They’d met at a party at Sharon’s house, on a Saturday night in June after she and her friends had finished high school. There’d been a bonfire in the backyard, a cooler full of ice and bottles of soda （and another cooler, in the back of a classmate’s trunk, full of beer）。 Lily remembered the dress she’d worn that night, pink eyelet cotton, with a flounced, tiered skirt, and thin straps that set off the tan of her bare arms and shoulders. She had never felt so pretty, so desirable, and when Ben had walked over to her, two beers held by their necks dangling from one hand, appreciation on his face, she’d felt lucky. Special. Chosen. Ben and Lily had spent the whole night talking, first by the bonfire, then on a couch in Sharon’s living room. He’d asked for her number and brushed the lightest kiss on her lips at the end of the night, one finger tucked under her chin to tilt her face toward his, and he was nothing like the high school boys who’d shove their tongues inside your mouth like they were trying to inspect your molars, when they weren’t knocking their teeth into yours. Ben’s mouth had been gentle, and he’d tasted like whiskey, and he’d smelled like aftershave. Lily had been instantly besotted.
Her parents hadn’t approved. Ben was twenty-three, and Lily was three weeks away from her eighteenth birthday. He was a man, and she was a girl. They’d told her she couldn’t see him, which, of course, had only made her want to see him even more. So they’d met in secret. It had been easy enough. Lily hadn’t even had to lie. “I’m going over to Sharon’s house,” she’d tell them. She wouldn’t bother adding that Sharon was at her summer job as a lifeguard; that Sharon’s parents were both at work, that no one was at Sharon’s house except Ben. All summer long, she invented sleepovers, movies and parties, bonfires at the lake, and last-minute babysitting jobs.
Lily had grown up going to church every Sunday. She’d promised to stay a virgin until she got married, but her promise had felt misty and far away when Ben had his mouth pressed against her neck and his hands up her shirt or down her pants; like words spoken by a stranger. They’d had sex half a dozen times, and they’d always used condoms, but then, when the week before her college orientation had arrived, Lily’s period didn’t.
Ben had panicked. “I can’t get married,” he’d said. “I can’t have a kid. I don’t even have a job!” By then, Lily had noticed that he hadn’t been trying very hard to find one. She didn’t blame him. If she had a nice place to stay, parents to pay the bills, and a mother to cook her dinner every night, she might not have put much effort into a job search, either.
Lily had taken a home pregnancy test and, when it had given her the news that wasn’t news at all, she had called up her pediatrician, Dr. Rosen, who’d been taking care of her since she’d been a baby. He’d told her to come in at the end of the day, when the office was empty except for the receptionist and the nurse. She’d sat on the exam table, in the little room with the poster of the food pyramid on the wall, where she’d been weighed and measured and checked for ear infections and poison ivy. With her eyes on her lap, she’d asked about confidentiality.
“You’re an adult now,” he’d told her. “So the standard rules apply. Anything you tell me stays between us.”
She’d told him what had happened. He’d asked her questions, his voice calm and nonjudgmental, and then a nurse had come to take a urine sample, just to be sure.
When the test had come back positive, Dr. Rosen had written out three prescriptions, tearing each sheet from his prescription pad and slipping them into an envelope before handing them to her. One had been for birth control pills. The other two had been for the medications that would end the pregnancy. “There’s a pharmacy in Harrisburg that keeps this in stock,” he’d said.
Lily had left the office, almost dizzy with relief that there was a pill she could swallow that could solve her problem, that she wouldn’t need a surgical procedure, or the money to pay for it; that, best of all, her parents wouldn’t ever need to know. She’d driven the forty-five minutes to Harrisburg. There, she bought the medication and swallowed the pills. The bleeding had been heavy, the cramps worse than any she’d previously experienced. She’d swallowed Tylenol and stayed in her bedroom with the shades pulled down, getting up every hour to change her pad.
And then it had been over. She’d gone off to college, with her birth control pills in their plastic clamshell zipped into the front pocket of her backpack. Four years later, she’d graduated with her teaching certificate. She’d gotten a job teaching third grade at a school in Pittsburgh and had rented a studio apartment in Squirrel Hill. Most of the other teachers were nice, but they were middle-aged or older, already married and settled. Lily had joined a hiking club and signed up for a wine-tasting class. She attended different churches every Sunday in the same spirit. She liked hiking, she liked wine, and church gave her similar structure and community. It was true that the beliefs she’d grown up with were important to her, but, if she was being honest, she was looking for friends more than Jesus at that point.