Elin Hilderbrand - Summer People

Once in the car, he transferred the pregnancy test from the shopping bag into the backpack that he normally used for school-he’d brought it to Nantucket filled with the books on his summer reading list, but now it was going to serve as the place where he would hide the pregnancy test until that evening when Piper would take it. They were going to meet early, while it was still light out, and head someplace private.

At home, his mother was the only one awake. Garrett sauntered into the kitchen holding the bag of groceries-the backpack was already tucked into the dark recesses of the front hall closet. Beth stared at him as he put the shopping bag on the table and began emptying its contents.

“I bought you some raspberries,” he said.

“You went to the store?” she asked. “What on earth for? Was there something special you wanted? You should have just told me, honey.”

“And olives,” Garrett said, holding up the jar. “You do like olives, don’t you?”

At six o’clock, Garrett and Piper picked up sandwiches from Henry’s and drove out to Smith’s Point to catch the sunset. This was one of the things Garrett wanted to do before he left the island for the summer. In previous years, Garrett’s father had arrived for the last two weeks of August and they did stuff as a family every night, including a sandwich picnic at Smith’s Point. As Garrett drove over the rickety wooden bridge at Madaket Harbor, he noted how vastly different this year was from last year. This year he was the one driving the car with his girlfriend in the seat beside him, his girlfriend who thought she might be pregnant. His father was dead; his mother had been married before. Garrett reeled at the enormity of it. He glanced at Piper. She looked pale, and nervous. He took her hand.

Garrett lowered the air in his tires at the gatehouse, and then he and Piper drove over the huge, bumpy dune to the beach. Piper groaned and clenched her abdomen. Garrett’s heart sank.

“Are you okay ?” he asked.

“Just get there,” she said.

They drove out the beach to the westernmost tip of the island. Across the water, Garrett could see the next island over, Tuckernuck. Piping plovers scuttled along the shoreline; the air smelled of fish, and in fact, the only other people on the beach were a couple of surf casters in the distance. Garrett spread out a blanket and unloaded the bag of sandwiches and the shopping bag that contained the Doritos and the root beer. It was a clear night; the sun was a pinkish-orange ball dropping toward the blue horizon. Piper sat resolutely in the Rover.

“Aren’t you getting out?” he asked.

She moved in slow motion, like she was running out of batteries.

“Do you want to take the test before or after we eat?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Before, I guess. While it’s still light. I have to pee anyway.”

“Okay,” he said. He double-checked their surroundings; they were shielded from the fishermen’s view. He took the test out of his backpack and studied the instructions. “You pee in this cup, and then you put the stick in. If a second line shows up, it’s positive. If not, it’s negative.” He handed Piper the cup and with the lethargic movements of an amoeba, she disappeared into the nearby dunes.

Garrett tapped the plastic stick against his palm. Dad ? he beckoned. But this moment was too monumental and too scary to share with his father. Garrett tried to clear his mind. He could smell his meatball sub and his stomach growled. He’d been too nervous to eat anything all day, and now he was starving.

After an eternity, Piper popped out of the dunes, holding the cup discreetly at her side, blocked from Garrett’s view. “Give me the stick,” she said. He handed it to her and she opened the back door of the car and moved inside. Garrett’s pulse was screaming along like a race car. He was too nervous to pray.

“How long does it say to wait?” she asked.

Garrett didn’t have to check the instructions; he had them memorized. “Three minutes, but no longer than ten.”

Piper checked her watch. Garrett lost all control. He tore open the bag of Doritos and stuffed a handful into his face. He felt like an ogre, a glutton, but he couldn’t help himself. Piper didn’t even seem to notice. Nearly half the bag was gone when Piper stepped from the car. Garrett paused in his eating; his lips burned with spicy salt. Piper emptied the contents of the cup behind the Rover’s back tire.

She smiled at him. The diamond stud in her nose caught the last rays of the setting sun. She waved the stick over him like it was a magic wand, changing his life forever.

“It’s positive,” she said.

The summer was fading fast. It got dark earlier, and there was a chill in the air at night. Garrett read the last two books on his summer reading list; he started running three miles each morning to get ready for soccer. Anything to lend normality to the very abnormal set of circumstances that bore down on him as surely as the impending autumn. Piper wanted to have the baby.

“But why?”

This was the question Garrett had asked over and again for the past three days. Garrett realized he should stop asking, because every time he asked, Piper came up with a more convincing answer. She valued the life inside her, she believed in a woman’s right to choose and her choice was to have the baby, she couldn’t bring herself to destroy a life that had been formed out of her love for Garrett.

Garrett countered with the predictable arguments-they had high school to finish, college to attend, years and years of life experience to acquire before either of them would be remotely capable of raising a child.

“Who said anything about raising a child?” Piper asked.

She wanted to have the child and put it up for adoption. There were thousands of good people in the world who were aching for a baby, she said.

“What about your senior year?” Garrett asked.

“What about it?” she said. “The baby isn’t due until April. I can accelerate my course work, take my exams early and graduate.”

“Yeah,” Garrett said. “But you’ll be pregnant.”

Piper stared at him like he was the stupidest person on earth. “That’s right,” she said.

Being pregnant empowered Piper. From the second she saw the positive result at Smith’s Point, she had transformed before Garrett’s eyes. She stopped being his girlfriend and became someone’s mother. She scared Garrett now, the way religious fanatics scared him. Only Piper’s religion was her body. Her body was changing, producing a hundred thousand new cells every hour, she said. She was desperate to see a doctor, to have an ultrasound and blood tests-but to do this, she needed access to her father’s insurance.

They had to tell their parents, she said and soon. There were only two weeks before Garrett returned to New York.

Garrett read and ran and moped, avoiding Beth and Winnie and Marcus. He moaned internally over his bad luck. He threw the remnants of his box of condoms into the trash. They were doubly useless-Piper didn’t want to have sex anymore. She didn’t want anything to harm the baby. She quit smoking for good, she said, and she began eating a lot of red meat and vegetables, although she was having a hard time keeping food down. Piper was going to have the baby and that was that. Garrett couldn’t believe he had no say in the matter. For the rest of his life, Garrett would have to live with the fact that his child was walking the earth.

Piper insisted on presenting a unified front. She wanted to tell their families together, in one large group. She stopped by one day at lunch, and Garrett entered the kitchen to find her and Beth sitting at the table planning an end-of-the-summer barbecue. Beth seemed energized by the idea. His mother was so predictable-she wanted to keep the last bits of summer alive by filling the house with people.