The Scent of the Blueberry -- 3

Still, though, every once in a while she wondered whether it would have been a boy or a girl. No harm in wondering about that – even if today was the first day of the rest of her life, and she knew damned well that it did her absolutely no good to dwell on the past. He would have been a lousy father anyway. He totally sucked as a human being – so he would have totally sucked as a father. And she knew that she wouldn’t have been a good mother, either. Not yet, anyway. Maybe some day. Not until there was someone there to help her raise him. Or her. Alone? By herself? No way. She had made the right choice. The only choice.

It was the unfairness. Evelyn wished that she had been raped instead. Well, not really – of course she felt sympathy for all the women who had experienced that abuse at the hands of other fucking bastards. But at least people were sympathetic about that. They could identify themselves as rape victims and people would understand their tears, feel outrage on their behalf, and even excuse any minor behavioral oddities associated with the harsh memories of the act.

But Evelyn knew that there was no such empathy for her. Many people would condemn her for what she did, and many, if not most, of the rest would grin knowingly and say that she had made her own bed, so now she had to lie in it. Well, fuck them. There should be some rule – no, some kind of universal law – that said that a guy couldn’t tell you how much he loved you, that he wanted to grow old with you, that he wanted you to be the mother of his children – and then just leave when you became pregnant. Leave you feeling like an idiot, knowing you had fallen for the absolutely and utterly oldest line in the book, leaving you to become a statistical addition to the “single mother” category. Somewhere in the Census Bureau in Washington, there was some idiot at a desk who would have said, “well, there’s another pea-brained female – gotta chalk up one more in the ‘love ‘em and leave ‘em single mother category.’ ” Well, no fucking thank you.

There. Evelyn’s feet were wet, she was tired beyond belief, and she had successfully undone the positive effects of an entire day of self-talk. Maybe an entire week. Good.

By now she had arrived at her building. She wasn’t looking forward to the climb up to her 3rd floor apartment, but at least it probably wouldn’t be snowing in the hallway. First she checked her mail. Bill, bill, junk, bill, junk, junk, letter from her sister. Evelyn smiled despite herself. Her sister Karen was a confirmed Luddite – while the rest of the world spent much of their time sending emails, text messages, instant messages, maybe even the traditional phone calls, Karen would sit down at the kitchen table with a 29 cent ballpoint pen and a couple of sheets of cheap photocopier paper and write an actual letter. A real letter. Evelyn would keep each letter until she had her blueberry herbal tea ready. Then she would pour the steaming liquid into the mug that Karen had given her on her birthday, break open a new package of low-fat Oreo cookies, sit in her overstuffed chair and carefully slit the envelope. As she sipped and munched, she would first scan the letter, then read it, then scan it again. Then she would put the letter back into its envelope and place it on top of the rubber-banded envelopes containing Karen’s previous letters that she kept in the bedroom dresser drawer. Carefully and lovingly written letters deserved equally careful and loving treatment, she knew, and the receipt of a new letter was a suitable surrogate for countless hours of positive self-talk.

Evelyn smiled when she thought of the one special letter that Karen had sent to her. After the . . . event, the abortion, she wasn’t sure how Karen would react. Not telling her was simply out of the question – she told Karen everything – but just picking up the phone and telling her that she had just had an abortion . . . well, that was out of the question, too. So Evelyn wrote a letter to Karen and mailed it . . . then waited. For 5 days, 5 very long days, she didn’t know whether she still had a sister or not. Evelyn thought that for once, just this once, Karen might call. Call if she was supportive, not call if she wasn’t. When she didn’t hear after the 3rd day. . . Finally she received a letter back. She took it into the apartment, poured herself a Scotch rather than an herbal tea, slit open the envelope, opened the letter, and read, “That fucking bastard. . . if there’s anything I can do for you . . .” An hour later, when she had finished crying, she had poured the Scotch down the kitchen sink.

But there would be no letter ritual this evening. This time, there was a strange man waiting outside her 3rd floor apartment.