My Wife's Baby

by Niomie Roland

  “Aww, I missed my baby as well.”

  “I told her you would be the first face she would see in the morning.”

  Okay, now that that was out of the way, maybe they could start something. Brad hastened his steps and caught up with her just as her right foot settled on the first step. He was about to grab her waist when her cell phone began to ring.

  “Who could that be?” Brad felt his lust fade when he considered that it was after 11:00pm. Alana had a puzzled look on her face when she turned. “Go on upstairs and take your shower; I’ll be waiting for you in the kitchen.”

  She raised the champagne bottle and gave him a wink.

  ***

  She was still on the phone when Brad came downstairs twenty minutes later. He had taken his shower and kissed their daughter goodnight before going to the kitchen. Aaryn was already fast asleep when he tiptoed into her room, but that didn’t matter. It was a tradition he kept whenever he was home.

  She was a carbon copy of her mother. Light brown eyes that were hidden by her eyelids as she slept and long eyelashes that swept her cheeks. A head full of black hair like her mother’s and cheeks that dimpled when she smiled. It was her skin that betrayed the paternity of her parents. It was that lighter shade of brown that most biracial kids of parents of mixed races have.

  They had her in the second year of their marriage. An unplanned kid that had marred their plans to enjoy each other for five years before letting any children into their lives. Her coming was funny because they should have known better. There were better and more trusted ways they could have used to keep their marriage to themselves, but they had chosen coitus interruptus of all things. Perhaps this was why Brad had forgiven Aaryn for coming when she did and had fallen in love with her, almost as quickly as he did her mother.

  “I love you,” he whispered and kissed her cheek. After, he remained bent over her, listening to her breathe, then he turned and padded out.

  His steps on the staircase were lighter than they had been when he had gone up. Alana’s headache was probably gone now, so if he wanted to start something in the kitchen, the coast would be clear. It was easy to reach the conclusion that her headache had come from her intense dislike of his law firm, Sandler, Harris and Whistler.

  That dislike had stemmed from the fact that there was no love lost between him and the partners in the firm. Brad was the reason. He was the mule, the beast of burden who did all the heavy lifting and they were the big mouths who ate all the proceeds from his labor.

  It was just a word of this in her ears that had been enough to paint the firm black in her eyes. Now, all she wanted was for him to get the hell out of that place. His yearning for a strictly corporate firm did not help matters. All she did these days was beg him to open his own practice or find a new employer.

  Alana was in the kitchen when he came down. Her voice floated to his ears as he crossed the living room. She was laughing hard. When he entered the kitchen, he saw her on a stool with her cell phone pressed to her ears.

  He stood by the doorway for a while watching her, wondering who she was talking to. Slowly, the fears he had left outside the house when she opened the door to let him in started to come back. They came back in waves, each higher than the other, threatening to drown him.

  At first, he tried to guess who she was talking to.

  It was easy to eliminate her mother and her sister. Those two did not know how to laugh. They needed people like Alana to make them laugh.

  It was also easy to eliminate her friends. Tasha and Willa were fun people, but this was not the kind of laughter that originated from them. It was the crazy thigh slapping, foot stomping laughter that resulted from hearing juicy bits of gossip that were also funny.

  No. This laughter was different. It was a…

  Brad turned and went back to the living room to wait. While waiting he tried not to think about Alana and her phone call. He settled on one of the sofas and leaned back, closing his eyes with a sigh. They were arranged in a U form, with a long sofa at the base and two love seats at the sides. Behind them, a book case and a giant vase of flower stood. It was Alana’s arrangement, something that had been done in one of those moments when interior design had caught her fancy.

  Brad could still remember her breathless laughter when she showed him her handiwork. It sounded almost the same as the one coming from the kitchen now. Lord, it grated on his nerves. Why was she keeping him waiting? Who was so important that she had to put their plans on hold?

  Suddenly an urge to creep to the kitchen door and eavesdrop came upon him. Resisting it was harder than Brad thought it would be. It was something that people with insecurity issues did. He was not that kind of person. He could not be that kind of person now.

  Unfortunately, despite Brad’s notions of being above the insecurities of common men, the urge did not die down. It only got stronger. It attacked him like a ferocious boxer eager to get his weakened opponent down to the canvas.

  When he couldn’t hold in his curiosity anymore, he got up and went back up the stairs. When he got to the master bedroom, he looked at the time on the clock and saw that he had been waiting for ten minutes. Alana had been on the phone with Mr. Funny for thirty minutes.

  3

  Brad pretended to be asleep when Alana came into the bedroom, but she wasn’t fooled in the least.

  “Somebody is jealous,” she said.

  He felt the depression of the bed when she sat on it, then heard a scraping on the floor as she pulled a stool close to the bed. She had come up with the champagne.

  Good luck with that, Brad thought. She was welcome to drink alone, or better still with her phone pal.

  He tried hard to zone out but couldn’t stop himself from listening hard for the sound of liquid splashing in the glass. He didn’t hear it. What he felt was her hand nudging him.

  “Baby get up please.”

  Seriously?

  “I don’t want to spill your drink on the bed.”

  Brad waited a bit then said, “I don’t feel like drinking anymore.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” he turned to look at her, then remembered that he was supposed to be playing asleep. However, that didn’t matter anymore. “I was down there waiting for you and you just went on and on with whoever it was you were having a good time with.”

  “Baby come on-”

  “Come on what?”

  “I didn’t take that long did I?”

  “Over thirty minutes, maybe forty.”

  “Really? I didn’t know.”

  Jesus.

  “I’m sorry, Sweetheart.”

  Alana turned and set down the glasses in her hands beside the bottle on the stool.

  “I shouldn’t have kept my king waiting,” she cooed, “I was wrong.”

  When her hands settled on his back lovingly and began to rub, Brad pulled his mind away from his body. “Who were you talking with?”

  The moment he asked the question he almost regretted it. The surprise on her face told him what he already knew. Until now, none of them had ever asked the other that question. But then, until now, none of them had ever needed to.

  Alana’s answer took a while to come and when it did, it didn’t satisfy him. “Just a friend.”

  He asked another question that brought him regrets almost immediately. “Which friend?”

  Like the first time, she was quiet, then she said, “Really?”

  “Yes really,” Brad sat up. “I want to know who was so important that I had to be kept waiting. I’m sure it wasn’t work. So who was it?”

  A look of hurt settled on Alana’s face and she sighed. “It was Greg.”

  That was the last thing she should have said.

  “Greg? As in your ex Greg?”

  She didn’t respond. She just sat there with her eyes averted. Looking at everything in their room except him.

  Greg the ex, the star feature of his nightmares. Great!

  Brad searched for words and fail
ed to come up with any. He simply laid back in the bed and turned his back to her.

  “Baby we were just catching up,” Alana said. Her voice was tinged with amusement, like his reaction was the silliest thing. “He came back to town recently and he wanted to catch up.”

  “How many times do you people need to catch up?” Brad asked her. His voice had a bite to it.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Were you two not also catching up at Rob’s Place last week?”

  She was stung by the question and stuttered a bit. “Rob-Rob…Rob’s Place? What-what…”

  “Did you two not meet there as well?”

  She didn’t answer the question, instead she got up from the bed and went to the only chair in the room. It was an armchair her father had given her after their marriage. It was one of her favorite things, especially since the old man died three years ago.

  “Are you not going to talk?” Brad asked her.

  “Brad can I ask you a question?”

  “What?”

  “Did you get your friends to spy on me?”

  “No, but does it matter?”

  “So who told you I met up with Greg last week?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It matters to me.”

  “Well, I don’t see why it does,” he said calmly, “What’s important is how many times you two need to catch up.” His last two words were laced with sarcasm.

  “I don’t need you to see why it does. Just tell me who told you, please.”

  “That’s not important. What’s important is the question, did you or did you not meet up with him?”

  “I did. Now who told you?”

  Law of the pack, no squealers allowed. That had always been the way things were, right from grade school to high school and college. The bro code looked down on those who snitched.

  There was no way Brad was telling her. He shook his head. “That’s not important.”

  Alana left the chair and came back to the bed. “Please tell me.”

  “Why?”

  “I just want to know.”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  She sighed in exasperation. “Because I want to know.”

  Brad shook his head again. “It’s not important. What’s important to me is why you’ve been meeting with Greg.”

  “I’ll tell you. Just tell me first.”

  4

  Brad didn’t tell her. So, she didn’t divulge any information either.

  They had spent the night with their backs to each other. In the morning they exchanged greetings like they were strangers who had office spaces on the same floor and went about their morning routines without saying anything to each other.

  Brad’s was the first face Aaryn saw when she woke up. He helped her with her toiletries and prepared breakfast for her. Alana watched wistfully as they had fun eating together. Every time Aaryn looked her way with a big grin on that precious face, she found herself wishing that she could join them. But she didn’t. Instead she loitered around the house, feeling lost and purposeless.

  She had to be at the office by nine, but something else was on her mind and it bothered her. It frightened her. In the five years they had been married, Brad had never questioned her movement and relations with the opposite sex. But he had done so last night. It could only mean one thing. The fact that he might have gotten his friends to watch her movements while he was out of town meant that he no longer trusted her. It hurt and he needed to know that.

  Dear God, is this how easy it is to lose a man’s trust?

  Finally, feeling tired and overwhelmed she went back to bed. A few minutes later the door swung open and Brad walked in. She dared to hope that he came in to make things right again. Maybe he wanted to talk about it before leaving. Without thinking, Alana sat up immediately.

  Her hope turned to disappointment when Aaryn walked in behind him.

  “You haven’t kissed her goodbye,” Brad said.

  “Mommy!” Aaryn ran to the bedside. “Bye mommy.”

  She kissed the little girl on her forehead. “Have a great day sweetheart. I love you.”

  “Love you mommy.”

  Aaryn was a strong girl. She had taken to her kindergarten classes with such aplomb that initially, Alana had wondered if she didn’t miss her at all. It worried her in those early days.

  She watched with growing sadness as Aaryn ran back to Brad and they left the room. It was then that the nausea came. One moment she was lying on the bed with her hand on her forehead, wondering how she and Brad would patch things up. The next moment she was on her feet rushing to the bathroom.

  ***

  She drove by her mother’s house on her way to work in the morning. The bungalow looked smaller than it had ever looked. It seemed to shrink in size every time she saw it.

  At the door she hesitated before ringing the bell.

  This place was her mother’s attempt to move on after their father’s death. She had bought it just a few weeks before selling the two storied brick house she and her late husband had started their life together with; the place Alana had known as home all her life. Her father had bought it one year after marrying her mother. She had grown up there with her siblings and had made wonderful memories.

  Then their father died, and their mother decided the house held too much of him. She had to move on. Although it was supposed to be a step in the right direction, to help her heal, Alana had always seen it as a betrayal. A way to get rid of their father’s memory.

  She hated this new place and tried as much as she could to avoid it. But that was as hard as getting a camel through the eye of a needle. Her mother loved having her children around and since Alana was her undisputed favorite, she was always inviting her to the house. Today it was dinner, tomorrow it was lunch and next week it would be some emergency that urgently needed her attention. The emergency always turned out to be some frivolous issue that could have been dealt with over the phone.

  It made Alana mad sometimes because she had her own life to live. But then, it was her mother and she loved her. Nonetheless she endured it.

  Today’s visit was to sort out a problem that needed Alana’s immediate attention. Although her mom had spoken about this emergency in the gravest of tones, Alana knew that it was nothing serious. It was one of her mother’s many ploys to get her to the house as many times as she could.

  There was a scowl on her face as she rang the doorbell.

  The front door swung open almost immediately, as if her mother had been standing behind it, waiting for her. The woman was still in her pajamas looking bleary eyed; the life of the retired. Alana’s elder brother, Johnson, was now running the family business, so her mother was enjoying an early retirement. Alana internally beamed with pride as she thought of her older brother. She may have been her mother’s favorite child, but Johnson was Alana’s favorite sibling. She shared everything with him. They had been that way practically since she was born.

  The moment she saw Alana, her mother’s eyes widened in surprise and she let out a squeal of delight. “Darling!”

  Mrs. Blake was like an older version of Alana. They had the same skin, and her eyes lit up the same way Alana’s did whenever she smiled.

  “Mom.”

  The two women embraced each other in a hug. As they held each other, the difference in their body physique became apparent. Alana had taken her father’s height and so she was almost a head above her mother.

  “Baby you came,” Mrs. Blake murmured, a wide smile painted on her face.

  As if I had any choice, Alana thought.

  “Yes mom,” she said and let herself be led into the house. Her mother’s steps had a spring to them. They gave her the look of a plastic ball bouncing in water. Her excitement to have her daughter here was so fresh you would think they had last seen each other a year or two ago.

  They went down a narrow corridor which cut across the house, partitioning it into a left and right wing. On the left were the living
room and the kitchen and on the right there were two bedrooms and a bathroom. It was oppressively small for someone who was used to large spaces. Even though she had just stepped in, Alana wanted to be out of there already.

  “Mom, what’s the emergency you called me for?” she asked.

  “Come here first; let me get a good look at you baby.”

  Her mother led her to one of the rooms and made her stand close to one of the big bay windows. It was the only redeeming feature of this box house. It had big windows that made proper ventilation possible. The good thing now was that the room was uncluttered. Every item was neatly arranged.

  The closet was shut completely, as if to ward off peeping eyes, and there was no clothing in sight. The only other furniture in the room, apart from the bed were an armchair and a table. The armchair was the other half of the one Alana had sat on last night. Her father had bought the two of them together.

  “Okay, I had a dream about fish, so tell me,” her mother said giddily after surveying her Alana’s full body.

  “Fish? Tell you what?” Alana was confused.

  A crafty glint entered her mother’s eyes. “Are you keeping it a secret for now?”

  “What are you talking about?” Alana’s eyebrows went up as she wondered what on earth the woman could be referring to.

  “You can’t keep it a secret forever you know. And I wouldn’t want to hear it from someone else’s mouth.” Her mom left the room and went into the small kitchen and returned with two cups of tea. From the emanating scent, Alana knew it was chamomile tea. Her favorite. Her mom handed her a cup of the hot brew.

  She was about to take a sip when with a triumphant smile, her mom asked, “You are pregnant are you not?”

  It was the last thing she had expected to hear. She almost choked on the tea.

  “Pregnant? No!” She answered, trying to get some air in her lungs.

  Even as she denied it, the possibility hit her hard. Her period had been due for five days now. But her cycle had yet to show up.

  “But I dreamt of fish and that glow…” her mother looked uncertain.