The Baby Plan

by Kate Rorick

  “Wow,” Lyndi said, blinking. That was a lot of work—but it was all stuff that Lyndi knew she could do. Paula trusting her with this much was a huge vote of confidence.

  Or, she wondered as a peal of unbridled laughter drifted up from Judy and the other arrangers below, was it a way to keep her sidelined?

  Either way, she was capable. And her boss was asking her to step up.

  “Okay,” Lyndi said finally. “I can manage that. But who’s going to take Stan’s run this morning?”

  “Guess I’m getting back on the bike.” Paula sighed, taking her massive ring of boss-related keys out of her pocket and handing them to Lyndi. “I’d love a full accounting of the decorative ribbons, especially the pinks, reds, and whites for V-Day, by the time I get back. But first things first . . . we need to make a job listing.”

  “A job listing?” Lyndi felt her insides freeze with worry.

  “Yeah—we need to hire a new Stan.”

  ONCE LYNDI WAS done with work, it was still barely two o’clock in the afternoon. When she’d been just an arranger and occasional delivery person, she used to love these golden hours. She could spend the afternoon going to a movie, or riding her bike over the little hills of Echo Park, looping around the man-made Echo Park Lake, letting ideas run through her head for new floral arrangements while she idly watched dog walkers, out-of-work actors, yoga devotees—and sometimes, all three at once—take the same pleasure in their free time.

  But today, she didn’t head that way once she climbed onto her bike. Instead, she found herself cutting across Silver Lake, then enduring the grueling hills of Griffith Park to cross into the San Fernando Valley and the city of Burbank, where her sister Nathalie lived and worked.

  Movie studios gave way to big-box stores, then gave way to restaurants and diners, that then gave way to neat little 1950s bungalows on rectangular sixteenth of an acre lots. It was the cookie-cutter life Nathalie had always wanted and that always bewildered Lyndi.

  It had always felt like life was muted here. The colors just weren’t as strong as they were in Echo Park.

  But as she rode through the neighborhoods, Lyndi couldn’t help but notice the number of kids. School had just gotten out. Elementary-aged kids were walking home, wearing backpacks bigger than themselves, escorted by parents or in gaggles of friends. One mom was riding alongside a kid, a toddler strapped into a bike seat on the back of her old-school beach cruiser.

  Would Lyndi be able to put her daughter on the back of her bike?

  Could she do that in Echo Park? With all the hills and the, er, characters that populated the streets and doorways, and occasionally peed in her stairwell?

  Or would she have to turn to the cookie-cutter life?

  Nathalie would probably say yes.

  Or maybe she wouldn’t. Nathalie had always been the person who told Lyndi she could do anything. That didn’t judge her on trying to find her path to what made her happy.

  At least, the old Nathalie did that.

  Current Nathalie seemed to have judgment coming off of her in waves.

  But maybe, just maybe she had shifted a little bit. The shock of Lyndi being pregnant threw her, but at the gender reveal party, they seemed to get along pretty well. They had something to bond over, after all—mutual horror of being molested by your French teacher would do that. (Oh yeah, Madame Craig got to Lyndi’s stomach too by the time the party was over, and the pink-and-blue cocktails were running low.)

  And Lyndi really needed someone to talk to at the moment. About what was happening at work. About feeling sidelined. About her hormones being completely out of control—seriously, Marcus must have whiplash from her overt horniness one second and her revulsion at being touched the next.

  About whether or not she could ride her bike with her daughter behind her in Echo Park.

  In the midst of all the cookie-cutter bungalows was Nathalie’s school. The bell had rung probably about a half hour ago, but there were still some kids milling around the front, waiting for rides. Or they were in team uniforms, heading out to the field for various sports practices. The smallest high schooler Lyndi had ever seen was hauling a tuba over her shoulder like it weighed nothing, headed for the marching band in a far field.

  Lyndi knew Nathalie usually stayed an hour or two after the school day ended, grading papers and meeting with students. She could only hope that she did today, too. But if she wasn’t there, she had an excuse all prepared. She had brought tear-off flyers for the Favorite Flower, looking to hire a new Stan—or rather, a new bicycle delivery person. Lyndi had visited the school before, and knew there was a bulletin board near Nathalie’s room for posting things like this. Last time she was here, there had been an advertisement for a photography service that took pictures of you with your cats (and they would lend you some cats, if so desired).

  Of course they had also posted listings online, and she would hit the coffee shops of Echo Park and Silver Lake with more flyers after this visit. But just in case anyone questioned a twenty-four-year-old pregnant woman (who didn’t really look pregnant yet, at least not in her blousy shirt) walking into a high school, she had things covered.

  She made her way through the halls and found her way to the English department wing, where she had to glance from room to room to remember which one was Nathalie’s—pausing only to put up her flyer.

  The more she searched, the more sure she felt that talking to Nathalie could help. Not solve her problems per se, but at least she would be able to understand them.

  Nathalie had always been the one she turned to when she needed to understand.

  But when she finally peeked into the right room, she found that Nathalie was not alone. She was speaking to a dark-haired woman around the same age as Nathalie, and they were laughing.

  Laughing hard.

  Laughing . . . about Lyndi.

  “My sister is so irresponsible, she got knocked up by her bisexual roommate, I don’t think she’s the one I need.”

  The other woman’s eyes went wide with shock, and she covered her mouth to keep the laughter from overwhelming her.

  Lyndi felt her stomach sink to the floor.

  Well. Guess the gender reveal party didn’t mend as many fences as she thought.

  Because once again, while Nathalie was the one everyone treated like an adult, Lyndi was on the outside looking in.

  Chapter 13

  “MS. KNELLER?”

  Nathalie looked up. Class had ended about ten minutes ago, and the last student had finally left the room, after hanging behind to ask question after breathlessly worried question about the AP Literature exam.

  Nathalie loved all her students, but she loved her AP students best . . . probably because they all worked so hard. But the seriousness with which they took the test had caused more than one anxiety attack over the years. She wished she could tell them to take a deep breath and chill out. To go to the beach for the weekend, and enjoy a book instead of trying to analyze it. But she had learned over the years that for hypercompetitive kids raised in a dog-eat-dogma of achievement, that usually fell on deaf ears.

  If only she could transfer a smidgeon of their drive to some of her more maddeningly lackadaisical non-AP students, the world would be a much more pleasant place.

  Well, at least she managed to get them to laugh at Shakespeare’s jokes along the way.

  But today she had been dying to get that last kid out of there, because she hadn’t been able to check Twitter since that morning.

  And when she finally got on her phone, she was rewarded with two new tweets.

  @WTFPreg—so people molesting a pregnant woman’s stomach is just a given then? Cool. Cool cool cool.

  @WTFPreg—I swear, if I get ONE MORE pregnancy marketing email, I might actually buy something. Yeah. That’ll shut them up.

  Nathalie felt that little pool of warmth in the middle of her body every time she read the Twitter feed. Finally, there was someone out there she could relate to! She’d been comp
laining about the pregnancy marketing emails just that morning. They popped up ever since she set up their baby registry online.

  Of course, she was the one to set up the registry. David barely acknowledged that they’d need to get anything beyond a couple of onesies and some diapers.

  She’d been dying to get on her phone because over the past couple days, she’d noticed a pattern—the tweeter of @WTFPreg tended to post her thoughts around lunchtime. So invariably, there was a little treat waiting for her at the end of the school day, a gift for getting through another round of teaching overeager AP kids and some of their more apathetic counterparts.

  But who—who—could possibly be writing them?

  “I’m Sophia Nunez—Maisey Alvarez’s mom?”

  “Of . . . of course!” Nathalie said, realizing she had been staring blankly at the woman who was in her doorway for some seconds, not comprehending anyone was there—her mind still on the tweets and their mysterious author. “Hi, please, have a seat.”

  “We’ve met before,” Sophia said, as she pulled one of the desk chairs around and brought it in front of Nathalie’s larger teacher desk. “At the—”

  “At the Los Angeles County poetry recital. Yes, Maisey did amazing that day. How have you been since?”

  “Oh,” Sophia said with a crooked smile. “You know. Busy. Life keeps us on our toes. Yourself?”

  “Much the same,” Nathalie said with a corresponding smile. She remembered Sophia. Remembered mostly being struck by how young she was—it was one of the first times she encountered a parent as a peer instead of seeing them as she would her own parents or older, more seasoned co-workers. (It could just be proof she was getting old.) She also remembered just how freakin’ gorgeous Sophia was, wearing clothes and makeup with a confidence that one usually found in magazines. Maisey was the kind of kid who didn’t broadcast her beauty—although she was a lovely young woman who would no doubt have all the boys in her pocket the minute she decided to notice them. Looking at Sophia was like looking at future Maisey, and being blown away by the sheer power of it.

  “You didn’t have to come by,” Nathalie said abruptly, to stop herself staring. “We could have done this over the phone, especially if this interferes with work . . .”

  “No, we’re doing night shoots this week, so I don’t have to be at work until later this afternoon.”

  “Right,” Nathalie replied. “And I swear, I won’t ask you for Fargone spoilers.”

  Sophia gave a small laugh. But they both knew this chitchat was nothing but stalling.

  So best to get down to it.

  “Ms. Kneller, we both know that parents don’t get calls from the teacher without a reason. That’s why I wanted to come in and do this in person. Maisey’s never been in trouble before.”

  “And she’s not now!” Nathalie was quick to reassure. She set her shoulders. “As you know, I’m Maisey’s faculty advisor, and I . . . I just wanted to ask if things are okay at home these days.”

  Sophia’s expression stilled. She sat up in the chair. “Did something happen?”

  “Well . . . yes and no,” Nathalie said. “Maisey didn’t turn in her paper this week.” For Nathalie’s AP class, the only homework she assigned—other than extensive reading—was one paper a week, ten pages long. It was grueling (and no picnic to grade), but it taught the students how to interpret literature on their own terms—and more importantly, it taught them how to argue, how to persuade, and how to write.

  Sophia sat up straighter. “That’s not like her.”

  “No, it’s not.” This was the second year in a row Nathalie had Maisey as her student and it was definitely not like her. “The Maisey I know often hands in her homework a few days early.”

  “Well . . . it is second semester senior year,” Sophia ventured. “Senioritis?”

  “I thought it might be that, although, senioritis doesn’t usually strike my AP students until after the AP exam in a couple months. I offered to cut her some slack, asked if she’d like to turn in her paper late for a grade markdown but still she’d get credit. If it was an A paper, she’d get a B, for example.” The first B Maisey had ever gotten in her class, but better than nothing. “But when I made the offer, she just shrugged and said, ‘Why? It doesn’t really matter, does it?’”

  Sophia sucked in her breath.

  “Okay,” Sophia said eventually. “Okay, I’ll have a talk with her. Thank you.”

  “Ms. Nunez—”

  “Sophia, please.”

  “Sophia—I don’t bring this up to get Maisey in any trouble. It’s just very out of character for her.”

  “Yes it is. I just . . . I’ve never had to have this talk with her before. She’s never . . . Reading and writing are her favorite things in the world. She’s never been disrespectful to a teacher.”

  “And she wasn’t now,” Nathalie replied. “Trust me. I could tell you horror stories about students so gifted with insults you pray that they’d one day use their powers for good instead of evil. But I thought if Maisey was having difficulty at home . . . I know she was severely disappointed to not get into Stanford.”

  “Yes.” Sophia nodded obliquely.

  “And I worry that that was enough for her to question her entire future. I spoke with the guidance counselor, and she said that Maisey hadn’t applied to any other schools yet either. Deadlines are fast approaching and—”

  “She hasn’t?” Sophia said abruptly. “But . . . I saw her, filling out applications. Right after she heard about Stanford. She had stacks of them, to UC Davis, San Diego . . . even UCLA and Berkeley.”

  “According to the guidance office, she hasn’t requested any transcripts for applications, so . . .”

  Sophia put a hand to her forehead, leaning on her elbow. Her eyes fell to the surface of the desk, no doubt her mind running a million miles a minute, trying to figure out the mind of a brilliant but lost teenager.

  Then she took a deep breath. “It’s not just Stanford. It goes back earlier than that.”

  “Earlier?”

  “Ever since she found out about the baby, I feel like she’s been pulling away.”

  Nathalie nearly choked. “Maisey’s pregnant?”

  “What? No!” Sophia replied. Then, she laughed. “God, if Maisey was seeing a boy, I’d know where to place the blame for her behavior, because that’s what I was like when I was her age. No . . . I’m pregnant.”

  “Oh. Oh!” Nathalie blinked. “Congratulations!”

  “Thank you,” Sophia said kindly. “It’s an adjustment for us. Me, Maisey, Sebastian—that’s my boyfriend.”

  “Understandably.”

  “Still. I would have thought Maisey would have been past the age of jealousy over a baby brother or sister.”

  “I’ve been teaching for a decade now, and kids at this age aren’t quite adults yet, no matter how much they pretend to be. Big changes still throw them—and they are facing down one of the biggest with college looming.”

  “Do you have any kids yourself?” Sophia asked.

  “Not yet,” Nathalie replied. Then, a hand went automatically to her stomach. “Although, give it four months or so, and I will.”

  “You’re pregnant, too?”

  Nathalie nodded.

  “Well, congratulations to you as well then!” Sophia smiled. “You don’t look it.”

  “That’s because I’m sitting and wearing this loose blouse.”

  But Sophia shook her head. “You don’t look pregnant, you just look—”

  “Lumpy?”

  “I was going to say ‘glowing.’”

  “Now there’s a classic descriptor. For what it’s worth, you don’t look pregnant either.”

  “Thanks—but I’m not as far along as you. I’m barely out of the first trimester. The only clothing I’ve outgrown so far are my bras.” Sophia looked down at her own boobs—Nathalie couldn’t help it, she looked, too. “It’s obscene. Come on, we’re reaching seventies porno levels here.”

>   Nathalie couldn’t help it. She laughed. Long and loud. It just . . . felt really good to laugh at something. Anything—but especially something that had to do with pregnancy. It just felt like everything that had to do with the baby lately had been so stressful. Doc’s appointments, 529 plans, whether or not she should do a water birth . . . Every little thing was so very, very important. And she was the only one paying any attention, so that just made it more stressful. So to be able to laugh at something . . . well, perhaps she was laughing a little too hard, because between the tears streaming out of her eyes, she could see a shocked expression on Sophia’s face.

  “Sorry, that might be a little TMI,” Sophia said by way of apology. “I don’t think I’m supposed to be discussing my boobs with my daughter’s literature teacher.”

  “No, please! That is the least TMI thing anyone has said to me in so long. I cannot tell you the number of personal stories of body fluids and functions that I’ve been subjected to when people find out I’m pregnant. It’s like the scene in The Shining when the elevator doors open—just a flood of horror people can’t wait to share with you.”

  “Well, I could tell you some, if you wanted,” Sophia said, on the fade of a laugh. “But honestly, all that stuff becomes a blur. At least it did for me anyway. Once the baby’s here—none of that really matters.”

  Nathalie sobered, then studied Sophia.

  “What does matter?”

  Sophia looked to the side, pulling from way back in her memory. “Well, for the first couple months, you spend most of your time trying to keep the baby fed, and clean, and comfortable—basically you focus all your energy on keeping the baby alive.”

  “And then?”

  “And then . . . they are alive. They start to become real people. They have their own way of looking at the world, and it’s truly amazing what they know. I remember so many little things that add up to the big thing that’s Maisey. Scribbles on paper that are drawings of whole worlds. Recited stories about every detail of what happened at the park. I remember . . .” Sophia gave a small laugh to herself. “Oh God, I remember ‘eat soup.’”