Baby Crazy (Matt & Anna Book 2)

by Annabelle Costa

  I bring the offending crayons to the kitchen, where Lisa is cooking dinner. I wonder if I’ll be able to eat anything here tonight. Years ago, I used to bring my own food when I’d come here for dinner, but Matt informed me I wasn’t allowed to do that anymore. Still, Lisa’s cooking practices are unhygienic at best. I realize I have higher standards than most people, but I am being completely objective here.

  For example, she pokes at the raw meatballs in the frying pan with a fork, then puts the fork directly on the counter. Is she unaware that ground beef can contain E coli bacteria? You don’t just rest a fork that has touched raw beef on the counter! Especially because I know she won’t clean the fork or the counter. The thought of it makes me nauseated.

  “Luke was eating crayons,” I inform my sister as I drop the crayons in the trash.

  She smiles at me. “Nice to see you too, Anna.”

  I wash my hands at the sink with scorching hot water and soap, then I take the fork she’d been using and wash that too. I take a sponge and clean off the counter as well. There—crisis averted.

  “Very helpful,” Lisa says. She glances down at my midsection. “Are you pregnant yet? You need something to occupy your time.”

  I sink into a chair near the stove, trying to ignore the disarray in the room. I spent an hour cleaning Matt’s car—I don’t have it in me to clean this kitchen. I’m so exhausted all of a sudden. “No, not yet.”

  Attempting to conceive has not been difficult in itself. I enjoy it, in a way. I like charting out my menstrual cycles—I am quite regular. My cycles are almost always exactly twenty-eight days and I ovulate on day fifteen. It’s nearly perfect. I used the ovulation kit the first month, but then I realized I could just as accurately predict my ovulation by charting my temperature day to day. I have multiple charts hung up in our bedroom to predict the exact moment when Matt and I should have intercourse. It’s like a science experiment!

  But it’s not all fun and mathematics. There are days when intercourse would be optimal, but Matt just can’t do it. I can see the frustration on his face. Usually, he puts my own pleasure above his and insists as long as I experience orgasm, he is happy. But it’s not enough to conceive a child.

  The strain of being off my medications is more intense than I had imagined. My baseline level of anxiety has increased several notches and I am without my rescue medication. There are times when my fingers are itching for a Xanax, but I can’t risk it. Dr. Hayward suggested meditation. He may as well suggest draining the Atlantic Ocean with an eyedropper.

  And then, of course, every month there is the disappointment of another failure.

  Lisa picks up the fork to stir the meatballs again, then lays it right back on the counter again. For goodness sake…

  “Listen,” she says, “Matt is able to… I mean, you guys can…?”

  I stare at her.

  “You’re able to have sex, right?” she finally says.

  I frown at her. “Of course we have sex! How else would we make a baby?”

  “Well…” She smiles crookedly. “It’s just a little hard to imagine you having… and well, Matt has all those issues, so…”

  This is very insulting. Matt says that I say insulting things to people, but this is really insulting. “How could you think I don’t have sex with my husband?”

  “No, of course you do,” she says quickly. “Sorry. Never mind.”

  Lisa throws the contents of a pot of boiling water into the pasta strainer. She picks out a piece of spaghetti with her bare fingers and puts it in her mouth. Sometimes I think she’s deliberately torturing me. If I don’t leave this kitchen now, there’s no chance I’m going to be able to eat any of this food, so I excuse myself and go back to the living room to watch the sports game with Jake and Matt.

  Chapter 16: Matt

  About forty minutes later, Lisa yells out that dinner is ready. Everybody heads to the dining room, except for Luke, who is probably too full from eating crayons all day. Lisa makes an attempt to get Luke to join us, but he refuses and Jake says to “let the kid be.” Anna looks horrified and I don’t blame her. It’s a family dinner, and maybe I’m old fashioned, but I think the whole family should be sitting together.

  Anna and I would probably be on the same page about a lot of childrearing stuff. But it doesn’t matter. Tonight I’m going to sit her down and tell her we need to stop trying. She has to get back on her meds. It’s not worth this.

  She sits next to the place setting at the table with no seat that is clearly meant for me. The table is a good height for my chair—I hate it when a table is so high that I’m half a head shorter than everyone at the table. That’s the situation at my parents’ house. Or alternately, it’s so low, I can’t get my chair under it.

  Anna’s got her hands on her lap and I reach out to take her right hand. She hesitates for a second, and I say, “I washed them.”

  She smiles at me and allows me to take her hand. “I know. You always do.”

  Christ, I miss my wife.

  It’s spaghetti and meatballs, made with fatty ground beef that Anna never would have used—I know because I do the shopping. But somehow, Anna’s tastes better than Lisa’s. My wife is by far a better cook than her sister. Even her tomato sauce is more flavorful. I know I shouldn’t criticize the meal Lisa worked hard to cook for us, but I’m spoiled by Anna’s food.

  “This is great, Lisa,” I say anyway.

  She beams at me. “Thanks, Matt. I can give Anna the recipe.”

  Anna shudders and I almost burst out laughing.

  I know the food isn’t great, but Anna is pushing it around her plate with a definite lack of enthusiasm. It makes me worry what she saw in the kitchen. It’s been at least six hours since we ate lunch, so she’s got to be hungry by now. But she hasn’t taken even one bite. Christ, I hope we’re not going to go back to her having to bring her own food when we go to our family’s houses for dinner. That was really awkward. Just one more reason why Anna needs to get back on her meds.

  “So are you and Anna still house-hunting?” Lisa asks us.

  Anna looks up from her plate, her face nearly green. I quickly answer, “No, we’re not. We’re putting that on hold for now.”

  If I made Anna move on top of everything else, she’d really lose it. That’s got to go on the back burner for now.

  “Why?” Lisa presses me.

  I just shrug, wracking my brain for something else to talk about.

  “You guys need to move,” Jake says around a mouthful of spaghetti. “Matt, I don’t know how you can stand it there, man.”

  “It’s fine,” I say through my teeth.

  “We’re making it work,” Anna adds.

  “Making it work?” Lisa snorts. “Anna, it doesn’t bother you that your husband can’t even get up the stairs?”

  “We have the stair lift,” Anna says weakly.

  “That thing sucks,” Jake says. “Remember I had to come over and fix it for you when it got stuck halfway up?”

  “It’s fine!” Anna snaps at him. She stands up from her chair so abruptly that she nearly knocks it over. She’s swaying on her feet. “We’re fine. It’s fine.”

  “Anna?” I say.

  Then Anna clamps a pale hand over her mouth and goes running.

  I look between Jake and Lisa, who have baffled expressions on their faces. Running off in a panic isn’t exactly atypical behavior for Anna, but she hasn’t done it in a long time. All the more reason we need to quit trying for a baby and get back to normal.

  I push myself away from the table and wheel myself to the bathroom, where Anna has shut herself inside. As a rule, I don’t bother Anna in the bathroom, but it’s obvious something is going on. I rap my fist on the door. When there’s no answer, my stomach turns into a little nervous ball. I rap again.

  “Anna,” I call. “Are you all right?”

  There’s a long silence. Shit, what the hell is she doing in there?

  “Anna?” I say again. “Ple
ase say something.”

  After another long pause, the door cracks open. I get a shock to see Anna kneeling on the floor. Her face is very pale and sweaty. “I don’t feel good, Matt,” she whispers.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She shakes her head. “I… I threw up.” She takes a shaky breath, looking horrified at herself. “I got freaked out about the whole house thing. I just… I can’t right now…”

  “I understand.” I reach out to take her hand, which is clammy as hell. “I swear, we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. The truth is… I’m not even sure about this baby stuff anymore…”

  She looks up at me with watery blue eyes. “Matt…”

  “I know how hard this is for you,” I say. “I was being selfish. It’s enough just the two of us, Anna.”

  The tears overflow from her eyes. She swipes at them with the back of her hand. I want to invite her into my lap, but I can tell she’s itching to get cleaned up. I know her really well.

  There are footsteps behind us and I hear Lisa’s voice booming down the hall. “Everything okay over there?”

  I don’t take my eyes off Anna. “We’re fine.”

  Lisa doesn’t go away though. She walks over to us, hovering above me, her hands on her hips. “What happened here?”

  Anna looks away, too mortified to respond. I mumble, “Anna has an upset stomach.”

  Lisa looks between us and then at the toilet. A smile spreads across her face. “So,” she says, “you finally got knocked up.”

  Anna and I stare at each other. She looks at the toilet then back up at me. She shakes her head. “No,” she says firmly. “I just wasn’t feeling well.”

  “I threw up every night with both kids,” Lisa says with a shrug. “I don’t know why they call it morning sickness—the only time I wasn’t throwing up was in the morning!”

  “But…” Anna is holding her stomach, looking greener than ever before. “I don’t think I am, Lisa.”

  “Are you serious?” Lisa laughs. “You know, for a couple of supposedly smart people, you two are pretty dumb.”

  I lean back in my chair, feeling dazed. One minute ago, I was telling Anna to forget it. I was resigned to the fact that it would just be the two of us. And now…

  Christ.

  “We’ll take a pregnancy test when we get home,” Anna says. “We’ll find out for sure.”

  Except I know. Lisa is right—I finally knocked up my wife.

  Our lives are about to change forever.

  Chapter 17: Anna

  I don’t believe it until I have the pregnancy tests in front of me.

  I lay out the positive tests on edge of the sink, all in a row. I know they have my urine on them, but for some reason, that doesn’t bother me. They have morphed into something else. Something almost magical.

  I touch my lower abdomen. There’s something growing in there. If I do nothing, that something will become a baby.

  I hear knocking on the bathroom door. It’s Matt, sounding just short of hysterical. “Can I come in?”

  When I open the door for him, he looks as frightened as I’ve ever seen him. I take a moment to recognize my husband is objectively a very attractive man. I’ve spent so many hours looking at him over the years that sometimes I barely notice what he looks like beyond my obvious affection for him. But occasionally, I see him as a woman meeting him for the first time would see him. He has thick brown hair that’s always somewhat tousled and eyes that crinkle when he smiles. He’s got what one might call “boyish good looks”—something that used to make other women at the office refer to him as “really cute.”

  I’m lucky to be married to him. Lucky he wanted me as much as I wanted him. Lucky we’re starting a family together.

  The dread in the pit of my stomach is a tiny ball that I can push aside.

  “So?” he says, his eyebrows scrunched together.

  I point to the pregnancy tests, lined up on the sink. Each of them shows a plus-sign, indicating a positive result.

  “You did eleven of them?” he asks in a baffled voice.

  “Well, I had to be sure,” I say.

  “So…” He scratches at his head. “You… you’re really pregnant?”

  I nod.

  He stares at me for a moment, then pulls me into his lap so suddenly that I laugh. I’ve missed this for the last six months—the way Matt always made me smile. It’s been so tense. As much as I’ve been frightened of this very moment, now I think it may bring us closer together. Raising a child together. There’s no one else I’d rather do that with, which I suppose works out well, considering Matt is my husband.

  “What do we do now?” he asks me.

  “Well,” I say, “I’ll go to my OB/GYN and tell them about my condition. And we’ll go from there.”

  “Okay.” He nods. “Um, should I come with you?”

  “I doubt that it’s necessary.”

  He smiles crookedly. “Can I come with you?”

  “Well,” I say thoughtfully, “they might do a pelvic examination. With a speculum.”

  “Sounds fun.”

  I laugh. “You can come if you really want to.”

  “I want to. It isn’t every day I get my wife pregnant.”

  He holds me close to his chest and all the tension of the last six months drains from my body. This is going to be okay. Yes, I won’t be on my medications for another eight months, but at least there’s an end in sight. And then we’ll have a baby.

  Oh my God, we’re going to have a baby.

  Chapter 18: Matt

  I’ve never been to Anna’s OB/GYN before or any OB/GYN for that matter. Why would I? I’m a thirty-four-year-old guy.

  But today I’m swinging into the handicapped spot by the entrance so that I can accompany Anna to her first appointment. She even consented to be in my car without much fuss and just maybe fifteen minutes of cleaning. When she called, they told her she’d likely be getting an ultrasound today and I wasn’t about to miss that. I know there’d be a picture and she could bring it home for me, but it wouldn’t be the same. I want to be there.

  Things start on a sour note when the office to the OB/GYN has a big, heavy glass door that Anna has to hold open for me. But it’s not like I don’t deal with stuff like that all the freaking time. Still. It’s a doctor’s office. It would be nice if they considered the fact that it’s not so easy to open a heavy door if you’re in a wheelchair.

  Anna marches right up to the receptionist and flashes her a nervous smile. “I’m here for a two o’clock appointment.”

  “Name?”

  “Anna Harper.”

  After two-and-a-half years, I still smile when Anna gives my last name as her own.

  We spend about ten minutes in the waiting room and Anna is getting antsy. I try to make conversation, but she’s too nervous to give much of a response. I finally pick up a magazine from the table in the middle of the room and that’s when Anna loses her shit.

  “What are you doing?” she nearly shrieks.

  I drop the issue of Sports Illustrated I’d been holding as half the room turns to stare at us. “Um, I was just going to read the magazine.”

  “Do you know how many people have touched that?” she snaps at me. “It probably has fecal material on it! And now you’ve touched it!”

  And now the other half of the room is staring at us.

  “It’s just a magazine,” I say.

  “Yes, but people touch magazines!” she cries. “How could you touch something in a doctor’s office? Don’t you know people are sick here?”

  “Anna, calm down,” I mumble. Christ, we’re going to get kicked out before we have our first visit. “Listen, I’ll wash my hands. Okay?”

  Except we don’t have time for that, because a nurse comes out to call Anna’s name. Anna leaps out of her seat to follow the nurse, and I go after her. The nurse regards me for a moment and then steps in front of me. “And you are?” she says.

  “The husban
d,” I say.

  “Oh!” The nurse’s face breaks into a smile. Who did she think I was? Some homeless guy Anna picked up on the street? “Well, all right then. Come on in.”

  “He needs to wash his hands,” Anna informs the nurse.

  For the love of God…

  “We have a sink in the examining room,” the nurse says. Which is all well and good if I can reach the sink, but I probably won’t be able to.

  “He probably won’t be able to reach it,” Anna speaks up.

  The nurse points me in the direction of an accessible bathroom, but I decide to follow Anna to the examining room first, because if I don’t know where she is, they’ll probably kick me out of here. I know Anna thinks washing my hands is the number one priority, but it isn’t.

  Luckily, I’ve got lots of time to wash my hands and then some before the OB/GYN, Dr. Reid, comes into the room. Anna has been seeing Dr. Reid for her birth control pills for years, so they’re familiar with each other. Dr. Reid knows Anna’s history and that she’s off her meds. That’s a comfort.

  Dr. Reid looks to be about Anna’s age, with a dark blond ponytail and brown-rimmed glasses. She’s attractive but has a confident air that makes me trust her. I know Anna likes her a lot, and I can see why.

  “Hello, Anna,” she says with a smile. Then she offers the same smile to me. “You must be Matt.”

  “That’s right.” I offer her my hand and she looks surprised, but she shakes it. I guess she’s grown accustomed to Anna’s “don’t touch unless necessary” policy. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” she says. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

  I glance at Anna, whose cheeks are pink. It never occurred to me that she talks about me to other people. Especially her gynecologist, for Christ’s sake. “All good stuff, I hope?”

  Dr. Reid laughs. “Only good stuff.”