Arc of Shadow

A Short Story

Photo credit: Jose Fernando Carli (freeimages.com)

He heard footsteps approach on the redwood decking.

“Dad? Hey, Dad?”

Will glanced up from the pages of a mystery novel. “Hi, Buttercup,” he said.

Alice still let him call her that even though she was ten. She took a seat on the edge of the chaise lounge, just outside the arc of shadow cast by the patio umbrella. Will scooted his legs over to make room for her.

“Dad? Are you busy?”

Will sighed, bent a corner of the page, closed the book, and set it on a wicker table next to a sweating gin and tonic. Alice settled in and smiled at him. “I need to ask you something,” she said.

Will steeled himself against her request, whatever it might be. This time he would resist the wiles of her persuasion and stand firm. “Okay,” he said. But even before she spoke, Will caught himself beginning to rationalize giving in to her.

A breeze coming off the lake blew a few strands of hair across Alice’s face. She pulled them aside as if drawing back a curtain. “Well,” she said. “My Sunday school teacher…”

“Mrs. Kern?”

“Yeah, she talked about abortions this morning and how it was the same as murder.”

The conviction with which his daughter spoke jolted Will. Uneasiness swept through him, touched his memory, and took him back twenty-five years to his college days when the subjects of war and killing were on everyone’s lips, and to Susan, an idealistic young woman who spoke with conviction and with whom he had fallen in love. Will had been tormented by questions of conscience then; Susan believed she had the answers. Susan…

Will shifted in the lounge but could not quite get comfortable. “Well, have you talked to your mother about this?”

“Dad, I can’t — Mrs. Kern said what would have happened if my mother had gotten an abortion?”

“I guess you wouldn’t be here.” Will’s sarcasm was intended for Mrs. Kern.

Alice frowned.

“But of course, your mother didn’t have an abortion. You’re living proof of that. Want to play a game of Chutes and Ladders after I’m done reading?”

“I’m too old to play that game.”

Susan hadn’t believed in playing games either; the world was a grim place.

“Oh? I don’t know,” Will mused. “I’m an adult, and I’ve played Chutes and Ladders.”

“That’s different; you’re a dad.”

“I’ll let you win.”

Alice folded her arms across her chest, sighed heavily, and stared at him.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Abortions aren’t right, are they Dad?”

Will cleared his throat. “I don’t think they are. Shouldn’t you change out of that dress and put on some shorts?”

Alice fiddled with the edge of her skirt. “Why does the law let abortions happen if it’s not right?”

Now he realized why she had sought him out instead of her mother. How could he tell her it was not up to him? He practiced law; he didn’t legislate it.

“Shouldn’t you be talking to your mother about this?”

“I told you I couldn’t.”

“I think she’d understand.”

“No, she wouldn’t.”

“Okay. All right,” Will said. “I’m listening.”

Alice bit her lip and kept her eyes on her hands. “You’d never let Mom get an abortion, would you?”

Will flinched. He reached for the gin and tonic and recalled the day Susan had asked him to meet her in front of the Student Union, how he stood there shivering in his thin leather jacket, shoulders hunched around his ears, the stiff March wind whipping his long hair.

Susan pushed through a door in a building across the Commons from the Union and trotted over to him, the collar of her surplus pea coat turned up against the chill. She touched his arm. Her warm lips branded his icy cheek.

“The rabbit died,” she said.

“I didn’t realize it was sick,” Will replied.

Susan didn’t laugh. “I thought you should know. Don’t worry. I’ll fix it.”

“The rabbit?”

It wasn’t funny. Susan turned and walked away.

He called her that evening and said he would marry her. She hung up on him.

A girlfriend drove her to Kansas City the next weekend. That Sunday night, Will received a call at the pay phone in the dormitory lobby. Some of the guys from back East were playing soccer in the adjoining hallway. Over the shouts and the thudding of muscle meeting cinder block, he recognized her voice. “It’s done” was all Susan said.

She never returned to campus. Will heard she joined the Peace Corps and ended up in Guatemala. He drew a high number in the draft lottery and went on to law school.

His daughter’s voice pulled Will back into the present.

“But what if Mom wanted to get an abortion?” Alice whined. “You wouldn’t let her?”

“Your mother’s not pregnant — -or do you know something I don’t?” Will tried to tickle his daughter’s armpit with his big toe. She pushed it away, causing some of the drink to splash in his lap.

“Why do you think she’d want an abortion?” Will noticed a sharpness had crept into his voice, but it seemed to have no effect on Alice.

“Mrs. Kern said lots of mothers get abortions because they don’t want any more kids.”

Maybe there was more to this than appeared on the surface, Will thought. Maybe Mrs. Kern had prompted Alice into wondering why she was an only child, why she had no brothers or sisters. But how did he explain that? How would Alice feel if he told her that her mommy and daddy had taken extraordinary measures to make sure she did not have any brothers or sisters? Wouldn’t she get the message that her parents did not particularly like having children? Which was mostly true, except they loved her. How did he explain that apparent contradiction?

“Your mother’s not that way. She loves you, doesn’t she?”

“But if she did want an abortion, you wouldn’t let her?” Alice continued to press her point. “You’d stop her, wouldn’t you?”

His daughter’s eyes accused him.

What could he have done to stop Susan? Try to talk her out of it? She would not have listened. She was sure she had all the answers. It would have been like trying to reason with her about the Vietnam War. For her, the war was wrong, and that was that. Everything in her world was either black or white, right or wrong, good or evil. Once she made up her mind about something, once she thought she had the answer, no amount of reasoning or argument could budge her.

It was this precise characteristic that initially attracted Will to her. Susan was so sure of the world and her place in it at a time when he was burdened by doubts and questions. He lived a shadowy existence of analysis, a constant weighing of the issues without coming to any conclusion, because there was no certainty in his mind, just endless arguments, pro and con. He hoped if he lost himself in his feelings for Susan, it would end the questioning. He could be idealistic and speak with conviction. That, he thought, would make him happy.

So for a time, he clung to her certainty and let it carry him along through her simplistic world of searing white and pitch black. But the draft lottery was coming up for his class, and he could no longer ignore the questions. Will found himself in the shadows once again. He and Susan argued. They fought. She called him an amoral hypocrite, an intellectual bystander. She told him that he did not believe in anything. He told her to grow up.

They had gotten together a couple of times for peace talks. Susan did most of the talking. The more she talked, the more he longed to give in, to quit thinking, to surrender to her ideals. Susan wanted him to go to Canada if he got a low number in the lottery. They would go there together, she said. And Will had begun the task of rationalizing that course of action when she asked him to meet her in front of the Union.

So what more could he have done to stop her from getting the abortion? Nothing. Oh, he could have called her parents, but he had never met them, and they lived in the next state. They would have contacted his parents. What a mess that would have been. Susan would have gotten the abortion anyway and more people would have been hurt.

He could have confronted her and pointed out the striking contradiction between her opposition to the killing in the war and the reality of abortion. But who was he to add to her guilt? And if she felt no guilt, wasn’t she better off? If she thought she had the answer, why should he cause her to start asking questions? And if she felt guilty, it wasn’t any of his business. Except it was; he had helped precipitate the situation. But hadn’t he done his part? Hadn’t he offered to marry her? He had lived up to his obligation as the father. The rest was up to her. Dammit, it was her decision!

“Now wait just a minute,” Will snapped. “Let me explain.” Alice cringed. Will took note of it but continued. “It’s the woman’s body. That makes it her decision. How could I possibly force her to give birth to a child she didn’t want?”

His words landed hard on Alice. She recoiled from him as though he had struck her. “What about the baby?” Alice muttered.

Will touched her shoulder. “Now don’t get upset.”

“What about the baby?” Alice’s lips pressed together to form a thin, bloodless line. A frantic trembling shook her body.

He had gone too far. Why couldn’t he have just told her what she wanted to hear and let it drop? He did that sort of thing every day. He would argue any position for the sake of winning a case. Successful lawyers were not interested in the truth, only in winning. Over the years, Will had become a very successful lawyer. Answering his daughter should be easy. Alice was just a kid, what was the problem?

“Hey, calm down.” Will leaned forward, tilting his head to one side, trying to catch her eye. “You’re getting upset over something that isn’t going to happen.”

“You’d let her kill it?” Alice whispered, her eyes brimming with tears.

Her bluntness irritated Will. Children lived in such a simple world, children and adults who had never grown up like Susan and Mrs. Kern.

“Hey, come on, Buttercup. Don’t do this.” He set the gin and tonic back on the wicker table. “I’d want the baby.” He reached out to Alice. “I’d want the baby. Hear me? I’d want it.” She let him put his arms around her and pull her close. “I wanted you. Mommy wanted you. I’d want the baby.”

He could feel Alice quiver as she sobbed and sniffled against his chest. “Everything will be all right,” he said and gently rocked her.

Soon her breathing steadied; she burrowed a little deeper into his chest. There, it was over for now, he thought. In a few minutes, she would leave to play with the neighbor kids, abortion forgotten, and he could get back to his reading.

Will had almost dozed off when Alice pushed herself away and rubbed at her nose. She looked at him and smiled weakly, her pink cheeks moist with tears. “Then you’d stop her?”

A simple “yes” would have satisfied her and ended it. She would have kissed him and scampered off. But Will could not say the word; he could not say anything. Alice rose to her feet and glared at him, then spun away and sprinted down the steps of the deck and across the lawn toward the lake.

Will watched her flight feeling as helpless as he had that windy day in March so many years ago. He rolled off the lounge, drained the remainder of his drink, and pitched the waterlogged lime. Leaning on the railing that surrounded the deck, he squinted into the brilliant sunlight.