Something Blue

by Emily Giffin

  The blonde sighed as she repositioned her squirming baby. “At least you’re having sex,” she said to her friend, as she reached down and pulled a pacifier out of a side pocket in her stroller and popped it into the baby’s mouth. The baby sucked vigorously for several seconds before letting the pacifier drop to the ground. An apparent subscriber to the three-second rule, the blonde picked it up, swiped it across her sleeve, and reinserted it in her child’s mouth.

  “How long has it been?” the brunette asked, in a candid way that told me these two were not new or casual acquaintances. It made me ache for Rachel, for the way things used to be.

  “I couldn’t even say,” the blonde answered. “Ages.”

  The brunette made a sympathetic clucking noise as she wrapped her tea bag around a plastic stirrer and squeezed with her thumb and index finger.

  I closed my magazine and made eye contact with the blonde. She smiled at me, giving me an opening.

  “She’s really cute,” I said, gazing at her baby and then realizing with panic that the baby could be a boy. It was impossible to tell. Yellow outfit, bald head, no gender-based accoutrement.

  “Thank you,” the blonde said.

  Good. I guessed right. “What’s her name?”

  “Natalie.”

  “Hi, Natalie,” I said in a high, singsongy voice. Natalie ignored me, kept straining to grasp her mother’s brownie. “How old is she?”

  “Twenty-two weeks.” The blonde smiled as she jiggled her up and down on one knee.

  “So…that’s what? Five months?”

  She laughed. “Yeah, right. Sorry. I remember before I had Natalie I wondered why mums gave their child’s age in weeks. I guess it’s an extension of the pregnancy.”

  I nodded as I noticed the brunette giving me a curious once-over as if to say, “What is your deal, American girl, sitting here alone on a weekday?”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. I’m eighteen weeks along myself—”

  “Pregnant?” both women squealed at once as if I had just told them that I was dating Prince William. It felt great to finally have a little enthusiasm over my news.

  “Yes,” I said, moving aside my coat and rubbing my stomach with my ringless left hand. “In fact, I just felt a kick for the first time this morning.”

  It struck me as a bit sad that I was first sharing such monumental news with strangers, but I told myself that they were potential new friends. Perhaps they would even become lifelong, to-the-grave mates.

  “Congrats!” the blonde squealed.

  “You look amazing for eighteen weeks!” the brunette said.

  I smiled with what felt like sincere modesty. “Thank you.”

  “Boy or girl?” the brunette asked.

  “I don’t know yet for sure, but I’m fairly certain that it’s a girl.”

  “I was too,” the blonde said, rubbing Natalie’s fuzzy head. “I just knew she was a girl.”

  “Did you find out ahead of time?”

  “No, I wanted to be surprised,” she said. “My husband knew, though.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “He knew and you didn’t?”

  She nodded. “Our doctor showed him the relevant anatomy on the sonogram while I closed my eyes. My husband swore that he wouldn’t tell another soul. Not even our mums, who were positively dying to know.”

  “I can’t believe he kept it a secret! That’s amazing,” I said.

  “Her husband is great that way,” the brunette said.

  “Hmm.” The blonde nodded. I had begun to notice that the Brits make that hmm sound often, in lieu of saying yes or uh-huh or yeah. She continued, “Never one slip with the pronouns. He was always very careful to say ‘he or she’ or just ‘the baby.’”

  “What about baby names? Wasn’t it obvious when you’d discuss names?”

  “Not at all. He covered both equally…. In fact, he pushed Gavin so hard that if anything, I thought we were having a boy.”

  “Wow. Your husband sounds like a great guy,” I said.

  She turned to look at her friend and they both burst into laughter. “We were just tearing him to shreds. He’s being a bit of a prat these days.”

  I wasn’t sure what a prat was, but I nodded empathetically and said, “I know how that is!”

  A few seconds of silence passed and I could tell that the girls were again wondering about my situation.

  “I’m Darcy, by the way,” I said, with what I hoped was a disarming, “I won’t compete with you” smile.

  “I’m Charlotte,” the blonde said.

  “And I’m Meg,” the brunette said.

  “It’s so great to meet you both. I’ve been dying to have some female interaction since moving here,” I said. It was the truth, although I don’t think I consciously realized it until that moment.

  “When did you move to London?” Meg asked.

  “About a month ago.”

  “Did you move here alone?” she asked. It was as close as she could come to inquiring about the father of my child.

  “Yes, I’m going it alone,” I said.

  Meg and Charlotte both stared at me, with what I detected as admiration. I gave them a warm, open smile, tacit permission to inquire further, which they did, tentatively. I answered each of their questions, only embellishing occasionally. For example, I told them that I caught Rachel in bed with Dex—and I left out Marcus altogether, thereby implying that Dex was the father. It just seemed easier that way, and frankly, what was the difference at this point? Both men were out of the picture. My audience of two was riveted. Charlotte even ignored Natalie, who was gumming the corner of an Evening Standard. I continued my tale, telling them I had quit my job, and come to London to live with my childhood friend Ethan. “He’s straight, but we’re just friends,” I told them. A gay friend might be more interesting, and certainly more entertaining, but there was something compelling about an aboveboard, straight male–female friendship. Besides, it gave me more credibility as a nice girl. I could hear them saying later, “She’s beautiful, but she doesn’t go around stalking every available man.”

  Charlotte asked if I had any interest in Ethan. I shook my head vigorously. “Absolutely not…We’re strictly friends. Although we did go out in the fifth grade!”

  They laughed.

  “So I’m entirely single…if you know anyone?” I said, fleetingly worrying that finding a man shouldn’t be important to me. I dismissed the concern; a boyfriend needn’t detract from my other, loftier goals.

  Meg and Charlotte exchanged a thoughtful glance as if doing a mental inventory of all their male acquaintances.

  “Simon?” Charlotte posited to Meg.

  Meg made a face.

  “You don’t like Simon?” Charlotte asked her.

  “I like Si well enough…” Meg said with a shrug.

  I resisted the temptation to inquire about Simon’s looks, but Meg seemed to read my mind because she giggled and said, “I doubt that Darcy is attracted to gingers!”

  “Meg!” Charlotte said, reminding me of Rachel. Rachel must have said “Darcy!” in that same tone close to a million times. “Besides, I’d say Si is more of a strawberry blonde.”

  “He’s a ginger and you know it!” Meg said, sipping her tea.

  “What’s a ginger?” I asked.

  “You know, orange hair? I think you call it a ‘redhead’?” Meg said.

  I laughed. “Oh. Right.”

  “So? Do you like gingers?” Charlotte asked.

  “Probably not my favorite,” I said diplomatically, rationalizing that chemistry is beyond one’s control. And for a relationship to work, the chemistry has to be there.

  “I suppose gingers aren’t sought after on either side of the pond,” Meg opined.

  Charlotte looked disappointed, so I said, “But there are exceptions. Look at cute little Prince Harry. I like his devilish little smile. It depends entirely on personality.”

  I couldn’t help thinking of Marcus. It had been a misguided (to use
Ethan’s word) decision to start a relationship with him, a decision based largely on intrigue, lust, and competition with Rachel. But at least I wasn’t driven by appearances. Marcus was far from perfect looking. So I knew I had it in me to look beyond the mere physical.

  Charlotte smiled at me. “Precisely,” she said, nodding. Then she turned to Meg. “Why don’t you invite Darcy to your party? Isn’t Si coming?”

  “What a fab idea! You must come, Darcy. I’m having a few friends over this Saturday night. Won’t you join us?” Meg asked.

  “I’d love to,” I said, thinking how satisfying it would be to tell Ethan I had been invited to a party by women. I took a mental inventory of my list. In just one short day, I had ticked off several items already. I had helped Ethan (by cleaning his apartment), I was being healthy (by not ordering a caffeinated beverage), and I had made a couple of new friends. I still needed to find a job and a doctor, so after a few more minutes of polite conversation, I asked Meg and Charlotte for a recommendation on both fronts.

  “Oh, I have the perfect chap for you. Mr. Moore is his name,” Charlotte said, consulting her address book and jotting down his number on the back of one of her own calling cards. “Here you go. Give him a ring. He’s really lovely.”

  “How come he goes by ‘mister’ and not ‘doctor’?” I asked, feeling a bit skeptical about the British health care system.

  Meg explained that in England only nonoperating physicians are called doctors—something that goes back to medieval times, when all surgeons were butchers and therefore mere misters.

  “As for the job,” Charlotte said, “what is it that you did in New York?”

  “I worked in public relations…. But I’m looking for something different here. Something that would help the poor, old, or sick,” I said earnestly.

  “That is so nice,” Charlotte and Meg said in unison.

  I smiled.

  Meg told me that there was a nursing home right around the corner. She jotted down some directions on a napkin, and then wrote her own address and phone number on the other side. “Do stop by on Saturday,” she said. “We’d love to see you. And so would Si.” She winked.

  I smiled, took my last sip of coffee, and said good-bye to my new friends.

  That evening, when Ethan returned home, I was waiting for him with a homemade Greek salad, a glass of red wine, and softly playing classical music.

  “Welcome home!” I said, smiling nervously as I handed him his glass.

  He took it from me tentatively, sipped, and then looked around his apartment. “It looks great in here. Smells good too. Did you clean?”

  I nodded. “Uh-huh. I scoured the place. I even cleaned your room,” I said, and then couldn’t resist adding, “Still think I’m a lousy friend?”

  He took another sip and sat on his couch. “I didn’t say that exactly.”

  I sat next to him. “Yes you did.”

  He gave me a half-smile. “You can be a good friend when you try, Darce. You tried today. Thank you.”

  The old me would have held out for an over-the-top apology coupled with a complete retraction and a small gift. But somehow Ethan’s simple “thank you” was enough for me. I just wanted to make up and move on.

  “So guess what happened this morning?” I said, bursting to share my news with him. Before he could guess, I blurted out, “I felt my baby kick!”

  “Wow,” Ethan said. “That was the first time you felt it?”

  “Yeah. But I haven’t felt her since. Should I be worried?”

  Ethan shook his head. “No. I remember when Brandi was pregnant…she would feel a kick one day and then nothing for several days. The doctor told her that when you’re active, the baby is less likely to move around, because you’re essentially lulling it to sleep,” he said with a somewhat pained expression, as if it still hurt to think of Brandi’s betrayal.

  “Does it make you sad to think about her?” I asked.

  He kicked off his wet Pumas, peeled off his socks, and propped his feet up on the coffee table. “I’m not sad about Brandi, but sometimes I am sad when I think about Milo.”

  “Milo? Was that the guy Brandi cheated on you with?”

  “No. Milo’s the baby.”

  “Oh,” I said sheepishly, knowing that I should have remembered that detail. I looked at Ethan, wondering what empathetic words Rachel would offer. She always had a way of saying the right thing, making someone feel better. I couldn’t think of anything good so I just waited for Ethan to continue.

  “For nine months, I thought I was going to be a father. I went to every doctor’s appointment and fell in love with those ultrasound pictures…I even picked the name Milo.” He shook his head. “Then we had the baby, and I realized he wasn’t mine.”

  “When did you know for sure that he wasn’t yours?”

  “As soon as he was born. I mean, he was dark-skinned with black eyes and all this crazy black hair sticking up everywhere. I kept thinking of my own baby pictures. Bald and pink. Brandi’s a blue-eyed blonde too. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going on.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “For the first few days, I think I was in shock. I pretended that it wasn’t true, that it was just a fluke genetic thing…. All the while, in the back of my mind, I remembered that ‘big b, little b’ chart from high-school biology…. Two blue-eyed parents just couldn’t make a Milo.”

  I touched his arm lightly. “That must have been so hard.”

  “It was awful. I mean, I loved that little boy. Enough so that I almost stayed with her. In the end…well…you know the rest.” His voice cracked. “I left. It felt as though someone had died.”

  I remembered Rachel telling me about Ethan’s divorce and the baby that wasn’t his. At the time, I think I had been preoccupied with some crisis of my own and hadn’t been particularly empathetic to his pain.

  “You did the right thing,” I said now, taking his hand in mine.

  He didn’t pull away. “Yeah. I guess I did.”

  “Do you think I did the right thing? Keeping my baby?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Even though you think I’m being a bad mother so far?” I asked, resisting the urge to tell him about my list. I wanted to make more progress before confiding in him.

  “You’ll get it together,” Ethan said, squeezing my hand. “I have faith in you.”

  I looked at him, and felt the same way I did on Thanksgiving, sitting on our bench in Holland Park. I wanted to kiss him. But of course I didn’t. I wondered why I resisted, when in the past I had always followed my impulses with not much thought of the consequences. Maybe because it didn’t feel like a game with Ethan, the way it had with Marcus and so many guys before him. Maybe because I had more to lose. Blurring the line between friendship and attraction was a surefire way to lose a friend. And losing one good friend was enough this year.

  Later that night, after Ethan and I watched the news, he turned to me and said, “C’mon, Darce. Let’s hit the hay.”

  “The hay in your room?” I asked hopefully.

  Ethan laughed. “Yeah. In my room.”

  “So you missed me last night?” I asked.

  He laughed again. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  But I could tell by his expression that he had missed me. I could also tell that he was a little bit sorry for our fight, even though much of what he had said about me was true. Ethan liked me in spite of my flaws, and as I fell asleep next to him, I thought of how much more he was going to like the new and improved Darcy.

  Twenty-Two

  The next morning, prodded by another series of kicks from my baby, I decided that I would go apply for a job at the nursing home Meg and Charlotte had told me about. Ethan had already left for the day, so I used his computer to type up my résumé and a quick cover letter, which articulately explained that my success in the world of public relations had everything to do with my outgoing personality, and that certainly this quality would transla
te well in the group bingo setting. After I spell-checked the letter, opting for the British spelling of the words colourful and organised, I showered, dressed, and headed out into the London chill.

  When I arrived at the nursing home, I was blasted with the distinct and depressing odor of old people and institutional food, and felt my first wave of morning sickness since my first trimester had ended. I found a mint in my purse and drew a deep breath through my mouth as I studied two little old ladies in matching floral smocks parked in wheelchairs in the lobby. Watching them laugh and chat together made me think of Rachel and how we used to say that when we were old and widowed we wanted to be put in a nursing home together. I remembered her saying that I would still be a guy magnet well into my nineties and could help her get dates with the cutest old men in the home. I guess she decided to play that one out sixty years early, I thought, as a gnomelike man, whom I’d assumed was a resident, came to the door and introduced himself as the manager.

  “I’m Darcy Rhone,” I said, shaking his hand.

  “Bernard Dobbs,” he said. “How may I help you?”

  “The question is, Mr. Dobbs, how can I help you? You see, I have come today to find a position at this fine institution,” I said, redecorating the shabby, poorly lit lobby in my mind.

  “What sort of experience do you have?” he asked.

  “I have a background in public relations,” I said, handing him my résumé. “Which is a very interactive, people-driven business.” Then I paraphrased my cover letter, concluding with, “Most importantly, I just want to help spread cheer to the elderly folk in your fine country.”

  Mr. Dobbs looked at me skeptically and asked if I had a work permit.

  “Um…no,” I said. “But I’m sure ‘wink, wink, nudge, nudge’ we could deal with that problem, couldn’t we?”

  He gave me a blank stare and then asked if I had ever worked in a nursing home. I considered lying. After all, I seriously doubted that he would place an international call to check my references. But I made a split-second determination that lying was not in keeping with the new Darcy, and that deceit wasn’t necessary to get a job. So I told him no, I hadn’t, and then added, “But believe me, Mr. Dobbs, I can handle anything here. My job in Manhattan was quite challenging. I worked long hours and was very successful.”