Mixed Blessings

by Danielle Steel

  Brad and Pilar spent the evening with friends on New Year’s Eve, and everyone was amazed when Pilar told them about the baby. She had certainly come full circle in the past year. From inveterate single woman to wife, and now mother. It was a far cry from the way she’d felt about life two decades before, but now her evolution suited her to perfection.

  After dinner, the entire group danced to old show tunes, and at midnight they kissed and drank champagne, and Brad and Pilar went home about one-thirty. She was more tired than usual, she liked late nights, but it was also draining explaining their new circumstances to everyone. And ever since she’d been pregnant, she’d noticed she was sleepy.

  “People are so funny, aren’t they?” Pilar grinned. “I love watching their faces when I tell them I’m pregnant. First, they think I’m kidding, and they don’t know what to say, and then they go wild. I love it.”

  “You’re a funny girl.” Brad smiled, but he noticed that she winced when he helped her out of the car, and he wasn’t sure why. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah … I just had a weird cramp, that’s all.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know, in my stomach somewhere,” she said vaguely. She’d had cramps a few days before, too, but when she’d called Dr. Ward, she’d said that that was normal, they were probably stretching pains as her uterus started growing. And she assumed that was what was happening again when she felt another cramp as she hung up her clothes, but this one was stronger. And then there was another one … and another … and she felt something warm run down her leg … and as she looked down, she saw that she was bleeding. “Oh, my God …” she whispered, and then she called hoarsely for Brad, and she just stood there, bleeding on the carpet. She was too frightened to move, or do anything about it. She didn’t know what it meant, but she knew it wasn’t good, and the moment Brad saw it, he rushed her into the bathroom. He lay her down on towels on the rug, and tried to elevate her hips to stop the bleeding, but she was bleeding heavily by then, and she was terrified as she watched him.

  “Am I losing the baby?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t move, sweetheart. I’m going to call the doctor.” He rushed to the bedroom to use the phone, and came back to her a few minutes later. It was too far to go to L.A. for Dr. Ward. He had called Pilar’s old gynecologist instead and he had said to get her to the hospital as fast as they could. He promised to meet them there in ten minutes. And he’d been kind enough to reassure Brad that he had seen some women bleed very badly and still keep their babies. Dr. Parker was an old-fashioned kind of man, in his early seventies, and Brad had always liked him.

  Brad told her that as he wrapped her in towels and put a jacket around her shoulders, but they left a trail as they left the house, and he lay her on the backseat wrapped in a blanket and several towels. And then he drove as fast as he dared down the hill to the hospital. By the time they got there, she was pale, and she was crying from the pain and fear that she was losing her baby. She said it was the worst thing she’d ever felt, and when the doctor tried to examine her she screamed. And he looked at Brad and shook his head, and explained to him that she was not just bleeding, she was losing tissue.

  Dr. Parker tried to explain gently to Pilar what was happening and she looked from him to Brad in terror. “The baby? Is it dying?”

  “It’s probably not viable anymore,” he explained as he held one hand, and Brad gently held the other. “Sometimes these things just can’t be helped.” Helen Ward had already warned her weeks before that older mothers were more likely to miscarry.

  But she was sobbing as she lay bleeding and in pain, and she couldn’t believe that the baby they had wanted so much was gone. It wasn’t fair. Why did it have to happen?

  “We’re going to take you upstairs in a little while and do a D&C, it will get everything cleaned out, and that should stop the bleeding. I want to wait a little while though, because Brad says you had quite a lot to eat. I think in another hour or two you should be okay, and I’ll give you something for the pain in the meantime.” But the “something” the nurse offered her didn’t come close to touching the pain, and for the next two hours she lay in bed and gritted her teeth and tried not to scream at the contractions. She couldn’t believe that anything could be so painful. She was completely overwrought and hysterical when they took her away, and she kept asking Brad what if the baby wasn’t really dead, what if they did a D&C and the baby would have been okay, then it would be like having an abortion. He tried to reassure her, as the doctor had, that the baby was gone, and they had to clear her uterus of the dead tissue.

  “It’s not dead tissue,” she had screamed at him uncontrollably. “It’s our baby!”

  “I know, sweetheart, I know.” He took her right to the doors of the operating room as they took her in on a gurney, and the doctor let him wait in the recovery room for her. But as soon as she came to, she started crying. She said not a single word. She just lay there and sobbed all night, as Brad stood by helplessly and watched her.

  “It’s going to be hard for her,” the doctor said to Brad before he left. “Miscarriage is one of the great underrated miseries of our day. It’s a death, there’s no way around it. We used to think it was ‘just one of those things’ and expect women to bounce back in a few days. They don’t. It takes months … sometimes years … sometimes never … and at Pilar’s age, she can’t be sure of another baby.”

  “We’ll keep trying,” Brad said more to himself than to the doctor. “We’ll try. We managed this one.”

  “Tell her that. She’s going to be miserable for a while. Some of it is real, and some of it is hormones.” But Brad realized that what he was feeling was real, too, and when he went back to her room, he cried for her, for the baby they had lost, and the grief they were both feeling.

  He drove her home that afternoon, and put her to bed. He wanted her to stay there for a few days, and that night Nancy called to tell her about a fabulous new crib she’d seen for their baby.

  “I—I can’t talk to you right now …” Pilar was engulfed in tears as she handed the phone to Brad, who didn’t do much better. He went into the other room and explained, and Nancy hung up, shocked, and sorry for them, thinking that maybe Pilar was just too old even to try it.

  They spent a long and lonely New Year’s Day, thinking of the child they’d lost, the dreams they’d shared, and sat quietly together, in silent mourning.

  On New Year’s Day, Charlie woke up at six-fifteen. He’d been awake half the night, and finally fell asleep around four. But he just couldn’t sleep these days, and he had finally decided what he wanted to do about Barbie. He didn’t like what she’d done, and she’d have to promise him it wouldn’t happen again, but he couldn’t leave her now. She needed him, and he loved her. How could he let her down now? And maybe this baby was just what they needed to save them.

  It was too early to call, so he got up and showered and shaved, read the newspaper, paced the room, and finally at nine o’clock he drove over to Judi’s. He hadn’t talked to Barb in three days, and he hadn’t known what to say to her when she left. He was just too shocked by the news that she was pregnant. In a strange way, too, he was sorry he had ever gone to see Dr. Pattengill. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have known he was sterile, and he would have believed the baby was his when she told him. But things weren’t that simple anymore. Or were they?

  He rang the bell, and they buzzed him up a minute later. Judi opened the front door to him, and then looked surprised to see him. She started to say something and then thought better of it. There was a guy with her she’d been seeing off and on since June, and the new roommate who had taken Barbie’s place when she and Charlie got married. Judi looked awkward suddenly, and so did Charlie. They both knew what was happening, and Charlie also knew by then that Judi must have covered for her whenever Barbie saw the guy from Las Vegas. She had betrayed Charlie, but her only real loyalty was to Barbie. And now she was sorry things had turned out the way they had. B
arbie had told her as soon as she had found out she was pregnant. Judi had told her to just get rid of it and not say anything, the baby’s father was married to someone else anyway. And Barbie said she would at first, but then she got all caught up in how much Charlie wanted a baby. In a crazy way, she thought she might be able to convince him it was his, and then she wouldn’t have to have another abortion.

  “Hi, Charlie,” Judi said softly. “I’ll go get Barbie.” But she was already standing in the hall by then. She looked tired and pale and unhappy.

  “Hi,” he said to her, feeling like a kid on a first date as Judi and the others disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. “I’m sorry I haven’t called. I needed time to think.”

  “So did I.” There were tears in her eyes, and she was choking on a sob. Seeing him made it all so much harder. She realized now what she’d done to him, and how wrong it had been to lie to him about the baby.

  “Can we sit down somewhere?” Charlie suddenly looked older, and more mature. He had been through a lot in the past few days. In fact, he felt as though he had aged ever since he’d been told he was sterile.

  She had been sleeping on the couch in the living room, and she didn’t want the others to hear them in the kitchen, so they went into Judi’s bedroom. Barbie sat down on the unmade bed, and Charlie perched uncomfortably on the edge of the room’s only chair, looking at the girl he had married. They had come a long way in less than two years, and most of the trip hadn’t been unpleasant. It just didn’t feel like much of a marriage, but Charlie felt sure that would change now. And with a child, they would have so much more to hold them together.

  “I want the baby, Barb. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think we could make it work. Hell, if anyone had adopted me, I wouldn’t have been related to either of them. And this baby never has to know that I’m not his father. His birth certificate will say I am, that’s enough for me.” He smiled gently at her. He was willing to forgive her for everything, and she cried miserably when he told her. And for a while all she could do was shake her head at him. It was a difficult time for both of them, and he reached out and took her hand, but she only let him hold it for an instant. He tried to tell her that everything would be all right. But she just didn’t want to hear it.

  “I had an abortion yesterday.” She finally managed to get the words out, and he felt as though he had been struck a blow. He had never realized she would do something like that so quickly.

  “Are you kidding?” But who would kid about a thing like that? He just didn’t know what else to say, as they sat staring at each other in the deafening silence. “Why?” Everything she said sounded crazy and stupid. But he was in completely over his head emotionally and he knew it.

  “Charlie, I couldn’t have that kid. It wouldn’t have been fair to you, or me, or the baby. All his life you’d have known that I cheated on you. He would have reminded you of it every day, every time you’d have seen him. And I …” She looked up at him, with eyes filled with pain. “The truth is, no matter how guilty I felt about what I did, or how sorry I was, or how much I hated to have another abortion … I just don’t want a baby. Yours or someone else’s.”

  “Why? A baby would be the best thing that could happen to us. And now we’ll have to adopt one,” he said unhappily. That baby might have been the perfect solution, and now even that was no longer an option. A part of him felt relieved, and another part of him was devastated.

  “Charlie”—her voice was soft and barely audible in the small room—“I’m not coming back to you.” She hung her head, unable to look at him after she said it.

  “What?” His face went white beneath the freckles. “What do you mean?”

  She forced herself to look at him again. “Charlie, I love you … you’re everything a woman would want in a husband. But I—I just don’t want to be married. I never knew that about myself before. I felt like I was dead sitting home with you every night. I thought I could do it, but I just couldn’t. That’s why this happened, I guess. At first, when we got married, I was so relieved to have someone decent take care of me.” The tears rolled relentlessly down her cheeks as she said it. “I thought it was all like a dream. But eventually, for me, the dream turned into a nightmare. I don’t want to answer to anyone. I don’t want to be stuck home all the time. I don’t want to live with one guy, and one thing I know for sure is that I don’t want to have a baby, yours or anyone else’s, and I sure as hell don’t want to adopt one. I talked to the doctor yesterday, and I’m going to get fixed in a few weeks. I just don’t want to have any more abortions.”

  “Why did you do that without at least talking to me?” he asked, fixating on the child again. As though dealing with that would make everything else she had said not have happened. She had said she wasn’t coming back to him, but she couldn’t mean it. She was upset, she didn’t know what she was saying. “Charlie, it wasn’t your baby. And I didn’t want it.” “That wasn’t fair,” he said, crying too. Nothing was. Nothing that had happened was fair, but nothing ever had been, not since the very beginning of his life when his parents walked out on him. And now she was walking out too. She was just like all those people in the foster homes who kept him for a while, and then decided he was nice, but they just didn’t love him. What was it with him, he asked himself as tears streamed down his cheeks and he cried like a child, why was it that no one ever loved him? “I’m sorry …” He tried to apologize for everything he felt, and for the tears, but Barbie just shook her head. He only made her feel worse, but she was absolutely sure now of what she was doing. She realized that she should have done it months before, before she had the affair with the guy in Vegas. “Why don’t you come home for a while, and we can try again? We can have an open marriage, or something, you can come and go as you like. No questions asked, no explanations.” But even hearing himself say the words, he wondered how he could have said it. He knew it would have driven him crazy. And she knew it even better.

  She had made up her mind, and nothing he said was going to change it. “I can’t do that, Charlie. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us.”

  “What are you going to do?” He was worried about her too. She needed someone to take care of her, she wasn’t as tough as she pretended.

  “Judi’s going to quit her job, and we’re going back to Vegas.”

  “To what? Another five years on the chorus line, and then what? What’ll you do when you’re too old to model bathing suits and show your boobs off?”

  “I’ll have ’em fixed, and show ’em off some more, I guess. I don’t know, Charlie. But I know I can’t be what you want, and what you deserve. I’d rather die in Vegas as a showgirl.”

  “I can’t believe this.” He stood up and walked across the room, to stare out the only window. The view of the street was bleak, like everything in his life now. “You’re really not coming home with me?” He turned to look at her again, and she shook her head firmly. They had both stopped crying by then, but he felt as though a giant had put a fist through his solar plexus.

  “You deserve better than I could ever give you,” she said sadly. “Some nice girl who’ll appreciate everything you have to give, who wants to stay home and cook for you; you can adopt a couple of kids and be very happy.”

  “Thank you for working it all out for me,” he said miserably. He knew as he stood there that he would never try again. He couldn’t force her to come back to him, but he knew he would never remarry.

  “Charlie, I’m sorry …” she said again as they left the room, and she watched him walk down the stairs as he left Judi’s apartment. He didn’t turn and look back at her. He couldn’t. It would have reminded him too much of all those terrible times the foster parents had taken him back to the institution.

  For the rest of January, Charlie felt as though he were walking underwater. He went to work, he packed her things, he dropped them off, he moved to a studio apartment in Palms, and he sat up all night thinking. He wanted to understand why things had gone
wrong, but he was never sure. Had he wanted too much, was it his desire to have kids? Was it that that had pushed her over the edge? It was impossible to admit that she just didn’t want to be married. She had already filed for divorce by the end of the month, and a few days later she called to tell him she was leaving for Vegas. She said she’d let him know where she was, so they could get the rest of the paperwork filed. She sounded businesslike and in control by then, which Charlie wasn’t. He had cried for an hour after he hung up the phone, and even Mark wasn’t able to console him. He kept telling him that there were other fish in the sea, that she wasn’t the only one around, and that he’d be better off with a girl who was a little more like him. He didn’t want to remind him that he had been wary of her from the start. What was the point now?

  And he kept reminding Charlie that he had been through the same thing, when his wife had left him for another man and moved to California.

  “And I had kids!” he said, to underline how much worse it had been for him, but that only reminded Charlie further of how bleak his life was, and how empty his future. He refused to go out with anyone else, and all of Mark’s efforts to get him out and introduce him to friends were fruitless. He even refused to go bowling. It was just too soon for him, and he wanted to rethink his life now.

  He was even beginning to think that he was better off without kids, that it was a blessing that he was sterile. What did he know about kids anyway? He’d never had a normal childhood. How could he expect to be a decent parent? He said as much to Mark, who told him he was crazy. His friend was heartbroken to see him so devastated, and even suggested he go to a psychiatrist he knew in the Valley, but Charlie didn’t want to do that either.