The Proposal

by R. R. Banks

  I felt my heart jump into my throat and I turned to press myself closer to the window so that I could watch what was happening between them. They were leaned toward each other over the table, obviously caught in an intense discussion. I saw Richard reach across toward her and Flora take his hand. He gave hers a squeeze and she offered him a hint of a smile. The limo was starting to roll again, and I twisted to make sure that I could continue to watch them even as we pulled away. They were nearly out of sight when I saw them both stand and walk around the side of the table so that Richard could gather Flora into a tight embrace.

  The breath seemed stuck in my lungs as I turned around and pressed my back to the seat, my hands coming to rest protectively over my belly as I fought to keep my emotions under control and my mind from spiraling out of it.

  “Funeral,” Abraham muttered.

  “That’s what it feels like,” I whispered back.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Richard

  I felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off of my shoulders as I climbed out of the limo that Flora had arranged to bring me to the restaurant. Meeting up with her that evening was something that I dreaded and certainly didn’t want, but now that it was over I realized that it was exactly what I needed. I knew for absolute certain that that part of my life was finished, and I could put it all behind me. Without even knowing it, she had taken away some of the stress that I had been feeling about my date with Rue that night and replaced it with total reassurance. Everything was in place now, everything was exactly as it should be.

  I reached back into the car and pulled out the bouquet of flowers that I had ordered for Rue. It was an exact replica of the one that I had brought for her on Thanksgiving, the first time that we had really had an opportunity to spend any time together just the two of us. I hoped that she would notice and understand the sentiment. The words that I wanted to say to her were repeating through my mind over and over as I approached the door to the restaurant. I wanted every single one of them to be absolutely perfect. What I needed to tell her was far too important for me to risk saying the wrong thing. I had never been so nervous about something that I needed to say.

  The maître d’ welcomed me to the restaurant by name and then directed me toward the table, though I didn’t really need such formality considering it was the same table that I always reserved. It was one of those things that people did for me, falling over themselves to show me courtesy and respect, to demonstrate that they knew that I was important with gestures that I was starting to recognize were largely meaningless.

  I saw Rue waiting for me at the table as I approached, and a wide smile broke across my lips. She was wearing the dress that I had chosen for her and the jewelry was the perfect accompaniment, exactly as I had envisioned that it would be. She was staring at the glass of water in front of her, her fingertip tracing the rim lazily as she seemed lost in her thoughts. I felt terrible that she had been waiting for me, even if it had only been for a few minutes, but I knew that by the end of the evening it wouldn’t matter to her anymore. I opened my arms as she looked up at me, but the expression on her face didn’t change. The smile that I had been sure that I was going to see wasn’t there and her eyes looked empty and dark.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Is Flora going to be joining us this evening?” she asked.

  My stomach sank, and I felt my face burn with embarrassment. She found out. Somehow, she already knew that I had seen Flora that evening. Though I obviously wasn’t going to hide it from her and had been planning on telling her everything about the meeting as soon as I sat down, she had found out before I had the opportunity to tell her and was now furious. I couldn’t really say that I blamed her for her reaction. Knowing that I had met with my former girlfriend, the woman who had once been the future mother of the child that Rue was carrying, would be confusing and upsetting at best, devastating and infuriating at worst.

  “Rue, let me explain.”

  She stood up suddenly, drawing the attention of everyone at the tables around her.

  “I don’t need you to explain anything you slimy fucking son of a bitch,” she said through gritted teeth.

  Well, damn, that escalated quickly.

  “Rue, please calm down,” I said quietly.

  “No, I’m not going to calm down,” she said. “And stop saying my name. I am so fucking sick of the touchy-feely psychobabble that you rich men think is going to help you control the world even more than you already do. You think that the more you say my name, the more I’m going to feel acknowledged by you, don’t you? Yeah, that’s right. I took the interpersonal skills workshop at work. I know all the tricks. I suppose you were making sure that I felt plenty acknowledged the other night at the fair. I’m sorry that I couldn’t acknowledge you in return. I was too busy with your dick in my mouth. It was pretty hard to talk around it.”

  Oh, holy hell.

  Everyone in the restaurant who was in earshot, which was everyone who was in the restaurant, gasped and I felt my face burning even more fiercely. I’m not usually one to be embarrassed easily, but Rue was certainly doing a great job pushing the limits of my self-confidence. It was fairly difficult to remain dignified when a heavily pregnant woman was screaming about your sexual adventures in the middle of a restaurant that had a waiting list of more than three years for the few tables not held by standing reservations. Now all she needed to do was mention Flora just a little louder and it would bring everything full circle.

  “Why didn’t you bring Flora along with you? I’m sure that she would have loved to get a bit of a laugh out of this. Or is she capable of laughing? I’m not sure how Barbie dolls forged in the annals of hell express emotion.”

  Yep. There we go.

  “There really isn’t a need to cause a scene,” I said, still trying to keep my voice as low and steady as I could, hoping to calm her enough that at least we wouldn’t be escorted away by the police. “Can you sit down so that I can tell you what happened?”

  “No need to cause a scene?” Rue asked, her voice reaching a thin, high pitch that was almost painful. “No need to cause a scene? I’m sorry. I guess you don’t know who you’re dealing with. Well, if you don’t like the mudslinging, then perhaps you should have stayed out of the pig pen. Because that’s what you think of Whiskey Hollow, isn’t it? Admit it.”

  “That’s not what I think,” I said.

  I felt the maître d’ come up to my side.

  “Sir, I apologize, but I’m going to have to ask you and your lady friend to leave.”

  “I’m sure you are,” I said.

  I turned and started toward the door, figuring that I could act as the pied piper and lead her out of the restaurant. Fortunately, it worked and I was able to get her out and into the back of the limo without another word.

  Not that she hadn’t said plenty already.

  As soon as the door to the limo closed, she started again.

  “Why did you even choose me?”

  “What?” I asked, trying to get myself on this seemingly new path of conversation.

  “Why did you even choose me?” She repeated. “To carry your baby. Out of all those other women I saw in the waiting room, what made you choose me?”

  “You were different,” I answered.

  It was the most honest thing that I could figure out to say, the thing that I had thought about her from the first second that I saw her on my computer screen.

  “Different?” she asked. “You chose me because I’m different? That’s really the best you’ve got?”

  “I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”

  “I want you to tell me why you put me through all of this. Did you know when you were sitting in that office being all skeezy watching all of us get interviewed, did you look at me and see something that made you go…you know what? I think that she’s going to be the perfect one to bang to amuse myself since my girlfriend is like fucking a popsicle in Antarctica? This girl is g
oing to be easy and then I can just go about my life when it’s all over and pretend that she never existed.”

  “I never intend on pretending you don’t exist,” I said, both angered and deeply saddened by the thought. “That was never the point of any of this.”

  “Of course, it wasn’t. You can’t pretend that I don’t exist because every time that you look at your daughter you’re going to see me. I bet that’s going to be a good laugh for you and Flora. One day she’s going to ask who carried her, who her biological mother is, and you’re going to get to say oh, she’s just some dumb chick from the sticks who was stupid enough to go along with this to save some house. You can even use it as a lesson about the people she should and shouldn’t associate with. I’m sure that it will be a very powerful learning experience. Like a social elite version of Scared Straight without all those pesky inmates and the drug talk, right?”

  “That’s not true.”

  I wanted to say more, but I was so stunned, I couldn’t get the words to come out. Tears were streaming down Rue’s cheeks, but she didn’t even seem to notice them. Suddenly the limo stopped, and I realized that we were in front of the building where I had secured Rue’s apartment. I hadn’t even noticed that we had started moving.

  “Don’t follow me,” she said. “And don’t you dare think that you can show up to any of the rest of the prenatal appointments. Until I go into labor, you stay away from me. The midwife will send you reports after each appointment.”

  “You can’t do that,” I said, feeling slightly panicked as I slid toward the open door.

  “Yes, I can,” she said. “Remember pregnancy is not a spectator sport? You’re the one who insisted on a privacy clause in the contracts and who instructed all staff at the medical center to guard my anonymity every step of the way. If I don’t want you anywhere near me until the baby is born, then you can’t be.”

  She slammed the door and I felt a sick feeling rush through me. My hand was still wrapped around the bouquet of flowers and I felt it slip from my fingers onto the floor of the limo. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The air in the car around me seemed to be getting thicker, suffocating me, and I clawed at my tie, trying to loosen it. Even when I tore it off and tossed it across the car, I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. I tumbled out of the car and chased after Rue even though she had told me not to. I couldn’t just let her go. I couldn’t just let her walk away from me without trying to make her understand.

  The door to the apartment was already shut and locked by the time I reached it and I pounded on it with both fists, shaking the doorknob a few times as if it was going to change somehow.

  “Rue,” I called through the door to her. “Open the door. Please. I just want to talk to you.”

  She didn’t come, and I continued to pound until a door opened down the breezeway.

  “Stop that,” an elderly woman’s voice scolded me. “She’s pregnant. Don’t disturb her.”

  “I know she’s pregnant,” I snapped. “It’s my baby.”

  “I don’t know what she’s been telling you, but she’s carrying my child.”

  I gritted my teeth, my fists tightening by my sides.

  “I really don’t need your input right now. Please go back inside and mind your own damn business.”

  I think Rue has been a bad influence on me. Or an awesome influence on me.

  “I never,” the woman huffed, and I heard the door slam.

  “This is why I wanted to get you an apartment in a nicer building,” I shouted through the door and then immediately regretted it.

  Being elitist had already gotten me into enough trouble with Rue. It probably wasn’t a viable means of trying to get back in her good graces. I pounded on the door for a few more minutes and then turned around, pressing my back to the door and sliding down so that I sat on the sidewalk with my head rested back against the door. The evening had long-since faded down into night and I was dozing in and out of consciousness when Abraham finally came, took me by the elbow, and peeled me off of the sidewalk. He brought me to the car and tipped me inside, then drove away. I didn’t remember anything else until I woke up the next morning, still in my clothes and an empty, hollow feeling in my stomach.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Rue

  “Son of a bitch.”

  I stepped back from the stove, sucking on the fingers that I had just burned on molten macaroni and cheese, and then paused. Rubbing my hand over my belly, I glanced down apologetically.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I shouldn’t be saying things like that. I wouldn’t want that to be what you remember about my voice.”

  I suddenly felt my throat close up with emotion and my eyes start to sting with the tears that had become all too familiar in the last several weeks since I had seen Richard. I had been trying not to let this happen. In fact, I had been having some serious talks with myself about the reality that was going to befall me in just a matter of weeks. My due date was in exactly 16 days and I was counting them down with a mixture of emotions that I had a difficult time sifting through. I was looking forward to my back not aching anymore and to being able to look down and see my knees again. I was telling myself that by next summer I could be in a bathing suit again sitting in a baby pool in the front yard of Grammyma’s house waiting for Sue Ellen to come by with fresh homemade peach ice cream.

  Alright, so that wasn’t so terribly different from what I had been doing the day before, but at least next summer I could wear something cuter and not look like a beached whale when I tried to get up out of the pool to eat a half gallon of said ice cream.

  In the next breath, however, I was already grieving not feeling the baby’s little kicks during the day or the hiccups that made my belly bounce when I had had too much to eat too quickly. I was struggling to wrap my mind around the idea that I wouldn’t have her inside of me to talk to anymore. Though I knew that I could keep writing her letters, I didn’t know if I would be able to bring myself to do it. It was just too hard to think about. For now, the letters that I wrote were tucked safely away in the scrapbook that I had been making her, protected in the pages among pressed flowers and leaves, pictures and ultrasounds, doodles I had made in the waiting room at the maternity center, and notes from Christopher and Tessie. I could keep them there, pretending that one day I would be able to give them to her, to hand her the book and sit with her while we talked about how she came to be and laughed about the memories that I had preserved from this time. Once she was born, though, I wouldn’t have that hope to hold onto anymore. If I wrote a letter to her I would have to put it in an envelope, address it with whatever name Richard and Flora gave her, and send it away. I would never know if she actually got it, or even if she did, if she cared what it said.

  The thought was too much for me sometimes, and I had spent many nights since walking away from Richard that night wondering if I had made the right choice. Saving Grammyma’s house was so important to me that I hadn’t thought this decision all the way through. I had simply jumped on the opportunity, allowed my fear and the emotions that I was feeling in that moment to control me rather than taking a step back and trying to look at what was happening through some sort of filter of logic. Maybe if I had done that, I would have been able to come up with another solution. I would have been able to find another way to come up with the money to pay off the house and not have to go through this.

  Even as I thought that, however, I knew that that would have been the truly wrong choice. No matter what I was going through right now and the pain and heartache that I knew was coming, if I had the opportunity to go back and change my mind, I knew in my heart that I wouldn’t do it. I had told myself in the very beginning that I wasn’t going to experience any of this. I was going into it with a clear mind and a confident spirit, I convinced myself. I wasn’t going to struggle with feelings of loss when it was time to give birth because I was never going to look at this baby as though it was mine, but that wasn’t the way that it
had happened. I had connected with this baby in a powerful and completely unexpected way and for a brief moment in time I thought that I was going to be able to continue on with that connection and allow it to flourish. Losing that possibility made the impending separation even more difficult to fathom, but it also reinforced that this baby was something truly spectacular, and that I would never want for her not to exist. Even if my only purpose was to create and carry her, and ensure that she was brought into the world safely so that Richard and Flora could raise her, I was proud of that contribution and I would take the pain that was to come as payment for the joy that I was able to feel now.

  I was reaching for the wooden spoon in the macaroni and cheese again, ready to try for a second time to get some into a bowl so that I could sit in front of the television and eat as had become my routine in the last several days, when I heard someone knocking on my door. I checked my phone to see if I had somehow turned it off. When I saw that it was still on and that no one had called, I got a sense of dread in my stomach. People around here might stop by in the late morning or early afternoon to drop off a pie or have a chat on the front porch, but they weren’t going to come over uninvited in the evening, especially not around suppertime. This meant that there was something seriously wrong. There could be a barn fire or some kind of accident. Jimmy Kudrow could be stuck up in the big tree again.

  I rushed to the front door and pulled it open before even looking out of the window to see who it might be. Depending on how long he had been up in the tree, every second might count. When I saw what was waiting for me on the porch, though, I wished that I had taken those few seconds to check. Maybe then I would’ve just gone back to the living room with my bowl of macaroni and cheese and ignored the knocking until it stopped. Standing there in the glow of the porch light, silhouetted against the dying light of the evening, was Richard.