Free Gift With Purchase by Jackie Pilossoph Page B

offered.
    “Thank you,” Mom said.
    My mom then switched gears and looked at me. “Hey, what’s wrong with you?” she asked, “You seem like you’re hiding something.”
    “No,” I lied, “Everything’s fine.”
    “You do seem a little weird tonight. Is everything okay?”
    “Fine,” I lied again.
    It was tough to keep my secret from my family, but I decided there was no reason to get everyone in an uproar until I went out and bought a test, which I was planning on doing the next day. Fortunately I was able to hold them off for the night, probably because we had lots of other issues on the table. Both my parents situation and my sister’s divorce were pretty huge, not to mention what ended up being the highlight of the night: Laura’s announcement.
    “So,” she said with hesitation, “I have a date tomorrow night.”
    “What?” I replied, “This is great! Who is it?”
    “A doctor from the hospital. Someone told him I was separated and he asked me out. His name is Ari Bega. He’s Israeli.”
    “Wow! I’m so happy for you!” I said.
    “It’s great, honey,” said our mother.
    “I bet he’s gorgeous!” I exclaimed, “Since he’s Israeli and everything.”
    “He’s pretty cute,” said Laura.
    “How old?” asked Mom.
    “Around my age, I think. He just got divorced and has two daughters.”
    “See?”
    “See what?” she asked.
    “It’s already starting. And you thought no one would want to date you.”
    “Will you help me find an outfit?”
    My sweet, sweet sister, so strong and sure of herself when it came to her job, yet so insecure, almost possessing a teen-age-like mentality when it came to her physical self-confidence, and I knew it was only going to get worse now that she was single again. “Sure,” I said with a smile.
    My mother looked pleased. I guessed she was happy her daughter had so quickly gotten up the courage to put herself out there. As for me, I was thrilled for Laura. I went to bed that night ecstatic for my sister but sick about my situation. So sick in fact, that I tossed and turned for what seemed like hours.
    That night, in total, I think I got approximately twenty minutes of sleep. I spent it crying, thinking, trying different sleeping positions, and watching Seinfeld re-runs. During commercial breaks of Seinfeld and between the bouts of weeping, I tried to come up with the answer for how in the hell a forty-two year old woman using condoms every time except one time could possibly end up pregnant. One time!
    From around 3:30 until 6:00 when Izzie woke up and crawled into my bed, I thought about the two options I had. One, have the baby. Yeah, right. I think I’ll complicate my daughter’s life even more by bringing a brother or sister into our home, whose father is a commitment-phobic sex addict. That thought only brought on more tears.
    Option number two, have an abortion, which in the Jewish religion isn’t really a huge deal. It’s sort of not discussed, which I always believed meant that it was okay, just don’t talk about it. The Jews, who are pretty much the chattiest group of people on earth, and who talk about everything under the sun in life, conveniently leave the topic of pro-life versus pro-choice out of their realm of conversation.
    Browsing in the pregnancy test aisle at Walgreen’s the next day, searching for the perfect brand to give me my official pregnancy test result, I wasn’t sure which option I’d go with, but I realized the first thing I had to do was tell Preston. Not because I was realistically thinking of having his baby, but because something was telling me he’d want to know. After all, he’d just told me not to hide anything from him.
    Plus, as immature as he seemed, Preston was also very intelligent, and he had good, decent morals (with the exception of thinking threesomes were okay), which made me believe that when it came to most issues he was an ethical person who would consider both options carefully. That’s why I