The Wish(16)

How could I forget that? “I remember,” I finally muttered.

“Perhaps we could pick out a Christmas tree afterward.”

“Super,” I said, but all I really wanted was to pull the covers over my head in the hope of making her leave. But it wasn’t necessary; Aunt Linda turned away. A moment later, I heard her bedroom door close, and I knew that I’d be alone the rest of the night, with only my own dark thoughts to keep me company.

*



As miserable as the rest of the week was, Sundays were the absolute worst. Back in Seattle, I didn’t really mind going to church because there was a family there named the Taylors with four boys, all of them from one to a few years older than me. They were boy-band perfect, with white teeth and hair that always looked blow-dried. Like us, they sat in the front row—they were always on the left while we were on the right—and I’d sneak peeks at them even when I was supposed to be praying. I couldn’t help it. I’d had a massive crush on one or the other pretty much as long as I could remember, even though I never actually spoke to any of them. Morgan had better luck; Danny Taylor, one of the middle ones, who at the time was also a pretty good soccer player, took her out for ice cream one Sunday after church. I was in eighth grade at the time and desperately jealous that he’d asked her, not me. I remember sitting in my room and staring at the clock, watching the minutes pass; when Morgan finally got home, I begged her to tell me what Danny was like. Morgan, being Morgan, simply shrugged and said that he wasn’t her type, which made me want to strangle her. Morgan had guys practically drooling if she so much as walked down the sidewalk or sipped a Diet Coke in the food court at the local mall.

The point is, back home there was something interesting to see at church—more specifically, four very cute somethings—and that made the hour pass quickly. Here, though, church was not only a chore but an all-day event. There was no Catholic church in Ocracoke; the nearest one was St. Egbert’s in Morehead City, and that meant catching the ferry at seven in the morning. The ferry generally took two and a half hours to reach Cedar Island, and from there, it was another forty minutes to the church itself. The service was at eleven, which meant we had to wait yet another hour for it to begin, and the mass lasted until noon. If that wasn’t bad enough, the ferry back to Ocracoke didn’t leave until four in the afternoon, which meant killing even more time.

Oh, we’d have lunch with Gwen afterward, since she always came with us. Like my aunt, she also used to be a nun, and she considered attending services on Sundays the highlight of her week. She was nice and all, but ask any teenager how much they enjoy eating lunch with a couple of fifty-odd-year-old former nuns, and you can probably guess what it was like. After that, we’d go shopping, but it wasn’t fun shopping like at the mall or the Seattle waterfront. Instead, they’d drag me to Wal-Mart for supplies—think flour, shortening, eggs, bacon, sausage, cheese, buttermilk, various flavored coffees, and other baking stuff in bulk—and after that, we’d visit garage sales, where they would search for inexpensive books by best-selling authors and movies on videocassette that they could rent to people on Ocracoke. Added to the late-afternoon ferry ride, all of that meant that we wouldn’t get back to the house until almost seven, when the sun had long since set.

Twelve hours. Twelve long hours. Just so we could go to church.

There are, by the way, about a million better ways to spend a Sunday, but lo and behold, as Sunday morning dawned, I found myself standing at the dock in a jacket zipped to my chin, stamping one foot and then the other while the frigid air made it appear as though I were smoking invisible cigarettes. Meanwhile, my aunt and Gwen were whispering to each other and laughing and looking happy, probably because they weren’t slinging biscuits and serving coffee before the crack of dawn. When it was time, my aunt pulled her car onto the ferry, where it crammed alongside about a dozen others.

I wish I could say that the ride was either pleasant or interesting, but it wasn’t, especially in winter. Unless you enjoyed staring at gray skies and even grayer water, there was nothing to see, and if the dock had been freezing, riding on the ferry was fifty times worse. The wind seemed to blow right through me and after less than five minutes outside, my nose started running and my ears turned bright red. There was, thank God, a large central cabin on the ferry where you could escape the weather, complete with a couple of vending machines offering snacks and places to sit, which was where Gwen and my aunt hung out. As for me, I crawled into the car and stretched out on the back seat, wishing I were anywhere else and thinking about the mess I’d gotten myself into.

The day after my mom had me pee on a stick, she brought me to see Dr. Bobbi, who was maybe ten years older than my mom, and the first nonpediatrician I’d ever seen. Dr. Bobbi’s real name was Roberta, and she was an OB-GYN. She’d delivered both my sister and me, so she and my mom went way back, and I’m pretty sure my mom was mortified by the reason for our visit. After Dr. Bobbi confirmed the pregnancy, she set me up with an ultrasound, to make sure the baby was healthy. I pulled up my shirt, one of the technicians put some goop on my tummy, and I was able to hear the heartbeat. It was both cool and utterly terrifying, but what I remember most was how surreal it felt and how much I wished that all of it was just a bad dream.

But it wasn’t a dream. Because I was Catholic, abortion wasn’t even an option, and once we learned the baby was healthy, Dr. Bobbi gave us the talk. She assured both of us that I was more than mature enough physically to carry the baby to term, but emotions were a different story. She said I was going to need a lot of support, partly because the pregnancy was unexpected, but mainly because I was still a teenager. In addition to feeling depressed, I might feel angry and disappointed as well. Dr. Bobbi warned that I was also likely to feel alienated from friends, making everything harder. Had I been able to check in with Dr. Bobbi now, I would have told her, check, check, check, and check.