For the next couple of miles, we both just sat there and listened to the radio, looking at morning traffic. It was still Monday morning, and it seemed like the city was just starting to wake up. We were listening to this talk show host letting us in on some of the best-eating-out-in-Seattle-for-under-twenty-bucks secrets, when all of a sudden Mom, who had taken over the wheel after we had dropped Stella off, pulled over and stopped the car on the highway.
“Hey! What’s with the dramatic pulling over today?” I asked, holding on to the seatbelt as she parked on the shoulder. “Next thing I know, you’ll be jumping out of a moving vehicle, like Steve-freaking-McQueen,” I teased. But she wasn’t smiling, she wasn’t listening, she wasn’t responding at all. She just sat there with both her hands on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead like she was frozen in time and space.
“Mom?” I tried again.
She didn’t move. Other than her chest moving up and down, she wasn’t moving at all.
“Earth calling Mom! Hey, I see a Starbucks sign ahead,” I tried, pulling the coffee card, but when that didn’t work, she really started to scare me. “Mom?”
When she finally turned and looked at me, I had already seen the big tears on her face. “Ella,” she said, clearly trying to control her wobbly voice. “I’m not in menopause, I-I-I’m,” she stuttered and buried her face in her hands. “I-I-I’m,” she tried once more, still hiding her face.
“You-you-you’re? C’mon, Mom, you’re freaking me out here. Tell me!” Something was not right.
She looked up and tried to tell me something, but, once again, her words were drowned in tears. Something was definitely not right. She had gone from flashing hot to shivering cold in just a matter of seconds, and she was now shaking all over her body. Something was definitely not right.
“Mom?” I tried again, suddenly remembering this heartbreaking three-day-walk-for-breast-cancer commercial I had watched just a few days earlier. In it, there was this young woman wearing a pink t-shirt with a picture of her mom, who had died of breast cancer at the age of forty-one, and it had me made so incredibly sad thinking that it could happen to me too, that I could lose Mom too. Immediately, I felt my entire body go limp. What if she was sick? Wouldn’t a breast exam be part of a routine checkup for women entering menopause? What if they had found something? One out of every eight women, I think the commercial had said. Pretty bad odds, if you asked me. Suddenly it felt as if the car was running out of air. Desperately, I rolled down the window and a breeze of air and gas filled up the car immediately. “Mom,” I whispered as I turned toward her.
“Oh boy. Oh boy,” she whispered, still staring at the cars in front of us. “Oh boy,’ she said a little louder and slammed her head against the steering wheel, hyperventilating at the same time.
“Now take a deep breath, Mom. Remember what you always tell me; deep breaths. Take deep breaths. Breathe in, breathe out,” I suggested, trying to do it myself.
She nodded and took a deep breath, but halfway through the exhaling part, she suddenly tossed the door open and threw herself onto the shoulder lane—alarmingly close to cars going sixty-five miles per hour.
“Mom?” I cried, trying to get out of my seatbelt. “What the heck?”
“I’m okay. I’m okay.” Her head appeared in the door. She looked even paler than before. “Ella, sit down,” she demanded without looking at me.
“I am,” I said pulling hard at the seatbelt.
She looked up and burped. “Oh, excuse me,” she said almost smiling. “Ella, the weirdest thing has happened. I’m... I’m... I’m...” She stared down into the car seat, shaking her head.
“You are WHAT, Mom?” I said pulling hard at the seatbelt at the same time, still nervous as hell.
“Pregnant,” she cried. She got up on her elbows and looked at me with a big silly grin, frantically shaking her head. Then all of a sudden, she disappeared again, and I heard the unmistakable sound of vomiting.
“Pregnant?” I pulled hard at the seatbelt one more time and almost crashed my head into my knees when it finally clicked. I leaned over. “Pregnant?” She’s pregnant? Mom’s pregnant?
Her head popped up again. Her face was speckled with tears, looking almost as if every little tear had blended into every single freckle on her face. She wiped her face on her tank top, flashing her belly and half her bra, and nodded.
My head bobbed up and down, hard. Thank God, she’s not sick. Mom wasn’t going to end as some heartbreaking statement on a pink t-shirt on a three-day walk in Washington. She’s okay. She’s going to be okay.
And pregnant.
Mom reached for my hand and squeezed it a little too tight. “Heartbeat,” I think she whispered.
“Heartbeat?” I asked and felt my own heart skipping a few.
She opened her eyes and looked at me through a heavy curtain of tears and nodded.
“Good, right? Wings, bad. Heartbeat, good? Right?” I said slightly raising my voice. Why was I talking in loud one syllable words? She was upset, not deaf. “Good thing, right?”
Finally, she looked up and nodded. “But how? I can’t be. I mean, how?”
“Well, I guess you know how.” I smiled. “Remember what we talked about the other day—about when you and Dad tried to talk to me about the “one and only” and the double on co-co-condoms in your own sweet but kinda embarrassing way?”
She smiled and grabbed a Starbucks napkin from the cup holder. “It’s good. It’s good, right?” she said, wiping her nose. “This time, I’m almost ten weeks pregnant, and we did see a tiny beautiful heartbeat in there. Nothing’s written in stone, but it’s better than no heartbeat, right? And my OB said...” Her voice trailed off. She stared out the window and took in a shaky breath. “Oh, what am I even saying here? Do I even want a baby? I mean, I’m over forty, and I never expected this, not now, hell, not ever.” She turned toward me and blew out air in way that made her look like a huge human puffer fish, and I couldn’t help smiling. I guess I felt both relieved and kinda shocked at the same time. She was all right, but pregnant? Pregnant, as in actually having a baby? Mom? Now?
“Of course, you want a baby. You’ve always wanted a baby. Besides, forty is the new twenty, right?” I moved a little closer and put my cheek against hers. Her face was wet with tears. “Oh Mom, I’m so happy for you. Why didn’t you tell me right away?”
She reached down and grabbed the last Starbucks napkin and handed it to me. “I just did. I couldn’t tell you earlier with Stella there. We started out this morning by going to the hospital to get rid of a baby, not to have one, but-but-but,” she started stuttering all over again, “but-but-but now we’re having two. Twins,” she cried hysterically. “Oh my God, we’re having twins!” she cried, stomping her feet against the floor.
“Twins? Fuck! There are two in there?!” I jumped back in my seat and stared at her flat belly. “Twins?” I said even louder this time. This was getting crazier by the minute.
She shook her head. “No, silly! I mean, no, thank God,” she said, shaking her head even harder. “No, I mean, you and me.” She pointed a finger at the both of us and smiled. “We are having twins.”
“Huh?!” I said, not quite sure exactly what she was getting at, but then all of a sudden it hit me. She was having a baby, and I was having a baby almost at the exact same time. Bingo: We were having twins! I didn’t know whether I should cry or laugh.
“Twins,” she repeated, crying and laughing at the same time. I guess you could do both.
“Twins, huh,” I mumbled, but what I really meant to say was “Holy motherfucker!!!” I was having a baby at the same time as my own mom. As if it wasn’t weird enough that I was having a baby, but now Mom was having one, too? Was this really happening?
I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes and listened to the guy on the radio. He had moved on to the ten best places to get a massage in Seattle and some woman caller was explaining the difference between a deep tissue and Shiatsu massage. Sh
e had the most annoying nasal voice I had ever heard, and I imagined what she might look like. It was not pretty.
“Bill and Ben,” Mom said, fastening her seatbelt.
“What?” I opened one eye and looked at her.
“Bill and Ben, the twin trains.” She smiled and turned on the engine. “For the twins,” she explained as she started to drive.
“Oh,” I said trying to build up some kind of enthusiasm. I couldn’t. It was still too weird.
“Molly and Polly?” she suggested, her eyes big.
“Polly?” I sneered like it was the most disgusting name ever. “It kinda makes me think about some nasty big-patterned dress in polyester fabric.”
“Okay.” She nodded and made a rather bold lane shift. “Oops,” she said, as we heard someone from behind honking the horn pretty hard. “Okay! Okay! Sorry, dude.” She waved at the offended driver in the car behind us and slowed down, making another less-hazardous lane shift. “Okay, we won’t do Polly,” she said as the offended driver drove past us in his big Chevy and flipped the finger. “Did you just see that?” she asked with a gasp, looking genuinely offended.
“I did.” I laughed. “I guess not everyone has the same highway patience as you.”
“But the finger? Was that really necessary?” she said in a way that did remind me of Grandma.
“No, Grandma, it wasn’t!”
She reached over and pinched me. “I told you so,” she said, laughing.
I leaned the seat all the way back and looked up at the ceiling. Even if it was just for a minute or two, it felt really nice to laugh and talk about something besides pregnancies and baby names; welcome random Chevy fuck off! But the moment didn’t last long. As soon as we got off the freeway, Mom’s face changed from big silly smile to biting down on her lips.
“Ella, I’m scared shitless,” she whispered, trying to control her trembling voice.
“Me too,” I said, which was not even close to the truth: I was more fucking horrified—constantly walking around with a pulse going more than one hundred and eighty beats per minute! I hugged my knees and looked at Mom. She did look scared, staring at the car in front of us, holding on to the steering wheel like it was some kind of lifesaver, but somehow it only made me feel calmer. Mom, the mother of all heart-shaped-peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwiches-mothers, was scared, too. I guess having a baby was scary at any age. “I know it’s scary,” I said, almost smiling, “It’s actually so scary that I don’t even know what the scariest part is anymore, but I think we’ll be okay.”
She nodded and looked in the rearview mirror before making a right turn. “You think we could wait a few weeks and see what happens with everything before we announce it to the world... And to Dad?” She cleared her throat and continued. “I’m actually only thinking about Dad here.” She pushed back a lock of hair that had fallen into her eyes. “I really don’t care about the rest of the world.”
“I know,” I said, not able to hide the disappointment in my voice. It had only been a few days since she—showered with guilty tears—had told me how she had regretted going behind Dad’s back and lying to him all those years, and now she was doing it all over again.
“I can’t have him go through all of this again,” she tried to explain, when she saw the look on my face. “I mean, if something went wrong again, I could never...” She looked down and took in a shaky breath. “I just think it would be better if Dad never knew. It would break his heart. And I know what you think, that it’s just another secret kept from him, but I’m only trying to protect him. Please say you understand.” She tucked another lock of hair behind her ear and looked at me with her swollen eyes.
“I understand, but that’s not the same as agreeing with you, because I don’t,” I said, looking out the window.
“Thanks.” She grabbed my hand and kissed it. “Can you believe he actually flipped the finger at me, I mean at us—the two pregnant women, that little piece of...” She shook her head and tapped her fingers on the dashboard.
“Well, it’s not exactly a federal crime.” I looked at her profile and was about to say something really lame, when suddenly I realized that I did know what the scariest part was. It was not me, pregnant at seventeen with a symmetric exchange student gone M.I.A. in Germany somewhere. It was not the image of me pushing a stroller up the hill in the sweet Seattle rain. It was not the thought of thirty-nine hours of labor or stretch marks or leaking breasts. The scariest part was the thought of Mom not making it once again—or more precisely—if Mom didn’t make it, and I would. It would break my heart into a million pieces. It already had, just thinking about it.
“What?” she said, looking at me with a big, white smile.
“Nothing,” I lied, still looking at her. In the last half hour she had dealt with sweating, crying, vomiting, shaking, and being mocked by impatient drivers, but still she looked so incredibly beautiful. She looked as if she was glowing in a weird kind of way. Maybe this was the special glow Miss T had referred to as the pregnancy factor? Maybe this was a sign that everything would be okay? There would be no more wings and no more urgent trips to the hospital at five in the morning—except for the arrival of the babies, our two little blue slash green-eyed babies with lots of fuzzy red curls.
I pulled down the mirror and looked at my own face. Did I have it, too? That special I’m-in-touch-with-my-beautiful-inner-self pregnancy glow? I couldn’t really see anything but a red face, but as I was looking at myself I realized this was the first time I had actually thought about the baby as an actual baby. Earlier that morning, sitting all by myself, drinking hot cocoa in the hospital café, thinking about Stella, I had had all kinds of weird black and white images of little tiny ultrasound babies with heartbeats, legs, arms, and tiny little faces. But now, sitting next to the glowing woman with the crazy red hair, I was having an actual visual image of a little chubby baby with big blue eyes, curly red hair, hands, and little baby feet. OMG! This was actually happening to me. I stared at myself in the mirror. Nope, there was no glow, just a scared and freckled girl looking back at me.
“Paul and John,” Mom said, pulling me from my thoughts. “Paul and John?” She let go of the steering wheel and clapped her hands triumphantly together.
“Please, no Beatles names,” I said and started to cry.
“Okay, okay,” she said, looking a little startled. “I didn’t mean to... I promise. No Beatles names.” She cocked her head to one side and looked at me with a tender, glowing face.
“It’s not that,” I cried, still seeing that image of a little chubby baby with red curly hair. “I guess I just feel so relieved and scared and confused and overwhelmed by, um, everything!” I looked down at my feet and sighed. “This sure has been the craziest morning ever.”
No, “crazy” wasn’t strong enough a word to describe it. “Fucked up” was a lot more on target, not just as an expression but as an actual description of events. I mean, we had gone from Everett to Kirkland and back, we had helped an almost-stranger terminate an unwanted pregnancy, Mom had gone from being menopausal to being pregnant, and I had gone from thinking of myself as pregnant Ella to thinking of myself as having a real baby with blue eyes and red curly hair—all before ten in the morning. No, “crazy” wouldn’t cut it!
“Oh, peanut, I know it’s a lot to take in. I mean, me being pregnant, too...” She looked at me, her mouth hanging open. “Wow, I just said it without even thinking about it. Without thinking the usual ‘what if.’ It felt really good. It felt real.” She took in a deep breath and wiped away a tear. “Sonny and Cher?” she tried.
“Please, names from this century, Mom,” I teased. I leaned back and closed my eyes.
The woman caller with the aggravating voice was still going on about massages. She had moved on to hand massages, making a big deal out of the importance of exfoliating.
“There’s still something you need to do,” Mom said with a tired voice.
“What? As if we haven’t been through enou
gh already?” I opened my eye and exhaled dramatically.
Her face tightened. “You have to tell Dad, and I guess you can’t really tell him without me telling him, too. I mean, that would force you to lie to him, and I can’t have that.” She said the last as if she was apologizing for suggesting it in the first place. “I know what I said just five minutes ago about not telling him, but I guess there’s no way around it. I need to. We both do.”
I hadn’t even thought about it that way. Of course, I couldn’t tell Dad without telling him about Mom, too, and I sure wouldn’t like to be the one breaking both headlines in one sentence. It was hard enough having to tell him about me. In his eyes I was still that ten-year-old girl with braces and piggy tails, sitting at the end of the table, listening to Mom and Dad trying to educate me on men, sex, and double-on condoms. “But how?” I said, already feeling my legs go all weak. “Do we do it together, or would that be too much for the little sentimental environmental guy?”
“I’ll go first,” Mom said very determined. “Poor guy, though. At least this time I come bearing gifts, not taking them away from him.” Mom looked at me, biting her upper lip. “I know. I know; we are cruel people,” she said, almost laughing.
I couldn’t agree more. It was a lot to digest, and it would take a hell of a lot more than a decent bottle of Chianti and a box of drunken noodles this time.
A cucumber hat and apple pants
“Dad?” I whispered, gently knocking on the coffee table again.
My father was sitting on the floor, leaning against the couch with his eyes closed. When he finally looked up I could tell he had been crying. Of course, he had.
Mom and Dad (and a bottle of Chianti) had spent the last few hours in living room, while I hid in my room, listening to Bruno Mars and practicing how to break my news to Dad. When Mom had finally appeared in the door with puffy, but mellow eyes, I had forgotten all about my well-rehearsed speech. “Your turn,” she had whispered, forcing a smile.
Lost in Seattle (The Miss Apple Pants series, #2) Page 39
