... and Baby Makes Two (3 page)

When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder
—for which he did carpentry
Riverside Scene Night
—wherein he performed a monologue by Christopher Durang

…

Jane couldn't make much of this. Did it mean that he was talented or not? Had he ever appeared on
Law & Order,
and how could she find out? She tried to find out about that program, but only learned that their upcoming episode was about a homicide over the custody of a baby.

Eventually, Jane's mind wandered to the phrase that had been rolling around in her head. Single Mother. She typed it in carefully, barely tapping the keys, and she Googled. She got
2
,
370
,
000
results in
0
.
26
seconds. She added “new york” to her search and was still sifting through
1
,
120
,
000
results.

There were articles, support groups, condemnations, personal essays, chat rooms, and dating services, and that was just on the first page. She kept looking, which was odd because she didn't actually
know what she was looking for. An answer? A solution? To what, the baby haunting? She didn't mind the baby haunting all that much. She needed no exorcism. She liked babies.

She loved babies.

She wanted a baby of her own.

No, she didn't.

Did she?

Would the ache disappear someday, or would it expand and amplify the thump of her pulse and drive her mad, like a telltale heart? Jane stopped thinking and returned to her search. It didn't take her long to find a thread in the glowing, blue-underlined world of blogs. She clicked on one and followed it to the world of Choosing Single Motherhood. CSM. They offered the thing Jane craved: information. They were located in Manhattan, and they were scheduled to have a meeting next Saturday. Somehow that meeting got itself entered into Jane's electronic calendar. What was that—satisfaction? Joy? Progress? An endorphin rush?

Jane needed to breathe deeply. Typing this into her electronic calendar was absolutely not a commitment. It didn't mean anything, did it? It was a week away, and a lot could happen in a week. Maybe the Christ Child would appear again and give her a sign. Maybe Dick-Richard would give signs of an appealing future. Jane was good at extracting information from signs, even when the signs were vague and the information nonexistent.

She printed four articles and called for a car service to take her home. Work late—get a car home. What a perk. Jane pushed through the lobby doors, and there was Celeste, her favorite driver, waiting and waving. Celeste was as old as Jane's mother, but not nearly as cranky. Her laugh lines curved up to her forehead. Her baby-fine hair was dyed orange-yellow, and she seemed happily unaware of the bright pink lipstick she always wore on her teeth.

“Janie! You working late again? I'm gonna get you home, baby”

Jane put away her reading material for a cozy chat with Celeste.

“What you reading, Janie?”

“Oh, some articles. Stuff. About kids.” This felt like an enormously brave step.

“Oh, yeah? You got kids?” Celeste asked.

“No. But I'm thinking about it.” Jane felt drunk with the freedom to talk about this crazy idea, this motherhood thing. She could just spill the idea right there to Celeste! She even said, “I'm not married, but I have this feeling I'm supposed to have kids. I can't explain it, but I'm supposed to be a mother. I think I know it. Does that sound crazy?”

Celeste nodded and said, “Oh, darling. I understand it.” There was no traffic, there were no pedestrians. Celeste could have driven faster and run a string of green lights, but she slowed down. She checked the rearview to watch her passenger in the backseat. Jane leaned forward.

“This makes no sense. I shouldn't want this. I'm probably being selfish or stupid or irrational. But I've had this urge before, and I'm starting to feel afraid. I'm almost thirty-seven, and if I wait much longer, I'll be in diapers along with the kid. You know what I mean?”

“Of course.”

“You've never mentioned any kids, Celeste. Do you and Theo have kids?”

“No, sweetheart, my Theo and I, we always talked about kids, but that's not how you get them! And there was so much going on. He started the store and he was working all the time, and, darling, I do mean all the time. It was terrible. And then he got the blood pressure thing and then, I don't know, we stopped talking about it and a lot of time went by.”

“And then?” They were two blocks from Jane's home.

“And then it was too late for me to make a baby. I went through the change, and that was the end of that. No kids. Not for Theo and me. And, of course, then he had his accident, and here we are.”

Jane had already revealed something important about herself, so she felt safe in asking, “Do you ever regret it?”

A block away from Jane's apartment, Celeste suddenly pulled
the car over. Jane was pushed back and startled by the squeal of the brakes.

Celeste turned around in her seat, so that she could look directly at Jane and say, “Every minute of every day I regret it. Every minute. Every day. You understand?”

She waited for Jane to nod before turning back to the wheel and driving that last block. For Jane, that was The Moment.

…

Jane couldn't sleep until she'd read all her articles and made notes in the margins. Celeste's words and The Moment had seemed scary on the surface, but Jane was happy. A tumbler had turned and a lock clicked open. Gravity was pulling her toward her destination, and, oh, she was happy to have a destination that she could name. When she finally slept, Jane dreamed about fruit trees dropping apples that turned into pears, while her mother hissed in disapproval.

…

The next morning, Jane was too restless to sit and drink tea. There was a galloping feeling in her body, like something was on its way. An event. A change. She reminded herself about her birthday. That was the event/change, remember? Getting old? That's what's coming up. She pushed aside thoughts of Celeste and The Moment. Maybe The Moment was just a jarringly personal conversation and nothing more.

She sipped her tea and watched an episode of
Your Baby and You.

She sipped her tea and reread her articles about single motherhood.

She put down the tea, took off her clothes, and looked in the mirror. See? Jane was a brave girl. Could you do that right now?

Jane saw her very good body. Strong legs, abs you could see (if you had the right lighting), healthy breasts. Uneven, but healthy. This body did what she asked it to do. But could it make a baby? It
had worked so hard for nearly thirty-seven years—was she asking too much? Was that a gray hair down there? Oh, God.

When the phone rang, she jumped back into her shirt before she picked up. It was her mother.

“Janie, Janie, Janie. Next Sunday, darling. You and me. Another year older.”

Jane's birthday came first—May
21
, while her mother's followed on May
30
. But Betty liked the expedience of mother-daughter celebrations, and this year, Jane's birthday fell on a Sunday. This Sunday.

“Who's going to be there?”

“The usual cast of characters, Jane. You, me, the pope. Who do you think is coming? Family. What a question. Your father, your brothers, the kids.”

Family. Jane had two older brothers, Kevin and Neil, whom she still owed on a long-standing debt of Indian burns and loogies. She had never been close to the boys. Maybe it was because Kevin was already twelve years old, and Neil ten, when Jane was born. Maybe they were still bullies. They were not the whole family. Jane had always been close to her younger sister, Sheila, but Sheila would not be coming to the party. Sheila's name could not be mentioned, not in Betty's presence. In fact, it was probably a bad idea to think about Sheila too much. Betty might sense it and start yelling. Jane felt Sheila's image surfacing in her mind and grabbed the first words that pertained to something else.

“I'm just tired. I had a late night last night. Server maintenance. You know, these days we try to avoid power outages and …”

Betty didn't know what servers were, so Jane shouldn't talk about them. She remembered her Saturday CSM—Choosing Single Motherhood workshop. Jane shouldn't mention that either.

“Sweetheart, you can bring a date, if you like. Let me know if you're bringing someone, and I'll order a deli platter. I'm too old to cook for these things. Oh, did I mention that Kitty thinks she's
pregnant—again? I mean, I don't know what they're using, but it's not working. Your poor brother looks so tired with three kids. How is he supposed to manage with four, I ask you?”

“Not exactly my business, or yours, oh mother of four children.” Ouch. This was an indirect reference to Sheila. Conversations with Betty always took place on a tightrope.

“Three children. I have three children.” An indirect way of declaring, once again, that Sheila was dead to her. The direct references had been shouted and sobbed. Now she turned to ice or steel when Sheila was mentioned, even indirectly.

“Mom.”

“Janie, Janie, Janie. I'm just saying. Kevin's hair has gone all gray, and now he's going to start pulling it out. You'll see. And Neil and Linda still can't get the baby to sleep through the night. They finally closed on their house, and poor Dylan has to switch schools. This late in the year? What are they thinking? And next year, they're sending little Jason to preschool for eight thousand dollars a year. For preschool! None of you ever had preschool, and you turned out just fine. I never had to waste twelve cents for you to learn to finger paint.”

“I think there's a compliment in there, so I'll say thank you.”

After Betty finished the family litany, she reminded her daughter to bring that really good dip and that cheese that no one else can find. And a date.

“Will you have time on Saturday to pick up that cheese? What are you doing Saturday? Can you come out here and help me clean?”

Jane saw two truths in the front of her mind:

1. i. Turning down her mother's Saturday invitation to clean = a firm commitment to the Choosing Single Motherhood meeting. That looked, sounded, and smelled like a first step toward actually doing this.
   

2. 2
   . Item #i would require a convincing lie to her mother, which is, by definition, a quick lie. No hesitation. Show no fear.
   

There was no time to create any pro/con lists. Her synapses fired out a quick “Oh, Mom, I have to go into the office on Saturday. And then I have to go pick up the cheese—it's a busy, busy day. Look. I'll come by early on Sunday and help. Okay?”

Like millions of women before her, Jane took her first step toward motherhood by telling a lie.

Jane unclenched her jaw a bit, though she didn't know it. She was starting to find the constant presence of babies to be a happy surprise, and she opened the door for official flirtation with Dick, who went by the name Richard, professionally. She had no intention of bringing him to the family gathering—what a nightmare of a first date that would be. No.

Jane had missed all six performances of his play, alas. But he was confident there would soon be another. His confidence was unshakable. He didn't know that he wasn't George Clooney or if he did, he didn't seem to mind. This should have been a fairly typical event in her life: attractive woman flirting with not–George Clooney actor. But it wasn't, which leads to the question:

Why Didn't Jane Date?

1. S
   HE WAS BUSY.
   

2. S
   HE DIDN'T MEET ANYONE INTERESTING OR ATTRACTIVE.
   

3. S
   HE WAS GETTING TO BE THIRTY-SEVEN.
   

4. S
   HE COULDN'T BRING HERSELF TO BARS, SINGLES EVENTS, OR DATING SERVICES.
   

5. S
   HE DIDN'T REALLY CARE ENOUGH.
   

6. S
   HE DIDN'T FEEL ATTRACTIVE ENOUGH TO COMPETE IN TODAY'S MARKET.
   

7. S
   HE DIDN'T HAVE THE ENERGY.
   

8. S
   HE HAD ENOUGH LOVE IN HER LIFE ALREADY.
   

9. S
   HE DIDN'T WANT TO SHAVE HER LEGS IN WINTER.
   

10. 10
    . She wasn't not dating; she was just in a dry spell.
    

All these sentences were true, but she knew that they didn't really answer the dating question. Jane had dated in the past. Not much in high school. She was reluctant to bring boys home to her bullying older brothers. But in college, she had freedom. And with freedom came everything she thought she wanted.

She was happy dating in college. She was. Okay she found that she didn't love dating lots of boys. She didn't love dating a boy for just a few weeks and then being friends. And she wasn't alone in this, she knew. Jane's Irish parents had taught her to prize loyalty. She needed to be loyal to someone.

So what? This was a good time, by anyone's measure. Jane was so young she still believed that life was supposed to be fair. After all, she studied hard and therefore got good grades. Proof positive. And if she continued to be a good and loyal person, Jane would eventually find the good and loyal man she deserved. And she did. His name was Sam.

Sam was twelve years older than Jane. He had returned to school after several years in the real world. He was one of so many T.A.s, working on his graduate degree and scoping out the undergrads. Sam was the T.A. for Jane's favorite professor, Dr. Barbara Ali. She taught Comparative Literature in Translation, which was listed in the course catalog by its smirk-inducing acronym. The course examined great works of literature that had been translated from French into English. Sam would read the text in the original French, and Dr. Ali would pretend to swoon over his accent. He would bow graciously. Jane found his accent dreamy too. Not to mention his liquid eyes. Oooh.

Jane would sometimes monopolize the class, exploring the dark subtleties of Beckett. Sam seemed to appreciate that. Which meant that he wasn't shallow, right? Jane wouldn't have been loyal to a shallow man. She had her standards. She and Sam fell in love.