“Then I'll get a job and take care of it myself.”
“And who'll take care of it while you work? See what I mean? Baby, you're not even fifteen years old …”
She started to cry. “You sound just like one of them …” And he never had before. She couldn't stand it from him too, and she looked up at him with heartbroken eyes. “Li, it's my baby … I can't give it up.”
“You'll have others one day.”
“So what?” She looked appalled. “What if they'd given you away because one day they'd have me?”
He had to laugh at the example, and he looked at her so tenderly. “I think you ought to give it some thought. You don't have to make your mind up right now.”
She agreed to that at least, but when she got home, she got into a huge fight with Val, who demanded that she stay inside the house whenever her friends came around.
“I'll be the laughing stock of school, if everyone knows you're knocked up. And you'll be going there in a year yourself, you don't want everyone knowing that.”
Faye admonished her that night for being unnecessarily cruel, but it was already too late. Anne had gone to her room after dinner and packed her bags, and at ten o'clock she was standing in Lionel's living room again.
“I can't live with them.” She told him why, and he sighed. He knew how difficult it was for her, but there wasn't much he could do for her. He gave her his bed that night, and told her they'd figure it out the next day. He called Faye to tell her where she was. She had already called Ward, and Lionel got the impression that he was going to spend the night, but he didn't ask. And he told his roommates that he was going to sleep on the floor, but of course he slept with John, and reminded Anne to be careful of what she said, because his roommates didn't know that they were gay. And the next day, when the three of them went out for a walk, he was embarrassed at the questions she asked, but he tried to be honest with her. “Do you and John really sleep together every night?”
He started to say something and then changed his mind. “Yes. We do.”
“Like husband and wife?”
Lionel saw John blush out of the corner of his eye. “Sort of.”
“That's weird.” She didn't say it meanly and Lionel laughed.
“I guess it is. But that's the way things are.”
“I don't know why people get so upset about that, I mean like Dad. If you love each other, what difference does it make what you are, I mean a man and a woman, or two girls or two men?” He wondered just exactly what she had seen in the commune, and remembered what the police had said. She had probably had numerous homosexual experiences now too, but he didn't ask her that, and hers would have been drug-induced, and as part of a large group probably, given the sect's practices. And Lionel didn't want to ask. She might not even have remembered what she'd done. It was very different from what he and John shared, which was a genuine love affair. But he looked at her now. It was odd how she floated between being a woman and a child.
“Not everyone sees it that way, Anne. It's frightening to some people.”
“Why?”
“Because it's different from the norm.”
She sighed. “Like me being pregnant at fourteen?”
“Maybe.” That was a tough one. And it brought to mind what they were going to do about her. He and John had talked about it for half the night, and they had an idea. Lionel had talked to Faye about it. In some ways it would be easier for Faye and Ward too.
And Lionel had been right of course. He had always been an intuitive child, and he wasn't wrong this time. Ward had spent the night. His father answered the phone, but he said not a word to Lionel, they were back on their old terms of his no longer existing in the Thayers' life. Now that he had found Anne, they could dispense with him again, or at least Ward could. He handed the phone to Faye, and she proposed the idea to Ward when she hung up.
“Lionel wants to know what we think of their taking an apartment near school, and letting Anne stay with them until the baby comes. And after that,