Julie would react to this news, my mother becoming a great-grandmother, Shannon’s music career. She was supposed to enter Oberlin in the fall!
“I met him online when I was researching a paper on the Civil War,” she said. “He has a Web site that I went to. We started e-mailing. And we talk a lot on the phone.”
I used to teach American history, and in spite of myself, I liked the fact that this guy from Colorado, of all places, had a Web site about the Civil War. I managed to stop myself from asking if the site was biased in favor of the North or South.
“And apparently you’ve met in person,” I said, motioning toward her midriff.
“He came here over his spring break,” she said, tugging one of the pieces of fringe completely free of the afghan. She grimaced, looked at me. “Sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay.” I moved my hand in a circular motion to keep her talking. “Where did he stay?”
“He has some friends in Montclair.” Her lower lip suddenly began to tremble. “He’s awesome, Lucy,” she said, shaking her head as if she couldn’t believe her good fortune in meeting him. “You would love him,” she said. “I know you would.”
I wasn’t at all sure about that. I wished she had told me earlier. Much earlier, so we could have had a reasonable conversation about her options. I felt a little betrayed by her. Shannon had always confided in me. I thought I knew everything about her.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about this guy?” I asked, thinking of all the lunches and dinners we’d shared during the past six months or so when she’d obviously had this Tanner person on her mind and yet had said nothing.
“I didn’t want to hear you say I was being stupid,” she said.
“When have I ever told you you were being stupid?” I asked. “And why would I start now?”
“You know…” She played with the loose piece of fringe in her hands. “Because he lives so far away and I met him on the Internet and everything.”
I felt suspicious. “What’s the everything part?” I asked.
“He’s twenty-seven,” she said, and stopped playing with the fringe as she waited for my reaction.
I tried not to let the shock show on my face. There were a hundred things I wanted to say, but none of them would be helpful to her.
“And what do you know about him?” I managed to keep my voice steady as I asked the question.
She smiled for the first time since I’d arrived home, one of her dimples showing, and her eyes got the faraway look of a woman smitten.
“He’s so amazing,” she said. “He’s in graduate school to get his Ph.D. in history. The Civil War was his undergraduate project. Now he’s working on something about the Holocaust. He’s totally gorgeous and brilliant. He wants to be a college professor,” she said, trying to win my heart. She knew I had a soft spot for anyone who teaches.
“What did he say when you told him you were pregnant?” I didn’t trust this totally gorgeous, practically middle-aged future professor one bit. He lived two thousand miles away. He could be some sleazeball fabricating his credentials. But he did have that Web site. I would be sure to check it out.
“He was really upset,” she said, “but mostly for me. I mean, he said he didn’t really want me to have an abortion, but he understood how having a baby would screw up my plans for college and everything, and he said that if that’s what I wanted, that’s what I should do.”
“And what—”
“I can’t do it, Lucy.” There was a plea in her voice, begging me to understand. “If it happened last year, I would have had an abortion. If it had happened before I was done with high school. But now…it would feel selfish of me to do it now. This is my baby.” She rested her hands over her barely there belly.
“Oh, sweetie,” I said, aching for her. I thought of how hard the past few months must have been for her, keeping this secret from the people who cared most about her. I thought of her 4.2 grade point average and her responsibilities as president of her class. How on earth had she held it together so well? She was pretty amazing herself.
“He’ll support me and the baby,” she said. “He wants me to move to Colorado and we’ll both get jobs and he’ll go to school part-time. Then, after the baby’s a little older, I can go to college.”
Tears burned my eyes. We’d all thought Shannon’s future was so neatly mapped out for her. She’d gotten into a prestigious and competitive music program. She was talented enough to have a wonderful career ahead of her with a good symphony orchestra. Now I pictured her living a marginal existence in Colorado with a man she barely knew and a baby to take care of.
“You’re majorly upset with me,” she said.
“I’m upset, you’re right. It’s too much too quick for me to absorb.”
“I know,” she said. “I should have told you about him long ago.”
“You knew I’d give you flak.”
She nodded.
“Only because I love you and worry about you.”
She nodded again, swallowing hard, the tremor returning to her lower lip.
I sat upright on the chair, pressing my palms together in the lap of my long skirt. My braid fell over my shoulder as I leaned toward her. “I’m trying to absorb what this means for you,” I said. “For your future.”
“You know how much I love kids,” she said. “I’d planned to be a cellist first and a mom later. I’m just going to reverse the order. I mean, if I had to, like, choose between the two things, I would choose being a mother.”
Was that true? Shannon had wanted to be a cellist in a symphony orchestra ever since Julie and Glen took her to her first New York Philharmonic concert when she was five years old. Had the adults in her life, anxious to encourage that dream, ignored her more ordinary ambitions, or was Shannon just kidding herself?
“You always said you had a calling to play the cello,” I said.
“I still love it,” she said. “I still want to play and I still want to go to school…eventually. I just can’t do it now. You didn’t go to college right away. Is that so terrible?”
“Of course not,” I said. I wanted to ask if this Tanner guy planned to marry her. I wanted to ask how she planned to take care of a baby and “eventually” go to school. But those questions would not be helpful. Not yet. Instead, I continued listening to her, trying to be as nonjudgmental as possible. She would get enough of that elsewhere.
“How long do you think you can keep this from your mother?” I asked. “Is that why you want to live with your dad? You think he won’t notice?”
“I don’t know what to do, exactly.” She stretched the piece of fringe taut between her hands, then dropped it in her lap. “Tanner really can’t have me move in with him until September, because he’s living with some other people right now and there wouldn’t be room for me.”
I hated him. Selfish bastard. I wondered if one of the “other people” was his wife, but I kept my mouth carefully sealed shut.
“So…” She looked at me helplessly. “What should I do? I thought maybe I should live with you, since you know about it, and I just wouldn’t—”
“Uh-uh.” I shook my head back and forth. “You have to tell your parents, Shannon. You have to. You know that, don’t you?”
“Mom will go totally ballistic.”
“Yes, she will.” Julie would have a fit. A baby out of wedlock. Thwarted college plans after she’d driven Shannon all over the eastern half of the country