Can't Forgive

by Kim Goldman

  Pregnant. Holy shit! Pregnant.

  How can such big news be so tiny?

  I had no idea what to do, and I thought for sure that the test was wrong. I had dared to use afternoon pee, so it must all be wrong, right?

  I grab another test out of the bag, and repeat the process again. And one minute later, there it is again, a pink plus sign! Still pregnant.

  I stand in the bathroom in complete shock. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I pause. Yesterday I stood in this same spot in the bathroom, and I was just a woman brushing her teeth, but now, as I stand here, I am a woman with a baby in her belly.

  I take a deep breath, collect myself as best I can, and decide to get another opinion, just in case. I change out of my grungy old sweatshirt and slip on a fresh, clean T-shirt, grab a pair of sneakers, and hop into my car. I am not sure I even know where I am going at first, but I ended up at a walk-in clinic near the local hospital. It looks a little dingy, but it’s the only one I know of in my area. I park the car and walk inside with the intention of getting a blood test. I must have seen that in the movies somewhere: you take a blood test, which will confirm whether you are pregnant or not.

  Stick a needle in me, ASAP!

  I sit nervously in the waiting area, as if I’ve done something wrong. As a young woman, you pray you never miss your period, but then as an adult woman, trying to have a baby, you hope you do. It’s a hard shift to make in your thinking. And even though I was a thirty-something married woman, I suddenly felt like a little girl caught kissing a boy and getting to second base.

  When my name is called, I walk quickly to the examination room. Before the nurse can finish asking her prying questions, I blurt out that I think I may be pregnant and need to take a blood test.

  She said, “Honey, we pee in cups here,” to which I replied, “But I already peed today, so it’s not morning pee anymore.”

  She laughs, hands me a plastic cup and motions me toward the ladies’ room.

  There I am, peeing for my life—and the life of a potential little human—again.

  I put the cup down on the sink, then wash my hands. I swear, the cup was staring back at me. That cup had the answer to my future—it was a fortune-teller of sorts. It knew if I was going to be a mother or not. Who knew pee could have that much power?

  I head back to my small, sterile space and hoist myself onto the exam table, ripping the paper sheet that lays between me and the green vinyl upholstery. I look around the room, the place where I will have my future laid out for me. It’s boring: The walls are white and lifeless and the typical posters (“Warning Signs of STDs,” or “What Mood Are You In?”) are missing. The only thing on the wall is the “vase of flowers” in a salmon-colored, faux-wood frame hanging off center over the sink. The countertop holds a box of moist Towelettes, Kleenex, and a bottle of liquid soap.

  The room is cold and unfeeling, yet this is where people come to seek help, get answers, and gain comfort. On the chair beside me, I notice a Reader’s Digest (from 2000) and a worn US magazine. I pick up the entertainment rag and begin thumbing through it. I wonder how many people looked at this magazine in an effort to waste time, perhaps wishing they could swap their lives for the celebrities they were reading about. I wonder what they felt like, sitting in this dismal environment.

  I don’t turn the page and read the same lame paragraph over and over again about Beyoncé’s and Jay-Z’s budding new romance. I am consumed with my own thoughts when I am interrupted by the hasty return of the nurse, who comes in and says very calmly, “Yep, you were right. You are pregnant, honey.”

  I sit there stone-faced. The silence must be uncomfortable for her because she takes my trembling hand and asks, “Sweetie, is this a good or bad thing?”

  I said, “Good, really good.” Then I burst into tears.

  She grabs for that box of Kleenex I noticed earlier, and pulls out a few sheets to dab my eyes. I start to giggle a bit, but mostly cry.

  She stands there for a second, gently rubbing my hand to help calm my nerves or maybe to ease her own discomfort in the moment. I smile, sort of, trying to suggest that I am okay and she can leave me in my weepy state. She politely excuses herself and squeezes my hand one last time, letting me know that I will be all right. She walks out and the door slowly closes behind her.

  I don’t get up immediately. I sit there with my news, letting the feeling fill up the lifeless room. I want this to be the feeling that is left ruminating in this space, not the dark, dreary one I walked into. I want to leave some joy behind for the next person to share. I scoot off the table, collect my stuff and proudly exit the room.

  I am going to have a baby. We are going to be parents. A new life.

  * * *

  I walked back to my car, feeling different from the walk I took just an hour ago. I strolled in just a woman, and exited as a mother-to-be. Yet I was feeling really alone. I had just been told that I had a living being growing inside me, but I still felt so alone.

  Shouldn’t I feel something? I created life, for God’s sake. How come I feel so disconnected?

  Oh, my God, I am going to be a shitty mother! I don’t even feel my own child.

  I was a bundle of nerves—crying, laughing, shocked, scared, laughing, crying, more laughing and crying. I was Sally Field in Sybil!

  I got into my car, turned on the ignition, and paused. I needed to breathe for a second, to figure out my plan. But just like that, the urgency mode kicked into gear. I remembered that Mike was coming home later tonight from a three-day trip, and I knew he would be wiped out. I wanted to surprise him with the news when he came through the door. I wanted to make it special, but I am terrible at lying and am an even worse secret keeper.

  I drove to the nearby Target, and headed straight to the housewares department and stumbled upon a really cute picture frame. It had a little yellow duck on one side, and the word “Baby” in blocks running down the other side—it was perfect. I got home and typed on a piece of yellow paper, “We are pregnant.” I slipped the note into the picture frame, wrapped it in yellow tissue paper, and put it on the bed, where I think Mike will find it. I have so much nervous energy, so to keep myself occupied, I vacuum, empty the dishwasher, do a few loads of laundry, scrub the toilets. Cleaning and organizing always helps me clear my head. Was I nesting already?

  Then I just wait.

  At some point Mike calls to say he just landed at LAX and will be home soon.

  Showtime!

  I heard the humming of the garage door open, and rushed to greet him. After Mike returned home from a long trip, he usually dropped his suitcase at the bottom of the staircase, left his flight bag in our office, and washed his hands in the downstairs bathroom before heading to the kitchen to get a gin and tonic or a glass of wine. Then he’d make the journey to the second floor, take a shower, unload his suitcase, and power up the laptop. He was pretty predictable that way, so I knew it would be a few minutes before I could spill the beans. I thought I was going to throw up, I was so nervous. I don’t want to give the secret away, but I’ve been sitting with this all day, by myself, and I can’t contain it anymore. He appeared before me, gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, and moved past, into Phase One of his routine.

  Mike started tinkering with something in the kitchen and we chatted about his last few days. Somehow that escalated into a fight. This was a pattern with us after his trips. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the schedule we kept, or the anxiety over the return—the “reentry,” I used to say. In any event, all of it created a lot of tension. I was desperately trying to defuse the situation with humor, which wasn’t helping because Mike felt I was mocking him. If we could just stop bickering, and I could get him upstairs, he would feel so silly for picking a fight with me.

  I was unsuccessful, as the fight moved from the kitchen to the bedroom. He blew right past my “display” on the bed and into the bathroom, preparing to take a shower. Our bed faced the bathroom, so I figured I would lie down ne
ar my gift, hoping he would look my way. Nope, wasn’t working. He hopped into the shower with such determination that I assumed it was better for me to wait it out. A few minutes later he was done, but I could tell he was still pissy. He wasn’t making eye contact with me, and was oddly quiet.

  I finally broke the silence and said, “Hey, I have something for you. Can you stop being angry at me for a minute and open this?”

  I was numb as he took the perfectly wrapped surprise from my shaky grasp. He looked at me curiously, and softened a bit. I was concerned that Mike was going to freak out—I freaked out, so why wouldn’t he?

  I wondered all afternoon how he would react. It’s one thing to say you want a kid, but it’s a whole other ballgame when you know you are going to have one. I wondered how this would affect our relationship.

  I guess I should have thought about that before we stopped using birth control.

  Mike tore open the wrapping paper, and his face lit up. His eyes welled up; he was thrilled and immediately hugged me and expressed his excitement. He kept staring at the frame, then back at me, smiling. He didn’t say much; I thought he was just letting it all sink in.

  I needed him to snap out of it, so I could talk about all the emotions I had experienced that day, but he just sat there, smiling. Then he jumped up, ran downstairs, grabbed a glass of wine for himself and a wineglass full of water for me, and we toasted the moment. I shared my shenanigans, and he chuckled at my neurosis. I didn’t expect him to get it completely, but I wanted him to feel as much a part of the experience as he could

  Our bonding time was short-lived, though. Mike fell back into his old pattern of surfing the Internet and winding down, and by that point, I was exhausted mentally and got myself ready for bed.

  Now that I had told my husband, I could share our news with my father, who I knew was going to be over the moon. I wanted to tell him face-to-face, so Mike and I decided to hop a flight during his next few days off from work. Since he was a pilot, we had some flexibility when it came to last-minute travel, so we agreed to take the trip and make it a big deal.

  During the past decade, all of the big news in our family had been negative for the most part, so I wanted to see the look on my father’s face when it was something positive for a change.

  The next call I needed to make was to Denise; I wasn’t looking forward to that conversation at all.

  * * *

  It has been almost five years of numerous failed procedures for Denise and Wade, and here I am, pregnant after only six months. The guilt is indescribable. It is the first time that I actually carried guilt over having something that someone else didn’t.

  Usually I am the one in the corner envious of the mothers, the brothers, the nuclear family—and now I am about to create that for myself with the birth of a child. I know that is going to be heartbreaking for my best friend. I am reluctant to make that phone call but can’t keep my news to myself.

  Deep breaths, soft heart.

  “I’m pregnant, Denise.”

  I hear a slight gasp and a short pause before, “That’s wonderful, Kimmy. I am happy for you.”

  We don’t stay on the phone too long after that. She says she isn’t feeling good and was lying down, and then apologizes for being so quiet, but I know she is hurting, and I have nothing to say to make her feel better.

  I cry for a long time when I hang up. My heart is heavy for both of us. Denise and I are so incredibly close. I have never had a friend like her, and to know that my happiness is a source of pain and anguish for her is overwhelming.

  So here I am feeling guilt over being pregnant, and feeling so alone, despite knowing a human life was forming inside me. I just want to connect. I want to share my fears, my hopes, and my sadness. I want Denise to make me feel better, as she always does.

  I am not sure I realize how much I am in need of comfort until I make the call to her; I am having such a wide range of emotions. I need to purge myself of what I am feeling, and the one I do that with is always Denise.

  * * *

  Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of strong female relationships in my life, so the women I became close to in my early twenties became like a family to me. They know all my secrets, my fears, my vulnerabilities, my hopes, and my failures—all of it. And if my friends are my family, Denise was my sister.

  We went to high school together, but we were never friends. I moved to Southern California the year she graduated, so we never met. It wasn’t until years later, in Santa Barbara when we became neighbors while attending Santa Barbara City College in the early ’90s. She loves to tell the story of how much she hated me back then and she didn’t even know me. I drove around town in this red Mitsubishi Precis. It was my first car and I was so excited—so much so that I got a personalized license plate, OYRCOOL.

  That was it for Denise. She hated the girl who would order that ridiculous plate. So when she saw that car on her street, she scoured the buildings looking for the owner of that lame plate. The next day she would find me standing outside my apartment, next to the car, with my boyfriend, who was coincidentally an old classmate of hers.

  She stopped the car, rolled the window down, and yelled out to him, “What the heck are you doing here?”

  He replied, “Visiting my girlfriend, Kim.”

  I waved, unsuspectingly.

  It wasn’t too much longer after that meeting in the street that she and I would be formally introduced, and she would inform me that my beau was an ex-boyfriend of hers. Despite her initial reaction to my license plates, we soon became friends. That was the beginning of a friendship that would span twenty-two years.

  Denise and I, and a few other girls, became inseparable. There was a small group of people who lived on that street who all went to high school with me, so it was comforting to know we were all nearby. Denise and I would be party friends for a few years while in college, only to seal the fate of our “Best Friend Forever” status when my brother was found dead four years later.

  Denise and I weren’t that close when my brother died, but she was close enough that I was relieved when I saw her at the funeral. At a time when I was at my most fragile and vulnerable state, and my friends were flustered with what to do with me, Denise provided me with the biggest comfort ever. Silence.

  She sat with me one day as I poured my heart out, and cried so much I became dehydrated. She said nothing. She put her hand on mine and said the most beautiful words ever: “I am not sure what to say to make you feel better, so I am just going to sit with you, and let you cry, so that you are not alone.”

  I wasn’t able to articulate to any of my friends what I needed while I grieved over my brother’s murder; I never knew how much I needed to just sit in silence with my sorrow, until that moment. I never knew how much I needed Denise until that moment.

  This pregnancy would be another defining moment for our friendship.

  * * *

  In a weird twist of irony, Mike and I had a prewedding celebration at a bar in Pasadena, where a scene from the movie Father of the Bride was filmed. I always thought that was so fitting because that was one of my favorite movies, strictly because of the relationship between Steve Martin’s character and his daughter in the movie, Kimberly Williams. It was like home for me when I would watch that movie. I gave it to my dad during our wedding-planning phase, and explained the importance of it to me. He cherished the story, but probably never watched the movie! But regardless of that, when Father of the Bride Part II came out, and the daughter was pregnant in the sequel, I thought, Wouldn’t it be clever to give my dad that movie, too? Wink, wink, wink.

  So off we go, to change my dad’s life and to introduce him to the newest member of our family—the first grandchild.

  * * *

  My dad picks up Mike and me at the airport and we chitchat during the forty-minute drive to their house in Scottsdale. My dad doesn’t get to see or spend time with Mike that often, so they use the time to catch up.

  When we get t
o the house and unload our bags, we head for the kitchen. Patti is already enjoying a glass of red wine and gives me an odd look when I don’t accept the offer of a glass. I know I wasn’t going to last long with my secret now. I blame my refusal on a sinus headache and quickly hand my father the wrapped movie to open. He wants to know what I am giving him, and why he deserved a present.

  My father isn’t the type of man who receives gifts or compliments easily, nor does he like being the center of attention. Even still, he rips the paper off and stares blankly at the movie until Patti blurts out, “You’re pregnant!”

  I start laughing, which confirms her guess.

  My dad’s face loses all of its color, while Patti’s shriek of excitement commences the celebration. What comes next is a big, weepy cryfest: Lots of hugs, “high fives,” and Kleenex are exchanged for the next few minutes—and, of course, a toast. Dad, Mike, and Patti fill their glasses with wine, and mine with water.

  Damn the water. No wine, no sushi, no feta cheese! What am I going to do for the next nine months?

  Our visit is short because we need to get back to Los Angeles for Mike’s work. My dad walks Mike and me out to the car, where Patti is waiting to drive us to the airport. It is always so sad for me to say good-bye to my dad. I love being with him; living in different states makes it hard for us to see each other.

  I take a photo with my dad and he whispers, “I love you both so much” as he puts his hand on my stomach.

  We squeeze each other tightly. I give him a kiss on the cheek and get in the car. I roll down the window to say good-bye again as he stands there waving to his “precious cargo,” as he likes to call me. I just got upgraded to an “us.”

  From that day forward, my once-a-day phone calls with my dad increase to at least three or more times a day.

  * * *

  I am not sure what I thought pregnancy was about, other than the obvious. But what I wasn’t expecting to feel while pregnant was an aversion to babies.