my employers and loyal customers, bought the Victorian mansions, which loomed with decay from a near century of abandonment. They spent years working on the buildings, preserving them as historical landmarks, improving the town, building bakeries, cafés, breweries, bars, restaurants, grocery stores, and hotels. Port Townsend became known for harboring wooden boats, with interest evolving into a formal school and yearly festival. Now that core group who’d worked to revive the town kicked back, slowed their pace, and settled into being the bourgeoisie. All of us service workers catered to them, worked for them in our various ways, living in tiny cabins, yurts, or studio apartments. We were there for the weather—the rain shadow the Olympic Mountains provided—and for the hidden artsy community that was only a ferry ride from Seattle. We were there for the calm ocean water in the bay and the sweaty work and lifestyle bustling kitchens provided.
Jamie and I both worked at cafés, relishing the youth and freedom to do so. We both knew we were on to bigger and better things. He helped out with his friend’s catering business and did whatever side work he could find that paid under the table. In addition to the café, I worked at a doggy day care and sold bread at farmers’ markets. Neither of us had college degrees—Jamie admitted that he hadn’t even graduated from high school—and we did whatever work we could to make money.
Jamie had typical restaurant shifts, from the late afternoon well into the night, so most of the time I was already asleep by the time he came home, a little drunk after hanging out at the bar. Sometimes I’d go down and meet him, spending my tips on a few beers.
Then I found out I was pregnant. Through a wall of morning sickness, my stomach dropped, and the world suddenly started shrinking until it seemed to stop. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror for a long time with my sweatshirt lifted to examine my stomach. We’d conceived on my twenty-eighth birthday, the day before Jamie left for his bike trip.
In choosing to keep the baby, I would be choosing to stay in Port Townsend. I wanted to keep the pregnancy a secret and continue with my plan to move to Missoula, but that didn’t seem possible. I needed to give Jamie a chance to be a father—it felt wrong to deny him that opportunity. But staying would mean delaying my dreams of becoming a writer. Delaying the person I expected myself to be. The person who would move on, become someone great. I wasn’t sure I wanted to give that up. I had been on birth control, and I didn’t believe it was wrong to get an abortion, but I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother, who’d possibly stared at her belly, debating her options for my life in the same way.
In spite of all my hopes for a different path, I softened in the days that followed and began to fall in love with motherhood, with the idea of me as a mother. When I told Jamie about the baby, he’d just finished his bike trip. His initial tenderness in coaxing me to terminate the pregnancy abruptly changed when I told him I would not be doing that. I had known Jamie only four months, and his rage, his hatred toward me, was frightening.
One afternoon, Jamie barged into the trailer where I sat on the built-in couch by the television, trying to stomach chicken soup while I watched Maury Povich reveal the results of paternity tests. Jamie paced while he stared at me, mirroring the men on the show, yelling about not wanting his name on the birth certificate. “I don’t want you to come after me to pay for that fucking kid,” he kept saying, pointing to my stomach. I stayed quiet like I usually did when he went on these tirades, hoping he didn’t start throwing things. But this time, the more he yelled, the more he fought and told me what a mistake I was making, the more it pushed me closer to the baby, to protect it. After he left, I called my dad, my voice shaking.
“Am I making the right decision?” I asked after telling him what Jamie had said. “Because I really don’t know. But I feel like I should be sure. I don’t know anything anymore.”
“Damn,” he said, then paused. “I’d really hoped Jamie would step up to the plate on this