by Judy Baer
My jaw dropped as I saw pages and pages of maternity clothes, baby supplies and strollers. “How did you know?”
She eyed me suspiciously. “Know what?”
“That Chase and I are going to have a baby? We just found out. We were going to tell you, but then Chase had this happen at the hospital…”
“So that’s why everything I’ve looked at for the last month has had a baby in it. I sensed that something about you was different.” Her face lit with delight. “Now it all makes sense!”
“You’ve suspected I was pregnant for a month?”
“Mother’s intuition,” she said modestly. “Congratulations, darling. I’m elated for you!”
“What about all that stuff you told me about your being too young to be a grandmother? I thought it might bother you. You have been introducing me as your younger sister for some time now.”
She looked at me mysteriously and blinked slowly. Her smile was serene and wisely maternal. “Darling, I’ll sing it from the rooftops when you and Chase have a baby. And as for my being a grandmother, people won’t believe it. And if they do, I’ll tell them I adopted you when I was a teenager.
“I think it is glorious, Whitney. It’s about time.” Then, more to herself than to me, she muttered, “And babies need aunties, too, you know.” She turned back to the catalogs. “Which bumper pads do you like? I’m partial to Peter Rabbit.”
When we returned to the kitchen, it was apparent that Chase had told my father the good news. Dad jumped to his feet and gathered me into a large, warm bear hug. As I burrowed my nose in his chest, I could smell the same aftershave that he’d worn every day when I was a child. Old Spice. If there is a more comforting fragrance on the planet, I don’t know about it. When I smell it, I’m transported. I’m five years old again and sitting in his lap.
He took me by the shoulders and studied me as he had so many times over the years. “My baby is having a baby.” I heard his voice breaking. “Praise God.”
At that moment, Mr. Tibble came marching through the room, his tail held high in the air. Scram, like a court jester to the king, followed, occasionally standing on his hind legs to bat at Mr. Tibble’s majestic tail.
I dropped into a leather chair and patted my lap. “Come here, guys.” As Mr. Tibble jumped into my lap, my mother let out an unearthly scream.
“Noooooooo!”
Mr. Tibble, who is no dummy, headed for the hills. Scram, who is a dummy, froze in place, every wisp of fur on his body erect. Then, realizing that his leader had abandoned ship, he took off, yowling for Mr. Tibble.
“Mother, you nearly scared the cats to death!”
My mother, red-faced, pointed at the doorway through which the cats had disappeared. “You can’t touch them. Not now. Not anymore.”
“Excuse me?”
“Have you given up reading women’s magazines, Whitney? Cats and pregnant women just don’t mix. Toxoplasmosis.”
You mean I’m already a negligent mother?
Chase cleared his throat. “Don’t worry. We’ll make sure the cats are healthy. They live indoors. It’s unlikely they’ve come into contact with the parasite.”
My mother didn’t buy it. “I don’t want anything to jeopardize my grandchild’s health. No cats.”
I shot Chase a pleading look. If mother got it into her head that the cats were dangerous, she’d kidnap them and not bring them back for months.
“I’ll take care of the cats,” Chase assured my mother. “We’ll have them tested, and I’ll clean the litter box. It’s not only cats that carry this, you know. You can get it from unwashed fruits and vegetables.”
Mother’s ears perked up. “Vegetables? You can get it from vegetables?”
Oh, spare me. Now she’ll patrol my vegetable bin. Being pregnant is already thornier than I thought it would be.
Mr. Tibble here.
Whitney’s Momma Cat, the one she calls “Mom,” is very annoying. She screeched like an owl and flapped her wings at us today. I don’t care for the cold, calculating way she stares at me. I do not trust her. I must be on guard. She has a predatory look which makes me believe that Scram and I are in danger.
I, of course, am much larger—and more magnificent, if I do say so myself—than that idiot Scram. Maybe if I fed him to her she would leave me alone. A brilliant idea, really. It would solve two problems at once. Momma Cat would be full and Scram would be history. I would have Whitney all to myself again.
Next time the screeching one arrives, I must entice Scram into the same room with her and see what happens. Oh, this will be fun.
Mr. Tibble, ruthlessly signing off.
Monday, June 21
Innova’s break room has turned into Baby Info central.
Betty spends her evenings shopping for baby items on eBay and brings new batches of printouts for us to examine every morning.
I had no idea babies were so complicated. Silly me, I thought you fed and burped them, diapered, rocked and loved them, and that was enough. Of course, that was before marketing, technology and consumer awareness.
Betty thrust a color photocopy of a little criblike bed under my nose. “Mitzi is getting one of these. You should, too.”
Of course, I thought, since I’m trying so hard to be a Mitzi clone.
At that moment, Mitzi breezed into the office wearing maternity clothes, a weird pink blouse with a huge pink bow at the neck and black Capri pants. She looked like a rerun of Lucille Ball pregnant with little Ricky. Talk about rushing things.
“It’s very cool, like a little apartment for your baby,” she announced.
“Isn’t a week old a little young to have your own apartment? My parents said I couldn’t move out until I was eighteen.” Actually, my father told me I couldn’t move out until I was thirty, but for once I didn’t follow his advice.
Mitzi tripped toward me carrying her ever-present carton of milk. If nothing else, her baby will have bones of steel from all the calcium she’s pumping in there. She pointed at the picture with a hot-pink fingernail. “It’s a bedside crib that attaches to your bed with fasteners. You never have to get out of bed to take care of the baby. No stumbling around in the dark looking for the bassinet! Isn’t it clever?”
“What if you want to get out of bed and that thing has you trapped?”
“Crawl over your husband, of course. He’ll go right back to sleep. They always do.”
“Or you could have this.” Betty handed me a picture of a tiny boxlike bassinet plopped in the middle of a large mattress. “The baby sleeps between you in its own little bed. Isn’t that cute?”
“Between the two of us? No wonder Kim says a new baby is a great form of birth control.”
“Well, what are you looking for then?” Betty asked impatiently.
“Exodus 2, actually.”
Betty and Mitzi stared at me as if I were missing some brain cells. Fortunately, Kim wandered in at just the right time to quote the familiar verse.
“‘Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river.’”
“That’s what you want for your baby? A basket covered with tar?”
“I doubt you’ll find that on eBay,” Mitzi muttered.
“I want a Moses basket, silly. The kind that has handles and is woven with palm or wicker, like the one his mother put him in and hid among the reeds on the river.”
“Now why’d she do a thing like that?” Harry asked as he walked through the office for a fresh cup of coffee.
“Because the pharaoh of Egypt had ordered that every Hebrew boy be killed, thrown into the Nile.”
“Well, that’s rotten!”
“The pharaoh’s daughter found the baby Moses in the basket and adopted him.”
“A baby outgrows a basket pretty quickly,” Mitzi observed between slugs of milk. “You’d better get both.”
This baby has already run up a huge shopping bill, and I’ve known about it for five days. I already feel I’ve been remiss in not having set up a college fund.
“And,” Betty said triumphantly, “wait until you see the breast pumps I found for you!”
At that, Bryan, who had been minding his own business and quietly eating a cup of applesauce, stood up and left the room.
I’d had no idea he could move that fast.
Sunday, June 27
“You’re looking like you lost your best friend,” I commented to Chase as he sat on the deck, staring at a vacant bird feeder.
He turned to look at me, his eyes serious. “The funeral is Monday.”
“Oh.” I knelt in front of him and took his hands.
“I’m still shocked. I’ve been over everything a dozen times, and I know there was nothing I would do differently were that patient to come into my office again. There were no warning signs.” He stared at me with a disconcerting look in his eyes. “It could happen to any of us.” Chase snapped his fingers, and I jumped. “Just like that.”
“Please don’t brood about this. We’ll continue to pray for his family, but it isn’t going to help to replay that afternoon in your mind.” Even as I said it, I knew that it was impossible for Chase to turn off those images in his head.
“He was thirty-five, Whitney. Thirty-five.”
Chase is also thirty-five and no doubt he had brushed up against his mortality when his patient died. It didn’t surprise me that he was brooding.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tuesday, June 29
The flu must be going around.
“Have you seen Bryan?” I asked.
Betty looked up from her desk. “He went back to get a cup of coffee and hasn’t returned.”
I spun on my heel and headed for the break room. To the right of the door was the compact counter on which the coffee machine sat. The vertical folding door closing off the shelves that held coffee cans, filters and cups was not entirely closed and the toe of a shiny black shoe protruded from the opening. I pulled the door back to find Bryan angled against the shelving, his face a ghastly white.
“Bryan?”
His eyes bulged from his eye sockets like a bullfrog’s, and I noticed a bit of ashy gray around his pinched lips. He was clutching the small garbage can we keep next to the coffee machine and making small fishy motions with his lips.
“Do you need help?”
Before I could finish, he bolted past me, green-faced, cheeks puffing, the garbage can tucked into his arms like a football in the hands of a running back protecting the pigskin. All I could do for him was pray he’d make it to the men’s restroom in time.
When Bryan came skulking back into the room, the garbage can dangling precariously from his fingertips, some color had returned to his face, but it didn’t look any healthier than the green hue he’d had when he ran out. His cheeks were red and splotchy and his eyes were watering.
“What on earth is wrong with—”
Mitzi took a bite of the pickle she was practicing on, and the crunch resonated throughout the room.
Bryan whimpered, spun around and headed again for the bathroom, once again clinging to his garbage can.
“That boy is weird,” Mitzi concluded airily.
It takes one to know one.
“I hope no one else catches it,” I commented to Kim.
“Wesley picked up something at day care a couple weeks ago, and it only lasted twenty-four hours,” she assured me. “Neither Kurt or I got it.”
“Good. You’ll need all the energy you can get, because I’m planning to start cracking the whip around here. We need to work fast.”
“Where’s the fire?”
I patted my stomach. “Here. We can’t leave Harry in a bind when we run off to have babies. I’ve moved some project deadlines ahead so that they’re finished before early February, when Mitzi’s baby and mine are due.”
“We’re hoping and praying to be in China to collect our new baby, too,” Kim murmured. “What are we going to do about work? Betty and Bryan can’t keep this office afloat without us. Mitzi we might not miss, but…”
“And just exactly what is that supposed to mean?” Mitzi entered on a cloud of Baby Touch perfume. Mitzi is going for a mother-and-baby theme these days. It’s disconcerting to have her come into the office looking like Donna Reed one day and Bart Simpson’s mother the next.
“Ignore her,” I said. “She thinks she’s being funny.”
“Oh. Ha, ha.”
“We’re discussing what will happen if everyone goes out on maternity leave at the same time.”
“You could move the office to my house,” Mitzi suggested airily. “There’s plenty of room there. Then I wouldn’t have to leave home.”
“Somehow I don’t think Harry would go for that.”
“Well, you can’t say I didn’t invite you.” Mitzi flitted out again, a life-size Tinkerbell, off to spread confusion along with her fairy dust.
“She’s got the space,” Kim said. “I want the sunroom with the wicker furniture and the fountain as my office. If you can’t move Mitzi to the mountain, move the mountain to Mitzi.”
“Think about it, Kim, moving Innova to Mitzi’s house is more like moving Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego into the lion’s den.”
Wednesday, June 30
“More pot stickers?” I shoved the plate toward Mitzi, who was downing sweet-and-sour pork as if it was popcorn.
“Order more egg rolls, will you?” Mitzi dipped another fatty, deep-fried bit of pork into a neon-orange sweet-and-sour sauce. “Or maybe just some more shrimp fried rice. And ask for a handful of fortune cookies, please.”
Kim grimaced as we watched Mitzi eat enough for ten starving Chinese children.
“This is so good that I can hardly stand it,” Mitzi purred. “Whitney, aren’t you hungry?”
“I filled up on the cashew chicken and the beef and broccoli, thanks.”
Kim glanced at her watch. “We’ve only got twenty minutes until we have to be back at the office.”
Mitzi waved down a waiter. “Will you put these in those cute little boxes you have? And add extra rice and a few packets of soy sauce, please?”
“This did taste good,” I admitted. “I’ve been craving Chinese food for three days.”
Mitzi looked up from the fortune cookies she was disemboweling. “If you crave Chinese food, I wonder what pregnant Chinese women crave?”
Tacos, maybe?
Mitzi happily settled down to read and eat her fortune cookies.
“You don’t believe in those things, do you?” Kim asked.
Mitzi looked hurt, as if Kim had questioned her intelligence. “Of course not, but sometimes they offer wise advice.” She picked up one of the tiny bits of paper and read, “‘A woman who wishes to be to be equal to a man lacks ambition.’” She looked up proudly. “See?”
Kim plucked a fortune out of Mitzi’s pile and read it aloud. “‘You are fond of Chinese food.’”
Mitzi nodded solemnly. “It’s true, isn’t it?”
“We’re in a Chinese restaurant, Mitzi, why wouldn’t we be fond of Chinese food?”
“Try another one.” Mitzi pushed the pile of unread papers toward Kim, who took one reluctantly.
“‘Beware of offensive odors coming from strange people.’” Kim rolled her eyes, “Excellent suggestion, don’t you think?”
“Now you, Whitney,” Mitzi insisted.
The only written advice I take comes from scripture, but I humored her. I picked one that looked promising and read aloud. “‘Never wear your best dress to a taffy pull.’”
Hmm. “Maybe you are right, Mitzi
. That’s very sound advice, and I plan to follow it.”
Fortune cookies are like so many other dead-end bunny trails people follow trying to find wisdom and happiness—pointless, useless or even, sometimes, harmful. If people would only look to God first for their insights, we’d all save a lot of time and energy. And calories.
“Once I had a cookie that said, ‘Do not eat your fried rice cold,’” Mitzi said. “I ate lukewarm fried rice at that very restaurant before I opened the cookie.”
“And?” Kim said wearily.
“I got food poisoning from it. I should have opened the cookie first.”
Fervently wishing I hadn’t had rice for lunch, I gathered the leftover boxes so that our little group could go back to work.
Estrogen and maternal vibes emanate from our office in clouds these days. They travel like sound waves through space. Everyone who comes within ten feet of Innova’s door senses that something unusual is going on inside. We’ve become a hatchery with everyone sitting on an egg. It could be the Shh. Baby’s Sleeping sign on the office door that gives it away or the fact that Mitzi has supplied the waiting room with books like Name the Baby and Creative Baby Names for the Twenty-first Century.
I don’t appreciate this trend toward making up baby names. I don’t care if my child shares a name with others. Why would anyone want to name their sweet little baby Mabrinina, Chelsetta or Zigfroid? There are babies named after garden tools—Spade, for example—and weather—like Stormie and Raine. Whatever happened to Susan, Dick and Jane?
Unfortunately, Chase and I don’t share the same opinions about names. That’s a bridge I’m dreading having to cross when we finally come to it.
Harry and Bryan walk around us as though we’re bombs with faulty timers that will explode unexpectedly at any minute. I’m not unstable—in a TNT or nitroglycerin sort of way—but I understand their concern about Mitzi. Most days she’s totally unhinged.
She’s currently researching baby names by country. This week it’s Ireland. Although she says she already has favorite names, she feels obliged to continue to do research. She compiles lists of names she likes and then gives them to Kim and me with the order that we cannot choose our babies’ names from the list. This week we aren’t allowed to name our babies Alana, Aislinn, Brianna, Bridget, Cathleen, Cara, Claire, Colleen, Dierdra, Shauna or Turlach.
