, even though we had done everything right, and it hurt even worse that I had no idea what to do next. I thought back to that entire night and it confounded itself inside my mind. I saw and heard and tasted and felt and smelled everything to do with that night all over again, all at once. Everything played, and then, all of a sudden, it stopped. How could something change so fast? I tried to not live in the past because that was already done with, but the future was so indeterminate right now for me to think about or inhabit. All I knew was the present and that Jasmine was pregnant with something that was both of ours. It was there, but just as easily and haphazardly as it was there, it could easily be gone. It was the only thing I knew for sure right then, other than the fact that I was freezing cold.

I turned around in the snow, and began to walk home. It was the only thing I could do.

When I got to Vivian's place, I went inside, but I was determined to only stay long enough to warm my hands. I got out the kettle and made a cup of tea. I dug through the cupboard and tried to find the one that Jasmine had drunk. In my search, I actually found jasmine tea and settled on that. It felt strange, drinking it, and I stopped halfway through. I wasn't going to consume her. I couldn't let that overwhelming urge get the best of me. If I consumed her, I consumed my own child and I had worked too hard and come too far to go right back to the beginning again. I was not going to be my father - whether or not she kept this baby - and I needed to make that clear. I dumped the rest of the tea down the drain and then I went out again.

I walked back to where Gerard and I used to live, and my heart ached as I passed the building. It was completely dark out, and so fucking cold, but I kept going. No lights were on in the small apartment building. Ours would have been, if I was there, and we would have been making art until dawn. Our art was our progeny, then, and now - what did we have? Gerard was selling his paintings and I was taking pictures for a magazine. I may have a kid. I shuddered and moved on. I liked the isolation of the night and the alienation I felt made me believe that maybe what had happened with Jasmine had been a dream; a strange twist in the chorus of a song, the bridge that repeated itself until the final end where the changed structure changed the meaning. Maybe the poems that we could pull out of the air could be redone and remade, and she wasn't really pregnant at all. Or maybe, all the art and time and memories we had together finally formed into something else. Maybe this was how our masterpiece together was supposed to form: it inside of her, made of us. Flesh of my flesh. Flesh is flesh is flesh. We were all irrevocably linked. I kept piecing together small bits and sections of conversation as I walked and reminisced, and before I knew it, I had made our baby into something metaphoric and artistic. It was a collage of all the remnants of our lives, the broken pieces that didn't always fit together, that changed shape and meaning through another form.

If she kept the baby, I told myself, if she kept it. It was up to her and I had no say, so maybe that was why I was spinning all these webs and lies together, forming something new and my own. I needed the content to override the form, because I suddenly had no choice.

I walked into memorial park, where Gerard and I came on our first day together and where Jasmine and I had the Food Not Bombs meeting and I sat on the bench. It was freezing cold and the chill still stung me through my jeans, but I shuddered and bore it. I pulled my knees to my chest and stayed in the fetal position and just waited. Is this what our baby looked like inside of her, all curled up into a ball like this? No, probably not. It was probably as big as a dime right now, if that. It was super tiny and fragile, and may not even be there in a week's time. She could get an abortion and then we would ignore one another for a while because we would both feel a loss of something, if only a friendship unmarred with difficulties. Or she could miscarry and the decision could be taken from us, and we could mourn over that. Sometimes these things just happen. My mother had hinted that she had had some miscarriages around and after my birth; it was one of the reasons that I didn't have siblings (and probably why they both clung onto me so much). Sometimes bodies just didn't take babies and sometimes bad things just happened. Like this pregnancy to begin with. Not that this was a wholly bad thing, it was just unexpected. Unplanned.

I sat there for a minute and tried to sort out my feelings. I didn't seem able to decide whether or not this was a good thing or a bad thing, whether having a baby was something I loathed or wanted, or whether or not an abortion would make me feel better about the situation or worse. It was all this mess of mixed up emotions, and a lot of it I knew stemmed from the fact that it just didn't matter what I wanted. I was not the one carrying the kid. Did Jasmine think I would run if she wanted to keep it? Was she keeping me at a distance because she couldn't really depend on my reaction either? Would I run? I had no idea. There were too many questions thrown at me that I had just never considered before.

And it wasn't fair. It honestly wasn't fair. Things were finally going well again. Finances were getting sorted out, I had a shitty part-time job, but it was a job, and Gerard and I had been doing better than ever. How would things change between us? Did he have to know if she didn't keep it? What if she did - would he still want to be with me? Before, he and I embodied freedom. Would he still be able to place that virtue inside of me if I had this child attached to my name, my body, and my life? Would I still be able to view my life with that descriptor?

It suddenly occurred to me that I may not have been the only one that knew this. Vivian and Jasmine had talked the day before. Did Vivian know this? And not tell me? Her erratic behaviour and her resistance to my questions about it proved her guilt in my mind. She knew, and then let me think everything was fine and that things were okay. She gave me no warning, and I was appalled. Did Gerard know too? Cassandra? Did everyone know but me and then wanted to keep it a secret? Why were we all suddenly keeping secrets? Jasmine was the same that she had been when I saw her weeks ago, except the she hadn't been. She was pregnant that time and we both didn't know about it, but it was there. She had been ill when we have moved and this is why she hadn't helped. Her pregnancy was there, it was everywhere, but no one knew about it and it drove me crazy sitting on the bench and replaying the signs, the scenes and symptoms in my head and kicking myself for not knowing. I stretched my memory to the night we had slept together, when the snow had made it impossible for her to leave, and my body began to shake. I could remember the exact moment, the exact time we made that baby. I tried to remember putting the condom on, but fuck, who really remembered that uniquely each and every time? It was like locking the door - I did it so often and so regularly that it blurred together. I had worn one, yes, but did I pinch the tip? Did it fall off and I not notice? Was it even fully intact when we were done? I didn't know. I probably just used a tissue and didn't think about it. Why didn't I think about it?

I kept replaying that night in my mind. We had slept on different beds. If we had just stayed there... I replayed the day we got back from Paris, and seeing Jasmine then. There had been no secrets then, no looming structures in the background that were going to determine our lives. She had not been pregnant then. It seemed like a paradise now, living in that apartment, free from burden. Nothing had been decided, nothing had been lost. I said that French phrase in my mind again: tout ce qui n'est pas donné est perdu. All that is not given is lost. What did we not give? Why did we lose it all?

I sighed. I thought about time. As much as Gerard said there was no fate and that time was a construct, I felt the weight of its burden. It was linear, no matter what, because if it wasn't then I could go back and fix things.

But was it really fixing? I didn't know. Was this bad or good? I was scared shitless, but that didn't mean I wanted to get rid of everything that had happened since that first night. If I got rid of this pregnancy, would Gerard still be famous? Would we still be in the same place we were then? It was the butterfly effect, if I touched one thing, did the rest crumble?

I got up from the bench and looked around the empty park. I thought I saw a shadow that went in between the statues, but I was probably losing it from cold right now. It was nearly two am, and soon I would have to go home. But I thought about not moving; about staying here all night, freezing to death. I thought about walking to the airport and getting on a plane and not coming back. If couldn't undo time, then maybe I could just disappear and then the future would be different. I really could run. Pretend it never happened.

I turned around and began to walk away from the park vehemently, towards the sidewalk, back to Vivian's house. I avoided looking at our apartment, because it wasn't ours anymore. I was losing it. I needed to talk to someone, anyone, fast, before I did something stupid that I knew I would regret. That both of us would regret. No, not both - all. There was more than one person in my life now, whether I liked it or not.

I got home and waited around for Cassandra to get up. I got a book, made more tea, and passed the time. I originally thought Gerard had gone to sleep, but I was surprised to find that he wasn't even downstairs. I thought this was really odd, but wrote it off. He was probably with Mikey. He had been spending some evenings there and maybe he had decided to spend the whole night. Maybe he knew about Jasmine and was giving me time to myself. I really hoped that wasn't the case, though. I needed him more than ever. Jasmine wasn't speaking with me, at least not yet, and I needed someone else to bounce my ideas and frustrations of with. I needed someone else who knew me the way that the two of them, intimate and vulnerable. There was nothing more vulnerable than this, I figured, aside from death. The creation of a life, and the ending of one; these two events were the biggest in life, and they were something that you could not do alone. My two best options to go through this with were gone and out of my reach, so I waited for Cassandra. She was harsh. She would tell me what I needed to hear.

I fell asleep around five in the morning, but stayed upstairs. I just put my head on my hands and dozed in and out of rest. The night shifts, in spite of liking them and adjusting to the flip in schedule, were still tiring me out. My body always wanted to sleep at night and be awake during the day. It only worked while I was on the shifts because those fluorescent lights made it too bright and annoying to find comfort in sleep. I was always on my feet and doing stuff, so even if my mental capacity diminished, I would remain awake. But anytime I wasn't at work, I would get tired and want to go to bed. Not having Gerard or anyone here to keep me awake, I wanted to be lulled into a complacent dream world where I didn't have to think about things anymore. My book was interesting, but my mind made it impossible to read. The only thing left to do was sleep.

I even dreamed my anxieties. I saw Jasmine splitting herself into twos and threes and mini versions of us both running around everywhere. While Jasmine split perfectly in two and three and four, each part of herself an exact clone and symmetrical, I was splitting myself by body part. I was an arm, then leg, and then my torso was torn in two. When I felt Vivian's hand brush down my back and touch my neck to wake me up, it had been the final scene in my dream where I lost my head.

" Fuck," I enunciated when I realized what had happened. "You scared me."

"You were drooling on my table," Vivian countered. "You were also moaning in your sleep, and not the good kind. I think I did you a favour."

She was wearing her red robe and her hair was tousled, but still fairly neat for just getting out of bed. She went over to the coffee maker and got it ready for the morning. I saw on the oven clock that it was a little past seven.

"Is Cassandra around?" I asked.

Vivian shook her head. "Sleepover. She's really taken with this new friend of hers."

I failed to comment on the friendship remark, but I knew who Vivian was talking about. I focused on my task at hand instead of teenage lesbian love affairs: "Do you know when she'll be back? I'd like to talk to her."

"She probably will go to piano right after hanging out with Noelle. I doubt we'll see her until dinner."

Vivian sat back down at the table and looked at me sternly. She had poured me a cup of coffee and slid it over to me. "Drink," she said. "And talk to me."

I obeyed her command to drink, but I shuddered at the idea of talking to Vivian about this ordeal. I felt like she already knew too much and was too invested in the situation. I wanted someone neutral. I wanted to talk to a fifteen-year-old who had more critical sense than me, not Vivian. Why was I so afraid of Vivian, though? It took me a while to register that it was because she had actually given birth and had a kid. She knew better than anyone what we were getting ourselves into and our options at hand. She was the most knowledgeable. She scared me she knew so much. I looked in the black pit of my coffee.

"Frank, you need to talk to someone about this or else it will eat you up inside," she stated blankly.

"That is why I will wait for Cassandra."

"You can't talk to a fifteen-year-old whose idea of a relationship right now is a piano and her best friend," she said exasperated. So, she did know about her daughter. "You should talk to me. You need to talk to someone outside the situation to get a better perspective."

"You're not outside the situation anymore. You're too involved. You had tea with her yesterday. You knew and you didn't tell me," I accused my coffee cup. I was too afraid to look at Vivian when I said anything.

"Of course I knew. I could tell that she was pregnant as soon as she walked into my house. I didn't need her to divulge anything to know what was going on, Frank. I've been through what she's been through. I knew and I gave her what she needed then: someone to have tea with. When she ended up telling me, I was there to listen, not to conspire against you. What happened between the two of us was not about you. There was no question that I would keep this quiet. It's not my issue to tell. But that is exactly why you should talk to me now. You know I won't tell Jasmine, no matter what you say to me. Unless you're planning to hurt someone, I won't say a word."

I sat up in my chair a bit more and took a deep breath. Her offer was tempting. "I... I just don't know. I'm scared."

"That is so normal. Even parents who plan children are scared when it happens."

"We did everything right. And it still happened," I exclaimed and Vivian just nodded. She reached her hand out and touched the one that was over the mug. Her fingers had a bit of a chill to them. I made quick eye contact, and knowing that she was there for me, I went on. "I can't even do anything about all of this now because Jasmine says it's her body and I have no right to it. I know that's true, but this fucking sucks and it hurts. This is part of me too. It's her body, but I'm a part of her now. She's always been a part of me, even before this baby. Can't she understand that?"

Vivian nodded: "You'll always be a part of one another, whether or not this baby becomes a baby or not. You'll always be that to one another. She's always you and you're always her. You can't undo something like that. Forget the baby as part of that equation. Even if she gets an abortion, you'll always be a part of her. I've seen the way you two look at one another. There is no denying that there is something between the two of you, beyond this issue."

I nodded. I knew that, I knew that as much as Gerard and I were a part of one another too. We couldn't biologically reproduce, but there was something there between us that made us linked. There had always been something about Jasmine and I as well, before this baby, and after it too. Hearing that Vivian could visually see it made me feel a lot better about this whole scenario. My fear had also been coming from the feeling that whatever it was that kept Jasmine and I together had been severed with this instance. Whether or not the baby became a child, this connection would not disappear, Vivian assured me. She also mentioned Gerard, and what she knew about that man and kids.

"Any connection that you have with him now would only be strengthened by this. Birth fascinates him, remember? You probably know more about Cassandra's birth than she does because he's told the story, made the pictures, and talks about it so much. I also see the way you two look at one another. Whatever happens, the people who love you love you and not a lot will change that," she squeezed my hand, assuring me. "Including me."

I squeezed back, feeling a lot of the burden lifted. My relationships, in either scenario, would be okay. There was a relative amount of security there. It was just the matter of the actual child now.

"Imagine keeping the kid," Vivian instructed. "What would you do? Just hypothetical now, Frank. We're just pretending. Remember that nothing has changed since the coming back in December. You and Jasmine will always be there and that's why it hurts when she's gone now. It's the uncertainty that's driving you crazy. I know. It drove me crazy when I was pregnant too. So just imagine both routes that this could go. Humour yourself."

I nodded and tried to do what Vivian asked. I stared down the bottom of my coffee cup and waited for answers to come. I closed my eyes, and I tried to imagine the world with Jasmine pregnant and the baby around. It was terrifying. I saw myself getting a better job or working more hours at the drug store. I saw a lot of money being spent and a lot of bills. I saw us arguing a lot, but I also saw us lying in the same bed together, our arms around one another. I saw us walking down the street together, with Gerard and Vivian too, just as we were now, but a large lump in the middle of Jasmine's stomach. I imagined my hands over Jasmine enlarged stomach, and though I had no reference point, I imagined feeling a kick. I pictured the being we could create together; what this baby would look like in the world, with fists and feet and fat. It was strange. I was used to seeing babies and I had always been ambivalent towards them. They were okay, but I had never given them much thought. I was giving thought to my life now, with children, and though it was odd, it wasn't as scary as I first imagined. It was not the child that frightened me. It was the economic insecurity, the bills, the life lived in a state of waiting and paying for things that were never-ending.

"Okay, now imagine no baby. None at all. Jasmine gets an abortion or realizes she wasn't pregnant at all. Now how do you feel?" Vivian asked, and I went off again.

I saw our lives how we had been living them the past little while. The night shifts, the staying up late drawing, the photography. Working for the magazine and talking about art and music. I saw Cassandra striving and striving for her piano, and I found myself wondering why. Why was she working so hard? What goal did she think she was going to accomplish? I saw her life and the rest of her days filled out with endless bouts of musical notes and crescendos. I saw Gerard's creative output of paintings and pictures laid together side by side. Even he was growing tired of that life. It was one of the reasons he wanted to take on cooking, one of the reasons he wanted to see his brother. It was people filling his world now.

I realized, in a moment of horror, that I was imagining other people's lives around me. I wasn't picturing my own life without a kid, I was picturing myself watching other people. I had my nights at the drug store, and taking some pictures, but what captivated me more was watching the endless days of music notes and sketch pads. Other people's passions. Where had my own gone? Had I left them behind completely?

Success was the same as failure. It came into my head like a lightning bolt, and paralyzed me like a stroke. Was I done, like Gerard? I had been okay with that a few days ago because it meant that we got to fill our days with one another. But it was really me filling my life with him, and that was what got me worried. I tried to think back to the night that Jasmine and I had spent together, taking photographs. I hadn't lost my passion completely. I thought of the night before we had moved at the old apartment, taking photographs of Gerard and I, like Robert Mapplethorpe. Is that what my life would be like without children, days and days of photographs? Just like Cassandra with music and Gerard with art?

I opened my eyes and looked at Vivian. She stared back at me, waited. "What do you like to do with your time?" I asked her suddenly. "When you're not busy? When you're free, what do you do?"

She sat there for a moment, and then repeated the answer from the time before at dinner. "I'm thinking of going back to knitting."

"But what about before that? Was there something before that?"

She smiled. "You mean before Cassandra was born?" I nodded, and she rolled her eyes, and shook her head a bit. "Seems like so long ago. And it's a long story, Frank. A very long one. I will tell you some time, but not today. I did a lot before Cassandra. Some of the things we have in common, actually."

"Like what? Did you take pictures too?"

"I did a bit of everything. I was still trying to find myself and what I really wanted. I still think I am, or maybe it's like Gerard says and I'm just good at everything, though I really don't think it's that."

"So what then? What did you do that I also did?"

Her expression cracked a bit, but she brushed her hair out behind her ears and went on. "I was deeply in love with Gerard. That is what we both have in common, Frank. He captivated me longer than any art form ever did. He was my love before I had Cassandra."

I was struck by what she was telling me, and how much emotion it was evoking from her. After Gerard and I had made up, I willingly forgot about their incident. It was over a month ago now, and so many other things had happened. It just didn't matter anymore, but when I glanced at Vivian, it clearly still did. Her face gave her away, but she was still speaking in past tense. "What about now?" I asked. "How have things changed?"

"Now I have life, Frank. A life that I like and would not trade for the world. Gerard is a part of this life now, but not the only part of it. My life has so much more meaning than one person could ever give it." She picked up her mug and filled up again, wanting to take the conversation away from herself. "I'm not telling you to follow in my footsteps. That would be equally wrong. I just wanted you to think about your life now, and in what ways it could change. In reality, we should all do this a lot more often. Whether or not you're about to have a kid, it's always good to know if you're doing the right thing for right now. Timing is everything; that was something I learned quite early on. Don't always be a slave to the plan you set out for yourself. Things change. Sometimes horrible, unexpected things happen, but a lot of the time, you have to learn to laugh at them."

She sat back down, a full mug of coffee, and a smile on her face. Laugh at them, really? I thought. I kept thinking of financial burden and the future. I couldn't get my mind out of a repetitive plot where I ended up in poverty or alone.

"What's scaring you the most?" she asked me, and when I told her, she nodded but didn't give me much sympathy. "Death and poverty are always the things that haunt everyone. It's going to happen whether or not you plan for it. Life is absurd. A lot of things don't make sense."

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14