Another month whirled past, and Felicity had to admit the only game she was playing was roulette. She showed Jack the test. He lifted her up and spun her around. “My little girl, my two little girls,” he crooned. Felicity said the baby could be a boy. Jack went right out and bought an early gender prediction test. With 99 percent accuracy and a cutesy pink ribbon streak, it was Jack’s dream, a girl after four sons.
Felicity didn’t want to be a mother at nineteen. She didn’t want to get married, even if Jack got divorced. No longer sure that she loved Jack, she was sure that she feared him. By the time she saw a doctor, there was no time to lose. But like so many other young women, when Felicity saw the somersaulting image of her unborn daughter on an ultrasound, she could no longer bring herself to stop that life.
She was going to be a mother. She wanted her own mother.
“So she ran from him,” Ruth said. “There was no way she could stand up against him. He was rich. He was influential. He was a lawyer. But even more, he was a bad man.”
“You mean, Felicity was afraid he would make her future impossible,” I said.
“She was afraid he would kill her,” said Ruth. “He said he would kill her if she had an abortion or a miscarriage.”
Felicity had to think fast. She pretended a meltdown. She told Jack that her mother was suspicious and on the brink of coming to Madison to bring her home. She further appealed to his sympathies; she actually wanted to go home, for a little while. She wanted to give birth with her mother at her side—after all, Jack couldn’t exactly tell his wife why he had to rush off to the hospital in the middle of the night, could he?
Later that night, Felicity confessed everything to Ruth.
“I went to Roman and said we could adopt the baby. We could raise her as our own. After all, he wanted more children, and this baby would be a part of me. He was furious. He was disgusted. He refused. He called her a harlot. He gave up on me then too, but he didn’t tell me that. He kept up appearances, to seem like a couple holding to the vows we made when we promised for richer or for poorer. I didn’t know about the... the... other wife.”
The most Roman would agree to was for Ruth to help Felicity learn the ropes of parenthood, short-term, before she was out the door. The sooner the better.
Ruth tried to sift through the silt for the saving grace: Felicity had completed one year of school with distinction. Life was a journey not a race, right? She and her parents would help Felicity raise the baby, as in fact, they did, at first. When Sparrow was born, a surprisingly swift and easy delivery, Ruth was at Felicity’s side. “I thought she was saying ‘Cleo’ and that was weird enough... but I got used to it. At least, the middle name is old-fashioned. Like mine.”
“What is it?” I asked, not really wanting to know, irritated by her meandering around.
Clearly surprised, Ruth said, “It’s Irene.”
I did not know that.
“What did you tell Jack?”
“Felicity decided on that. She said I should call Jack and tell him that the baby died and Felicity nearly died as well.”
“What? Didn’t you think he’d check?”
“I did, but Felicity said, why would you think someone was lying about a thing like that, especially if you were talking to the girl’s mother?”
I thought about it for a moment. “No reason, I guess. But that actually was a lie. She never lies.”
“She never had this much reason to lie. And she had this sortof world view, about the visible world. She had to read Plato in high school, didn’t you? In the ethics class? The world you don’t see is just as real as the world you see? Maybe more important?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t have that class. You mean Mr. Adi.”
“Yes. Imari Adi. Such a nice man. He just took two years off to try to actually become a philosopher. The idea Felicity had was that you have to be strict with your mind to perfect your mind. It was like a dare—could you tell the truth all the time? She would have lied. To save Sparrow. She did a lot worse than that. And anyway, she didn’t lie. She made me lie.”
That seemed like splitting hairs. But evidently, it worked. Jack sent flowers and a check for ten thousand dollars. But he wasn’t letting it drop.
A week later, Jack showed up on Ruth’s porch, beautifully dressed and smiling, carrying roses and chocolates and jewelry boxes of robin’s egg blue. He introduced himself and asked to see Felicity.
“I had no idea what to say. I just had to make it up. I said, oh wait, I said I would follow him to the hospital, because only family was supposed to be allowed to visit Felicity. But I was so glad he was there because he could be with her when they told her. And he said, told her what? I said, ‘When they tell her that she can’t ever have children anymore.’”
Ruth clearly had a gift. She told me that Jack’s face blanked and he mumbled something about maybe he should wait to see her if she was still that sick. Ruth pretended like, no, no, it was a good idea to see her right then. Jack stalled. He made some comment about how attractive the rectory was and Ruth told him that Felicity’s father was a very well-known minister with a huge congregation and a TV ministry. At that, the man literally began to back away toward his car, and Ruth started to breathe again.
Meanwhile, Felicity was upstairs, in a bedroom with the door closed, but had Sparrow begun to cry, it would have been all over.
Not long after, Felicity told Ruth that Jack sent his regrets that their “brief idyll” was over. It had been neither brief nor idyllic, but she was glad it was over. In time-honored fashion, Felicity was left holding the bag, in the home of a man she once wanted so much to be proud of her, but who now called her a disgrace. “He said Felicity took after me because I had a baby too, when I was only seventeen.”
So sad, Ruth said, even if it was true.
I couldn’t help but interrupt. “True? Did you think it was true as well? Was it both Roman and you who were ashamed of her? And him, lot of room to talk! Felicity was single, young, sort of naive. What was his excuse?”
