A Mother to Embarrass Me (4 page)

“You two are too old…” I wanted to say “too old to be doing the deed,” but I was embarrassed. Mom and Dad were probably too old to know what that even meant.

Every time I saw my mother's pink face, and my father grinning, and then Mary smiling, smiling, smiling, I felt appalled.

Didn't my best friend get it?

Didn't they?

My mother and father, the oldest people in my immediate family, had been doing it. It. The it that would get my ancient mother pregnant. I thought they were too old for… for… you
know. I couldn't even bring myself to say the word. I could barely think the first letter.
S.
I thought people stopped having you-know-what when they were about twenty-nine.

Mary leaned toward me. “Now you know,” she whispered when Dad and Mom were toasting each other with caffeine-free Coca-Colas.

“I know what?” It felt like a tortilla chip was caught in my throat. Maybe it was just embarrassment.

“You know why your mom nearly burned down the house.”

“No, I don't.” I glared at Mary, my eyebrows pushed together.

“Sure you do. She's pregnant.” Mary lifted her hands at me like I might find an answer for my parents' craziness hidden between her fingers.

“Ha!” I said. The only thing I knew now was why my mother was getting heavier. She
should
be heavier.

I should have noticed Mom was getting heavier, especially in her tummy area. The fact was, though, she wasn't that much bigger. I mean, her face looked a little puffy, but it was hard to notice. Mom didn't look a thing like Mariah Barry when
she
got pregnant. That girl porked right up, and it was her first baby. I only know that because she came to our house to talk to Mom about exercising and she said those very words. She said, “I've porked right up.”

On the way home that night I tried to ignore my mother and father and best friend as they sang baby songs.
Baby
songs. I guess there were things to be thankful for. Dad wanted to stop at a music store so he could buy a guitar.

“I'm sure I could teach myself a song on the way to Mapleton,” he said, pulling into Keith Jorgenson's. “It can't be that hard. Jimmey, you can drive us home.”

“Okay, Danny,” Mom said.

The store was closed, and even with all Dad's tapping on the window, the employees counting money at the cash register wouldn't open up for him.

“That's the last time I shop there,” Dad said as he climbed into the car. “They could have let me in and they didn't.”

The good thing was that the window I sat behind in the car was tinted. I was pretty sure no one in the store could see me.

In my room that night, after we dropped Mary off at home, I had a good long chance to think.

“I guess I wasn't expecting Mom to get pregnant.” I said this to no one when I went out onto the balcony. It was a clear night, and the sky glittered with stars. The moon had yet to peek over the mountains, so it was pretty dark out. Only a hint of smoke smell remained in my room.

“I mean,” I said, “she's miscarried all the other babies she's tried to have.”

I had lost count, but I knew there were at least five miscarriages after I was born. Those Mom had spoken to me about. I remembered her talking to me a year or two before, when we still saw things the same way. She had been so sad.

“Laurie,” she had said. “I really wanted a big family.” We were in her studio, where she fashioned a little girl with fat cheeks, wearing only a diaper, from clay to be bronzed. Eventually this, too, would be added to her collection.

“I'm sorry, Mom.” I breathed deep the smells of the orange clay and watched Mom's slender hands smooth the child's skin. I felt sort of sorry for my mother. A baby would have been a nice thing to have around the house.

But I felt a little guilty, too. I kind of liked being an only child. I had all Mom's attention. I worked clay with her. She taught me to draw. We went places together—did stuff. It was a nice life. For sure a baby would change all that.

I thought, as I sat on my little balcony, how lonely Mom must have been for another child. I mean, to try so many times. And now at such an old age. Good grief, she was nearly forty. If you ask me, the
5
word should be saved for the young. Not my age, but definitely not my mother's, either. For people on television.

I watched the moon rise and in the darkness
of the evening tried to follow the bats flying after mosquitoes. I thought of Mom and Dad, down the hall, doing It. I thought of the baby Mom carried. I thought of her almost burning our house down.

Yes, I had liked being the only child in the Stephan home. But I was tired of carrying this burden alone. If Mom and Dad had succeeded in having other babies, I would have been sharing this awful moment with a sibling. One that I am sure would have loved me and would pretty much have done everything I wanted him to do. Including hating the thought, like I did, of our mother being pregnant at the very old age of thirty-eight.

I pulled out my list.

• 11. She's been doing It, very possibly here in the house.
  

(My face turned red when I wrote this.)

There wasn't much I could do about Mom's pregnant state. Pretty soon everyone at church and in the neighborhood would know that she and Dad were active. You'd think there would be a law about people as old as they are doing… well, you know.

It took me a week and a half before I could look at Mom and Dad without thinking how Mom ended up pregnant.

It didn't seem to bother anyone in the neighborhood
except
me. Mary told her parents and they were both excited, probably because there are six kids in their family and they are used to, well, you know. Then Mary told Christian when the three of us were playing a short game of basketball.

“Cool, Laura,” Christian said. “A baby. Do you think it will be a boy or a girl?” He brushed his sandy blond hair out of his face.

“Yeah,” I said, and then missed the next three shots. I usually win at that game too. Dad says I have a good eye and he's not sure where it came
from, 'cause he's never played any athletic game in his life.

Later Quinn found out Mom was pregnant and said, “Tell her I said congrats.”

My face turned red anytime anyone said anything about it, and the news spread like wildfire.

A couple of ladies from church came and visited Mom. They wanted to have a baby shower for her, they said. Our next-door neighbor Wendy Smith brought over dinner “just because.” And to make matters worse, Mom seemed to glow.

I mean it. She got this cheery look on her face, and her cheeks always seemed to be pink. And then she tried to get chummy with me. She started asking me to do things with her. “Let's go to lunch, Laurie,” or “Let me read this picture book to you, honey, to see if you think the new baby will like it,” or “I'm going to try to learn how to knit, want to try too?”

It was sickening.

One afternoon Mom called me down from my room. I was reading
Dinah Forever
, by a lady named Claudia Mills. I was actually laughing at the things Dinah was going through. I kind of felt like her—pretty, smart, a new sibling. Well, almost for me.

“Laurie,” Mom called. “I need you a second.”

I put my Dinah book down and let out an
aggravated sigh. I stomped all the way to the living room, where Mom and Dad waited.

“What are you doing home from work?” I asked Dad. He usually isn't home until six or so. Unless there's a fire, of course. Anyway, he works in American Fork, and it always takes him a little while to get here.

“Two reasons,” Dad said. He raised both pointer fingers. “First of all, we're going to see the ultrasound today.” Dad reached over and patted Mom's belly. My face went red.

“Don't do that,” I said. I looked toward the bay window. Outside the sun shone. A slight breeze moved the aspen trees, making the leaves shiver.

“Do what?” Dad asked.

“Don't pat Mom's… area.”

Dad grinned. I have to admit that my father is very attractive. He may be a computer geek, but he looks great. His hair is thick and wavy and an almost blond color. His eyes are deep brown. He has a few freckles.
All
my girlfriends are always telling me how good looking he is. But then he does something like open his mouth and I am, most of the time, horrified.

“I'm patting the baby, Laura Anne,” he said. “Your baby brother or baby sister is nestled in the protective
area”
—he emphasized the word
area
—“of the womb, or uterus. He or she is floating
in amniotic fluid and appreciates it when I touch here. I believe the baby knows I am waiting just—”

“Dad,” I said. I didn't want to hear any more of that crap. And I didn't want to see him patting anything of Mom's, either. I was just getting over the
s-e-x
part of things. “What did you all call me down here for?”

“We want you to come with us, Laurie,” Mom said. “And we want to talk to you about throwing a party.”

“What?”

Mom smiled at me. Dad put an arm around her shoulder and then he smiled too. I took a step backward.

“We've felt you needed something to cheer you up.” Mom glanced at Dad. “We were thinking you could have your first boy-girl party. Here, at the house.” Mom stretched her hands out wide, like maybe she was offering me the living room.

A party?

Dad stood up and pulled Mom to her feet. “We have to go. Wanna come? We can make plans on the way to the hospital.”

A boy-girl party?

“Go get your shoes on,” Mom said.

“Okay,” I said. A boy-girl party! That could be fun. For a moment I saw myself inviting Quinn
over. And maybe us dancing a slow dance together. I hurried up the stairs, grinning. Happy, for what seemed the first time in all my life.

At the hospital the doctor uncovered Mom's ball of a belly. He squirted jelly stuff on her stomach and started rubbing what looked like a microphone all over the
area.

I don't know what I expected. Maybe to see a picture of a baby as clear as any on TV. That's not what happened. There was a faint white outline of things that made no sense.

“There's the heart,” the doctor said. “Looks healthy. Four chambers. Blood flow is great. Let's keep going. Spine is fine.”

My eyes started adjusting.

Mom was bawling and Dad kept saying, “There, there,” but I could hear tears in his voice, too.

“Oh, here we go,” the doctor said. “It's a girl.”

A girl? How could he see anything on that screen?

“A girl,” Dad said, and his voice cracked right
in two, he was so happy. “I always wanted all girls.”

“Can you show me her face?” Mom asked.

“Sure.” The picture seemed to spin and then slow down. “Look at that,” the doctor said. “She's sucking her thumb.” He used an arrow to point things out.

It was then that I saw it. I saw the whole picture. I saw my sister sucking her thumb. She was still all funky looking, just a pale outline in a bluish black sea, but I could see her little hand up at her mouth. And even though I wasn't going to say a thing about it to my mom or dad, it was at that very moment that I fell in love with her, and I couldn't wait for her to be born.

“Now, of course you'll invite Christian, right, honey?” Mom asked. She sat at her desk in her office, a pad of paper in hand. We were making a list. No,
she
was making a list.

“Yes, Mom.” I didn't want to look at her. I was angry. This was, after all, supposed to be my party. A party that I wanted to plan with Mary. How could I with Mom's nose stuck right in my business?