Expecting: A Novel (16 page)

She’ll plan the dinner menu carefully. Chicken? Some kind of casserole? She can’t decide now. Some of her pregnancy books have suggested menu options. She’ll check them out later.

***

Childbirth in Other Cultures. By tradition, some new mothers in the Philippines are given a special meal after childbirth of boiled chicken, cold porridge, and a small amount of cooked placenta.

Delicious.

Who knew hot air ballooning was such a big deal in Albuquerque? The city has an international balloon museum and a balloon fiesta. Alan imagines himself walking with Nancy Futterman, looking up at multicolored, multishaped balloons, hearing the hiss of helium from vents, people chattering as they point to the sky.

Another Albuquerque tourist site suggests parachute jumps. Would Nancy go for that? Probably not. He hasn’t sprung the hot air balloon idea on her either. In fact, he hasn’t mentioned Albuquerque. They continue to chat on Facebook; Nancy talks about her children. Ava is the perfect child, sweet and good-natured. Trevor, on the other hand, is trouble. “He was born sneaky,” Nancy writes. “Maybe that’s a terrible thing to say about your own child. It must be something he inherited from
Bob’s
side of the family. Ha-ha.”

Ha
-
ha
indeed. Let me tell you about the unknown side of
my
unborn
child, Nancy. Not that I can let anyone else know. Like my family. Especially my mother, the Ancestry.com queen. She can trace our family back to England and Ireland for generations. And that’s just her side of the family, the Caffrey side. I can show you photocopies of birth announcements and obituaries. Ask me any question about a Caffrey or a Gaines, I’ll be able to answer.

But
sperm
donor
number
296—what do we know about him? His parents were born in India. I guess my mother will be able to figure it out on Ancestry.com/India. Assuming they have Ancestry.com in India, which they probably do.

He doesn’t say any of this to Nancy. He tells her he’s sorry about Trevor. It’s probably a phase and he’ll grow out of it.

“Bob said the same thing. He says I worry too much. Like Bob would know. He’s never around—
I’m
the one who gets stuck with the hard shit. Bob doesn’t like to discipline the children, so guess who’s the heavy?
Moi.
It sucks being the Nazi
all
the time. Sometimes I think children take
years
off your life.”

“I bet,” Alan types back.

***

Suppose Nancy is afraid of heights? He checks out other Albuquerque attractions. A botanical garden? Nancy might like that, but Alan would be bored to tears. He finds the perfect spot. The Trinity Site. Wow, he never thought you’d be able to see the place where the first atomic bomb was tested. Not that there’s much left to see. Obviously.

Nancy has to like this, who wouldn’t? He keeps reading the online information. Oh, this might not appeal to her:

A one-hour visit to the inner fenced area at the Trinity Site will result in a whole-body exposure of one-half to one milliroentgen. Although radiation levels are low, some feel any extra exposure should be avoided. The decision is yours.

Nancy might wonder why Alan is offering her a choice between a hot air balloon ride and radiation poisoning. “Some kind of death wish for me, Alan?” She’ll laugh. Or maybe she won’t.

At ground zero, trinitite, the green, glassy substance found in the area, is still radioactive and must not be picked up.

They can stay in their room in the Hotel Andaluz; they never have to leave. No worries about falling out of a balloon or picking up radioactive trinitite.

He looks one last time for an attraction that Nancy would like.

The American International Rattlesnake Museum.

***

Talking to Nancy gives him something to look forward to. Talking to Laurie is tricky these days. He’s afraid he’ll say the wrong thing. He anticipates seeing her frown, hearing a nasty comment. He can’t do anything right. If he asks how she’s feeling, she snaps at him, “How do you think I’m doing? My back hurts.” He could volunteer to rub it, but he hesitates. She’ll only remind him that he
didn’t
rub her back last night. And as for making jokes—he thinks that would only make things worse.

He’s exaggerating. She’s not that bad. Yes, she’s short-tempered, but aren’t most pregnant women? He can’t blame her; she’s running around, either working with Grace or getting things ready for the baby. And that’s okay; everything seems almost normal—except the Jack part.

“Jack was so funny the other day,” she’ll say. And she’ll tell a story about how Jack and his family got locked out of their car after a 49ers game and Jack’s father held up a twenty-dollar bill in the parking lot at Candlestick and shouted, “First one to break into my car without smashing the glass gets this.” And a bunch of guys jumped forward and had his car open in under a minute. And Laurie will laugh and Alan will wonder why he’s jealous of a twenty-one-year-old college student. Yes, it’s great that Laurie is getting to know Jack, but every story she tells, every clever Jack anecdote—it makes Alan dislike Jack a little more. And it shouldn’t, he knows that, and when Laurie tells Alan she’d like Jack to come for dinner, the easiest thing in the world would be to say yes, of course Jack should come for dinner, I’ll grill something on the barbecue. But instead Alan shakes his head and says no.

Why can’t he meet Jack? Is it because Jack has his whole life ahead of him and Alan is settled into middle age and wants to be young again?

No, it’s not about age. Alan is jealous because Jack has a part of Laurie’s life that he doesn’t. It reminds him of the James Joyce story, “The Dead.” Laurie made him watch the movie on cable one night.

“That’s Gabriel,” Laurie points to the TV. “He’s insanely in love with his wife.”

In the film, Gabriel observes his wife listening to someone singing an Irish song. And the look on her face—she’s remembering something: a different time, a person? Later when Gabriel asks his wife what she was thinking about, she talks about her life before she married Gabriel, how she was in love with a boy named Michael Furey. He got sick but came to see her anyway and stood outside in the rain. A week later, he died.

Gabriel is stunned. His wife loved another man before him? He had no idea. He thought their love was exclusive. But all this time, Michael Furey was there, part of his wife’s past. Everything has changed for Gabriel—nothing is what he thought it was.

Jack is Laurie’s Michael Furey. Jack will always have a piece of Laurie that doesn’t belong to Alan. Not to mention the physical presence of Michael Furey/Jack. Every day the baby will remind Alan of someone else in Laurie’s life. Jack and Laurie have created a human being together. Alan is only there to catch the football after it’s thrown. He reconsiders, realizes that’s a terrible analogy.

But this isn’t Jack’s fault. If Alan should be mad at anybody, it’s the crazy fertility clinic tech who switched around the specimens. Jack is as innocent as Laurie. Or Alan. Or the baby.

Alan could give Jack money to disappear, leave the state, promise to never contact them again. Would that make him feel better, even though it’s creepy and borderline criminal?

Or if he agrees to dinner that might put everything to rest. He’ll reassure himself that Jack is a fine potential father/donor. And once he’s reassured, he can let the ghost of Michael Furey go away. Hopefully for good.

Unless the giving Jack money thing works out.

***

Alan and Nancy Futterman talk about life in Texas versus life in California, their marriages. Nancy and Bob’s marriage is going through a rough patch. Alan says he understands.

They haven’t acknowledged their new relationship except when one of them types, “I’m so glad we made this connection again.
:-)
” That would be Nancy.

Does
:-)
mean Nancy will meet him in Albuquerque? Alan isn’t sure how to bring that up. Does he casually work it into a conversation about CityVille or Ava’s new haircut? “You ever get out to Albuquerque?” Alan could say. “No, why are you asking?” Nancy will answer. And then Alan could tell her he has business there, and when he was looking it up on a map, he realized Albuquerque is almost
exactly
halfway between Los Angeles and Dallas, what an amazing coincidence.

There must be an easier way to suggest they get together in Albuquerque.
Hey, do you like balloon rides? How do you feel about atomic testing?

***

He tells himself he doesn’t want to have sex with Nancy. Yes, he liked having sex with her way back when, but that was way back when. Yes, he liked her breasts, not that he should compare them to Laurie’s because Laurie’s are excellent—and changing. At first it was exciting, watching them grow rounder and fuller, and when Laurie told him they tingled sometimes and her nipples felt more sensitive. “Let’s see how sensitive,” Alan said and touched his fingertip to her nipple. Laurie gave a little “ooh” of pleasure and Alan touched it again, this time with his tongue.

But that was weeks ago. The last time Alan reached for Laurie’s breasts, she was getting dressed, putting on a lacy bra he’s never seen before and he saw her breasts in the mirror—large, engorged, the areolas darker, the nipples pinker. He reached over and squeezed them, gently, the way she likes. But she pushed him away. “Sorry, ow. They’re super tender today.”

He knows she’s not rejecting him. It’s the pregnancy. Once the baby is born, their sex life will go back to what it was before—different time schedule, but mostly the same.

So he’s not thinking about sex with Nancy Futterman; it’s more about how he’d like to lie in bed with someone, have the imaginary someone put her arms around him. No one judging him or telling him his fear about having a baby that is only
part
his is unnatural and will go away. He won’t have to think about the baby at all. He can bury his head in the crook of her neck and she won’t push him away. He won’t have to think about anything unpleasant, like the pressure of the Choc-O presentation at Palmer-Boone—he’s been told the presentation has to have wow factor. He won’t worry how a new baby will change his life. Or how his feelings about the new baby are still complicated and possibly unresolvable.

Nancy will nod, say she appreciates him. She knows he works hard, she knows he always tries to do the right thing; he’s a good man. Laurie should appreciate him more. She shouldn’t take him for granted. “Poor Laurie,” Nancy will sigh as she massages knots out of Alan’s neck. “She doesn’t know what she’s missing.”

“I don’t want this to be complicated,” he’ll tell Nancy. “I can’t leave my wife. Just like you can’t leave Bob and your children.” But suppose Nancy says her marriage is over? “Bob and I have decided it’s time to move on. Nothing acrimonious. We’ll share custody. Money’s not an issue; we just don’t want to live together anymore.”

And she’ll ask him to leave Laurie, tell him she doesn’t like L.A. and could never live there. But she’s not crazy about Dallas either. Albuquerque might be an interesting place to live; there’s something soothing about the desert. She likes the vast horizons, the dry air. (“The humidity in Dallas is HELL on my hair,” she says.) “We could get a little place in Albuquerque,” she says. “Not too big, but big enough for when the kids come to stay. It’ll be a nice spot for them. Halfway.”

Halfway. You have a whole affair; you don’t jump into it halfway. He’s either going to have sex with Nancy Futterman or he’s not.

He’s standing at the end of a diving board. A high board, not a low one. The one where if you make a wrong move, the pain when you hit the water leads to unconsciousness. And the sound, the
crack
when you hit—everyone will look over. Grimace. Feel your pain.

He loves his wife. He doesn’t want to do anything to mess up his marriage. He should delete his Facebook account. After he tells Nancy Futterman his business requires him to be out of the country for a year. And in a place, strangely enough, with zero Internet or wireless connections. He is a man whose wife is having a baby. He needs to be there for her. One hundred percent. He is not the kind of man who has an affair—he is
better
than that. What is he thinking?

***

He’ll have dinner with Jack. Step one of repairing the damage he almost did to his marriage. That will reassure Laurie and make her happy. He’ll get to know Jack and who would have believed it? Jack will turn out to be a great guy. Maybe Alan will figure out a way to get Jack on the Palmer-Boone softball team. And the awkwardness with the baby—that’ll be fine too. He’ll be able to laugh about it with Jack.
Why were
we
thinking
this
would
be
such
a
big
deal? Families are all kinds of different these days. We’ll be all kinds of different too.

Alan takes a deep breath and exhales. Okay,
now
he’s ready to be a father. He flirted with the idea of running away, doing the cowardly thing, having a wild, semicelibate but possibly not weekend with an old girlfriend, but that’s
over
. Even though he can’t tell Laurie any of this because she would be majorly pissed off. But he’s back and in a good place. There’s nothing for Laurie to worry about.

This weekend he’ll put the crib together.

Megan’s duplex is Spanish-styled with arches everywhere, three bedrooms, and a kitchen that’s not huge but has a cute, rounded breakfast nook on one side.

“This is great,” Jack tells Megan as he’s moving in.

“Yeah, it’s brilliant.” She’s still working on her Irish accent. “Except the landlords live upstairs and stomp around and you can’t complain. They’re eejits.”

His room will be the smallest of the three. Megan explains the current roommate, Florence, has moved in with her boyfriend. Megan is giving Florence’s relationship a fifty-fifty shot.

When Megan told Jack he could stay at her place, she made it clear he wouldn’t be sharing her bedroom. It’s their apartment rule—no live-in boyfriends or girlfriends. “It changes the dynamic,” Megan says. “Suddenly you get this
couple
vibe and the balance gets messed up. We get along brilliantly, why ruin that?”

They get along brilliantly, except for Jeff. He’s in the graduate screenwriting program at UCLA and needs to finish a screenplay to get his degree, which doesn’t sound hard, except he’s been working on it for two years. Apparently the script hasn’t been going well, and Jeff has decided to vent his frustration on his roommates. For example, he’s stopped cleaning. When his roommates complained, he said his writer’s block prevented him from getting his hands wet. Megan told him fine. But he’s no longer allowed to share the communal dishes or silverware. Instead Jeff uses paper plates, cups, and plastic utensils, which is bad for the environment, but, “Hey, we’re not his cleaning service,” Megan says.

“Why don’t you evict him?” Jack asks.

“We’re trying. But tenants have all these crazy rights and even if somebody goes eejit batshit like Jeff, you can’t just boot ’em.”

Casey lives in the dining room. She hangs heavy floor-to-ceiling curtains to make her space more private. She’s an accounting major—petite and pretty and only wears one color at a time. Like blue jeans. With a blue shirt. Blue socks, blue Converse. Sometimes a blue beret.

“What Jeff’s screenplay about?” Jack asks one morning when they’re eating breakfast in the breakfast nook.

“He asked us to read a rough draft.” Casey keeps her voice low. “It’s set in the future. Sort of
Catcher
in
the
Rye
meets
Alien
.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Jack says.

“Jeff said it’s about the ultimate alienation—get it? Alien-ation. Don’t ask to read it,” Megan says. “I’m
so
not kidding.”

***

Jack hasn’t told Normandie where he’s living. “You could at least check in with me,” Normandie tells him. “Maybe I should get you a GPS device, so I’ll always know where you are.”

He laughs—and realizes she’s serious. Her neediness is starting to freak him out. One night, driving to Megan’s, he thinks he sees Normandie’s car behind him. No, just his imagination. Hopefully.

He’s happy in Megan’s apartment. They have a good time, except for Jeff, who rarely appears. Jack tells himself it’s much better than life in the SAE house—Megan and Casey walk around in their underwear, there’s not nearly as much farting, and the kitchen doesn’t smell like beer. Almost paradise.

***

The only big negative right now is his Medieval Literature of Devotion and Dissent class. It sounded cool in the course listing—life, death, the plague. How could that be boring? Unfortunately, he missed the part that explained how the readings would be in Middle English. Trying to translate stuff like, “And in pis he shewed me a lytil thing be qualitie of a hassyl nott…” What the
fuck
? He’d drop the class, but then he’d lose his minor, and how else is he going to get his religious studies masters and/or PhD?

He’s failed two quizzes and made a D-plus on his
Piers
Plowman
paper, possibly one of the most boring things he’s ever read in his life. Written in unrhymed alliterative verse—oh, yeah,
that’s
a good time—in his paper, Jack compared Piers Plowman to Frodo Baggins from
The
Lord
of
the
Rings
. His hard-ass, lard-ass professor Mr. Bryant wasn’t amused. Jack can do a makeup paper, but he should know—unless he makes an A on the final, he’ll flunk the class.

One class short of getting his degree? His parents will show up for graduation and wait for him to get his diploma and his name won’t be called. “I knew you’d find a way to ruin everything,” his mother will say.

At least Subhra is supportive, texting him, sending emails. She wants to come for graduation, but she doesn’t think she’ll be able to get away. She asks how Laurie’s pregnancy is going, about things like incompetent cervixes and placenta previa. “I’m sure Mrs. Gaines is getting excellent medical care. I checked out her doctor, and he’s highly rated. If she has any questions, she can email me.”

Jack isn’t sure that’s a great idea. He talks to Laurie at least twice a week, and lately she’s sounded cranky. Jack suspects her crankiness has to do with Alan, but he doesn’t want to say anything that might upset her like, “Hey, my sister wonders if your cervix is incompetent or not.”

“I know this is hard, Jack,” Subhra writes. “But it’ll work out. I have a good feeling.” So there’s one major positive thing that’s come out of the baby business. He’s feeling closer to his sister these days.

“Mom and Dad want the best for you, you know,” she says to him one night on the phone.

Jack laughs. “You think? Then maybe they could say that to me. Instead of always making me feel like I suck at everything.”

“Come on, when you’re a parent, you’ll act the same way.” Silence on the phone. “When you’re a parent,” Subhra says. And laughs. “Whoa. And that’s going to be sooner than later, baby bro.”

***

Jack is going to be a parent. How will he feel if baby Buddy grows up to be a slacker? Suppose
Buddy
is a fifth year senior. Will Jack have to tell him to man up and get his shit together?

If Jack is part of Buddy’s life. Buddy’s real parents, Laurie and Alan, will be the ones saying to Buddy, “Man up and get your shit together.”

There must be some sort of switch in your brain. It’s turned off now, but the minute your child is born, it snaps on. The thing that gives you the ability to wake up in the middle of the night when you hear a child’s cough, to touch a forehead and feel a fever. Jack remembers getting ready to throw up when he was little and how his mother rushed forward to catch his vomit in her hands. In
her
hands
. Disgusting. But now—he gets it. Sort of.

He remembers his parents reading to him every night before he’d fall asleep. “Another Babar,” he’d say, and his father would talk about growing up and seeing real tigers walking in the street and Jack believed him. It wasn’t until years later that he realized tigers weren’t strolling the streets of Mumbai.

His mother would tell him Indian tales—about a woman who had a snake instead of a baby, stories about crows and banyan trees. When Jack would ask what a banyan tree looked like, his father would take out a small notebook he always carried with him and draw a picture for Jack.

In a few lines, Jack’s father could capture the exact expression on Jack’s mother’s impatient face when the family was late to dinner. Or Subhra checking her reflection in a mirror, her lips curled in an admiring smile. And Jack, his hair too long, bent over a Harry Potter book.

“I wanted to be an artist,” his father said. “Cartoons especially, but my parents were practical. They told me I should make a good living. And they were right.”

“But you loved art.”

“I respected my parents to make the right decision for me. And they did. I have had a successful career. A successful life. I am blessed many times over. And I wish the same things for you.”

It’s harder to be a parent than he thought. If someone told him that years down the line Buddy would have a terrible life, Jack would be crushed. He wants Buddy to have all the things his parents want for him. Now that he understands this, he’ll have more respect for his parents. This lasts two days—until he gets a text from his mother that says, “Let us know if you are truly graduating before we make our travel plans.”

***

“Conor McPherson is a genius,” Megan says. They’re sitting in the living room and Jack is helping her run lines. It’s cold, and there’s a thunderstorm outside, rare for Los Angeles. Megan is thrilled with her part in
The
Weir
. She’s explained to Jack the play is about people who hang out in a rural bar in Ireland. Megan is Valerie, a young woman who’s just moved from Dublin.

“So everybody’s drinking and they start telling ghost stories,” Megan says. “You don’t know if the stories are true or not. Valerie talks about her husband and her little girl, Niamh. Niamh was always afraid of the dark.” Megan goes into her Irish accent and Jack is surprised how real it sounds, not forced or boyoish at all. She talks as Valerie, about her daughter Niamh who won’t go to sleep at night. But Valerie reassures Niamh and tells her if she’s ever afraid, just pick up the phone and call. Anytime.

And then one day, Niamh’s school has a swim meet, and when Valerie arrives to watch, she finds out there’s been an accident, a terrible accident. Niamh’s been hurt, so badly that she might not survive. And would Valerie like to say good-bye to her daughter?

“‘And I gave her a little hug. She was freezing cold. And I told her Mammy loved her very much. She just looked asleep but her lips were gone blue and she was dead.’”

Megan looks down at her hands in her lap and doesn’t say anything for a while. She’s no longer Megan. She’s turned into Valerie. Jack realizes he is holding his breath.

When Megan/Valerie speaks again, she talks about the funeral and how awful it was. And then one morning when her husband Daniel had gone to work, the phone rang.

“‘So I went down and answered it. And. The line was very faint. There were voices, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. And then I heard Niamh. She said, “Mammy?” And I…just said, you know, “Yes.” And she said…she wanted me to come and collect her. I mean, I wasn’t sure whether this was a dream or her leaving us had been a dream. I just said, “Where are you?” And she said she thought she was at Nana’s. And would I come and get her? And I said I would, of course I would. And I dropped the phone and I ran out to the car in just a T-shirt I slept in. And I drove to Daniel’s mother’s house. I could hardly see, I was crying so much. I knew she wasn’t going to be there. I knew she was gone.’”

The storm outside makes the windows shake. Megan wraps her sweater closer around her.

Jack doesn’t know what to say. Megan has tears in her eyes. He had no idea she was so good. She looks up at Jack. “Was I horrible?”

“You’re great. I mean—wow.”

“My accent was probably all over the place, I might as well just go back to saying
boyo
all the time.”

“No, your accent was amazing. I felt like you were another person. How did you do that?”

“That’s one of the cool things about acting, learning to be somebody else. I don’t have her a hundred percent yet, but I think I’m getting closer. It’s so sad, Valerie’s story,” Megan says. “Losing a child, can you imagine anything worse?”

Losing a child. Jack is having a child. He lets that settle over him. And it feels good when Megan snuggles beside him and rests her head against his.

“Thank God we’re years and years away from worrying about anything like that,” Megan says. “Because there’s enough stuff in the world to worry about already.”

***

Like Normandie. Who’s been texting him at least ten times a day. It’s time to end things with her. She’s too controlling, and she is
definitely
freaking him out. And he’s tired of being dishonest to her and to Megan. No more running away from things. If he’s going to be a parent—even if he won’t be in Buddy’s life every day—he still needs to face things head on. So instead of ignoring Normandie’s texts, he replies to one and suggests they get together.

They meet at a bar in Westwood.

“How’s your new place working out?” She kisses his cheek and he realizes she knows where he lives.

“It’s fine.”

“You and Megan are back together?”

“We’re not together. I have my own bedroom.”

Normandie nods. She doesn’t believe him. She orders another glass of red wine and seems unhappy when Jack gets a Diet Coke. “So who else are you seeing?”

“Nobody,” Jack says.

“You drive over the hill a lot.” Oh my God, she
is
following him.

“I have a friend in the Valley.”

“It’s okay, Jack. You can tell me about your other girlfriend.” Normandie gulps at her wine.

“I don’t have another girlfriend.”

“With the Audi?”

Audi? Who has an Audi?
Laurie.

“She’s not a girlfriend.”

“Who is she?”

“You know—I’m kind of sick of you being suspicious all the time. I can’t do this anymore. We need to take a break from each other, okay?” Good, he’s said it.

“She looks old. The Audi woman,” Normandie says. “But she’s pretty. Where did you meet her?”

“Did you hear what I said? She’s not my girlfriend. She’s…” Hmmm, how to describe his relationship with Laurie? “My friend.”

Normandie laughs. A little too loudly.

Jack stands up. “I better go. I have a class.”

Normandie puts her hand on his arm. “This is Wednesday. You don’t have a night class. Only on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

She is a psycho.

“You need to stop following me, Normandie. I mean it.”

“Okay. If you tell me about your new girlfriend.”

“She’s
not
my new girlfriend.”

Normandie laughs again. It sounds like a bark. And before Jack can say anything else, she’s reaching in his pocket. Jack thinks,
She’s going to pull off my balls
, but instead she grabs his cell phone.

“Is her picture on here?” She scrolls quickly through the photos on his phone and Jack’s thinking,
oh
no, what do I have on there
, but he’s always been super safe about what he keeps on his phone, ever since the guys at the fraternity got Carter’s phone and posted half his videos on YouTube.