by A. E. Murphy
“The day before yesterday.”
“Maya, you aren’t supposed to eat peanuts when you’re pregnant.” James gives me a smug grin, I pinch his thigh and twist making him yelp. “And James, never, and I mean never take food from a pregnant woman unless you want to be mauled.”
I give him a smug grin, he pinches my leg and twists. Ouch. She chuckles. “Let’s all stop pinching each other. This is good.”
“Say what?” How is this good? We’ve not spoken in three days, and we got a warning from the cops! THE COPS! For disruptive behavior and littering. The littering part was an accident, we didn’t mean to make such a mess. I didn’t even get a chance to buy a Johnny Depp poster.
“Look at you both, the passion between you is great. The way you achieved it is a little unconventional and I won’t be recommending it to my other patients but I think we’ve had a break through.” I really have no idea what she’s talking about. She sighs at our perplexed expressions and shrugs. “Don’t worry about it, just keep doing what you’re doing. So, when’s your scan?”
“This afternoon,” James responds suddenly looking happy again. “We’re setting the nursery furniture up soon.”
“Correction, he is doing that, I’m going shopping with Marie tomorrow, my best female friend. For Christmas gifts. He wants to go to his moms for thanksgiving but she has these god awful dinners with loads of people I don’t know or even care to know,” I look doc straight in the eyes. “I want to go to Jacob’s parents. They’ve extended an invite. They’re having a proper family dinner.”
“Always Jacob this, Jacob that.” He snaps and throws his hands in the air in defeat. “They got really close over the time she spent there. I’ve seen videos on her phone of them dancing around her bedroom. Videos of them messing around his house.”
How dare he? “You’ve been going through my phone?”
“I need to know why you text Jacob more than you text me. She’s sending him dirty messages on twitter.”
I stand up and grab my bag. The doc tells me to sit down, I don’t. I’m furious. What happened to trust and communication? I never check his phone… ever. And those messages are a joke that Jacob hasn’t even seen yet otherwise he would’ve responded. I only text Jacob once a day, we chat for a few minutes and that’s it, I have no reason to text James, he’s always with me or at work.
“Maya wait,” James shouts as I exit the room. He catches up and grabs my elbow. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re always sorry James!” like usual. “Sorry about cheating. Sorry about lying. Sorry about not trusting me. Always god damn sorry. Stop doing things you know you’re going to have to apologize for!”
“Maya, come on, let me drive you home.”
The doc is leaning against the doorframe watching our squabble. I bat his hands away, “I’m going to stay at Lucas’.”
“You can’t keep running away Maya.”
“And you don’t have a reason to not trust me.”
He laughs humorlessly, “Oh I don’t? What about Paul and Frankie? What about your relationship with Lucas. You’re very comfortable hugging him Maya. And Jacob, so many men in your life. How do you think that makes me feel?”
“I don’t really care if I’m honest James.” Sigh. “I don’t have the energy to care what you think of my friends. I don’t have the energy for this. We’ll never get past this, will we?”
“So what are you saying?” he runs his hand through his hair that still needs a cut and looks at me nervously. “Are you stopping us?”
“Us? What us? I can’t even be near you without wanting to throttle you. Not to mention you’re constantly shifting your shit onto me. You feel guilty for what you did so you’re trying to find something that will make us even. I haven’t cheated James and nothing is going to make me forget what you did. Even if I had chosen to fuck somebody.” I turn to the doc. “Sorry doc. I’m out.”
“You two can get through this.” She says reassuringly and I almost believe her.
“How? When every week he’s bringing something new to the table. He cheated, he hurt me and now he doesn’t trust me.” I scoff at the last part.
“I do trust you.”
“You don’t even trust me with your own brother.”
How can I cope with everything like this? It’s ridiculous, I’m constantly in the firing line for his insecure bullshit. We can’t work through anything if he doesn’t talk to me.
Stay and solve this. Don’t walk away.
Solve what? I can’t touch him, I can’t be with him and I certainly can’t understand him. This isn’t a riddle to be solved it’s the end. There’s no getting past this.
You’re just running scared. Once you’ve calmed down you’ll see reason.
The only reason I see right now is the reason I have to leave.
James’ voice brings me from my thoughts, “You need help Maya. You clearly can’t be trusted to take your tablet every morning, or to eat the right things. We both know right now you need me.” Ha! Is that why he thinks I’ve stayed?
“James I stayed because I wanted us to work. Not because I was pregnant! Yes, it’s the main reason I came home but even if I wasn’t pregnant I’d still be sat in this office with you working through shit. You’re baggage is unbelievable and for some reason you shift it on to me, even though I’ve been nothing but loyal to you since we got married.”
“You’re right,” he relents and nods sadly. “I’m messing up.”
“Yeah, you are.” And for once I don’t think this is my fault. At all. Ok, I do think I have contributed to the current events but I don’t believe I’m doing anything wrong now.
“Come back inside Maya,” the good young doc says softly and motions to the office with her arm. I stare into James’ pleading eyes for a moment, both of our chests are rising and falling with each breath. “We can work through this.”
“Can we?” I don’t know who I’m asking. “How can you solve something between two people when one will never be enough for the other?”
“I can be enough, I swear,” James pleads and takes my hand in his.
I shake my head as my lips thin. Is he really that dense? “I’m talking about myself, James. I’ll never be enough for you.” No matter what I do, how hard I prove myself. It’ll never be enough. “You need to work through your issues.”
“Together, we’ll do it together. I promise, I’ll be better.”
My frustration vanishes with his calming words. I want to believe him, the problem is I don’t. Isn’t that a major factor in our shitty relationship? Not believing in it will surely be our downfall right? So many damn questions left unanswered, I’m getting a headache. Stupid couple’s therapy, I knew this was a bad idea.
“Right, for a start James you need to establish a bond of trust, stop going through her phone. Maya, stop being so dismissive of everything or he won’t open up to you.” Yikes, I just got told. “James, ask her. Just speak to her. Let’s start that now. Let’s talk about your past. Before the engagement. What’s a good memory you both share?
“I’d like to talk about our wedding night,” James suggests. “I know it’s not before the engagement obviously but it’s a main route along the road of why we are the way we are now I think.”
“Ok, let’s try that.”
“We were getting intimate for the first time when she got a call from her father’s nurse. He had a heart attack, his heart stopped. They managed to bring him back but we knew he only had weeks left. After that she spent all of her time with her dad, which is understandable.”
“He was there for me,” I smile wistfully. “The whole time, through all the vomit and the accidental bowel releases he was there.”
“She became withdrawn, like we weren’t even married. I didn’t push her or expect her to have sex but I expected her to at least come home.” The doc nods and hums. He goes on, “Then a month later, he passed away. Suddenly she was a blur of movement. She didn’t stop to grieve, she got right on with the funeral, and i
f she wasn’t planning the funeral then she was working.”
My father died at home, I remember finishing work and going straight home. There was a doctor there, the same man who told him he had cancer. I stepped into the room and waited as they prepared.
“Baby,” my dad rasped and held out his hand. He was so frail… so… so sick. Watching him get worse was like watching a flower wither, from beauty and full of life, to weathered and frail. My dad knew his time was up, we all did. As if we could feel death staring over our shoulders at him, waiting with open arms. I’ve never been a religious person but I prayed at that moment, not for a miracle, but for peace, so he could be free from this pain. His soft blue eyes were unfocused and glassy. I moved his wires and tubes as James came into the room, kicked my shoes off and slid into the bed with my father.
He sang to me, it was weak, I could barely hear him. His arms held me as my head lay on his chest. I didn’t cry yet, we all just listened to him sing. The sound of his weak heart beat against my ear still haunts my dreams.
“Hush little baby don’t say a word”
Thump, thump. Thump, thump.
“Papa’s gonna buy you a mocking bird.”
Thump, thump. Thump, thump.
“And if that mocking bird don’t sing”
Thump, thump. Thump, thump.
Papa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.”
Thump. Thump.
“And if that diamond ring turns to brass.”
Thump. Thump.
“Papa’s gonna buy you a looking glass.”
Thump.
His heart just stopped, the machines held a beep and I felt his last breath exhale from his lungs, my head lowered with his chest. That’s when the tears came, that’s when I clung to him and cried. He was gone and as normal I put it away so when it finally came it was like getting smashed by a wave of water in a desert. I’d never felt such heart wrenching pain before.
James held me, even the doctor let a tear slip as I sobbed into James shirt. The nurse left the room to cry I assume. I screamed and wailed and cried and denied it to the point where I was beating on James to let me go. Shock, I was in shock. The doctor sedated me and when I woke up the next morning I wouldn’t allow myself to think about it so I got preparing. Fortunately James called everybody. A few were mad that they weren’t there but that was my time, my dad requested nobody be there. Like hell if I was going to let him die alone and I’ll never regret the moment when I held my father until his last dying breath.
I don’t realize I’m crying until the doc hands me a tissue. James is still recalling his version of events.
“She’s never grieved over it. As soon as he was buried she stopped calling me, stopped talking to me, she hadn’t been home once. She stayed with Marie and planned a trip to Vegas. Marie is a bad influence on her. Then she came back and acted like her father hadn’t died and like nothing was wrong. When I walked into her office the day after she returned I expected to find a sobbing mess. All I found was the typical Maya.”
“Do you feel like you grieved Maya?”
I nod, of course I grieved. “I grieved every day for a year, meaning every day he was sick. I promised my dad I wouldn’t grieve his death. I never break a promise. I’m in a good place about it. It hurts, it sucks but he’s gone and part of me is relieved.” Sigh. “You saw him James, saw the pain and humiliation he went through day in day out. He was a proud man having his vomit and crap cleaned by a woman he barely knew and by his daughter. It destroyed him.”
James smiles sadly and his sad eyes light up, “He went through a bout of depression. Started shoving Maya away. She’d been so strong, so brave through the ordeal. There was this one time he got so bad, just wallowing. Wouldn’t let anyone help him bathe or shave. And by god he stunk.” I nod in agreement and crinkle my nose in disgust. That was an awful week. “She went right up to him and took a pair of scissors to his shirt.”
He wouldn’t let the nurse bathe him and he wouldn’t listen to reason so I cut his shirt off, he was too weak to protest, I held up a pair of adult diapers and threatened, “Dad, I swear to god if you force me to traumatize not only myself and you as well by cutting your clothes off, wheeling you into the garden and spraying you with a hose… the hose because right now I think you’ll clog the shower with how much filth is crusted on your body… I will put you in one of these and I will take pictures and I will never forgive you, I really don’t want to see the tool that created me.” My dad’s eyes went as wide as saucers, he nodded whilst staring at the scraps of fabric dangling over his shoulders and chest. “Christ dad, you really stink.”
“He certainly never argued with her again, nobody takes one of Maya’s threats lightly.”
“Yeah, that snapped him out of it, once he was clean and healthy in the mind things got better. He let me take him out to places, he stopped being embarrassed by the oxygen tank and lived his last few months as best as he could.” It was a great win on my part.
Considering all of the drama of the session James and I left on a good note. I get the shrinks point now, she wanted us to think of something we’d been through together because it helps pop that angry bubble you’re in. You know? Plus she doesn’t analyze us, she’s just like an educated friend. She doesn’t go into detail she just asks the right questions and lets us work it out ourselves. I think this is a great sort of therapy because she could sit there and tell us what to do but if it doesn’t match our way of thinking it’s never going to get through to us. I’m stubborn as a mule and James is sensitive, we are complete opposites so we need to figure things out together in our own way. We should label it the Jaya way, James plus Maya equals Jaya? No takers, no? Ok then. Moving on.
We go for lunch at McDonald’s, I eat all of my large meal and finish off James’ as well. What a wise man he’s becoming, I’m referring to the fact he doesn’t comment at all on the amount I eat, even when I eat two brownie Flurry’s straight after. He laughs when I get brain freeze though.
So now we are at my new doctor’s, waiting to get one of those 3D sonograms. Shouldn’t be waiting long the receptionist told us, HA, been here an hour and twenty minutes already. During which time I’ve paced the room a thousand times, gone to the bathroom twice only to now need it again and have read and re read the only magazine available that isn’t from the seventy’s.
“Maya Freeman,” its Johnson now but I don’t correct her.
We head into the dark room, I hoist myself up onto the bed and roll my top up to expose my belly. James sits on the chair by my side after placing our coats and such on the chair in the corner. Am I nervous? A little bit. Part of me is worried something’s wrong with him, he’s kicking fine but my belly is so small. I looked online at pictures of other pregnant women at twenty weeks and they are huge compared to me. My belly has rounded and you can tell I’m pregnant when I’m lying down but it’s still so small. James is concerned, he’s been a nervous wreck since we walked in.
“Hi, my name’s Amy, I’m the ultrasound technician,” she smiles and plops herself on the stool by the machine. “You’ve paid for a 3D sonogram today?”
We both nod and she broadly smiles. She doesn’t look old enough to be out of diapers, the fact she’s chewing gum is extremely unprofessional but the way she’s going at it on the machine is telling me to shut up because she clearly knows what she’s doing.
Give her a chance, she probably just has bad breath or something.
I’ve been wondering when you’d pop back in my head conscience. She squirts the cool gel on my stomach and starts moving the prong around. I lay back and look at James who is staring at the side of the screen. After clicking a few more times she turns the screen around. It’s brown and black this time but I can see the baby.
“Everything is fine. All measurements are perfect,” we both sigh with relief. “You’re just a small carrier, my sister was the same. Do you want to know what you’re having?” she says as she measures him by dragging ovals across the scree
n.
“We’re having a boy, they told us at the last ultrasound,” James grins and takes my hand. I see the baby’s face, he’s sucking his thumb, or what looks like he’s sucking his thumb. We see his leg move and my stomach goes bump. I laugh. “He doesn’t like being spied on.” His little eyes are closes, his nose, yes! I’m almost certain he has my nose. James has a nice nose but if I have to look at a nose all day I’d prefer it to be my own.
“You say you’re having a boy?” she says and frowns in concentration at the screen. We both nod. She moves the prong a little further to the left. “This is definitely a girl.” A what? “Yep, look, see. No penis.”
“Really?” James breathes looking a little shocked. There’s a grin plastered on my face, I actually feel happy. “That’s, great.”
“I’m sorry you were misinformed. It happens sometimes,” she moves the prong so we can see my baby’s face and not her moo. “I hope you didn’t buy anything you can’t return.”
I shake my head and let out a laugh, “No, not yet.”
James kisses my lips softly and rubs his nose against mine, “A girl. I guess we can’t call it James.”
I laugh, “No but we can call her Maya.”
“I love you and everything babe, but hell will freeze over before I give my daughter a childish name like Maya.” I feign offence and slap his arm. For once I don’t feel so bad about this pregnancy. Especially now I’m having a girl. I never claimed to not be selfish or a little shallow.
We leave the doctors with a couple of pictures, DVD’s and matching smiles, our fingers laced between us as we head to the car. “What do you want to do?” James asks as I switch up the heating.
