Grace Grows

by Shelle Sumners

Rebecca stayed near the door, glaring at me, arms crossed tightly.

  “I know it seems bad that I waited so long to tell him,” I said to her. “But you don’t understand.”

  “What kind of person do you think my brother is?”

  Jean laid a hand on her arm. “Beck.”

  “We didn’t plan this,” I said. “I wasn’t sure he would want it, with everything else going on in his life.”

  Jean shook her head. “Oh, honey, you don’t know him at all.”

  “You don’t deserve him,” Rebecca added. Jean grimaced at her.

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” I said.

  “Tell us.” Jean pulled me over to sit with her on the couch.

  “We . . . we were . . .” Oh, how embarrassing. It was hard to look at them. “We were . . . together. And not very careful. And after, he said he should have been. More careful.” I snuck a peek at them. Jean was pink-cheeked. Rebecca, narrow-eyed but listening.

  “And then he was gone, for six months. And whenever I thought about calling and telling him, I remembered him saying that he should have been more careful. I thought he might not be happy about the baby. I couldn’t bear to hear that in his voice. You don’t understand how much power he has to hurt me! More than anyone.”

  I had held it together, so far. Then Rebecca, anger apparently deflated, dropped down in the armchair across from us. She rubbed her face and cracked her knuckles just like Ty, and I quietly lost it—shoulders shaking and tears streaming down my face.

  Jean patted my back and blotted my face with a tissue from her pocket.

  “Ty told us you left him the message after he lost his phone,” she said, after I’d calmed down some. “You must have been so upset that he wasn’t calling you back.”

  “I was. It was terrible.”

  “He wasn’t calling me back, either,” Rebecca said. “I still may kick his ass about that.”

  “Sometimes he’s a little oblivious,” Jean said. “He’s so busy writing songs, he forgets to do important things.”

  “Like get a new freaking phone,” Rebecca said. “Or learn how to check messages remotely.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Ty says it’s a boy,” Rebecca said almost kindly.

  I nodded.

  “My first grandbaby!” Jean clapped her hands lightly.

  Her delight was infectious. “I have ultrasound pictures, do you want to see them?”

  Of course they did. And they were appropriately amazed by the delicate perfection of his tiny skull, spine, arm, and hand.

  “I wish Nathan could see these,” Jean said.

  “Maybe I could run down the street and make copies for you to take to him.”

  “Better yet, why don’t you come with us to the hotel and show him the originals?”

  “Why are you at a hotel?”

  “Ty’s staying there, he sublet his apartment till summer. Come with us and we can all go to dinner.”

  There was just no way I was ready for that. I didn’t think Ty was, either. “I don’t think I can do that tonight. Thank you.”

  I glanced at Rebecca. She smiled sharply at me and stood up. “Let’s give her some space, Mom.”

  I stood with them and belatedly tried to play hostess, offering to make tea before they left. They declined.

  We went to the office-supply store and I made copies of the ultrasound for Jean to show Nathan. I realized on my way back upstairs that Ty would see them tonight, too. What would he think? Would he be as astounded and humbled by them as I had been? I wished I could see his face when he saw them. I had to sit down on the steps for a moment and grieve. Parents were supposed to see their baby’s ultrasound pictures together.

  I spent Sunday mentally retracing my steps, trying to figure out how I had made such a sad mess of things. It seemed to boil down very simply to a) loving understandably but unwisely, and b) making several hundred snowballing bad choices.

  It helped to go to work Monday and focus on others. I taught a half-day workshop on contraception and STI prevention at a girls’ prep school on the Upper East Side. The whole time I was explaining the various methods of birth control, they were staring at my belly. I barely restrained myself from pointing at The Bump and saying See? This is what happens.

  I stopped at a deli on the way home from the subway and picked up a Philly cheese steak for supper. Hauled myself up the stairs to the apartment and stopped on the fourth-floor landing.

  Guitar. Someone playing. A song I knew.

  I climbed up the last flight and let myself in. Ty was sitting on the couch, strumming. He paused and looked over his shoulder at me.

  “Hey,” he said.

  There was a suitcase by the armchair, next to his guitar case.

  “My apartment is sublet till August. I’m gonna sleep here.” He nodded at the couch. “Peg gave me a key.”

  He went back to strumming.

  I went to the kitchen and threw my stuff on the table. Walked to the window and looked down at the people crossing Hudson Street in the dusk. Went back to the kitchen door and watched the guitar-playing muscles in his back move under his plaid shirt. Crossed the kitchen to the window again. Oh, yeah. I was hungry.

  I got the cheese steak out and set it on a plate. I went to the door.

  “Are you hungry? I have a cheese steak.”

  “No thanks.” He didn’t even glance back at me this time.

  I sat at the kitchen table and ate half the sandwich. Drank a glass of milk.

  Ty was running through all the heartbreaking songs in his repertoire. I thought about how I was going to have to stop at the drugstore tomorrow for earplugs.

  I went to my bedroom and closed the door. Wadded up tissues and stuck them in my ears. I stripped down to my undergarments and stretched out on my back across the bed; it always felt good at first, but I could only stay this way for about thirty seconds before it became uncomfortable and I’d have to roll on my side.

  There was a sharp rap on the door and Ty stuck his head in. I sat up on my elbows, startled.

  “Sorry.” He pulled the door shut.

  Great. What a picture that must have been, me beached on the bed in my granny panties and thick-strapped support bra, wide-eyed, with big wads of tissue coming out of my ears. I got up and put on my robe. Discarded the tissues. Opened the door and went down the hall.

  He was back on the couch with the guitar.

  “What?” I said, from a few feet away.

  “Hm? Oh, nothing.” He smiled vaguely and kept playing.

  I took a bath and tried to go to sleep, but now he had the TV on. So I lay awake and stewed about this new circumstance.

  Yes, I had made a big, big mistake not telling him and had a lot to atone for. But Peg knew how hurt I was that Ty was involved with Roberta. That our intensely intimate weekend together had turned out to be, for him, nothing special. I was one of the multitudes. And now she was forcing me to live, while pregnant with his child, in close, constant proximity with him.

  High dudgeon. That’s what you’d call my state of mind by the time Peg came home around midnight. Ty was stretched out on the couch watching Jay Leno. I slipped past him and cornered Peg in the kitchen. She was making her bedtime cup of tea.

  “Peg, how could you do this to me?” I whispered.

  She set down the box of Sleepytime and looked at me. “I’m doing this for you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You two have things to work out.”

  “Maybe so, but we don’t have to live together to do it!”

  “Don’t be angry, hon. Just let the right thing happen, for once. There’s a baby involved.”

  “Oh, is there?” My voice got loud. “I had no idea!”

  They were both asleep when I left for work the next morning. I called Julia as soon as I hit the street and caught her in her car, just arriving at the courthouse.

  “Can you come get me tonight? I’m ready to move in with you.”
r />   “Oh,” Julia said. “No, I can’t. I’ve just had the house painted. Inside. We need to give it a couple of weeks to air out. You don’t want to inhale paint fumes.”

  “Julia! You said I could move in anytime. You didn’t say anything about painting!”

  “Didn’t I? Listen, I’ve gotta run, let’s talk later.” I heard her car door shut and the lock beep. “Have to take a deposition.”

  I thought about going to Dan’s for the next two weeks, but it would be such a hassle to move my things twice. I didn’t want to live out of a suitcase. And my train to work from Peg’s was so much more convenient.

  By midday my ire at Peg had melted and I felt embarrassed about the way I’d behaved. I called her.

  “Peg, I’m sorry.”

  She sighed. “I know. It’s okay.”

  “I called my mom to see if I could move in with her today, but it will have to wait at least another week, maybe two.”

  “Why do you want to leave, anyway?”

  “It’s not the most comfortable situation.”

  “It will give you and Ty a chance to figure some things out.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “And Grace, you’re a New York girl. Do you really want to give that up? Your OB is here. You don’t want to commute to give birth.”

  “No. But, Peg, if I’m going to stay in the city I’ve got so much to figure out. I think if Ty pays child support I might be able to afford my own place. I just don’t know if I’m up to trying to find an apartment and moving while I’m this pregnant.”

  “Of course not. You shouldn’t try to do that right now.”

  “Okay. But I want you to know, I realize that The Bump and I can’t live with you forever.”

  “Who says?”

  “Peg, he’ll grow into a little boy and need space. He may make noise and break things.”

  “Let’s just wait till he’s here and see how things unfold. Maybe I’ll like living with a little boy.”

  “Peg, I don’t deserve you.”

  “It’s okay, Grace. You’ve been overwrought lately. It’s understandable.”

  “Lately!”

  “Well, all right, for a couple of years, at least. And the intensity does seem to have ratcheted up a notch or twelve since you got pregnant.”

  “Maybe we need to just take a deep breath. All of us. Especially me.”

  “Yes, please,” Peg said. “Take a deep, deep breath.”

  She was right. I didn’t want to leave the city. I resolved to try, as hard as I could, to just be nice. No matter what. To everyone.

  Even, if absolutely necessary, Roberta.

  I texted Julia and told her that I would stay at Peg’s for the foreseeable future, at least until after the baby was born. She called me immediately and said that she thought that was a good idea. Saturday she would bring me the crib she’d found.

  Since it was Monday night and Peg was off, she cooked dinner for us. I decided to try to look pretty. I put on a pink top with a scoop neck that displayed some impressive cleavage. My hair had gotten long again, and though I usually ponytailed it, tonight I brushed it and left it down.

  Ty was already seated at the table. Peg was dishing vegetable lasagna onto our plates. She double-glanced at me and smiled.

  Ty stood up and pulled out my chair.

  “Thank you.” I looked at him surreptitiously while I served salad. He had cut his hair. Probably himself, with Peg’s kitchen shears. It wasn’t exactly short, but it curled just below his ears now, rather than at his shoulders.

  “I like your hair,” I said.

  He looked at me with those enigmatic eyes.

  “Did you cut it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It looks nice.”

  “It does.” Peg reached over to tug at the back of his hair. “You might need a little evening-up in the back. You could do that for him, couldn’t you, Grace?”

  I’m certain I must have grimaced. Who in their right mind would want me near their hair with a pair of scissors? Then I remembered my resolve to be agreeable. “Oh, sure! Probably.”

  I thought I saw a flash of humor on Ty’s face before he bent low over his plate and hoovered up his lasagna and salad.

  Peg asked Ty questions about life on the road. She asked me questions about what it’s like to be pregnant, though I’d already shared with her plenty on that subject. She was clearly trying to help us make up for lost time.

  I asked her what it was like to be the most curious woman on earth. She served us giant helpings of homemade tiramisu.

  “I’m doing cleanup!” I announced cheerfully.

  “Me, too,” Ty said.

  “Great!” Peg said. She added something about needing to make a call and abruptly disappeared.

  I knew I should tie on an apron, to keep my blouse clean over my protruding belly, but I didn’t want to look like the Michelin Man. I’d take my chances. I carried the lasagna pan to the sink carefully, holding it well away from my midsection.

  Ty piled all the rest of the dishes up and carried them to the sink one-handed, no problem, bicep bulging. He filled the sink with warm, soapy water and started scrubbing the lasagna pan.

  I picked up a dishtowel and stood beside him. He was wearing a tight gray T-shirt and jeans and smelled wonderful in that just-showered, clean man way. I wanted desperately to insinuate myself under his arm, to get as close as I could, to press my face against his shoulder; to just breathe him.

  Then to be naked with him.

  One time a month or so ago, a fellow pregnant lady had stopped me in the parenting section of a bookstore and asked me if the horniness was taking over my life. I understood in theory what she was talking about and smiled as if I could relate so as not to make her feel like a freak, but it had felt akin to reading that Inuit people survive for months at a time by eating only raw whale blubber. Fascinating, in a queasy, human-interest way, but for me it just didn’t apply. I was too busy reading up on motherhood and making plans.

  Now, thrust suddenly into close proximity with my impregnator, it seemed I was atingle with randy hormones! Maybe I would do some Googling on the subject tomorrow. The New York Times Science Page archives might have something.

  I dried the last dish and Ty took the towel from me and said, “I’ll finish up, wipe the table and stuff.”

  “Okay, thank you.” For smelling like God.

  I went to my room and sat on my bed. Checked the clock. Eight-thirty.

  I went back out to the living room. He was just coming in from the kitchen. Peg’s door was closed.

  “Would you mind if I watch a little TV?” I asked.

  “That’s fine,” he said.

  I turned on TV Land and tucked into a corner of the couch. The second episode of Andy Griffith was just starting. It was one I’d seen a million times, in which Barney has been left in charge of running things in Andy’s absence and he instructs his three hapless temporary “deputies.”

  “The minute it looks like there’s gonna be trouble,” Barney shrieked, “we got to NIP IT! Nip it in the bud!”

  I always laugh at that line. But it’s not a completely unsound theory.

  Ty, sitting in the other corner of the couch, laughed, too. It was a relief to see that his anger at me hadn’t killed all of his joy.

  When the episode ended he reached for the remote and turned off the TV. We were quiet in the dim lamplight.

  “I got a new phone,” he said. He pulled it out of his pocket and showed me.

  “Oh, that’s good.”

  “I heard your message. And about a hundred messages my mom and sister left during those weeks. They’re pissed off at me for letting it go so long. Guess I’ll try not to let that happen again.”

  I nodded.

  “I saw the pictures,” he said.

  I looked at him. He was looking at his phone, opening and closing the little hinged door on the cable slot.

  “You did?” I sat up. “Did you see his—his arm, and han
d?”

  He nodded.

  “And his face, could you see his face?”

  He nodded.

  “And the shape of his skull, and his spine? What—what did you think?” I asked tremulously.

  He raised shining eyes. “I thought—fucking awesome.”

  I hiccupped a laugh and talked through tears, blotting my face on my sleeve. “You should see—sometimes I can see the shape of his foot, or hand, pressing through my skin. And he gets really active at night, right when I’m trying to go to sleep!”

  Ty smiled, looking at my belly. I wanted to move closer, so he could feel it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m very sorry. I would have told you earlier, but I thought . . . I was worried about how you’d react.”

  He shook his head and looked away.

  I wondered, What are the odds that you will ever like or trust me again someday?

  “Why did you come back early?” I asked. “Didn’t you have a couple more weeks of your tour?”

  It was a moment before he answered. “I got a cold and needed to go on vocal rest. It was just a few final gigs that got canceled.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re back safe. Are you feeling better?”

  “Yeah.”

  I stood up. “Good night.”

  “Okay if I play for half an hour? Will that bother you?”

  “No, that’s fine.”

  He smiled. “I can get you some toilet paper for your ears.”

  “It was tissue. It doesn’t work.”

  “I’ll try to be quiet.”

  Ty didn’t say anything when I mentioned that my mom would be coming on the weekend to bring a crib. He just nodded. But when Julia came on Saturday he was conspicuously absent.

  “I’m downstairs,” she called.

  I got down to the street to find her double-parked and unloading the crib in pieces from the back of her SUV.

  I kissed her cheek and picked up one side of the crib to carry upstairs. It was bulky, but not heavy. “This is pretty,” I said, running my hand over the honey-colored wood.

  “I was going to buy you a new crib, but my assistant’s son just outgrew this one.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “You’re not carrying anything.” She looked over my shoulder at the front door. “Is there . . . um . . . anyone else here who can help me?”