“I can’t believe I am fucking doing this,” Lila says.
Lila’s warm breath on my ear and her saying “fucking” and the fact that my legs are spread and that I haven’t had sex or even touched anyone in six months makes me start to giggle. The noise is a bit hysterical and high-pitched and sounds like my mother’s laugh when she is with her brothers and sisters. The giggling tickles me from the inside out, and the tickling keeps me going.
“Gracie,” Lila says.
I look up and see the teacher, a plump woman well past childbearing years, glaring at me, and all of the couples in the class, collapsed on the floor in similar positions to Lila and me, watching. There are seven other couples, and each one is made up of a pregnant woman and a male coach. They are looking at me, wedged between my sister’s thighs, as if they are considering calling a family services agency and having my baby removed from my immoral, negligent care before he or she is even born.
“Sorry,” I mutter to the room at large.
“Now, class,” the teacher says. “Let’s get to work on that breathing. The breath is the key to a beautiful childbirth experience. I want both mommies and coaches to follow along. This is the breath that I want you to practice at home, and whenever you feel stressed and achy. This will be the foundation of your labor; this is what will save you from the pain. Come on now, here we go, it’s two short breaths in and one long release breath out. Hee-hee-hoo. Hee-hee-hoo.”
“Hee-hee-hoo,” the class says.
“Hee-hee-hoo,” Lila says into my ear.
The baby gives me a mighty kick in the stomach then, which seems like a clear message that I am in trouble. This strikes me as rather obnoxious, because I didn’t need the air knocked out of me to learn that. I have no time to recover because the teacher is still looking doubtfully in my direction as if she has the number for the Department of Youth and Family Services on speed dial. I struggle through the pain for a breath. My first effort is more of a wheeze than anything else. I am trying to follow along and not stand out from the group, who are deep-breathing as though their lives depend on it. But as hard as I try and as deep down in my lungs as I reach, there is no force to my breath. There is no conviction, no strength, no faith that this is going to save me from anything. “Hee-hee-hoo.”
AFTER CLASS I am tempted to go home, change back into my pajamas, and climb into bed. But there is a party later, and I have vowed to take action and not spend all my time in the house, so instead I stop home just long enough to pick up the white iced cake and then continue on to my parents’. I drive slowly these days because I don’t feel entirely confident sitting as far away from the steering wheel as my belly demands. I can’t reach well enough to wrap my hands around the wheel, only the tops of my fingers.
I think of Gram giving up driving, and wonder if this is how she felt before she handed over her keys, just barely in control. The thought of Gram makes my back ache and I have to work to stay upright and in contact with the wheel. You’ll see her this afternoon, I tell myself. She is the reason you didn’t fight the idea of this ridiculous shower. This will mean something to Gram. She will want to give the baby a gift. It might be money.
I pull into my parents’ driveway and park behind my mother’s convertible. I get out of the car and then lean back in for the homemade cake. When I am upright with my purse looped around my elbow and the cake balanced on my palms, I notice how humid and sticky the day is. The sky is overcast and after two minutes I feel sweat run down my back between my shoulder blades. I am not dressed for the party yet, thank goodness. I am wearing shorts and a huge T-shirt. I have set aside my one maternity sundress for the event. It is light blue and clean, so I figure it should make my mother happy and keep Meggy quiet and kill Angel’s last hopes. Not that I should be scared of them anymore. For God’s sake, I am getting married. I will be giving this child a mother and a father, and that is all I need in order to fight my family off, right?
I walk around to the back of the house with cautious steps, wondering how to break the news to my mother. Remember Grayson? He’s one of my ex-boyfriends who you did know about, remember? Well, he’s asked me to marry him and I’ve said yes.
I think she will be happy. This is good, solid, presentable news that she can share with her women’s group and her family. I think this should go all right. I open the back door and then pause to kick off my flip-flops. I leave them on the tile floor next to my mother’s favorite sandals and a pair of my father’s shoes that I’ve never seen before. I place the cake on the kitchen counter and then, out of habit, look in their refrigerator. There is not much normal food to pick at, because the space is filled with plastic catering platters filled with crudités and bite-size sandwiches and three different kinds of cookies. I grab a bottle of water off the door of the refrigerator and walk into the hall. I am just about to call out my mother’s name when I see movement and a flash of color from the corner of my eye. I unscrew the water bottle as I look into the living room. I expect to see my mother walking toward me, or to see her reading in one of the chairs. I take a deep breath, and tell myself that I can have an adult conversation with her. I can do this.
But what I see is my mother standing in the middle of the living room pressed up against a man who is not my father. This man is shorter than my father, and he is overweight with dark slicked-back hair. My mother’s hands are on the nape of this man’s neck; she has her fingers in his hair. As I watch, she lifts her face off his chest. It is my mother, but she looks different than I have ever seen her. She has a changed, softened face. She is crying, her cheeks are wet, and then she is kissing this man. Her lips are pressed against his. His hands are moving around the small of her back. I know kisses, and this is the unhurried, soft kind that leads straight to the nearest bed.
My heart is beating so hard I can hear it in my ears. I am afraid the couple in the living room can hear it, too. I feel wetness on my stomach and notice that I have spilled half of the water bottle on myself and the floor. There is a dark spot on the beige carpet in front of my feet. I take a few tiptoed steps backward, until I am safely in the kitchen. I stand there in the half-dark for a full minute. I am shaking, and I wonder what I should do.
No answers come, except that I have to leave. I am certain that if my mother knew I saw her, she would never forgive me. I know that in this moment, as well as I know anything. I reach into my purse and pull out the Happy Anniversary card I bought to go with the cake. Still shaking, I pick up the cake and drop it and the card into the garbage bin under the sink. The white icing sticks and slides down the side of the plastic bag. The cake folds in half slowly and deliberately before it comes to rest on top of coffee grounds and a milk container.
I look down at the cake for a minute, amazed that I have done this. I think this may be the most aggressive thing I have ever done, after deciding to keep this baby. The sight makes the crazy giggles start up in my stomach again. I clamp my hand over my mouth, tiptoe to the door, and gather up my flip-flops. Barefoot, I leave the house. But when I turn to close the door behind me, I lose my balance. I reach my hand out to keep myself from falling, and, caught under the full weight of my body, the door slams shut. The noise is amazingly loud. It seems to boom through the entire neighborhood. The giggles rise up through me then, like bubbles swimming for the surface, and I let go.
Hugging my flip-flops to my chest, choking on laughter, I run awkwardly down the back steps, across the top of the back lawn, and down the burning-hot driveway. It occurs to me as I huff and puff and snort, my heart pounding so hard I have to worry about whether this is bad for the baby, that this is the second time I have run today, after months of near complete inactivity. I may well be headed toward a heart attack, or something worse I don’t yet know the name of. With all the grace of a St. Bernard, I hurl myself into the car, turn on the engine, and reverse until I am on the street. I don’t allow myself to look back as I drive away, because I can’t bear to see my mother and Mayor Carrelli staring out at m
e from the living-room window.
FOR TWENTY minutes I drive up and down the streets in my parents’ neighborhood. The giggles have died away and left me weak but focused. I repeatedly pass the access roads that lead to their block. At first I am not aware of what I’m doing. I’m busy getting my breath and heart under control. I concentrate on the idea that there is someone else in my body and that I have to be cautious for her. My fingers keep sweating, which seems odd. I wipe them off on my T-shirt and return them to the wheel. I study each car that passes. When I am able to think clearly, I know that I am looking for my father. I am watching for his pickup truck. I need to keep him from turning onto his street, into his driveway. I need to stop him at all costs. I decide that if I see my father I will honk and wave and gesture for him to follow me. I don’t know where I will take him, but I can figure that out when the time comes. I have no doubt that he would follow. He would follow Lila or me anywhere. He would think I needed him and he would never disappoint me.
But on one of my swings past my parents’ street, I see a familiar-looking beat-up Honda paused at the entrance as if deciding whether to turn left or right. It is the mayor’s car. I recognize it because sometimes Joel had to drive it on one of his spying missions or to bring it to the shop. I can see the shape of the mayor’s dog in the backseat. I didn’t see the car near my parents’ house while I was there; the mayor must have parked it down the street. Perhaps—now that anything was possible —he and my mother meet like this every afternoon. Maybe part of the thrill for them is getting away with it in the middle of the day, in my mother’s own home, where her husband or her kids could—and finally one did—walk in at any moment.
I drive faster, so the mayor doesn’t recognize me. I see only the blur of his dark hair and white face, his stomach pressed against the steering wheel. I don’t circle back this time. My mother’s lover is gone. There is nothing I can protect my father from now. I keep going, pointed toward home.
When I get there, Lila is still in the oversized sweatshirt and baseball hat, as though she is trying to hide from someone in her own house. She is in the kitchen making iced tea. She points toward the TV room.
“I know,” I say, “I saw his car.” I watch her for a minute, stirring tea and lemon and honey in the big crystal pitcher Gram gave us when she moved into the assisted-living center. She adds the ice cubes last. I am waiting to see if I am going to tell her what I just saw at Mom and Dad’s house. But nothing comes out of my mouth. I can’t even begin to think of the words it would take to explain.
I say, “I wasn’t able to talk to Mom.”
“That’s the problem with Mom,” she says. “Nobody can.”
I watch Lila mix the tea with a big wooden spoon for another moment, then go into the TV room. Grayson is sitting on the couch holding the remote. The TV is not on. I know he was eavesdropping, listening to Lila and me talk, trying to gather information.
“Now’s not a good time,” I say. “I have to get ready.”
He looks me over with stunned eyes. “Look how big you are,” he says.
“Thanks a lot.” I know I look disgusting. I have sweated through my T-shirt in places. My hair has gone flat; it is sticking to my neck.
“I’m not leaving,” he says. “You invited me to the shower on my answering machine. You haven’t returned my calls since I got back from Seattle.”
“What is there to say back to an invitation?”
“We have to talk, Gracie, and not in front of your entire family. We need to make plans.”
When he says that, I have the image of a seat belt being fastened. I hear the final click as metal hits metal. I feel tired, and sit down in the nearest chair.
“Do you need something?” Grayson asks. He leans forward, still holding the remote control. “Some water? You look pale.”
“I could have this baby at any time,” I tell him, but really I am telling myself. I just realized it today for the first time, during birthing class, while driving, in the hallway watching my mother kiss Mayor Carrelli, lowering myself heavily into this chair. Time is moving by so fast, spinning me, flipping me along like a leaf on an empty sidewalk. I need to put my foot down. “We should get married soon,” I say. “Maybe this week.”
“This week? All right . . . sure. We can go down to the county courthouse.” Grayson gathers himself. He is not used to me meeting him anywhere near halfway. I wonder what he will say when I tell him I’ve been sending out my résumé in an effort to get more freelance writing work, to supplement my Bergen Record income. I’ve even been looking over the journal I’ve kept while pregnant, wondering whether it might be publishable. I think it might be. I think it might be of interest to other young women.
“I can take care of the license,” he says. “I know someone in the department. We’ll just show up at the courthouse and do this and then you’ll move in with me. We can invite family to the ceremony, or not. But you’re right, it needs to be done. It’s important that we get married before our baby is born.”
He sees the look I give him. “We’re getting married, so it is our baby, Gracie. I will be the baby’s father. You know very well that Joel has no interest in being involved.”
“I never asked him,” I say. “Did you?”
He looks down at his hands, and I realize that he did. I should have known. Grayson is thorough; he does his research. He probably felt Joel out before he proposed to me the second time. It is a strange thought. I rarely think of Joel; I don’t want him in my life. But still, it is a different thing altogether to know that he told Grayson he wanted nothing to do with us, the baby and me.
“Gracie?”
“There’s one more thing,” I say. “We’ll live here. I don’t want to move.”
He takes off his glasses and then puts them back on, something I have seen him do during meetings when he is caught off guard. “You want me to move in with you and your sister? I have a great apartment overlooking the Hudson River and the city. We can have our privacy. There’s a second bedroom for the baby.”
“Maybe later,” I say. “I want to bring my baby home to my house.”
“Have you discussed this with your sister?”
I shake my head. “No.”
Grayson studies me. I know he doesn’t understand what is going on in my head and that that excites him. He enjoys the challenge. I know that I have already done the worst thing I can do to him by shutting him out these past few weeks. Nothing I say to him can be as bad as the silence, the absence of information. “So, this week?” he says. “We’re really going to do it?”
His words sound odd to my ears, because there is no question. This is simply the right decision, the safe decision, the only decision. This is my leap forward. The baby thumps hard in my belly. “Yes,” I say. “This week.”
Then, our conversation over, something resolved, I go upstairs. I strip off my clothes and stand under a stream of cold water in the shower. I just stand there at first, eyes shut. My mind flicks past the image of my mother and the mayor kissing, then the sight of me sleeping beside Grayson, then the scary video of a birth I saw at the hospital. None of the images are upsetting; I feel instead as if I’m watching someone else’s life. The pictures fall away as suddenly as they appeared, and all that is left is the cold water against my skin. The patter of drops, the coolness, the wet.
Then, slowly, my hands start moving. It takes a moment for me to realize what I’m doing. My hands have set out to cover the extensive groundwork of my body. Starting first with the face, then moving to the neck, the shoulders, the breasts, then lingering over the swollen belly. No inch of skin is left untouched. It takes a long time. My fingers stroking, memorizing, documenting, greeting, accepting.
LILA
I arrive at my parents’ house an hour before the party, as instructed. I am wearing a sundress, because my mother asked me to. She wanted me to show up early so I could help with last minute setup, but as with all gatherings hosted by my mother, there is nothing t
o do. She is so organized and prepared that everything has been taken care of. During every Christmas afternoon in my life, while other families raced around the kitchen, passing pots and pans and checking the roast, wondering if they would be ready in time for their guests, my family was silently lounging in our party clothes, flipping through magazines and newspapers and waiting for the doorbell to ring.
The party platters were dropped off this morning by the caterers, and the flowers have been set out. I folded the napkins decoratively yesterday, and my father bought pastel-colored balloons. There is a cake in the shape of a rattle in the downstairs refrigerator. My mother is upstairs taking a shower and my father has disappeared.
I wander through the house. I want to keep moving. I am nervous, with all of the symptoms: butterflies in my stomach, mild diarrhea, dry mouth. I went to the registrar’s office this week and filled out the three forms necessary to drop out of medical school. The head registrar, a square-faced woman in her forties, seemed very happy to tell me that I am the only student in the last decade to drop out at the beginning of the fourth year. It seems that the students in their fine institution who have made it as far as I did—three-quarters of the way—usually manage to hang in there.
I e-mailed Belinda, because it seemed right to let her know that her arch nemesis had left the picture, making her number one by default. I can’t deny that that bothers me, a little. I enjoyed kicking Belinda’s ass. I’ll need to find a new hobby, a new punching bag. I’ll also need to find a job. The registrar has alerted the Office of Student Loans that I am no longer in school, and so I will need to begin paying off my debt. I have no idea what I am going to do.
Lately, I haven’t done much. I’ve watched TV, eaten a lot of Cheddar-flavored Goldfish crackers, and sat on the back porch in the sun. I’ve put on big, shapeless clothes and a hat and gone to birthing classes with Gracie. Those moments in the hospital, incognito, sitting with my legs wrapped around my sister listening to the detailed description—a horror story really—of what it feels like to give birth, have been like an out-of-body experience. How did I end up there? What made me think I could coach Gracie through this? How could I possibly be of any help?
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