Son of Stone

55

S tone and Peter got ready to go to Elaine’s for dinner and met downstairs.

“I’m going to go pick up Hattie,” Peter said. “We’ll meet you there in a few minutes.”

Stone gave him some cash. “We need to open a bank account for you and set up an allowance.”

“Thanks, Dad, I’d appreciate that.”

“Joan will set it up on Monday.”

They walked to Third Avenue together and took separate cabs.

Peter wondered what this was about. Ordinarily, the doorman in Hattie’s building would have put her in a cab, and she would have met them at Elaine’s, but Hattie had said she wanted to talk about something.

He got out of his cab at her building, and she came outside. He opened the door for her.

“Can we walk for a little bit?” she asked.

“Sure,” Peter replied. He paid the driver and got out. She slipped her hand into his, and he put both in his coat pocket. They walked up Park Avenue in silence for a couple of minutes.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” she said.

“All right.”

“No one else knows, and you have to keep it a secret.”

“Of course.”

Hattie took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m pregnant.”

Peter stopped and turned to face her. “But we haven’t…” He stopped, his mind reeling.

“It was someone I went out with before I met you,” she said. “It only happened once.”

Peter thought about that. “I want to help,” he said.

“Thank you,” she replied. “I’ve already decided to have an abortion, and I won’t brook any arguments about it. If you find that unconscionable, I’ll understand, and you can go your own way.”

“I want to help,” he said again. “Does the guy know?”

“No,” she said, “and he’s never going to.”

“Good,” Peter said.

“I’ve looked this up on the Internet, and I’ve found a clinic up on First Avenue in the Nineties.”

“What kind of clinic?”

“Licensed, part of a nationwide family planning organization.”

“Have you been there yet?”

“No.” Her lip trembled. “But I have an appointment after school on Monday. Will you go with me?”

“Of course,” Peter said, squeezing her hand. “I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

“The way I understand it is, first, I have an interview, then the procedure is scheduled-there’s a waiting list-and I have to be accompanied by someone.”

“That will be me,” he said.

“After the procedure I’ll be kept there for a few hours, until they know I’m all right, then I can go home. But I don’t want to go home.”

“You can come to my house,” Peter said. “I’ll take care of you there, then take you home later.”

“What about your father? I don’t want him to know.”

“There’s a way into the house through the garden. He’s usually in his office, so I can take you upstairs.”

“We have to face the possibility that something might go wrong. In that case I’ll have to go to a hospital.”

Peter thought about that. “I don’t see any way that we can keep you out overnight. If you need to go to a hospital, I think you’ll have to tell your parents.”

“I don’t want to do that,” she said.

“I understand, but you have to think of them, as well as yourself.”

“I know, but I’m afraid.”

“I know you love them, so think about what you’re afraid of-disappointing them in some way?”

“Yes.”

“If I’m facing something I’m uncomfortable about, what I do to handle it is, I think about the worst-case scenario,” Peter said. “What is the worst thing that could happen? Then I figure out what I would do if the worst thing happened. Once I’ve decided that, I feel a lot better. What’s the worst thing that could happen in this case?”

“For my parents to find out what I’ve done.”

“Let’s think about what that would mean,” he said. “What would they say to you?”

“They would be shocked, especially my father.”

“Of course, but how would they react after that?”

“Once the initial shock was over they would be sympathetic,” she said. “And they’d want to know who the father was.”

“Would you tell them?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Do you think they would punish you in some way?”

“Peter, I’m eighteen; they can’t spank me.”

“Would they ground you? Place some sort of limitations on you?”

“They can’t do that, either. If they treated me like a child, I’d move out.”

“How would you support yourself?”

“I have a trust fund. I could get by very nicely on the income from that.”

“You couldn’t take money out of your trust without the permission of your trustee, right?”

“Right.”

“Who is the trustee, your father?”

“No, it’s a bank. They would let me take money out of the trust for living expenses and my education.”

“I can help, too.”

“I wouldn’t want you to do that.”

“You have to let me decide what I want to do,” Peter said. “I have a bank account in Virginia that receives automatic deposits for my prep school fees, but I left prep school early, so there’s something like fifty or sixty thousand dollars in that account. I can write checks on it.”

“I wouldn’t want to touch that money.”

“It’s my money now; my mother is dead. Just think of it as a safety net.”

“All right, I’ll think of it that way.” She smiled. “I feel better now.”

Peter took her in his arms and held her for a moment. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” he said. “We’ll make this work.”