When You're Expecting Something Else

by Lowe, Whisper

  When You’re Expecting Something Else

  By

  Whisper Lowe

  Chapter One

  Do you know what it’s like when you think you’re happy, when you really believe you’re happy, on top of the world, you know, that kind of happiness? Well, that’s what happened to me. I thought I was happy. Everything was going my way, and I was beginning to feel very special in life, certainly blessed, and maybe even immune from bad things happening to me. Well, not so. I’ll try to be brief.

  I was getting married. Alex and I had been going together for three glorious years. Me, Connie Harrison, once plain and unimportant, was engaged to marry Dr. Alex Masterson, Chief of Radiology, at New Haven General Hospital in Connecticut. I worked as a staff nurse on Pediatrics, and I loved my job. Sandy Williams was my best friend and a Registered Dietician. She was supposed to be Maid of Honor in my wedding.

  I’m thirty-five years old. Do you know what that means? Well, let me spell it out: T-I-C-K-T-O-C-K. Yes, it’s tick-tock-time, time for me to have a baby, to start a family with the man I love. My biological clock has been ticking for over a year now, so loud in fact that I’ve already named my two allotted children, hopefully a boy and a girl, if not a girl and a girl, and worst case, but acceptable scenario, a boy and a boy. No matter, we’re all supposed to live happily together in the pretty little cream-colored house on River Street where Alex and I were about to make an offer.

  Yes, you guessed it. I’m not getting married. It’s already next week and what am I doing? I’m packing, but not for my honeymoon to Hawaii with Alex. No, instead I’m getting the hell out of Dodge before I kill somebody, maybe the two of them. I hate them both with all my heart. Or, maybe I’d just kill myself, I’m so miserable. Right now, I’m feeling so crazy that I really need to run away, to get as far away from life as I know it, as quickly as I can. Otherwise, I don’t know what I might do. I’ve never hated anyone before. Not ever.

  So, I’m throwing books into boxes, clothes into suitcases, and scribbling lists with a bold, black marker as fast as I can. The truck has already come to take my furniture to Goodwill. I hate all that furniture. I used to make out on that couch with Alex, dream about making babies in that bed. We ate our favorite shrimp scampi at the beautiful oak table and sipped wine watching the stupid flat screen TV in high definition. We watched Philip Philips win American Idol and Jessica Sanchez, who I voted for, make it to runner up. Who cares? I hate everybody.

  It’s not a new story. It’s actually quite old. I left work at my usual time, end of shift at three-thirty in the afternoon, but instead of going home I went by way of the Radiology Department to ask Alex if he’d gotten his tux back from the tailor, yet. I really just wanted to see him. I saw him all right, trying to hide behind a closet door, tangled in the arms of Sandy Williams who professed to be my best friend, his hand on her ass, a body press there was no mistaking, and a French kiss that took my breath away.

  I must have gasped, or maybe an all out scream, I don’t remember, but they stopped and turned to look straight at me, Sandy blushing all red, and Alex mumbling something about how it’s not as it looks.

  “Wait, Connie, I love you!” he yelled, a look of shock on his face.

  Ha! Like I’m stupid or something? I didn’t stick around for an explanation. How could I? I panicked and ran, tears pouring down my face as I bolted from his office and crashed right into Sheila, the X-Ray technician, coming around the corner, knocking her flat on her butt, her clipboard flying into the air, crash landing onto the tiled floor with a clatter.

  “Wait, Connie! What’s wrong?” Sheila’s voice followed me down the hall.

  I ran and ran, not to my car in the hospital parking lot, but all the way home, all two miles. I ran past the quaint little shops downtown, past children playing tag in Little Haven Park, my white nursing shoes squeaking on the sidewalk cement, and people stopping to stare. I sobbed as I ran, tears streaming down my face, making god-awful noises, gulping air, my blonde hair flying.

  I couldn’t smell the usual warm, sugary scents wafting from the corner bakery. I flew past without seeing the little green buds forming on the maple trees that line the streets. I couldn’t appreciate the sound of the baby robins chirping in their nests. All I could feel was cold, hard hatred in my heart.

  Alex called my cell phone over and over again that day. “Sandy doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s you I want to marry,” he pleaded into my voicemail. He left message after message. He came to my apartment begging me to let him in. He tried his own key, but I secured the deadbolt, a barrier he can’t penetrate. Hell will freeze over before I ever even talk to that cheating man again. Kissing my best friend, his hand on her ass, a French kiss that took my breath away!

  I miss my dream babies. I miss Randy and Jordan, or Kate and Samantha. I miss T-ball and ballet, those jelly smeared faces, my little boy in his uniform with grass stains on his knee; my daughter in her white net tutu and pink ballet shoes. How can I miss babies that never existed? It’s because I loved those babies as if they were real, and it breaks my heart. It seems as if the babies that used to play on my living room carpet just floated out the window like a puff of white smoke. They’re gone now, just vaporized into thin air, my sweet, sweet babies.

  I slam the suitcases shut and tape the cardboard boxes closed. I’m not even crying anymore. I’ve quit my job at New Haven General without so much as a good-bye to my co-workers. They all belong to Alex and Sandy now. I sent an email to my sister Serena in New York. She’s been calling and calling my cell phone, but I don’t answer. I can’t. She’ll get over it. I don’t know if I ever will. I’ve never hated before. It’s a new feeling to me. I want it all to just go numb, but it’s been two weeks now since I saw Alex and Sandy kissing, and I can’t get the picture out of my head.

  I’ve gassed up my car. I toss my boxes and suitcases in. My rent is paid through until the lease is up next month. I’m just moving out early, inconveniencing nobody. I’ve directed Alex to cancel the wedding guests. I know he heard me when I shouted through the door. My wedding planner said she’d take care of the other details. No, I don’t have wedding insurance, that’s how sure of Alex I was. I told my planner to send the bills to him. He deserves it, kissing Sandy inside the closet door. I’m history now. The last of the apartment is emptied. My car is packed and ready. I set my navigation system to the future and away I go; knowing in my heart, I’ll never come back.

  Chapter Two

  I’m not sure where I’m going, but San Francisco sounds good. Isn’t that where runaways usually go? Or is that Hollywood to become a star? Wherever, it doesn’t matter. I zigzag my red Honda Accord through cities to farmland, marveling at how green the grass can be in late April. Seems like yesterday I was waiting for the snow to melt so I could see the crocuses peek through the wet earth beneath my apartment window. Now, gently rolling verdant hills stretch as far as my eyes can see. It’s mesmerizing in a way, and helps to numb my searing heartache, though I’ve only been on the road for half a day so far.

  My mind flows as I drive until I hardly pay attention to the scenery any more. I think about Alex and our three-year relationship. I must have really loved him deeply because love is blind, and I could not, would not see. I think about the many times I saw him together with Sandy, exchanging glances that once made me smile, thinking how lucky I was that the two most important people in the world to me got along so well.

  “Let’s pick up Sandy along the way,” Alex said so many times on our way to casual places here or there.

  “Let’s get an extra ticket for Alex,” Sandy said last time on a girls’ night out. Stupid, stupid me! I wonder now if stu
pid is an intrinsic part of who I am or if that was just a phase in my life.

  I think I might be going crazy. I think my mind is splitting in two. My heart is broken in so many little pieces. Alex and Sandy are dismembered in my head, their bones shattered like a broken mirror, their faces reflecting back at me, spinning, spinning, until I find a hotel to rest my weary head, hoping that sleep will give me respite.

  “But, my babies are innocent,” I say into the silence days later. Time just blends from one day to the next, my car a sanctuary, insulating me. I’m on a long country road where only I can hear. I think about artificial insemination, about having babies on my own. Then I try to push the nagging thought out of my head.

  “Knock it off, Connie!” my voice commands, projecting from my brain.

  “I can’t! I want my dream babies to be real!” my heart cries, while tears tickle my face.

  I arrive in some nameless city in Ohio so tired I can hardly even think, my brain on overload, my heart burdened with tears. I check into Roadsway Inn and then wander across the busy street, weaving my way between clusters of speeding cars, to hell with a crosswalk, to wait on the center divide for the lane to clear again. I dart across and into Kentucky Fried Chicken where I buy a greasy bag of food to take back to my room to eat alone, sitting on my bed before my hot shower, and then I don flannel pajamas to keep me warm between the cold and lonely sheets.

  I stay here for three days, sleeping on and off, waking up only to use the bathroom and wander across the street to Kentucky Fried Chicken for sustenance. Now though, I walk to the corner, push the button, and wait for the white-lighted albino man to grant me permission to cross. “Jaywalking is subject to fine,” a prickly officer had said, writing me a $60 ticket on pretty yellow paper, thin and wrinkled, and torn in the corner where it peeled off the pad.

  I should have wondered if I was sick, but the thought never crossed my mind. It seemed the most natural thing; to sleep when I was tired, eat when I was hungry, to cry when I was sad. Heartsick is what I was. But now, my teeth are brushed, the greasy bags emptied into the trash with chicken bones and spoilt cole slaw, and empty cobs gnawed of corn. Who was that slob? Surely it wasn’t me. I eat only healthy foods, and follow hygienic habits by the clock, and maintain wholesome daily routines. It’s who I’ve always been.

  The motel clerk tells me where I can find a laundromat. I check out, and then I go there to wash my dirty, wrinkled clothes. Hypnotized, I sit on a pink plastic chair, and watch the suds splash against the window, and then the spin cycle spinning round and round just like the thoughts in my head. By the time I fold everything into neat piles, I realize that I like the feel of the heat against my skin, the clean, fresh smell of laundry soap, and I notice the sunshine of the day. My brain feels clean, like my clothes, and while my heart is still sad, I notice, for the first time, that the ache has lessened.

  I drive and drive, from lonely two lane roads lined with trees, through lonely, crowded freeways with views of city skylines. Days turn into nights, my brain grows numb, and the scenery outside my windows blur like the rain on my windshield with the wipers going swoosh-swoosh-swoosh. I still think about having a baby on my own, but now I know it can only be one baby, and I’ll take whichever I can get. Whether it’s a lifestyle with T-ball, or pink ballet shoes, I’ll love my child more than life itself.

  “You can still meet someone new,” my brain argues to my heart. “There are other fish in the sea.”

  “Get real! I’m thirty-five,” my heart bleeds, yelling at my stupid, stupid brain.

  In Kansas City I stop at a small deli in a Wal-Mart shopping center where I order a turkey on rye with everything and sit outside at a white plastic table with green chairs. I sip ice water and nibble my sandwich while watching people come and go, pushing shopping carts overflowing with detergents and toilet paper, diapers, and baby clothes. I see a mother in the parking lot yank her toddler by his arm and position him for a spanking on his diapered butt. I jump up and run across the potholed asphalt, abruptly dropping my turkey sandwich onto its plate, pickles and tomatoes spilling out. I yell at the top of my lungs, like a woman crazed by an inner demon, the one that resides in me. “I want babies, and you abuse yours! Do you know how unfair that is? I would love my babies!” I shout so loud that people stop and stare.

  The mother stops mid-spank, the child stops crying. She thrusts him into his car seat, strapping and buckling with lightning speed, and then races to the driver’s side, jumps in, and peels out, driving way too fast for a parking lot and with a child in the car. She flips me the bird and then thumbs her nose at me.

  “Hey lady, lighten up!” A fat man yells, meaning me.

  I go back to my table, reassemble my sandwich, stacking the pickles and tomatoes on top of the turkey again. I feel a strange peace settle inside me, like order reestablishing after chaos. Usually, I’m quite restrained. I rarely say what’s really on my mind, and I’m self-conscious about what people think. But here and now, I really don’t give a rat’s ass. As crazy as it sounds, I feel liberated from my outburst, like a new person has emerged from my crisis. Nobody would dare kiss the best friend of this new personality. I am woman hear me roar.

  Now every time I start to think about my dream babies, I laugh out loud to break the craziness, though laughter doesn’t really solve the baby problem, or some of the other problems I’m thinking about, like I don’t have a job or a place to live. I have a savings account that includes a small inheritance from my parents who died three years ago in a car crash, but it doesn’t amount to much, although I could probably make it through a year or two if necessary, but that’d be wasting good money. Glad I didn’t waste it on a wedding that wasn’t meant to be.

  I drive and I drive, minding the speed limit, weaving my red Honda between the lanes on the highways, and find myself appreciating the topography of lands I’ve never seen before, from mountains to plains, cities to farms, the changing elevation shifting up and down like the moodiness that shifts in me. Then comes the long and dreadful road where boredom is worse than any of my moods and I long for a place to stop, anyplace less barren than where I am.

  I see a green highway sign listing miles to San Francisco. It’s still a long ways off, but I feel my heart pick up its beat. Before long, I come to a town called Charming Hill, a strange name, I think, since it appears to be all flat farm land, dotted with dilapidated barns, cattle, and grazing goats. I see nothing charming at all, but I stop at a small café in the center of town there for a snack, but mostly because I’m desperate to talk to somebody, anybody who isn’t me. I find a waitress who’s happy to oblige.

  “You know the movie, Ernie and Meg? It was filmed here, down that street,” she points. And then she adds, “Charming Hill is also the place where a little girl named Susan Hart was kidnapped from her bedroom window, but we try not to think about that. It’s really a very safe place to live.”

  Coffee splashes from my ceramic cup onto the table. How lucky for Meg; I saw that movie and she got married! I think about Alex again and my marriage that wouldn’t be, and how my dream babies flew out of my own window just like Susan Martin, as if kidnapped by Alex and Sandy, and then vaporized into thin air.

  “Are you okay?” the waitress asks as I swipe at my tears.

  “Can you put this in a take-out cup?” I ask, pointing to my drink. “I’ve got to run.”

  “Here,” she says, handing me a paper cup, looking at me with eyes of pity, which I cannot bear.

  “How long can I keep on running?” I cry to myself when safely ensconced inside my car, tears subsiding again. I bang the steering wheel with my fists, and then my temper tantrum over; I’m on the road again.

  Finally, I see the majestic orange towers, the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco, just as I’m about to give up hope of ever getting there. Traffic slows and I join the others jam packed on the bridge, feeling an excitement I can hardly contain, like I am crossing the bridge to my future, leaving heartache and troubl
e in my past. I pay my six dollars to the lady in the tollbooth and then follow signs to Nineteenth Avenue where my dirty, red Accord mixes in with other colorful cars that crawl. Feeling brave, I turn right onto a one-way street leading to who knows where.

  And that’s where my excitement ends and trepidation begins. Where did these F’in drivers come from! Not to mention the one-way streets and vertical hills with stop signs on the edge. Fear threatens to engulf me as I hyperventilate to the sound of honking cars and screeching tires while pedestrians ignore the threats of large wheels that promise to crush their lives. Who are these people!

  I manage to avert a total psychological breakdown, just by luck, when I turn onto a street that suddenly has cars driven by sane people. Here I see colorful houses attached together that I believe are called painted ladies because they stand so tall and regal, houses I’d read about in a travel book once. I pull over to the side of the road where I catch my breath and reprogram my navigation system, knowing that living in San Francisco is not the place for me.