Accidentally on Purpose Read online

  But as rational as the reasons for these relationship mishaps were on an individual basis, collectively they took on the stench of failure, and the only consistent factor in the equation was me. Perhaps I was too bitchy, angry, bitter, controlling? Not needy or clingy anymore, but what about acerbic? I make my living as a movie critic, and maybe whatever it was in my nature that made me want to be a critic was off-putting to men. Ninety percent of my hate mail at work came from the opposite sex. “Bitch,” they’d say. “Why don’t you just keep your opinions to yourself?”

  Certainly I’m opinionated and proud of it. But I’m also smart, affectionate, kind. I have a good job. On a mercenary level, I can get you into any movie at least three days before it opens. For free. The only catches are I’ll be taking notes in the dark—and I won’t want to talk about the film on the way home.

  I am completely truthful. I have never cheated on anyone, nor would I. While it is true that I have two cats, the universal symbol of spinsterhood, I also love dogs. Dogs love me. I come from a family of six, so I work well in chaos. I am social. I can cook. I can make, and have made, lobster rolls for forty people in an afternoon. With fish chowder on the side. “You are such a catch,” my friend Karen said once, using a tortilla chip to scoop up the ceviche I’d just made for her. “I just don’t understand how you’re single.” Crunch, crunch. Scoop. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  There was no point in dwelling on any of that right now. “Just a nice quiet night with the girls,” I told my reflection. I put lipstick on, then wiped most of it off. It was hardly going to be a wild evening. Both April and Laura were still bruised from their last encounters, April with a younger boyfriend who turned out to be a jerk, and Laura with an ex-husband who left her for another woman shortly after Laura gave birth to their first child (a guy who, incidentally, immediately impregnated the other woman).

  I felt that familiar female surge of guilt as we dug into a shared plate of fried calamari. I’d worn my loosest jeans that night because I was bloated and premenstrual. This isn’t going to help, I thought, dipping another one into the aioli. Blimp.

  Where was my period, anyway? It seemed as though I’d been mentally preparing for it for days. Actually a week. And then some. April and Laura were chatting away. I started in on my second vodka gimlet and realized that I was drinking with less relish than usual. Technically maybe I was, what, a day late? Maybe two? But God, my boobs were so sore. I tried not to be obvious as I pressed the sides of my arms against them. Really sore.

  During a lull in the conversation, I put the glass down on the table.

  “I’m a little worried that I might be pregnant,” I said. “Just a little worried.”

  April’s big blue eyes got bigger. Laura sat back in her chair.

  “Who?” April asked. She sounded baffled, understandably. For all she knew, it had been a year since I’d had a boyfriend.

  “This young guy,” I said. “I met him at Finnegan’s Wake.”

  I gave them the short version, until April, also a journalist, who specializes in health and science stories, started grilling me on when I’d had my last period, precisely what date I’d had sex with Matt, etc. She gave me a deadly serious look.

  “I think after dinner we need to go get an EPT,” she said. “You can do it at the bar.”

  We were headed to a bar in the Mission District, a retro place where the waitresses wear vintage dresses and they still let people smoke. I couldn’t quite fathom the image of myself squatting over a stick in the tiny bathroom, with some drunken guy pounding on the door.

  “If I’m pregnant, I don’t want to find out at the Lone Palm,” I said. “I’ll do one tomorrow morning.”

  “If you’re pregnant, what are you going to do?” Laura asked.

  I leaned back in my seat. I felt far away. The noise in the crowded restaurant receded. The door opened and two couples walked in, bringing a breeze with them that reached all the way to our table, brushing across my cheeks.

  “I guess I’ll become a single mother,” I said.

  It sounded absurdly blasé yet terrifyingly true.

  WHEN I BECAME A WOMAN of a certain age, that is, around thirty-five, my female friends began floating the suggestion of single motherhood to me. “Have you ever thought about doing it on your own?” they’d say, a wineglass in one hand, their brows slightly furrowed with concern over my future. Their cell phones would be close by, because a night out with the girls when you are thirty-five or older typically means that back home, a husband is bumbling through babysitting duties and will almost certainly require coaching at some point.

  I’d drink deeply from my own glass and eye the hostess, who certainly looked as though she could use some help in the kitchen, right this minute. “I’ll be back,” I’d say. “I think Kir needs help cleaning that fish.”

  I didn’t want to hear a sales pitch for single motherhood from a married woman. What did she know about it? Moreover, the question pissed me off, implying as it did that my romantic situation had been declared hopeless. I might think it was worth waiting for the right man, but my friends had clearly given up on that possibility. What they had—the smart, loving, outdoorsy husbands; the houses; the cooing babies; the adorable toddlers; the winsome five-year-olds; the minivans; the Christmas card postcards of perfection—all of it was out of my reach. They were suggesting that I resort to something I doubted they would ever have seriously contemplated doing themselves.

  I knew they had my best interests at heart, but it seemed as though they were recommending I go climb Everest without an oxygen tank. It was obvious from observing them that motherhood was hard as hell. At my monthly book club, half the mothers in the room would be bursting into tears over sleep deprivation or some trauma involving a negligent nanny. The other half would be vague as to what it was we’d read; they’d blame their dulled memories on breast-feeding hormones. One friend with an infant couldn’t cope with the strains of motherhood at all; she retreated into the garage and sat on the washing machine doing bong hits between diaper changes. And they all had husbands. With jobs. And nice houses. Why would I ever want to undertake this on my own? First I wanted a husband. With a job. And a nice house. Or even just a starter cottage with one bedroom.

  If I did get stuck listening to their sales pitch for sperm banks and/or Chinese orphans, I listened with a skeptical ear. Sure, their friend from graduate school had become a single mother and was as happy as a clam, but that was her, not me. I was barely making ends meet on my own. Journalism is not a profitable business, at least not for reporters and feature writers. I didn’t see how I could support a baby.

  We tend to be united in fear, but divided in bravery. We look for excuses for why we can’t do what someone else does. I suppose to these kindly women, I looked like a natural candidate for single motherhood, a semi-artsy Bay Area resident who did yoga, voted left, and wore jeans to work. But what they didn’t know about me was that I was not interested in a nontraditional life. Beyond the financial constraints of doing it on my own, I longed for partnership with a wonderful man, marriage, and then family. Somewhere in the bottom of a box in my closet I had a pair of photos I’d ripped out of the Washington Post Sunday magazine almost twenty years ago, photos of a dark-haired model on a beach, wearing a slim-fitting lace wedding dress, which I’d thought would be just the kind of dress I’d like to wear to my wedding.

  So when I said to April and Laura that I guessed that, if I was pregnant, I’d become a single mother, what I was really thinking was: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what fool just uttered those words?

  IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT when I sped down Guerrero from the Lone Palm. Since our night together, all Matt and I had done was go to a movie, but he’d made it into my cell phone directory. He might be too young and absent a J-O-B, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to sleep with him again. Plus, I figured, if I was going to find out I was pregnant in the morning, I wanted to lay eyes on the father of my child at least once more. It
seemed only proper to call. Civilized. He answered.

  “What if I picked you up and brought you home to my place?” I asked. “I’ll bring you back in the morning.”

  “Okay,” he said, agreeably.

  At my place I noticed two things about him. The first was that my cats liked him and that he seemed to like them. The second was that we had very little to say to each other. He seemed so young and unformed that I would have believed him if he’d told me he was still in college. He’d been unemployed for an appallingly long time, temping sporadically for three years.

  Nonetheless, he was still adorable. I was grateful when he lunged again, ending the stilted conversation. I’d no intention of telling him anything about the possibility that I was pregnant. I just wanted to see and smell and taste him again. Rolling around with him in my bed was just the diversion I needed.

  In the morning, I dropped him off at his place and went straight to Liza’s house. She and John were just getting up. I sketched out the scenario for her, and she immediately grabbed her coat.

  “Let’s go buy a test,” she said. “Just get it over with.”

  Shopping for a pregnancy test when you are thirty-nine and unwed can make you feel like a teenager, a criminal, and a fool. The pregnancy tests at Cala Foods on Haight Street were actually locked up, along with the condoms, baby formula, and other items a desperate person might prefer to shoplift rather than pay for. They had only generic tests, none of the recognizable names, and this wasn’t something I wanted to scrimp on. But I also wanted to get it over with. The line at the checkout was long. Matt lived just around the corner. What if he walked in? It would be poor form to have sex with someone and then be caught buying a pregnancy test the next morning.

  We walked back to Liza’s flat, me clutching the see-through plastic supermarket bag as I anxiously scanned the sidewalks for Matt. As soon as we reached the sanctuary of her steps, I scurried up them and headed for her green-tiled master bathroom.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” she called up after me.

  “No,” I said. “That’s okay.”

  I read the directions twice and got myself into position. Was that enough pee? I wondered. Did I hit the right spot? I set the magic, life-altering wand down on the edge of Liza’s sink to wait and retreated to the edge of the tub. I inspected myself in her scary magnifying mirror. I pulled out her tweezers and yanked a few offending hairs. I looked at her collection of beauty products, more lotion than one woman could use in five years. I tried not to look at the stick. I should have found a magazine to read. Even Elle Décor—all Liza ever seemed to have around the place—would have provided some distraction. I checked my cell phone. It had been two minutes. I resolved to wait three more. What the fuck was I going to do if it was positive? How would I feel if it was negative?

  It came to me then: disappointed. I’d be disappointed if the test was negative. In the stressful, fractious, vomit-filled months to come, I would continually return to those two or three minutes for reassurance. Just then my heart knew what it wanted.

  I paced between the shower and the toilet for another minute, then took a peek. I checked the directions again. Plus did mean positive, right? It had to. You plus one. But sometimes these things are counterintuitive. I scrabbled at the box and held it far away from me; my glasses were downstairs.

  I was pregnant. I walked into the kitchen with the stick in my hand. John looked up from his tea. His big brown eyes were bleary and even his goatee looked disheveled. “Oh geez Louise,” he said. “No way.” Liza fastened her eyes on mine for a long beat, then came to put her arms around me.

  “Maybe we should go get another test,” I said. “This one is generic. And it looked like it had been sitting in that case for a long time.”

  “You sure you don’t want to sit and have a cup of tea first?” Liza said.

  I shook my head. It was very important to establish beyond a shadow of a doubt what I already knew to be true. We went to a yuppie health store up the street, one of those places that look like the play stores we had as kids, with neat bins of couscous and brewer’s yeast and mysterious wheat-colored potions. I plunked down my debit card for a double test with a brand name I recognized. This one promised results before I’d even missed my period. Did I have enough money in my checking account to buy the test? How pathetic was that? The walk back to Liza’s house went directly past Matt’s apartment. We crossed the street, as if proximity to him might make me more pregnant.

  Of course the results were just the same. We stared at one another all over again. Then I started to cry.

  “I’m never going to be alone again,” I choked out.

  “Oh sweetie,” John said helplessly.

  “Yes you will,” Liza said, brushing the hair off my forehead. “Don’t worry, you will definitely get some alone time. Not as much, but there will be some. I’ll babysit. John will babysit.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t want to be alone. And now I won’t be. It’s good. I’m going to have a family after all. A small one, but a real family.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Where I Came From

  I’D BEEN PREGNANT BEFORE, and it was an unmitigated disaster. I was twenty-one and living in Florence, Italy, fulfilling a longstanding dream to study abroad. I was staying with an Italian family, struggling to learn the language and find my way around town. At first I thought I had a urinary tract infection; my college boyfriend and I had been reunited for a week before I’d left the country, and we’d had a lot of sex. I’d been using the contraceptive sponge, and the whole experience had been a bit of a nightmare. One time I couldn’t get it out, and he’d had to fish around inside me to find it. Maybe we took it out too early. I don’t know. But there I was, five or six weeks into the semester, feeling miserable, and an Italian doctor was pronouncing me “gravidanza.”

  I’d gone to the central post office in Florence, the only place I knew where I could make an international call. Armed with handfuls of Italian coins, I’d called the boyfriend first, to break the news and discuss our options, and then my parents in Maine. Fortunately, my mother answered the phone. I absolutely couldn’t stand to tell my father. I expected that I was going to break both of their hearts, but as a rule, my mother was far more tolerant of our mistakes. There were six of us and therefore plenty of mistakes.

  My mother didn’t miss a beat. “I’ll help you raise it,” she said.

  She had been raising children since the late 1940s. I was the youngest, and there was a seventeen-year spread between me and the oldest, my brother Adrian, the only one of us who hadn’t been a “mistake.” My parents grew up Catholic. They didn’t have a problem so much with using birth control, just a problem with making it work. “I’ve had a child for every kind of birth control I’ve tried,” my mother would say. After Adrian came three girls, Cynthia, Elizabeth (whom we called Wib), and Alison. Then my mother had a bit of break for five years, before my brother Benet was born. I was the ultimate mistake, arriving three years after Benet and just before my mother turned forty-four.

  She loved babies, but we’d shortchanged her in the grandchild department. By 1985, when I was in Italy, she had only two grandchildren. Here she was saying she was ready for more, regardless of the circumstances. Or maybe she was pro-choice only in theory.

  I put my head against the wall of the phone booth. That fall in Florence was ceaselessly hot and I was sweaty and uncomfortable. The phones were equipped with a clock, telling you how much time you had left before the money ran out. I watched my lire disappear and wondered how much my crisis was going to end up costing all of us.

  “I don’t think I’m going to keep it,” I told her. “But I think I have to come home.”

  Perhaps my fears were ungrounded, but I was afraid to have an abortion in such a Catholic country. I was ashamed and afraid and I hated having to tell my parents, but I needed their help. Within a few days, they had me on a train to Milan and then on a flight home to Ma
ine. My father was waiting on the tarmac for me, a blanket under his arm—as if I were an invalid. Benet was standing awkwardly by his side, curly-haired, brown-eyed, skinny in his Bruce Springsteen–style jean jacket. We always stood up for each other, but usually I was defending him. I could tell from the look on his face that failing out of college or getting caught with a pipe in the pocket of your down parka was nothing compared with having to leave your study abroad program because you were pregnant. I had trumped all the mistakes of my five siblings in one fell swoop.

  I had never felt like such a failure. For a few more days, we were trapped together in the old white clapboard house where I’d grown up, me trying to throw up as quietly as I could while I waited for my scheduled abortion. In the meantime, there was my father, a small man who held his head high, sobbing quietly at the breakfast table, imploring me to do it fast if I had to do it, telling me it would be less of a sin the sooner I did it. I had never seen him cry before. I couldn’t go back to Italy. I lost a semester of school. I have no idea how much my mistake cost my parents, either monetarily or emotionally, but it crushed me. I’d failed as a daughter and I’d failed as the mother of the child I could have had.

  How I would have liked to call my mother on that June morning in San Francisco almost twenty years later, to hear her say that she would help me raise the baby, and this time, to be able to say, “Thank you, yes, I’d love that.” But I was grateful she still knew my name. She had dementia. The first signs of it had started when I was in my mid-twenties. Now she lived in a nursing home. I longed for her, but she had no strength to offer me, no reassurances, no solace. She had five grandchildren by then, including two new ones, Benet’s little girls, but all she could do was watch them, smiling. When she held them, there was something tentative about her embrace, as if she thought she was not to be trusted with a baby in her arms.