Yes, she thought. Maybe if she bought the test she'd get her period. She threw the EPT into her shopping cart and made her way toward the cashier. But before she got there she stopped back at the feminine hygiene aisle, took the big blue box of tampons out of her cart, and put it back on the shelf.
That night at home, she looked at her swollen naked breasts in the full-length mirror on the back of her bathroom door, and then looked down at the body that had carried and brought forth Heidi twenty-four years earlier and Jeff seventeen years earlier. Her body, which was undeniably a little too round in the belly, too wide in the waist, too meaty around the hips, and had no tone whatsoever anywhere else, and she wondered what would become of it after a mid-life pregnancy.
Dear God, she thought, I don't think I can do this. When this child is seven years old, I'll be a fifty-year-old woman. Babies cry all night. Babies feed on demand. Babies require constant care every minute. Am I ready to give up the travel I postponed, first to have kids, then to go to school, and then because I was too busy at work?
Just as I was getting to the point in my life where I could take a big deep breath. Her breasts pulsed with a hot ache from deep inside. So soon into the pregnancy. A baby who will come forcing its way into the world past gray pubic hairs. No! The pubic hairs would be shaved. Oh please. She'd forgotten that indignity and the enema that went with it, and the awful itch when the hair started to grow in. And that was the least of the physical discomfort.
Years of no sleep, potty training, the terrible twos. Maybe this is PMS, she thought. Maybe my forty-two-year-old hormones are so out of whack they're causing me to lose my mind. Maybe they're making me imagine that I could actually still be fertile. She took the early pregnancy test out of the bag and looked at the box, opened it, and took out the directions. She had picked this particular test because it didn't require her to use her first morning urine, the way some of them did. This was one she could do at any time. Like right now.
She removed the funny dipstick from the box, watching herself in the mirror as if it were someone else performing this bizarre act. Then she locked the bathroom door so Stan wouldn't pop in on her, and then found that she didn't remotely have any urge to urinate. In fact she was certain she couldn't have squeezed out even a drop. For a long time she stood leaning against the tile counter, staring at herself, wondering what to do.
Pregnant. Mother, I'm pregnant. Gracie would probably laugh at her, then tell her about all the other cultures where older women had babies. No, she wouldn't tell Gracie, or Heidi or Jeff yet. When she found out if she was pregnant, which she knew she was, she would tell Stan and discuss the truth, which was that having a baby at this stage of their lives was probably a big mistake.
Dr. Gwen Phillips was in her late thirties. When Barbara was being escorted from the reception area to an examining room, after a wait that was only as long as it took to fill out a few forms, she passed the young female gynecologist's office and saw the doctor at her desk holding a baby boy.
"That's the doctor's son," the nurse told Barbara.
Maybe I'm lulling myself into a false sense of security here, Barbara thought, feeling defiant and proud of herself for finally breaking the Howie Kramer cycle, but I like this doctor already and I haven't even met her yet. When she'd undressed and was seated on the table, the first thing she noticed was the little knitted bootielike casings around each of the stirrups. Obviously they were put there to make the damn things feel a little softer and warmer. When Gwen Phillips entered, she was carrying a pillow which she gently placed behind Barbara's back.
"Mrs. Singer," she said. "I just checked your urine, and I hope this is good news. You're pregnant."
"I know," Barbara said. "I knew before I did the early pregnancy test. I've been trying to figure out how I got so careless. And frankly I'm not so sure if it's good news or not."
"Tell me your concerns and maybe I can help," the doctor said.
Howie Kramer, Barbara thought, you will never see me again. At least not without my pants on. "My concerns. Well, let's see, where do I start? My daughter is twenty-four and my son is seventeen. When I tell them, they'll probably disown me. I have a full-time career, and clients who really need me. I was recently entertaining the thought of retirement so I could do nothing for a few years. I will probably have to wear glasses to see my own baby. I dye my hair to get rid of the gray and I know for a fact that's unhealthy for pregnancies, and most of all, I don't want to interrupt my sleep on Saturday mornings to watch 'Smurfs.' "
The pretty young doctor was serious. "Are you saying you want to terminate the pregnancy?''
Barbara felt a distant wave of nausea heading in her direction. "I don't know what I'm saying. I mean, I thought I was on my way to being a grandmother. Granted, an early grandmother, but not this. A mommy, again. I mean . . . listen, I wanted to come in just to be sure that I was, but now that I know that I truly am . . . I have to think this through."
"If it helps, I can assure you that I've delivered many healthy babies to women your age and much older too, and with proper prenatal care and testing, the pregnancies and the deliveries have been problem-free."
"Oh, it's not the pregnancy or the delivery, though I'll admit they worry me a little," Barbara said. "It's really the time after the pregnancy and delivery that worries me. The part where they look at you one day and say, 'Mom, get off my case.' "
The doctor smiled. "I understand," she said. "Listen, why don't I give you a prescription for some prenatal vitamins and you can call me in a few days and we can talk about it some more." After she wrote the prescription, the doctor shook Barbara's hand, said to call her at any time day or night if she just needed a sounding board about the pregnancy, and left the room.
"You have great hair," Barbara said to her, but the doctor didn't hear that because she was already out the door and on to put a pillow behind the back of her next patient.
44
RUTHIE WAS ALONE in the Zimmerman and Milton cubbyhole of an office at the network trying to make the script come together, but it wasn't happening. Her face throbbed with exhaustion, and she was wondering if the fluorescent lights were really dimming or if her eyes were going bad from too many hours of close work when she heard someone walking down the hall. Probably it was the night-shift guard checking to see who was left in the building. Maybe she would knock off now, gather her things together and ask the guard to walk her out to her car. It was late and she'd been so engrossed, she'd forgotten to check in at home. Both Shelly and Sid would be asleep by now.
The footsteps stopped and she looked up, sure it was a mirage when she saw Louie Kweller.
"I was already in the parking lot when I spotted your light on up here so I came to say hello," he said. "I guess we're the only two fanatics who work this late."
"Hi," she said, surprised at how happy she was to see him, and worried about how bad she must look, since she'd been sitting in that same spot for the last six hours, and her hair was probably frizzed out to the moon.
"So what's happening?" he asked as if they'd just bumped into each other on a street corner instead of in the back-hall offices at CBS, at what Ruthie, without looking at a clock, knew had to be at least two in the morning.
"What's happening is that I can't figure out how to end the second act," she said.
"Well, let's see," Louie said, and she could tell by his expression that he was searching for something cute to say. "How about if she runs into a guy she knew a long time ago, and she can't believe that she never noticed before what a sexy hunk he is? He's crazy about her, always has been, so she starts dating him and the next thing you know, they get married, and have a few kids together. She already has one kid, and he's so happy to have siblings that he thrives. Then they all live happily ever after, because their life is made into a movie of the week."
"I'll use it," she said. "Have your agent call me to negotiate the fee."
Louie wandered over and sat in Shelly's chair across from her,
right under the needlepoint sampler that said DYING IS EASY, COMEDY IS HARD. The night was very black outside and Ruthie looked at the window's reflection of her messy office and Louie leaning back in the chair as he gazed at her. The fluorescent lights hummed like crickets.
"Listen," he said after a while, "I don't want to do something bad to Shelly. He's a terrific man. Talented and smart and a good person. I also think your loyalty to him is awesome. But as far as we know, we each only get one life, and maybe you ought to think about having some romance in yours. Maybe even another baby. I'll make a baby with you, or two or three."
"Louie," she said, looking at his serious face and wishing she didn't feel like crying. "You don't even know me. I'm overwhelming, I'm needy, I crack dumb jokes at all the wrong times. I look ugly in the morning, not just sleepy but like a beast. I go on strange diets that make me cranky, or should I say crankier because I can be a complete bitch, and I may need some expensive dental work coming up in the near future."
"I understand that you feel that way, and I just want to go on record as telling you you're my favorite person in Hollywood. I think you're funnier than Joan Rivers, deeper than Anjelica Huston, sweeter than Melanie Griffith, and—"
"Taller than Danny DeVito," Ruthie said.
"Yeah. That too."
"See, I told you I make dumb jokes."
"Unfortunately for you I happen to like that in a woman. In fact I like it a lot. In the old days at the Comedy Store, I used to have the wildest crush on you. Remember the night a zillion years ago when Frankie Levy did your run about supermarkets?"
Did she remember? "It was the night Shelly and I got our first prime-time television job," she said.
"Well, I wanted to come over to you right after Frankie walked offstage, grab you, and take you away to an island somewhere and jump on you, but Eddie Shindler was doing my stuff next so I had to watch him."
"You mean you put your career before my sex life?" she teased.
"You and Shelly must have left early that night, because I looked for you, and when you were gone I felt like a jerk and just figured maybe I ought to leave you alone, so here I am, how many years later? Don't answer that, and I'm making another try for you and that island. So what do you say?"
"I say it's a pretty thought, Louie, but I don't think I can accept."
"I'll tell you what. Why don't you ask Shelly about it? Talk to him. I know for a fact that he loves you. So maybe you should ask him if you shouldn't spend some time with me to see if you like me, and I guarantee you he'll say you should go for it. And, Ruthie, I promise you, if it works out with us, when the time comes and Shelly needs you to take care of him, I'll never resent one minute of your doing that. I'll help you do it. I'll support your doing it. Only I'm asking you to not give up your own life now in anticipation of that time."
"Louie, I've trusted too many people who disappointed me. Your speech about the Comedy Store and the island is great. And I mean it as a compliment when I tell you it sounds just like something one of the characters from your show would say. I wish with my soul that you meant it, and maybe you do. But in my repertoire of feelings, the ability to be swept away by romantic love doesn't exist anymore."
"I understand," Louie said softly. "I understand. So why don't I walk you to your car?"
Shelly was having the time of his life with the computer. The woman Ruthie hired from the Writers' Computer Store spent three afternoons with him, and by the time she left after their third session, he was up and running on what had a week earlier been "the dreaded machine." Ruthie could hear him in his room, now and then emitting a "this is incredible," dazzled by his own prowess. Sometimes he would come and get her and make her stand behind him to observe the magic tricks of moving and editing text, telling her that this gift made up for all the toys he never had as a kid.
She no longer went to work fearing she was leaving him at home to watch daytime television. In fact when she called him from the office, he would talk to her in a kind of mindless answering-the-questions-without-listening style that she knew meant he was being distracted by the computer.
After a while he began frequenting the computer store himself to find out what he was missing and found what he called bells and whistles galore. He bought software for screenwriting and tried out the new format by writing funny opening scenes of silly movies to amuse himself and to make Ruthie laugh when she got home.
At the end of five weeks he started writing a real screenplay. Often when Ruthie got home and found her way to his room Sid would be on Shelly's lap where he'd fallen asleep from boredom while Shelly typed madly away in that kind of glazed-over otherworldly writer place inside his brain.
Sometimes he was already sitting there, or still sitting there, in the morning when Ruthie woke to the sounds of Sid stirring in the nursery. This morning it was the clickity clicking of the computer keys that woke her, and she walked into the room where Shelly was working feverishly. For a while she stood in the doorway watching him, then finally she spoke.
"Shel."
"Hmmm."
"What would you say if I told you you were right about Louie Kweller?"
"You mean that he's a rich asshole?"
"No, that I should start dating him."
"I'd say hallelujah." She walked into the room now and looked at his face.
"Hey, I think you should pursue him with everything you've got. Maybe he can pay for Sid's bar mitzvah. By the time the kid is thirteen, the cake alone will cost five hundred thousand."
"You don't mean it. You're pissed off. I know the way your eyes get all bugged out when you're annoyed."
"You're confusing me with Peter Lorre. I'm not annoyed. Can you get him to adopt me and pay my medical bills?"
"Is this your way of saying yes?"
"I don't know why you think you need my permission, but yes. It's a yes. Tell him to come on over."
Louie began by calling her at work every day, and soon he was sending flowers and gifts and cards. One day he sent over an actor in a gorilla suit to her office, and the gorilla brought flowers and serenaded her and the entire writing staff. When the gorilla, paid extra by Louie Kweller to do so, lifted an enraged Zev Ryder above his head and spun him around, all of them laughed out loud.
"I want her to marry him," Shelly said one day in group. "I want her to have a future and I want that for Sid too. I joke around about Louie, but he has a lot of great qualities."
"It sounds as if you're saying that it's okay with you for Ruthie to leave you and be with Louie," Barbara said.
"I'd like to give the bride away," Shelly said, but Barbara detected the fear behind all he was saying. It made sense that he would worry that Louie might take his place, not just as Ruthie's love, but as Sid's.
"Yeah, well, what about Sid?" Judith asked. The group worked in a way that allowed all of them to challenge one another freely, and none of them was afraid to speak out.
"He'll still be our son. And sometimes he'll be with me. And sometimes with them. It's a hell of a lot more amicable than a divorce."
"Louie and I are just dating," Ruthie said. "I'm not getting married so fast."
"Why not?" Shelly flared, and everyone, especially Ruthie, seemed taken aback by his anger. "Don't postpone your life waiting for me to die, Ruthie. Because I refuse to oblige. I don't need you to take care of me. I've got a nearly finished screenplay I'm going to sell, and a million other ideas for things to write and do, and I won't have you stop living because you're waiting for me to stop living. If Louie is serious and you love him, it's going to be the best thing for all of us if you goddamned marry the rich bastard. And don't you dare turn me into the reason you're not doing it. I'm calling the caterer the minute we get out of here."
Ruthie, who had been holding tears inside during his tirade, let them go now, and she wept openly, struggling for her words which came out in spurts. "I can't . . . I don't think I can. I don't want to ruin our . . . I can't."
"Well, you'd better figure
out why you can't and not put the blame on me," Shelly said tenderly and put an arm around her while she covered her face with her hands, embarrassed to be crying so hard in front of the others.
"Ruthie," Barbara said, "Shelly's right. You need to work on why you're so unsure about how to proceed when it comes to having a relationship with a man who offers you sexual intimacy, and the real possibility of a marriage."
Ruthie shook her head. "I don't know," she said and sniffled, and Lainie handed her a Kleenex. "I think about it all the time. Maybe because when my brothers died it was so painful it made me afraid, or maybe it's because nobody ever really wanted me before the way Louie does, so I don't believe him, or maybe it's because I wanted to keep up the ruse for Sid that Shelly and I are a conventional couple. I don't . . . I don't . . . " Then she turned in her chair and faced Shelly and took his hand. "I love you so much," she said. "I can never tell you how you are my life and my love, because it was your love for me that gave me a life and a reason to survive."
Shelly smiled at her, holding both of her hands in his, and when their eyes met he said, "Likewise I'm sure. And it's because I feel this way about you that I'm telling you it's time to move on." Then he stood and moved her to her feet and took her in his arms and hugged her. And when the hug broke and Ruthie blew her nose, Rick said, "Yeah, but the real bottom line question is . . . when do I get to read the nearly finished screenplay?"
"I'll bring it in next week," Shelly said, and everyone laughed.
45
YOU OKAY?" Stan asked, curling up next to Barbara, fitting himself against the curve of her back, further warming her already very warm body. She was only half asleep. All evening long she'd been dozing a little, then opening her eyes to peek at the clock and wonder if his plane had landed and how long it would take him to get home. Now she could let herself drift into that unconscious world because he was there and safe. She started to float there, then jumped, remembering in her misty state that she'd been saving the big news to tell him in person.
The Stork Club Page 37
