The Couple Most Likely To

“And now?”

“We’re not talking about now. But, no, I don’t see myself ever going that route, I have to say.”

“Because it’s boring? Narrow?”

“Because it’s…”

Too scary, and too hard.

Anna had taught him this. Most men—boys—have pretty simplistic attitudes to life at eighteen. Love is love. Grief is grief. Freedom is freedom. You want what you want. No ambivalence. No excuses. Until Stacey’s pregnancy he’d never imagined you could tear yourself in two with such conflicting, opposing emotions—emotions that simply had no way to coexist. Loving Stacey became a burden. Loving Anna was a burden, also, and every bit as heavy.

“Because it’s just not for me,” he finished after a moment. “It’s still not. And it definitely wasn’t for me back then. There were times—a lot of times—when I just wanted the whole situation to go away. Like for some superhero to fly up into space—” he mocked himself with words and tone “—and reverse the rotation of the earth so that time would spin itself back to the moment before I didn’t pick up a pack of condoms the night of the prom, or something. It wasn’t logical. It was never logical or rational or thought out, Stacey. I just wanted the situation to go away,” he repeated.

“And then it did.”

“And then it did.”

“And I was racked with grief, while you—”

“I was, too. Never doubt that! Only I didn’t have the right to be, I only had the right to feel guilty, because at some level I’d made it happen. Again, not rational. We were both in a mess. For a while, I tried to pick up the idea of us traveling, going to college together somewhere different. Like New York.”

“I remember you talked about New York.”

“You weren’t interested. You didn’t want to know. You wanted me to stay at Portland State.”

“I needed time, for heaven’s sake!”

“I know,” he answered quietly. “I just couldn’t see it then. Of course you did. But even if I’d given it to you, I’m not sure that it would have helped, because I wasn’t ever going to let myself be happy with you after we lost Anna.”

“Because you didn’t think you deserved to get what you’d always wanted—the two of us and the wide horizons.”

“That’s right.”

“Oh, Jake…” She didn’t sound angry anymore.

“I picked the fights. I did push you away. I’m so sorry about that, Stacey, believe me. When you told me we were finished, it hurt like hell, but I felt like it had to happen. It was inevitable. There was a relief, too. Cosmic justice had been served.”

“Jake…”

“I was eighteen. We were eighteen.” To both of them, it sounded so impossibly young.

He put his arm around her and she leaned in, not away. Her head dropped to his shoulder. They stared at the flames. He felt a cloak of peace settle over his shoulders. Peace and trust.

“Tonight, when I said her name…” Jake revealed. “You’re the only one I can say her name to, Stacey. My mom and dad, maybe, but it’s still not the same.”

“No. It wouldn’t be.”

Her bare arm felt warm beneath his hand. Her hip bumped his and he realized their thighs were pressing together, separated only by the fabric of his jeans and her frothy skirt. None of this was about sex, though, it was about shared pain and mutual support.

“I said something about her to my mother, once,” she said quietly, after a minute. “Maybe five years ago? I used her name. After Anna died. Do you know what Mom said?”

“Tell me.”

“‘Who’s Anna?’ Mom had forgotten that we ever named her.”

“She’d forgotten? The name of her own lost granddaughter?”

“I know. It felt like a punch in the gut.”

He turned her into his arms and said against the softness of her hair, “You are a miracle, Stacey.”

“Because I’m not like my mother?” she whispered.

“Yes!”

He couldn’t speak.

He had more to remember.

Those awful moments when they’d had to break the news to their respective parents that Stacey was pregnant. They’d announced their plan to marry at the same time. He knew his parents had had doubts and concerns, but they’d expressed them in the context of their love and support, and they’d swallowed a lot of their fears, ready to just be there, rather than preach.

Stacey’s mother had been far more vocal, all of it a variation on the theme of, “How could you do this to me?” How could Stacey and Jake embarrass Trisha Handley with a teen pregnancy in front of her friends? How could they make her a grandmother, when she was only forty-three? And if they thought they’d be able to dump the baby on her for free child care whenever they felt like it, it wasn’t going to happen, because Bob Handley’s company was transferring him to San Diego in the spring, thanks very much, so she wouldn’t be around.

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