AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"To lose the baby," she told him.
"You're pregnant?" Angel asked her.
"Again," she said. "Again and again, I guess," she said. "Somebody must want me to keep havin' babies."
"Who?" Angel asked her.
"Never mind," she told him.
"Someone who's not here?" he asked.
"Oh, he here," Rose Rose said. "But never mind."
"The father is here?" Angel asked.
"The father of this one--yeah, he here," she said, patting her flat stomach.
"Who is he?" Angel asked.
"Never mind who he is," she told Angel. "Tell me that part again--only better make it two babies. Now they me and you, and everybody else, and two babies," she said. "Won't we all have fun?"
Angel looked as if she'd slapped him; Rose Rose kissed him and hugged him--and she changed her tone of voice.
"You see?" she whispered to him, holding him tight. "We wouldn't of had no fun at no beach, Angel."
"Do you want the baby?" he asked her.
"I want the one I got," she told him. "I don't want this other one!" She struck herself as hard as she could when she said "other"; she bent herself over again, she'd knocked the wind out of herself. She lay in the grass in what Angel could not help observing was a fetal position.
"You wanna love me or help me?" she asked him.
"Both," he said miserably.
"Ain't no such thing as both," she said. "If you smart, you just stick with helpin' me--that easier."
"You can stay with me," Angel began--again.
"Don't tell me no more 'bout that!" Rose Rose said angrily. "Don't tell me no more names for my baby, either. Just plain help me," she said.
"How?" Angel asked. "Anything," he told her.
"Just get me an abortion," Rose Rose said. "I don't live 'round here, I don't know nobody to ask, and I got no money."
Angel thought that the money he'd been saving to buy his first car would probably be enough money for an abortion--he had saved about five hundred dollars--but the problem was that the money was in a savings account, the trustees of which were his father and Candy; Angel couldn't take any money out without their signatures. And when Angel called Herb Fowler at home, the news regarding the abortionist was typically vague.
"There's some old fart named Hood who does 'em," Herb told Angel. "He's a retired doctor from Cape Kenneth. But he does the business in his summer house over on Drinkwater. Lucky for you it's still almost summer. I heard he does 'em in the summer house even if it's the middle of the winter."
"Do you know what it costs?" Angel asked Herb.
"A lot," Herb said. "But it don't cost as much as a baby."
"Thanks, Herb," Angel said.
"Congratulations," Herb Fowler told the boy. "I didn't know your pecker was long enough."
"It's long enough," Angel said bravely.
But when Angel looked in the phone book, there was no Dr. Hood among the many Hoods in that part of Maine
