Leaving Haven (16 page)

Polly had been talking all the way through Maryland in an attempt to convince Chessy to move in with her for a while after the baby came, and Chessy was equally adamant that she was going to handle the baby on her own, no matter what.

“I'm not questioning your ability to be a good mother,” Polly said. Her eyes were on the traffic in front of her. “But a baby is hard work, not to mention
expensive
.” She emphasized this last word, because it was the one weak point in Chessy's case, her ability to afford this baby. She and Ez were not going to get married, at least not yet. Ez was working as an apprentice plumber, but had several years to go before he could qualify as a master plumber, and Chessy wanted him to continue with his acting because she thought he was so gifted.

“I know babies are expensive,” Chessy said, shifting in her seat. She was eight months along now, her belly a round curve over the line of her seat belt. “But we've got it all figured out.”

“But what about the insur—,” Polly began.

“I said,
we've got it covered,
” Chessy said. “I am twenty-seven, you know, not fourteen.”

“Okay, okay,” Polly said. “But we're here to help you, you know that.”

Chessy rolled her eyes. “Yes, I know that. And thank you.” She looked at Polly. “I could remind you, though, that you are my sister, not my mother.”

“Fine,” Polly said. They drove along in silence for a while. Polly looked in the rearview mirror and caught Georgia's eyes. “You're uncharacteristically quiet,” she said.

“I'm trying not to throw up,” Georgia said. “I hate the backseat.”

“At least you're not pregnant,” Chessy said.

“Chessy!” Polly's voice was a reprimand. “Really. Have a little sensitivity, can't you?”

“Georgie's over it,” Chessy said. “Aren't you? You gave up on the baby thing on your fortieth birthday, right?”

“That doesn't mean she doesn't still want one,” Polly said. “And she's been unbelievably supportive about
your
baby. You could try thinking about someone other than yourself once in a while and not rub her nose in it.”

“I'm not rubbing her nose in it!” Chessy said. “I just said she probably doesn't feel like throwing up as much as a pregnant person feels like throwing up. Jesus, Polly. Take a pill.”

“Listen to yourself,” Polly said. “You
sound
like you're fourteen, not twenty-seven.”

“It's because you insist on acting like my mother and treating me like I'm an adolescent,” Chessy said. “I didn't mean to hurt Georgie's feelings, she knows that.” Chessy twisted in her seat to look at Georgia. “Are you upset? I'm sorry if you are.”

Georgia shook her head.

“You see? She's fine.”

“She's not fine,” Polly said. “Or she'd actually
say
something. She's always quiet when she's upset.”

“I'm fine,” Georgia said.

In truth, she was happy to listen to Polly and Chessy bicker without having to say anything, to watch the rolling hills pass by the windows, to think.

“So why are you so quiet?” Polly said.

“I'm not,” Georgia said. “I just don't have anything insightful to say about Chessy feeling like she wants to throw up.”

“You did hurt her feelings,” Polly said to Chessy.

“She's not that hypersensitive. Give it a break, Polly.” Chessy turned again to look at Georgia. “Honestly, is this hard for you? I'm sorry if I've been—”

“Oh, shush,” Georgia said. “It's fine.” She took a deep breath. “I'm pregnant.”

A stunned silence met her words.

“Are you serious?” Polly said.

“Of course she's serious,” Chessy said. “Why would she make that up?”

“I can speak for myself,” Georgia said. “Although it's hard to get a word in with you two sometimes.”

“That's because Polly never stops nagging,” Chessy said.

Polly snorted.

“It's still early,” Georgia said. “Eight weeks. But the doctor thinks everything looks good, really good.”

“Wow,” Polly said. Her eyes sought Georgia's in the rearview mirror again.

Georgia's eyes met Polly's and she smiled. “I know. But don't worry. I think this time it's going to work.”

Polly's eyes filled with tears. “The baby has a heartbeat,” Georgia said. “My doctor is confident everything is fine.
Don't
worry, Pol.”

“Really?” Polly said. “Wow.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Just think, after almost thirteen years suddenly I'm going to be an aunt to
two
babies in the same year. My kids are going to be so excited. And Teddy! He'll have
two
new cousins to play with.” Polly turned her head quickly to look at Chessy. “So, Chess, your baby and Georgia's will be just a few months apart. It's perfect.”

Chessy greeted this with silence.

“Chessy?” Georgia said. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Chessy said, staring straight ahead out the windshield. “I'm fine. I'm happy for you, I am. I know how long you've wanted this. It's just—” She bit her lip.

“It's just what?”

“You're stealing my baby thunder,” Chessy said. “You and Polly do
everything
first, and there hasn't been a baby in our family since Teddy three years ago, and
my
baby was going to be the youngest grandchild, and now it won't even be that.”

“I'm not stealing your baby thunder,” Georgia said. “This is your first baby. Everyone is excited about that. You'll have your baby half a year before mine is born. Come on, Chess.”

“I know.” Chessy sighed. “It will be good in some ways.” She turned in her seat to look at Georgia. “I can't believe it,” she said. “I noticed you were putting on a little weight, but I just thought you were getting fat.” She paused. “Hey! I can give you my maternity clothes once I have the baby. Yours are all a million years old, right?”

Polly looked sideways at Chessy's outfit, which consisted of a pair of black maternity leggings, a long lace tunic, and, inexplicably, a fake-fur vest in a strange shade of orange. “Great idea, Chess!” she said, her voice bright.

Georgia smiled. “I'd love that.”

“It's incredible you were able to get pregnant this time,” Polly said. “What happened? You just got pregnant?”

“No, we did IVF again.”

“And it worked this time!” Polly's voice was elated. “And you didn't even have to use a donor egg. That is so great.”

“Mmmm,” Georgia said. She was still unsure how to handle all this egg donor business, how much to tell, how much to conceal. She and John and Alice and Duncan had agreed they wouldn't discuss it with Wren and Liza until later, after the baby was born. Beyond that, they had decided not to tell anyone outside their immediate families.

Georgia looked out the window again. They were crossing the wide swath of the Susquehanna River now, bordered on both sides by the brown-gold trees of late autumn. The next time she crossed this river headed north would be next summer, with her new baby strapped in the backseat. She still could not believe it.

“Can I just say now I don't want to hear any more from either of you about your giving birth stories?” Chessy said. “God, I could recite them in my sleep.”

“That's Polly,” Georgia said. “She has four of them. I only have my one measly story.”

“None of them are that interesting, no offense,” Chessy said.

Georgia and Polly exchanged glances in the rearview mirror. “They get a lot more interesting once you've been through it yourself,” Polly said.

Chessy started to say something but Georgia's cell phone rang, and she saw it was Liza. “Hush, will you?” Georgia said, as she flipped the phone open.

“Hi, honey. How are you?”

“I'm fine,” Liza said. “How's your trip?”

“Well, fine. We've only been gone three hours.”

“I know. I just wanted to say hi. I miss you.”

Georgia was silent for a moment. This was not at all like Liza. Well, it was like Liza-at-ten or Liza-at-eleven, but not at all like Liza-at-almost-thirteen.

“Is everything okay?” Georgia said.

“Yes,” Liza said. “I'm going to Emilie's after school, then Emilie's mom is dropping me at the restaurant and I'm going to help Dad.”

“Why are you calling me from school?” Georgia said, looking at her watch. “Aren't you supposed to be in class?”

“It's my lunch break. I was thinking about you, and about the lake. I wish I was going with you.”

“I do, too, sweetheart.”

“Remember when Wren and I took the floats down the creek and they popped and we had to walk all that way to the bridge?”

“That was crazy,” Georgia said. For years, Alice and Duncan and Wren had spent a week in the Adirondacks every summer with Georgia and John and Liza. The girls played on the small sandy beach at the end of the bay, digging elaborate palaces with moats and rivers, finding sticks and pebbles for tiny stockade fences and stone pillars. When they were older they went for long canoe rides, just the two of them, or practiced doing dances and cheers in the meadow next to the cabin, Wren showing Liza the steps over and over, and applauding when she finally got them down.

“I just wish I was there, with you.”

Something in Liza's voice caught Georgia's attention, and she sat up straighter. “Sweetie, what's going on? Is everything okay?”

Georgia heard noise at the other end of the line, other voices.

“Nothing,” Liza said. “I was just thinking about how fun the lake was. Have fun, Mom. I've got to go.” And Liza hung up before Georgia could say another word.

T
HE
NEXT
MORNING
Georgia awoke to the bright September sun streaming in through a gap in the flowered curtains. The bed across from hers was empty; Polly must have either driven to town to get groceries, or gone for a run. She lay in bed for a few minutes listening to see if she could hear Chessy moving around downstairs, or Polly returning from wherever she was, but the cabin was quiet. Red-winged blackbirds chittered in the marshes by the lake. The cool air in the room nipped at her face and she burrowed deeper under the blankets. She'd forgotten how cold it could be in the Adirondacks in the fall.

She lay there in kind of a dreamy half sleep, feeling, as she always did here, as though the lines of time were blurred, as though she could be six or sixteen or thirty-six, here in this room with the yellow pine walls and the ancient oak dresser and the flowered curtains, dark green with bright yellow daisies. Nothing about this room had changed in forty years; neither had the lake outside the windows, or the forest beside the cabin, or the undulating mountains beyond that. Georgia loved the continuity of it all.

The only time it had seemed jarring was in that awful first year after her mother died, when coming here had been at once the most reassuring and the most horrifying thing of all. Everything was exactly the same, as always.
Here you are,
the cabin and the mountains and the lake seemed to say.
Let us take you in.
But the idea that all this just went on—the wind ruffling the curtains, the water lapping at the shore, the leaves of the birches rustling in the breeze—when her mother was dust, a memory, was almost too much to bear. She had glared at the curtains in bitter resentment that summer, thrown stones into that awful placid lake, spat at the silent forest. She had hated all of it for being there, so calm and unchanging.

Georgia rolled over. She wished, for the first time in a long time, that her mother were here. Maybe it was something about being pregnant again. She remembered those terrifying first months after Liza was born when she'd been racked with terror that something would happen to her, Georgia, so she wouldn't be around for Liza. She'd developed mastitis in the first week after Liza's birth and been convinced the golf-ball-sized lump in her breast was a sudden, malignant tumor in spite of the doctor's reassurances. For the next few years she had agonized over every freckle, every cyst, every headache, sure she was about to be struck down and severed from her daughter. The miscarriages and infertility—symptoms of lupus or leukemia or ovarian cancer—had fueled her hypochondria even further. Finally one night she had awakened John, worried about a throbbing headache that Advil wouldn't cure. “It could be an aneurysm,” she had said, “like my mother.” And John had turned agonized eyes to her and said, “I know. And what do you want me to do? Every time you worry, I wonder, ‘Could she be right? What should I do?' But if I say, ‘Let's go to the ER,' you tell me I need to be more reassuring. And if I tell you not to worry because it's probably nothing, you tell me I don't take you seriously enough. Georgia, this has got to stop.”

She knew he was right, but she couldn't still the fear. Growing up without a mother had completely changed her life, as it had changed Polly's and Chessy's. She had asked Polly once if she felt the same fear about dying prematurely and leaving her children behind. Polly had said, “Of course I think about it. How could you not? But I figure it's pretty unlikely. So I don't worry about it.” But then, that was the difference between Georgia and Polly.

Georgia closed her eyes and felt a sudden wave of nausea. She opened her eyes, looked around the room, and leaped out of bed just in time to vomit into the plastic wastebasket next to the dresser. She waited, kneeling there on the floor, to be sure she was done, and stood up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
This is good,
she said to herself. Nausea meant raging pregnancy hormones, which meant her little embryo was thriving. It was reassuring.

“Georgia?” Polly's voice called up the stairs. “You okay?”