The Way We Were

Summary: A teenage couple learns that while one mistake can ruin your childhood, a few mistakes can ruin your life.

Rated PG-13 for thematic elements including teen pregnancy and miscarriage

The thin slit between the cheap Target curtains I hung five months ago allows a bit of sunshine to bleed into the dark room, casting light on Abigail’s colorless face. I can see dust particles drifting in the air in front of her, aimlessly dancing in the sunlight, simultaneously begging for attention and hoping to pass unnoticed. But Abigail doesn’t seem to notice anything. Her beautiful blue eyes stare at the window—not the line of light, but instead, the whole shaded window. Still, her eyes are unfocused. She sees nothing. She’s lost.

“Abigail, let me open the curtains,” I say, but she immediately starts shaking her head. Nowadays, the only sign of life in that swollen body is when she’s protesting my attempts to make her healthier.

“No, Jackson,” she whispers. “I don’t want them to be open.”

“You can’t just sit here in the dark—“

“I want to.”

I sigh and lean back in my chair, staring at my hands. In the past six months, they seem to have lost their color, too. That’s probably due to the contrast with the shine of my silver-colored Wal-Mart wedding ring. It’s not a pretty color, or even a pretty shape. I’m beginning to wonder if my hands were even designed for a wedding band.

If this was five months ago, Abigail would be throwing the curtains open. She would be dancing with the dust. She would be catapulting herself into my lap and kissing the frown off my face. I would be wrapping my arms around her, tickling her, laughing with her…

But that is the way we were. Not the way we are.

I look up at the curtains again. Teal, with a floral print that I hate but she loves. I compromised on the window dressing: if she was able to pick the curtains out, then I was able to pick the curtain rod out. It was a wonderful compromise. She was able to have her feminine patterns, and I was able to have a much manlier, more rigid fixture to hold them up. I remember how she laughed as I hung them. I’ve never been especially handy around the house—in fact, the rod is crooked and always looks a little loose—but Abigail gave me a few kisses anyway.

“Abigail, you need to eat,” I say, feeling a bit like a broken record. We go through this routine every day.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You’re starving yourself.”

“Don’t you want a skinnier wife?”

The air escapes through my teeth with a hiss. “Don’t even start that. I want a healthy wife.”

“Then I’m sorry you have a broken one.”

“Abigail, stop it. I’m going to make you some macaroni and cheese. You love that.”

“Don’t even bother, Jackson.” Her tone is flat…emotionless…dead. “I won’t eat it.”

“You’re acting like a child.”

As soon as the words escape my lips, I regret them. She gasps, and a little part of my brain observes that this is the deepest breath she has taken since the sobs stopped twenty-nine days ago.
But she regains her very sickly composure and swallows the air down. “That was a low blow, Jackson.”

“I didn’t mean it—“

“No, I think you did.”

I sigh, deciding to change the subject. I’ll never convince her otherwise, anyway. “The school called.”

“And?”

“They’ve given you so much time off, with the pregnancy and now this. If you want to graduate on time, you’re going to have to go back. Principal Butler is getting really impatient with you.”

“Maybe I don’t want to graduate.”

“Abigail. You’re talking like a crazy person. You know, you now have a chance at med school. Have you thought of that?”

And then the most incredible thing happens—she sniffles.

And a teardrop falls from the corner of her eye.

She hasn’t cried since The Great Cry that took place twenty-nine days ago. Her lack of tears certainly was strange—she’s always been a crier, whether the source is sadness or anger or extreme happiness. But this month, she has emotionally shut down, staring off into space, seeing and saying nothing. I’m so relieved to see that one single tear glisten in the sliver of sunlight that I inch closer to her on the bed.

“Baby.” My tongue betrays me again, calling her entirely the wrong name.

A strange squeaking sound comes from her throat. “That’s exactly what this is about,” she agrees tearfully. “My baby. My baby. You know, I’ll never see my baby graduate? I’ll never get to hear my baby talk about how he wants to be a doctor? I’ll never even get to put a Band-Aid on his knee, Jackson. Why the hell should I fantasize about taking care of other children when my body couldn’t even take care of my own child?”

“Could you please quit saying that it was your baby?” I reply, not even bothering to hide my anger and irritation. “It was our baby.”

“The fact that you’re referring to Connor as an ‘it’ tells me that you never thought of him as yours,” she whispers, her face revealing nothing but nausea. “You never wanted him, Jackson. I forced him on you.”

“You know that I never wanted an abortion,” I remind her, and it’s the honest-to-God truth. “I wanted to keep it. I wanted to marry you and make you happy. I wanted to make our little family happy.”

“Until the gravity of the situation hit us,” she corrects. “It was exciting at first. Scary, but exciting. We got to live together, and get married, and have a cute little wedding, and we could decorate our house and get ready for our cute little baby…”

She suddenly chokes. “Was he cute, Jackson? Was he beautiful? Did he look like you?”

The images flash through my sixteen-year-old mind. It’s something that no sixteen-year-old should see…that tiny little person I had a glimpse of while I was by my wife’s side in the delivery room…the baby who just didn't make it...
            
“Don’t worry about it,” I whisper.

“I couldn’t even stand to look at him.” Her breathing picks up. “I was his mother, and I couldn’t even look at him. What kind of person am I? You didn’t even want him, and you have the memories with him!”

“They’re not memories,” I spit bitterly. “That word implies that seeing him like that was pleasant. It was the most horrifying moment of life, second only to seeing that car hit you.”

“Were you really concerned for me?” she asks, and the surprise in her eyes is the most animation I’ve seen in a long time.

I nod firmly. “I think I died a little inside. It was like it was in slow-motion—the frantic swerving of the driver, the blaring of the horn, the look of horror on your face, and seeing it crash into you, straight into your stomach…” I inhale sharply, pulling my fist to my mouth to bite it. The pain feels good. I still feel human. My guard has suddenly been let down. I can’t stop the words from leaving my mouth. Oddly enough, this is the most human I have felt in a very long time. I like the pain that my teeth leave on my skin. “I thought I lost you, and I died a little.”

“You’re about to lose me again, you know,” she replies, the coldness of her tone making my blood turn to ice in my veins. “As soon as I figure things out, I’m gone.”

“You’re leaving me?”

“Don’t be surprised, Jackson,” she snorts, sounding more like the hilarious, sarcastic Abby I used to know and love. “Our marriage fell apart as soon as my belly started to show and you lost your spot on the baseball team.”

She’s spot-on about the timeline—but not about the reasons behind our failure of a relationship. “Don’t blame it all on me,” I shoot back. “Yeah, I was devastated about having to quit baseball to get a job to support you. I gave up my chances at a scholarship. And yeah, I hated the fact that your body was changing. But you had such high expectations for me. How could you expect a sixteen-year-old kid to be excited about becoming a father? Like you said, it was cool at first. We could move in together and you took my last name and we could have sex whenever we wanted…but then everything suddenly became much too real. But I always loved you, Abigail. And Connor. I loved Connor. Connor just came at a very inconvenient time in our life.”

She mulls this over for a second. I can tell by that familiar little crease between her eyebrows that she’s turning it over in her brain, examining every word and every part of my tone. A few months ago, I would have kissed that worry line. I would have sang Bob Marley and she would have laughed.

But that is the way we were, not the way we are now.

Finally, she speaks. “I know it sounds crazy, but I think I would have been a good mommy.”

“I know you would have been,” I confirm, and for the first time in what feels like ages, I touch my wife’s hand. “When that car hit you, you instantly tried to shield your belly. I think that says it all.”

“But I failed.” She swallows hard, like she’s fighting a gush of bile. “I couldn’t protect him.”

“You tried. You fought for a long time, Abby. They released you from the hospital to bedrest at home because they thought that Connor had a real chance of making it. But sometimes these things happen, Abby. You did a good job of shielding him.”

“I felt him kicking just before the accident happened,” she says, ignoring the truth that I’ve tried to convince her of many times. “You know that babies pick up on changes in their mother’s bodies? He must have sensed my heart rate increasing, or something…he started kicking like crazy as soon as I realized that car was coming.”

“And that’s why you’re the lucky one. Because you felt him. I’ve never even touched him. You have, in a way.”

“And then one day, I couldn’t feel him move at all…I could only feel the blood…”

Her breath catches, she squeaks, and then she sighs and throws the covers off of her body before moving to leave the bed. I expect her to go to the bathroom—the only place she sees outside of the bedroom of our shabby little apartment—but instead she walks to the dresser and starts to rummage in the top drawer. Finally, she pulls out the little box.

“Abigail, don’t,” I beg, but she shakes her head.

“It’s over, Jackson. Look, we made some mistakes. We’re just kids. You know that one mistake can ruin your childhood, right? But Jesus, we didn’t even stop at one mistake. We kept going. First we got pregnant. And then we decided to completely go against our parents’ wishes and get married. And then I was hit by a car, and I lost our baby, and I slipped into a practically catatonic state and you fell out of love with me. I get it, okay? One mistake can ruin your childhood. Our chain of mistakes ruined our lives.”

I whisper, “Our biggest mistake was allowing ourselves to fall out of love with each other.”

“We both could have done more. And we both could have done less. Screaming at each other in the middle of the street was so unnecessary. And it was…fatal.”

Something strange happens when the wind is knocked out of you. You can feel and hear your heart race. You can sense that all of your panic synapses are firing off—your organs are asking, Where is the oxygen? Your mind becomes very clear. You’re capable of processing everything that is happening in your body. I always picture my mind looking like a room, and when my breath has literally been taken from me, I am able to observe every nook and cranny of my mind. Past events flash before my eyes, but for one eternal moment, I’m trapped. Time is frozen. I am frozen. My mind and my inactive lungs are the only things that exist. It hurts. God, it hurts. And my mind is nothing but pain—pain painted in such excruciatingly tedious detail that even the masters couldn’t portray it on a canvas.

But now it’s different. Because the pain is mixed with something else.

Guilt.

“I’m sorry, Jackson,” she whispers, and I’m aware of the box opening. I see her remove her rings from her left hand, and I hear it snap closed.

And then I start fighting. My diaphragm tries to act, moving in short, pulsating motions. Slowly but surely, I make progress, and my body relaxes as the sweet air invades my cells.

“I’m sorry, too,” I reply, still shaken. “I started that argument.”

“No. I’m just as guilty. I shouldn’t blame you so much. And to think that we were voted Most Likely to Stay in Love. Ha.” That last syllable is nothing but acerbic.

“We could just blame it on the student body, you know,” I reply, weakly trying to make a joke.

“They jinxed us.”

“No. It was our fault.”

I sigh. “Abby, I miss us.”

“‘Us’ no longer exists, Jack. There’s Abigail, and there’s Jackson. Two separate entities. It’s been that way for a long time now.”

“But I do love you.”

“I loved you too, Jack.”

And that’s enough for me. I see where I stand in her eyes. And now my guard is completely down.

“I love Connor, too, Abby. I love him so much.”

And finally, the sight I’ve been longing to see for so long approaches. A faint trace of a smile on her face. Fondness flitters across her face. She looks soft—not so sick, not so vulnerable, not so grief-stricken. She’s soft, and loving, and the girl that I fell in love with.

When she speaks, her words are filled with awestruck wonder.

“You said 'him.'”

“What?”

“For the first time, you just called our baby 'him,' not 'it'...out loud.”

“And you just called him 'our' baby.”

She stands still as she lets this sink in, and then she just gives me a simple nod. I watch, astonished, as she walks to the window and yanks the curtains open, allowing the sunlight to flood in.

But we don’t speak. There is enough noise in the room as the curtains overpower the rod, and the curtain rod falls from its rightful place above the window.