Lucy

 

“After all I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me?!”

 

My dad screamed until he was blue in the face, shouting questions and insults at me as if they were supposed to magically make me un-pregnant or erase the relationship I’d had with Dylan.

 

“Daddy, I’m really sorry,” I told him again and again. There was nothing I could do about the situation I’d put myself in.

 

“I have worked long hours and sacrificed my own happiness to get you the best education and help you shine amongst your peers. I got you into Harvard for Christ’s sake!” Spit gathered at the corners of his mouth like the rabid froth of a mad dog. His voice roared with the ferocity of an evangelical preacher. He raised one clenched fist and pointed up at the ceiling of our immaculate living room like he was even calling God to bear witness.

 

My dad was a very stern man. He had built his business from the ground up. I’d heard the story a million times about how he’d started with nothing and built an entire city around it. He was worth a fortune because not only did he pull himself up by his bootstraps when he hadn’t had a penny to his name, but he’d also made those bootstraps himself. I didn’t know how much of it I believed, but I had seen pictures of his family before he ran away and started making deals with local businessmen. He’d never had anywhere to go but up.

 

Once he got there, though, he had all these expectations of how life was supposed to work if someone wanted to be successful – namely, if I wanted to be successful. Getting pregnant out of wedlock by a married man didn’t fit in line with what he thought a successful lifestyle looked like. I had to agree. I didn’t feel successful— unless screwing up my life had been my goal, but that wasn’t my plan.

 

I had never seen him this angry. Sure, there had been plenty of times when I’d messed up before. What kid never upset their parents? But even when I ran over my mom’s Pomeranian the first time I drove out of the driveway, he hadn’t been this mad.

 

I could see my mother crying into her hands in her white evening gown behind my father. She sat at the dining room table, removed from the messy emotions in the living room. She didn’t want to get any of it on her. Yet, her own emotions seemed to be taking over.

 

“You see what you’ve done to your poor mother?” my dad growled when he caught my eyes straying to her.

 

My family wasn’t the warmest, but I had never doubted their love for me. They had their own ways of showing it, by providing for me and making sure everything went as smoothly as possible. They had gone to great lengths to provide their ideal life for their less than ideal daughter.

 

I preferred baggy jeans and loose shirts to their prim and proper, perfectly fitting formal wear. I preferred color, and lots of it. My room looked like it belonged on the opposite end of the solar system from the rest of their minimalist house. My wardrobe was vibrant and sometimes chaotic, like Arshile Gorky, the abstract expressionist. I couldn’t have been more different from my parents.

 

At the same time, they tolerated me as much as I imagined they were able to. My grades were good. I never got into any trouble, other than the occasional upset at home. And I excelled at almost anything I did academically. Since I did well in school and showed promise, as my father often said, they were willing to put up with my expressive lifestyle and personality so long as I didn’t purchase any nude artwork or turn up my indie rock records too loud while they were home. Yes, I listened to vinyl; it was the only way to really enjoy the music.

 

I met Dylan at a benefit auction held by a local gallery the summer after my senior year. My folks had given me some money to purchase something inspiring (my word, for once, not theirs, and I wasn’t even sure it was in their vocabulary) for my apartment when I moved off to Harvard. They felt it was only fitting that their artsy daughter had some real art to hang in her room.

 

Dylan was a successful banker who had a deep appreciation for fine art, but he didn’t like his art nice and neat. He didn’t like his structure clear, his focus handed to him and prescribed to him by the artist. He liked it messy. Picasso was too tame and seemed afraid of his own vision, he would tell me. He liked artists like Jackson Pollack. He liked art that did more than convey meaning. He liked it to create an experience.

 

And I had never met someone who spoke more romantically to me than he did when he talked about art. He was going through a rough patch in his marriage. She didn’t understand him. She had even gone so far as to turn his kids against him. He was planning on moving out and filing for a divorce, but he knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. He knew she was going to try to take him for all he was worth, and he was worth a lot. He was worth as much as some of the art hanging in that gallery, maybe even more.

 

Ours had been a whirlwind romance. He visited me at school whenever he was free. Whenever I was home for break or vacation, I would sneak off with him. He was my first, the first. I gave myself to him in his private art gallery at his home while his wife and kids were out of town, visiting her parents. He made love to me like the paintings he loved. It was messy and passionate. It was intense, emotionally and visually.

 

I gave myself to him whenever there was a chance, but it was still a surprise when I turned up pregnant. I thought we had been careful. We had used protection some of the time. The rest of the time he pulled out and let me finish him other ways. There were people out there who tried and tried but never could get pregnant. I took that as a sign that as long as we had put in some effort to avoid it, we were fine. I trusted him to take care of me like he said he would.

 

I found out right before summer break at the end of my junior year. I had one year left to go, and I didn’t know what to do. I knew I had to finish school. I was too close not to. I also knew a lot of girls didn’t finish, or at least didn’t finish on time, once they got pregnant.

 

I went to see him before I even went home to my parents’ house. He slammed his door in my face and told me to stop harassing his family. He stopped answering my calls and texts. When I called and got the message that the phone was no longer in service, I knew I had nowhere else to go but my parents, which was how I ended up cowering from my father on the couch while he shouted to the heavens about how horrible I was and how I was ruining his life.

 

After enough time had passed, my dad seemed to come down from his rage a little. His voice lowered and turned serious instead of frantic. He put a hand on my shoulder and sat down next to me.

 

My body shook. My breath came in sharp, hysterical bursts. I fought back tears and tried to maintain a straight face. I never cried in front of my dad. It was not permitted. My mom was allowed to cry because my dad had accepted that she was weak a long time ago. At twenty-one, there was still a chance for me to be strong. My dad wanted me to be stronger than my mom, and he rarely missed a chance to remind me of that.

 

“Lucy, there are other options. We can send you to spend the summer with family in Washington, and no one here has to know anything different,” he said as calmly as possible.

 

“Bryan,” my mom hissed through her runny makeup and tear soaked face.

 

“Lauren, I’m just trying to help here,” my dad replied in a calm, almost reassuring voice.

 

“Our daughter is not going to have an…an…abortion,” she said indignantly. I could tell it was hard for her to even say the word. For once, I agreed with her. No way in hell was I going to do that.

 

“Laur, she can’t have the thing,” my dad argued.

 

“It’s not a thing,” I snapped, pushing him away from me. “It’s a baby, and I’m keeping my child.”

 

He looked at me as if I had slapped him. Behind him, my mom stared at us in stunned silence. Much like everything else in their perfect life, I had been planned. They had left no room for messes and, as I was learning, unplanned pregnancies created quite a mess.

 

My dad was shaking, but he took a deep breath to steady his nerves. He looked me dead in the eyes, and I saw all the anger and resentment he felt toward me at that moment. I felt it just as I would have felt heat from a fire.

 

“You are not going to have that child out of wedlock in this house. If you want someone to take you and that bastard in, go find the bastard who got you pregnant in the first place,” my father bellowed. He stood up and raised his hand to point at the door.

 

“Bryan, please,” my mom pleaded.

 

“Not now, Lauren. She is not staying.” He didn’t even look back at her. He kept his eyes fixed on me.

 

“Lucy, honey, at least go pack some things to take with you,” my mom said sweetly.

 

My dad grumbled something under his breath as I took the opportunity to get out of the room. I heard them arguing downstairs while I went upstairs and packed my backpack full of clothes and small necessities. I figured I was only going to be gone for a couple of nights before I was able to come back for the rest of my things.

 

My hands shook. My heart raced. My mind was working overtime, trying to figure out what I was going to do, where I was going to stay. My eyes watered again as I looked around my room one last time. I looked at all the things I was going to leave behind. There was also my student apartment at school. I had no idea what was going to happen with all of that. I had one year left, dammit! I thought about running off to attend school, but it wouldn’t have been any use. My dad wasn’t going to pay for school or an apartment now.

 

There was a knock at my door. My dad’s voice came from the other side, barely muffled by the thin wood. “I want you out of the house. Now! Go have that bastard child somewhere else!”