Nan's Story (19 page)

Come January, Heath was offered a job in Portland and wasn’t keen on the idea of traveling an hour each way to see Nan in the snow, so tried convincing her it would be easier to just go with him. Despite her willingness to have sex with him even though they weren’t married, living with someone was a line she ironically wouldn’t cross. So when Heath proposed one night while lying in bed at his bachelor’s apartment, his seed still running down her thigh, Nan agreed to marry him.

Without telling anyone, they stopped at City Hall the next day, got their marriage license, and with two secretaries in the clerk’s office serving as witnesses, they said their canned vows and left the building husband and wife. Elsie and Joe were bewildered, and although they had resigned themselves to raising CJ until Nan pulled herself out of her misery they were flabbergasted at her next request.

“Mama, I can’t take CJ with me,” Nan pleaded with Elsie that evening. She had encouraged Heath to go back to his place and let her talk with her mother alone. Fundamentally a coward, Heath agreed without hesitation and made plans to pick her up the next morning after mumbling something about having a lot to do before the move anyway.

“Nan, do you know what you’re asking?” her mother implored, looking at Nan as if she’d completely lost her mind. Again. CJ held himself standing in an upright position grasping Elsie’s chair for balance, and followed his grandmother’s gaze. Nan avoided looking at him.

“Look, you know Heath isn’t really comfortable around kids. But that’ll change,” she told her mother. She wasn’t so sure of that, but there was no need to bring it up now.

“It was one thing to care for CJ while you came to terms with Eddie’s bullshit, but what you’re suggesting is ludicrous!” Elsie said through clenched teeth. “You can really just walk away from him?”

“Mama,” Nan said, brushing away a stab of guilt. “It’s not forever, I promise. Just give me a few months alone with Heath. He’s not a bad person. It won’t take me long to convince him that CJ belongs with us.” The lies were coming easier and easier.

Elsie looked skeptical.

“I’m going to have to talk to Joe before I can agree to this,” Elsie said.

Nan thought of Joe’s evident devotion to CJ, along with his conclusion that she was unfit as a mother, and believed it would tilt the scales in her favor. She assumed, correctly, that the deal was done.

Joe did agree to allow CJ to live with them, but not without having his say. The next morning as Nan prepared to leave, on one of her many trips through the dining room, Joe addressed her. He sat alone at the table, though CJ was next to him in his high chair throwing Cheerios over the side. Before she could get through the doorway, he spoke.

“Nan, your mother told me about your plan. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Joe asked. “What if it doesn’t work the way you think it will?”

Nan felt a stab of anger at her stepfather’s intrusion. She was tired after a restless and mostly sleepless night. She looked at Joe, her face taut and brows furrowed. He hadn’t bothered to be any kind of a father to her for all the years he’d been married to Elsie, but here he was, doing his best Ward Cleaver imitation.

“Listen Joe,” Nan started. “Thanks for your touching concern, but I can take care of myself,” she said, not bothering to hide her sarcasm

“Well, there’s more to this than just yourself,” Joe replied, glancing at CJ. “You might not remember this, but
you’re
his mother, not Elsie, and it’s your responsibility to think about what’s best for
him
, not what’s best for
you
.”

Joe’s tone was cold and biting.

“I am thinking of CJ!” she countered. “I just can’t bring him until I know Heath is ready. Being a father to someone else’s children is a big responsibility, and I don’t want
him
to resent it,” she said, her reference thinly veiled.

“Just what to you mean to imply, Nan?” he declared, his eyes narrowing. “Did I not come into the picture and take on all you kids? Did you lack for anything once I got here? Do you not remember what a dump this house was before I married your mother?”

It pissed Nan off hearing him brag about how much their lives had improved once he’d come to
rescue
them. He had made it clear time and again that what he did for her family was more of a favor than a gift, a favor that might someday come due. Every single bit of it was insulting.

“Sure you did, Joe. But just how happy were you about it?” Nan asked him, her voice trembling with anger. “Believe me, we all know how you felt about having to care for my mother’s baggage. At least my father
loved
us. He might not have been able to fix up the house, or keep the pantry filled to the brim, or host stupid, pathetic cocktail parties, but he was our
father
and he
loved
us. That’s something that you could never understand!”

“Well I’m glad to hear that in the deluded world you’ve created for yourself, you haven’t confused me with the drunken low-life your father was,” Joe replied furiously.

CJ puckered up his lips and began to cry at the shouting. Nan didn’t move to comfort him and was only peripherally aware that Elsie had. As her mother shushed the little boy, she looked over at Nan.

“Just go Nan. You’ve made up your mind. Just go without causing any more trouble,” Elsie told her.

Nan’s mouth dropped open at Elsie’s defense of Joe, and she turned without saying another word. After packing a small suitcase of clothing and a handful of personal belongings, she left the house to wait on the freezing cold porch for Heath. She never went back to say good-bye and never looked at the house growing smaller behind them as they drove out of the neighborhood. She cried almost the entire way to Portland, but Heath didn’t bother to ask her why. He patted her knee every once in awhile, then eventually pulled a flask out of the glove box and insisted she take a few swigs when she wouldn’t stop.

Nan had herself as composed as she could when they pulled up in front of a small shack next to the railroad line three or four miles outside of the city. It sat leaning to one side, alone in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by dirt and tracks. Dark naked windows stared blankly at Nan.

“Got this baby for fifty bucks a month,” Heath told her with a baffling measure of pride.

At her obvious disappointment, he pouted and told her they wouldn’t be there for long.

“This job’s gonna pay off big,” he promised. “Then baby doll, we can get you the mansion you want.”

As she crossed the threshold and set her bags down, Nan surveyed the room. Dismal was the first word that came to mind. Dank was the second. A few pieces of furniture had been left behind: a tattered couch, a coffee table covered with scratches and a chair missing all four of its legs. Nan was appalled when she noticed a lamp sitting on a crooked end table in the corner, adorned with a lampshade fashioned from aluminum foil. She began to cry in earnest again.

Heath set out for work the next morning and Nan attempted adjusting to her new surroundings. This feat was made a bit easier with assistance from the bottle of whiskey Heath left for her. After a few cups, she found that she could tolerate the dingy walls, the rodents and the blast of locomotive engines that punctuated each hour. She spent most of her days during that first six months the same way, sipping on whiskey, chain smoking cigarettes and watching soap operas on the small television Heath found in someone’s trash shortly after they arrived. No one ever came to the door, and since Heath hadn’t bothered to have a telephone installed, Nan was never interrupted by calls.

Although Heath was making good,
really
good money according to him, at the new job, Portland provided a lot more opportunity than Portsmouth for someone like him to squander it. Most nights he’d stumble in well past midnight, drunk and broke after playing cards for hours. He’d grasp Nan clumsily, and sometimes she woke up enough to participate. Other times, she slept through it.

Nan suspected right away she was pregnant when her period went missing. A few weeks later along came the tell-tale nausea and her assumption was confirmed. Confusion reigned and she kept silent. Heath, still leaving early and coming home late, didn’t seem to notice that she was no longer drinking. What was he going to think when he found out? More importantly, what was he going to
do
? He’d be shocked, probably angry, but this
was
his child. Maybe, she began to dupe herself into believing, once he got over the initial surprise, he would come around. Throughout this time, when only Nan and God knew about the baby inside of her, she began contemplating things that she hadn’t allowed herself to before. Things like the idea of bringing CJ to live with them.

Although she tried not to think of her son often, being pregnant again seemed to awaken her maternal instinct and she began to regret the way she’d shut herself off from CJ. Perhaps
this
baby could change the downward freefall her life had become. It wouldn’t be easy, and she knew Heath was going to need some time to adjust, but she thought eventually, he would. By the time she told him about the new baby, this was the daydream she lived in.

She planned to make Heath’s favorite dinner and asked him to come straight home after work that evening. It took considerable pleading, but he reluctantly agreed, although he still didn’t arrive until seven-o-clock. The smell of frying liver and onions made her sick to her stomach but she got through it and served him a plate. He paid no mind that Nan wasn’t having any and mopped up his dish with the last bite. As he chewed, she took a deep breath and blurted it out.

“Heath, honey, I think I’m pregnant,” she said, feeling a twinge of disappointment, but not surprise, at the look on his face.

“Oh shit,” he yelped. “Are you sure? Have you been to a doctor?”

“No,” she replied carefully, “but I’m pretty sure.”

“Well, you could be wrong, you know. I dated this one girl and her period was always fucked up. Had more than once scare with her, that’s for sure.”

“I don’t think so Heath,” Nan said, a little hurt that he’d brought up an old girlfriend at a moment like this. “I’m pregnant. It’s more than missing my period,” she said in response to his denial. “My boobs are sore and my back hurts. Not to mention that I’ve thrown up at least twice a day for the past three weeks.”

“What the fuck Nan?” he asked her in a burst of anger. “Now what the hell are we supposed to do, huh? You don’t like living in this hole? Well how long do you think it will take me to get us out of here if we got another fucking mouth to feed?”

He looked frantic, searching for a way out.

“Look Heath, I know the timing’s not great,” she agreed, trying to calm him down. “But what’s done is done. Please don’t be mad.”

Suddenly, with stark clarity, Nan wondered if Heath might leave her sitting in this dump, pregnant and alone. A new fear was born.

“I gotta get out of here,” he replied, and left despite Nan’s pleas he stay and help her figure it out. He didn’t respond, just walked out the door, slamming it behind him. She spent the entire night convinced he’d never come back. What would she do? Crawl back to Elsie and Joe’s? Have another baby that she couldn’t bear to look at? Her situation sat in front of her like a rancid pile of garbage.

But he hadn’t left her for good and Nan was more relieved than she wanted to admit when Heath pulled into the driveway at dawn the next morning. He came with an apology, a handful of wildflowers and a plan. A solution, he called it. It had come to him shortly after he left the house on his way to an all night card game. It so happened that a man at the table that night knew of someone who could help them. Heath had taken the contact information from him and held it written on the back of a cocktail napkin in front of Nan’s upturned nose.

“Now listen, Nan,” he said in response to her expression. “It’s perfectly safe. This guy that I talked to, his wife had the same thing happen, and she went. He said it was in and out and the little lady was back on her feet in a day.”

Nan was at a loss for words. Here she was pregnant, and her husband was suggesting that he knew of a way they could end it. Of course she had heard of abortion and even knew someone from high school who’d had one. But she had never, not with CJ, and not this time, ever considered it herself.

“Oh my God,” was all Nan could say. She barely listened as he went on to tell her how quick it was, and that the hundred bucks it would cost them would pale in comparison to bringing a child into their lives.

“It’s illegal!” Nan said, nearly whining and hoping that the fear for his own freedom might get him to give the idea up.

Heath acknowledged that it wasn’t legal, but had been assured that the doctor was careful in conducting his business.

“It’s only a problem if you get caught baby doll,” he responded. “And we won’t.”

Another random thought occurred to her. Although never deeply religious, Nan still hadn’t ruled out the prospect of God and damnation. She fleetingly remembered having a conversation on the subject a long time ago, with whom she couldn’t recall, but in the end hadn’t concluded one way or the other what she believed. However, she harbored a significant enough nugget of fear for her mortal soul to say it out loud.

“What if I go to hell?” she blurted.

“Jesus Christ, Nan that’s fucking stupid,” Heath replied.