Rattled!
A Memoir
Christine Coppa
While this is a true story, some names and details have been changed to protect the identities of those who appear in these pages. Copyright © 2009 by Christine Coppa All Rights Reserved Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www.broadwaybooks.com broadway books and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Random House, Inc. storked ! is a registered trademark owned by Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc. Book design by Songhee Oh Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Coppa, Christine. Rattled! : a memoir / By Christine Coppa.—1st ed. p. cm. 1. Pregnancy, Unwanted—United States. 2. Unmarried mothers— United States. I. Title. HV700.5.C67 2009 306.874'32092—dc22 [B] 2008045955 ISBN 978-0-7679-3082-6 printed in the united states of america 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition
For Jack Domenic, You are the light of all of my days.
“The child must know that he is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn’t been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like him.”
—Pablo Casals
Introduction:
The Positive Sign
F
alse A-larm I think as I tear open the box and dump
the contents, a folded pamphlet of paper and a capped stick, into my hands. I’ve never taken a pregnancy test before in my life. I’m twenty-six, but suddenly I feel like a scared fifteen-year-old hiding out in a bathroom stall somewhere. My hands shake as I read the directions, which say to remove the cap and place the stick in the direct stream of my urine. It’s a black-and-white statement but I read it four times because I am certain I am going to screw this up and cook this wrong. My toes are burrowing through the fuzzy lavender rug; my thong and leggings are slouched at my ankles. You’re not pregnant, Christine, I assure myself as I swim the stick between my legs. I peer around the small, white bathroom. The tub is lined with half-empty bottles of products that smell
like honey and jasmine and citrus (the perks of living with a beauty editor) and the toilet is plastered to the floor on a weird corner angle that I’m just noticing for the first time. I pull the stick out from under me, placing it on the counter as I inch toilet paper off the spool with my fingers. Maybe I’m supposed to get my period next
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week, I think—no, pray. Dear God, next week, right? I suppose I should start noting my cycle in red ink on the calendar like my sixth-grade health teacher recommended nearly fifteen years ago. I suppose I should buy a calendar. Maybe I should just get on the pill. Yeah, I’ll get a prescription from Dr. Collado, I think, reassuring myself this is clearly a false alarm that will go down in history as a “Remember when” story I’d rehash to my girlfriends over cocktails—or, better yet, one that would talk one of them off the ledge: I was late once, too—it was fine—relax . . . another round of drinks, on me! Cold air is pushing through the closed window behind me. The thin blue curtain gently balloons and relaxes. It’s January and frozen outside. The streets are white, washed in salt, and the sky is just starting to light up with the bright, morning sun. A wave of nausea rolls over me—again, but I don’t fall to my knees and palm the sides of the bowl. I swallow the dizziness. The flu. I have the flu. It’s flu season. Everyone has the flu. My cycle is messed up because I’m sick, I think as I comb my fingers through my hair, collecting it into a tight bun. As I wrap the elastic around the lumpy knot, I try to process the fact that we did have unprotected sex. Once. The stick is sitting next to the sink. I find it with my eyes, but quickly look away. Deep breath, Christine. I say it out loud, like I’m kneeling down before myself holding my own hand. I reach for it, quick, but cautiously pull back. What if I am pregnant? A and I haven’t exactly been together that long—almost three months, in fact. I don’t know his middle name. Does he have one? I just admitted to some of
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my girlfriends that I might want to break up with him—and that I might not. Our relationship happened at warp speed. I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and feel for the stick. I open my eyes and my face wrinkles up in scared anticipation like a firecracker is about to go off in my hand. I see it— two blue lines. I fold my body in half and let my hands touch the tile floor. It’s cold to my fingertips and assures me I am awake, not dreaming this scenario from my bed, about to wake up relieved. I sit there for a moment before darting my eyes back to the stick and willing the appearance of a negative symbol. I pinch the stick between my thumb and forefinger, squint, squint harder. I scramble for the box’s directions, but after reading them again, twice, the paper just wrinkles in my fist. My stomach feels like the roller coaster just dropped. A surge of panic fills me. I think my throat is closing up, but it’s not. I pull my underwear and pants up in one tug, run into my room, and shove the stick into A’s hand. He’s sitting on the edge of my bed with my roommate’s oversize coffee mug in his hand, watching ESPN. “What does it mean?” I insist, glaring hard at the stick, pursing my lips together, stressing the question more. I know what it means. He irons out the crumpled-up directions on his thigh and runs his finger down a paragraph of text. Looks at the stick. Then the text again. I need another set of eyes to confirm what I didn’t see. I must’ve read it wrong—that’s all. “You’re pregnant,” he says, and he looks up at me. I stand at the edge of my bed looking at him like I’m waiting for someone to translate what he just said. I’m what? I
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think as I turn from him and press my palms against the windowpane. The sun is filtering through the trees in the square courtyard and even though every day I look out at this cocoon lined with rusty fire escapes, it suddenly seems very unfamiliar. “Okay,” I say and turn to A. “Okay,” he repeats. “I need to lie down. I feel sick,” I say, slumping on my bed. He lifts the covers for me and I slide under, pulling the comforter up to my chin. I turn over and stare at the wall, which is discolored with splotches of plaster. He sits on top of the covers, against the headboard, and I hear him breathing, digesting the news and tapping his teeth against the mug. “What do you want to do?” he wants to know. Me? The question makes me shift uneasily under the covers. What do we want to do, he means. Obviously. “Ya know what, the test is probably wrong. I bet it’s been sitting on the shelf for eighteen years all dusty and picked around,” I say, not turning over. After a couple of weeks of dating, A and I got into a deep phone conversation at midnight and he told me about how someone close to him had an abortion and how at first she wanted to keep the baby, but then since the guy wasn’t exactly onboard she made the decision to . . . A didn’t ask what I would do in that situation, but I felt inclined to tell him that I respected her choice, but I probably wouldn’t have an abortion. I think the conversa-
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tion changed to where we were meeting for dinner the following evening. We didn’t need to talk about such heavy stuff, anyway. I close my eyes and start to panic in silence: I don’t think I can have a baby. Can I? Should I? Then I realize it’s Saturday morning, and on Monday I am scheduled for my yearly checkup. The coincidence of the appointment is unnerving, but Dr. Collado will give me a “real” test and fix this . . . misunderstanding. So the commercial calls it the “Most Accurate Test on the Planet”—so what? I hate the commercial. “This is fuck-ing crazy,” I blurt out, breaking the silence between us. “I know,” A says. We haven’t even said “I love you,” because although we’ve been exclusive the last few months, who really knows where this is going? I don’t know if I love him. Wait, does he love me? We met at a bar on the Lower East Side one night when my friend Claire pushed me into him and winked. Alcohol influenced the breezy flirtation between us. He had kind eyes. They looked a little sleepy and when he smiled the skin under them folded a bit. He bought me a beer. The next day we convened at a small café on the Upper East Side where we shared a bottle of wine and a plate of grilled calamari in a pool of lemon sauce. The waitress thought we were a couple, I guess because we got on so well. We talked about movies and work. I told him I was a writer and he told me he was a runner. It was easy. After that he pretty much
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started living at my apartment and in the beginning I didn’t mind it. I liked the company. It had been a long time since I let someone hold me while I slept. By now, basically, we’re spending every waking minute together, but only in the last month or so have I realized how present he is in my life. His spare sneakers are perpetually on my bedroom floor and his neckties are flung over my desk chair. Come to think of it, I don’t believe I sat down at my desk once since I met him. I should have told him how I was feeling, but I didn’t. When he first put his toothbrush in my cup, I remember wanting to throw it out the window, then I felt like a psycho and just let it go. See, I wasn’t exactly ready to play house and I don’t think he was, either. He had moved to New York City from the Midwest a few months after breaking up with his longtime girlfriend and decidedly declaring his independence. Having sex with him sans a condom was like getting on a roller coaster at Six Flags and not buckling my seat belt. You don’t do it. We’re not supposed to be pregnant. We’re supposed to be eating dinner, screaming conversations at each other at loud, overcrowded bars, communicating via cheesy text messages. I feel so defeated lying here like this. It’s not even like the condom broke or I fucked up and forgot to take the pill. I turn over to find A, slumped in the pillows, sleeping, and I study his face, thinking, Everything has changed now. A couple of hours later, I wake up from napping. It’s after one p.m. now. I bet the girls are still drowning in mimosas at brunch downtown. I turn over into A’s neck. He’s wide awake, staring at the ceiling.
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“Hey there,” he says. “Hi,” I say. “We’re going to be okay. This is fine. Babies are a blessing,” he says. He sounds like he’s been awake, thinking about this while I slept off the nausea and then woke up and fake-slept for the past twenty minutes, my mind racing. He sounds excited, even. “Right,” I say. “This is fine.” I love babies. I want babies. “Should we tell our parents?” he says. My stomach drops. Tell our parents? This is really happening. “Let’s wait until after I talk with my doctor,” I say. “Sure?” he asks. “Yep,” I say, realizing I could just about burst into tears. I get up and take a shower instead and cry behind the curtain, the shhh of the water covering up my sobs. I lean against the tiles, or risk toppling over from the sporadic waves of nausea. If I could stay in this curtained cocoon until Monday, I would. The rest of the day happens in slow motion. The television is on, but we’re not watching it. We’re sleeping in the afternoon but we’re not tired. A goes out to buy dinner and I sit pushed against the headboard wondering if he’s going to come back at all. He does. I nibble on a cheese quesadilla and decide I’m not hungry. All I know is that I can’t have an abortion and I’m not exactly ready to be someone’s mom—am I?
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$14.95/AUTOBIOGRAPHY—PERSONAL MEMOIRS (CANADA: $17.50)
—Susan Goodall, editorial development director, Glamour
Warm, honest, funny, and empowering, Rattled! is an unforgettable memoir of a life that takes an unexpected turn—and a brave young woman who decides to follow where the road leads. Everything in twenty-six-year-old Christine’s life was going as planned—great friends, a promising job as a magazine assistant, New York City at her feet . . . even a cute guy. Until the fateful day she realizes she’s pregnant by said cute guy, whom she’d only been dating for a few months. The next thing you know, he bails and Christine is left to wonder, What now? Trading Manhattan for the suburbs, skinny jeans for sweatpants, and all-nighters with the girls for 3 a.m. feedings with a restless infant, Christine chooses to live a life that honors what’s important to her—and in the process finds strength she didn’t know she had.
Christine Coppa
“Even if you’ve never found yourself single, pregnant, and headed back home to the ’burbs, you will relate to this true story of life gone wrong and then oh-so-right again.”
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Dual
“Christine Coppa is a potty-mouthed, modern-day Holly Golightly. May she steal your —Genevieve Field, cofounder, Nerve.com heart as she’s stolen mine.”
26 and living the life of a
“Neither fairy tale nor cautionary tale, Rattled! is both a brave, bittersweet memoir about the life that happens when you’re busy making other plans and a hilarious, heartwarming love story about a mother and her son.” —Matt Sullivan, InTouch Weekly
a great job at a women's
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authors of The Perfect Manhattan and Cocktail Therapy
Christine Coppa is a freelance writer and pens the popular Storked! blog on Glamour.com. She lives in New Jersey with her son, Jack Domenic. A LSO Look for the Readers’ Guide at the back of this book, or go to www.broadwaybooks.com/browse/rgg Cover design and illustration: Olga Grlic Author photograph: Sherri O’Connor New York www.broadwaybooks.com www.crownpublishing.com
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“This memoir is deeply affecting—not only has Christine handled numerous challenging life experiences with aplomb, but she also writes about them beautifully and courageously. Shock morphed into poignancy, which in turn morphed into joy—and we were right there with her, inspired at every page turn.” —Leanne Shear and Tracey Toomey,
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Christine Coppa was
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“Sex and the City crashes into reality at taxicab speed. Coppa is engaging, honest, and, —Louise Sloan, author of ultimately, inspiring.”
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“I was hooked from the very first page of this triumphant memoir—an inspirational story which proves that life’s richest rewards appear when you least expect them.” —Allison Winn Scotch, New York Times bestselling author of Time of My Life
and overpriced cocktails; $271 in the bank–– and then her life was . . .
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To purchase a copy of Rattled!, visit one of these online retailers: Amazon Barnes & Noble Borders Indiebound Powell’s Random House
To read more from Christine, check out the Storked! blog on Glamour.com: Storked!