Portion of the Sea (44 page)

“Busy beyond belief,” I blurted out, for just thinking of what lay ahead, an overwhelming triangle: a newborn, a single mom, and a fast-paced, stressful career.

But then I saw a look of rejection on his face, and I felt bad for how I had responded. “I didn’t mean it as harsh as it sounded,” I said. “I’m just not up for any sort of social engagements right now. I just need time.”

He sipped his coffee. “More time,” he said. “I’ve got to respect that. It’s what you want. But tell me the truth, Lydia. You’re not turning into one
of those women’s libbers, are you?”

I felt my baby inside kick me in the gut. “Ouch,” I said.

“Thank God,” he said. “I hoped not.”

“They’re not so bad, Ethan. If there weren’t any assertive, aggressive, ambitious women in the world, I today might not be allowed to ride my bicycle.”

He raised an eyebrow at me, and I agreed how goofy I just sounded. And although what I said was the truth, we both laughed, and I knew he was thinking back to the day he tried stopping me from riding my bike to work, and I battled him on it, and then took off—arriving to work before him, I might add. He took a bus.

I sipped my tea and patted him on the shoulder. “You take care of yourself, Ethan. I know you’ll make the right decision as to which direction to go—whether it be the follow-up on President Kennedy’s assassination or Vietnam. I’ll be watching for your bylines. They always let me know where you’re at.”

“After talking with you, I’m leaning more toward Vietnam,” he said, looking like a hurt puppy dog.

“I didn’t suggest that, did I?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“It’ll give me someplace to go. It’s not like there’s any personal interests keeping me here at the moment.”

“You just be safe, whatever you do,” I said, not wanting to take responsibility for his decisions.

“I will. It was good seeing you as always. Bye, Lydia.”

“Bye, Ethan.”

Had I not sworn that day on the Causeway Bridge that I’d never marry any other man, maybe I would have said “yes” to getting together with Ethan. Just as he made a good journalist, he would have made a fine husband, for any man of integrity is a man worth marrying. But as long as I loved Josh and as long as he had no intentions with me, I would never ever marry any other man, and I held firm to that.

I did my best not to think of him all the time. At first, I could kick the thoughts out of my mind, but lately I let him stay there in my mind like a handsome bird.

It was only fantasy, for the real Josh was off doing volunteer work with the Peace Corps, having no idea at all that I was carrying his baby. I couldn’t let myself dwell on it, for doing what was necessary to support my baby without losing my job was all I had to care about for the time being. And that was a lot!

And then, four weeks before my due date, I tried standing up from the chair I had been sitting on and noticed parts of my body aching that I never knew I had. Time was running out, and I had no one to help me once the baby was born. It was something I kept pushing to the bottom of my to-do pile. The people I occasionally socialized with, I also worked with, and I couldn’t trust. Friends I grew up with were long since married and living in the suburbs. I didn’t feel like calling on them. I needed someone to help me, and I had to think fast.

But thinking fast was something I no longer did. Maybe it was the leg cramps that interrupted my sleep every night, or the hormones, or the secret I was harboring inside me. I had to find a nanny fast, and it was a daunting task for someone like me, someone reaching her wit’s end. There was no reaching deep down into my innermost being, not this time. When a woman reaches her wit’s end, there’s only one thing to do, so I reached out and asked for help.

I knew nothing about babies or mothering. I hardly played with but one doll when I was younger. I never had little siblings to care for. And I had no mother to mimic. I thought about the last role Marlena played—mother of ten opera- singing boys who formed a theatre in their neighborhood, and soon attracted an audience the size of London lining up on the sidewalk outside their home to buy tickets to see the beautifully well-behaved and talented boys perform. Damn, Marlena’s acting was superb. Her role as their mother grabbed me and pulled me in, and I forgot she was acting. I wrote her a letter immediately after seeing the movie and explained my circumstances and then invited her to come stay with me for the birth of the baby. I included a roundtrip ticket arriving before my due
date and staying for one month.

I had everything perfectly calculated. I’d use five vacations days from work after giving birth and then add a couple of sick days onto that if needed. Then, on the seventh or eighth day I’d return to work, leaving my baby in the matronly arms of Marlena and hire a nanny to take over once she left. It was the perfect plan. I just hoped Marlena was still resting on Sanibel before flying off to London to direct another film. And that she wouldn’t be too disappointed by my pregnancy.

When I still didn’t hear back from her one week later, I started calling nannies just in case, and when I narrowed my list, I asked them to stay flexible with me until I knew more and that it all depended on what and when I heard back from Marlena. I didn’t want to call her. I wasn’t good at asking for help and the letter, although it made me wait for a reply, was my most comfortable way of asking.

But then, as I was quietly talking to one of the prospective nannies on the phone at work, I got a sharp spasm across my lower back. My stomach had been tightening in bursts since I first woke, but I assumed my body was just rehearsing for the big day.

“Hola?” the nanny said in the phone. “Que pasa?”

“I don’t know,” I managed to say five seconds later. “I just had a spasm in my back.”

“Oh dear,” she said. “You’re in labor.”

“I can’t be, not today.”

“Si, si.”

“No, no. I’ve got another week yet. I’ve got a ton to do. I was planning on shopping this week—diapers, bottles, baby clothes,” I whispered into the phone, my words coming out choppy.

“You need to get to the hospital,” she said. “Dear? Are you there?”

“No,” I said. “Yes, I’m here, but it’s coming back again. My back …”

“Another contraction. Start counting! Uno … dos … tres … How far apart they are, dear, and then get some help.”

Help? I didn’t have anyone to help me. As I fought the excruciating wave of pain darting across my back, the piles of work on my desk looked taller than ever, and I had to close my eyes. I told myself, “Stay calm and
collected. You can do this. No problem. Just breathe.” I imagined the white sands of Sanibel and the turquoise waters. The contraction subsided.

“I don’t have time to talk,” I said. “Thanks for your time, and I’ll be in touch if I decide to further pursue a nanny. You are most certainly my first choice.”

“Gracias muchacha. Gracias.” I hung up the phone. There were more questions I wanted to ask her, but time was running out and I felt all kinds of troublesome deadlines hitting me from every direction. First and foremost, I had to finish the story I was working on for the paper.

Between contractions, I typed as fast as I could, a story about the new generation of women preparing to push down doors that a former generation of women had been pounding on with regard to womens’ rights.

When another contraction came, I stopped typing, closed my eyes once more, and there I was, rolling around in the warm white sand with the birds overhead chirping, “This is why we lay eggs. It’s simpler,” I think I heard one of the birds whistle down to me. “You ladies should try it.”

I opened my eyes and made a phone call to a woman I had been meaning to include in this story. “Now that women have received federal protection from discrimination, are they content?” I asked her.

“Hell no,” she shouted. “There’s more worth fighting for.”

I could feel a contraction coming on. I thought contractions started light, then progressed. It wasn’t fair that I was getting hit hard, like a major earthquake. Then again, I had done my best since five o’clock this morning to ignore the simpler tremors I had felt within me. I had been in denial that this might be the day.

“What about benefits for working pregnant women?” I blurted out as I bent over in my seat.

“It’s criminal,” she said. “That they should lose their jobs or not get hired or be told their careers are over because they’re pregnant.”

My contraction had reached its strong point, and I was sliding down my chair, almost to the floor. I tried returning to the beach in my mind, but it turned into a dangerous place, with stingrays whipping and jellyfish stinging. “Damn!” I shouted into the phone.

“Exactly,” said the woman on the phone. “The majority of men in this country have no regard for women’s rights.”

“Damn,” I shouted again. “They have no idea what we go through. I hate them all!” I could hardly bear the pain across my back. Maybe if the contractions would switch to the front it might be okay. “I’ll tell you what I’d like to do to those men,” I said, taking a deep breath in. “I’d like to make them stay home all day and bake the meatloaf and scrub the toilets and beg us for a little extra money so they might be able to buy a new lamp for the house. But most importantly, let them give birth! I wonder if there’s a way for that to happen! Male seahorses do it. They’re the ones to carry the eggs.”

“You are good,” she said. “Have you thought of helping us kick start our movement? Organized feminism has practically been nonexistent, but now we’re …”

“Dang!” I cried, feeling something starting up again. “I could be president of your cause, but I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. I’ve got to get back to work. Thanks for the …”

I hung up just before the next wave of pain reached its peak. And when my phone rang, I didn’t know whether I should answer it, but I did. It was Marlena.

“I can’t talk now,” I said in broken breaths. “I’ve got to turn a story in and get to the hospital. Call me later. I should be back to work in a couple of days.”

I staggered through the newsroom, one time dropping to my knees pretending to tie my shoelace while waiting for the contraction to subside, then I continued onward toward the editor’s desk. When I saw him, I was out of my mind and yelled, “Catch,” and then, like a kite, I sent my story gliding through the air, apologizing and then racing out of the room. “I’ll explain later, but I’m in a hurry,” I said before the next contraction.

I longed to be invisible, not wanting to talk to anyone as I made my way through the halls, to the elevator and out the front door into the city streets. From there, I flagged down a taxi and went to the hospital.

XXXIX

JUST AS A MOTHER DOLPHIN
has a nursemaid dolphin there at her side to assist her at birth and protect her from predators, I had Marlena.

She had arrived earlier that morning to surprise me and, after our interrupted phone call, she headed directly to the hospital mentioned in my letter. The labor was short for a first-timer like me, but that didn’t surprise me. It fit my nature of always being in a hurry.

But no one had prepared me for two hours of pushing. I imagined three maybe four pushes and out with the baby. I’ve never feared death before, but as I pushed for two agonizing hours, I wondered whether my baby might be without a mother, just like I was as a baby. And in those two hours, I didn’t want to think about anything beautiful or relaxing, and once I wondered whether my boss was upset with the headline I included with the story I tossed his way:

WHY WOMEN HATE MEN

Maybe he’d find it comical. It wasn’t my job to write headlines, anyway, so he would know I was only kidding. Someone else wrote the headlines. I just wrote the stories. But as I pushed again and again, feeling the veins under my eyes nearly bursting and wrinkles forming on my face, I couldn’t stop myself from hating Josh more than I hated pointy shoes, sleeping in rollers, making meatloaf, and poking slimy raw bait on a hook. How dare
him love me like that, then leave me the next morning, having no idea of the pain he was causing me, or what I was going through because of our night together.

“I vow I will never go near another man again,” I yelled to Marlena between pushes and breaths.

“That’s what we all say,” said the nurse. “Give it time. You will.”

Between pushes, I considered joining that newly organized woman’s movement. I’d give them a call next week. I was angry with Josh for making me feel pain and with men in general for making me work on the day I gave birth, so I wanted to be one of those women to push the door down.

Instead, I pushed a baby into the world and suddenly my anger vanished. When the nurses handed me Jack, he was wrapped snuggly in a blanket like a burrito, and I was filled with a kind of love I had never felt before. As I touched his cheek to mine, I would do anything for this little person, anything to make his world good. I cried my eyes out because I loved him. And I loved his father too.

“Oh, Lydia,” Marlena said as she held Jack for the first time. “He looks like a newborn pelican with the thin white fuzz atop his head.”