Sweet Little Thing: A Novella (Sweet Thing) (7 page)

“Will?” she said in her melodic voice.

“Yes, baby.”

“I’m pregnant.”

Well if those two words didn’t throw this boy for a loop…

I leaned back so that I could look her in the eye.

“I don’t think it works that way, kitten. It usually takes a few weeks before one even has symptoms.”
First stage: denial.

She took a deep breath through her nose and smiled piteously at me. “I don’t mean I got pregnant just now. I was already pregnant. I found out last week.”

“And you let me do that to you? What I just did… to you… against the wall?” I pointed frantically behind her.
Second stage: anger.

“It’s okay to have sex when you’re pregnant.” She cupped my face. She was smiling, and then I saw a hint of sadness wash over her.

“I thought you were getting on the pill. I thought you were on the pill. Aren’t you on the pill?”
Stage three: bargaining.
In those moments after she told me, I had no clear stream of consciousness. I was simply spewing out every word that popped into my head.

“I never got a chance to start the pills.” Her eyes filled with tears.

“Are we going to be able to handle a baby and the expenses and… oh my God… everything will have to change because of
this
.” I gestured with my hand toward her stomach as I held her out, away from my body.
Stage four: depression.

Tears were now streaming steadily down her face. Her eyes were scrunched up with such an expression of pain dragging them down that it made my heart ache. She sniffled and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry, Will. I thought you wanted
this
with me.” She looked down at her stomach the same way I had. “I’m sorry.” She put her face in her hands and began to sob. I was officially the biggest asshole in the world. She was curled up in my arms, naked, sobbing, heartbroken, and pregnant with my child.

I watched her cry for several moments. She let me pull her closer so I could soothe her even though I was the cause of her pain. There was something so beautiful about her raw vulnerability, but it hurt to know I had caused her to feel that way.

“I love you,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” she replied.

At first the news of her pregnancy seemed life changing in a scary way, but those thoughts were fleeting. Sitting there with her crying in my arms, I realized our baby, which we had made together, was growing inside her. Once it became tangible in my mind, her being pregnant became the most life-affirming news I had ever received.

“No, I’m sorry.” I started kissing her all over. “I love this baby. This is our baby,” I said as I kissed her belly and breasts and neck. “I’m so happy, Mia. I realize this is all I’ve ever wanted, to be with you and to make a family.”
Stage five: acceptance.

I’m not sure why I had to weather the stages of grief after hearing the news that night. Maybe it was the death of my singledom or the death of my own childhood that scared me. For some reason, when you’re faced with the realization that you’re going to become a parent, it immediately changes how you view yourself. You no longer think of yourself as someone else’s child because you can’t be a parent and a child. It’s an official good-bye, and good-byes always scared the hell out of me.

I continued kissing her as she cried and cried and cried, until finally there were no more tears.

She looked up at me with puffy red eyes and said, “Really?”

“Really what?”

“You really want this?”

“Yes.” I brushed the hair out of her face. “I promise. It just took me a second to process it. I’m sorry I reacted that way. You know I want this with you, Mia.”

She nodded unconvincingly and then stood up and reached for her dress.

“No, here,” I said and handed her my black T-shirt. “We’ll clean this up tomorrow. Let’s get you to bed.”

We exchanged few words as we scurried, half naked, out of the studio and into the freezing air. The doorway into the loft stairwell was only a few feet away.

“I’m freezing. I want to take a bath,” she said as we ran up the steps.

Inside the loft, I immediately went in and drew a bath for her. “Are you allowed to takes baths?” I yelled from the bathroom as she tinkered around in the kitchen.

“Yes, it just can’t be too hot,” she said finally as she approached me from the hallway. She had a stack of books in her hand.

“What are those?”

“Some pregnancy and childbirth books Martha gave me.”

I immediately shut the water off and stood up from the side of the tub. “What?” I barked. There were so many things running through my mind in that moment.

“Calm down, Will.”

“You told Martha before you told me?” I was shocked.

She held her ground. “Hold on a minute—just listen. I went to the café to visit Martha that day you came by, remember?”

I nodded.

“I was complaining to her about… you know, girl stuff?”

“No, I don’t know. Martha is not a girl, she’s sixty-six. What were you telling her?”

“I told her my nipples were sore, okay?” She blushed all the way to her toes and then stalked off to our bedroom.

“Wait, Mia, hold on. Aren’t you gonna take a bath?”

“Yes, but I don’t want you berating me in there.”

I huffed. “Just tell me the story.”

She sat on the edge of our bed with a pouty face and then she got all misty-eyed again.

“Don’t cry.”

“I’m not!” She punched the sides of the bed. “I’m just embarrassed.”

“Baby, you’re gonna have to get over that very soon. You can tell me when your nipples hurt, for Christ’s sake.”

“Will,” she whined. “It’s not that, but even if I did tell you, you wouldn’t know what it meant.”

“That brings me to my next question. How does Martha know about any of this stuff? She doesn’t even have kids.”

“Martha’s a doula. I thought you knew that.”

“She’s a whata?”

Mia shook her head and exhaled, looking down at her hands in her lap. She brought her thumb up to her mouth.

“Oh, no. You are not chewing on that thumb.” I pulled her hand away.

“A doula is like a birth assistant. She’s there for pregnant women before, during and after childbirth.”

“So, what, like a nurse?”

“Doulas mostly assist natural or home births. I want to have this baby naturally, no drugs.”

“Are you kidding me? You love drugs.”

“God, Will, be serious for once.”

I slapped my hand to my bare chest. “I am. I’m as serious as a fucking heart attack, Mia. Why would you want to put yourself through that torture?”

“I just want to see if I can do it. I want to see what I’m made of.”

“It’s masochistic. One of my sisters had a baby naturally and she said she would never do it again. She said it was like being blown apart from inside out.”

“Thanks a lot for that visual.” She crossed her arms.

“Sorry, but it’s true. You need to know.”

“Listen, Martha has been present for hundreds of births and she says natural is way safer for the baby and me.”

“It’s safer?” That got my attention.

She held a book out to me titled
The Birth That’s Right for You
. “Yeah, it basically says that in here.”

“Well then, if it’s safer, by all means.” I took the book from her hands and flipped through it. “Oh, you’re not even gonna get a Tylenol, lady. It says every intervention you add increases your chance of having a C-section.” I waved my index finger at her. “No drugs for you.”

She laughed.

“And… and you are going to breast-feed that kid for at least five years. You know how much bad crap is in cow’s milk?” I was being silly at that point, but it looked like Mia was relieved and that’s all that mattered.

She smiled. “Let’s not go too far, buddy.”

“You still haven’t told me what happened, how Martha found out.” I sat down next to her on the bed.

She took my hand in hers. “That day at the café when I told Martha about my… you know…”

“Yes, your nipples, Mia. Let’s stop being embarrassed. I get sore nipples all the time.”

“Really?”

“No,” I said seriously.

She elbowed me. “She said I should go buy a pregnancy test and go up to Jenny’s and take it. I didn’t think Jenny was home. It was actually kind of awful. Right after I texted you, I used my key to get into her apartment where I found her crying on the couch. She said she saw me in the store, buying the test. She ran home and that’s where I found her.”

“Oh my God, poor Jenny.”

“Remember when Jenny had the miscarriage and you said that it would change her?” I nodded and Mia continued, “Well, now she has a really hard time hearing about other people getting pregnant. She doesn’t even like to see pregnant women on the street. She insisted on me taking the test—it was like she wanted to punish herself. We got into a huge fight because I didn’t want take it in front of her. She went completely aggro. There were two tests in the box, so I peed on both and handed her one as I left the apartment. On the way down the stairwell, I looked at the test and saw that it was positive.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? And how did Martha know?”

“I didn’t tell you because it seemed like you had a lot on your mind that day. I never told Martha anything definite, but somehow she knew. The next morning, she showed up here with a stack of books and some prenatal vitamins. She has that weird sixth sense, you know?”

“Yeah, she does. What about Jen? How is she?”

“I went to see her after Martha’s visit. I sat on her couch and let her cry in my lap for an hour. She promised she wouldn’t say anything to Tyler until I told you. Before I left, she told me congratulations. She said she was happy for us and that she hoped we could be pregnant together.”

“Aw, man, that must be rough for them.”

“Yeah.”

We sat there in silence for several moments, absorbing our new reality. “Are you ready for your bath, mama?”

“Will, please do not call me that.”

In the tiniest, scariest, robot-baby voice I chanted, “Mama, mama, mama, mama,” as I followed Mia into the bathroom.

“Stop, Will.”

“Better get used to it, sweet thing.”

A
s we approached the big day, Mia became more and more nervous. She had decided we should wait until our wedding to make the pregnancy announcement so she could tell her mom and step-dad in person. Being one of thirteen kids and the youngest after a brother and eleven sisters, baby news was nothing new in my family, but I decided to wait so everyone would hear it at the same time. Except, of course, Tyler, Jenny, and Martha.

Jenny warned Mia to wait until the three-month mark when it was more of a sure thing. Understandably, Jenny was a bit of cynic when it came to these things. Mia said Jenny was practical; I called it negative. Finally, I told Mia she had to make the announcement at the wedding. There was no way anyone would buy any excuse that Mia wasn’t drinking at her own wedding other than being pregnant. I argued that everyone would know anyway, so we might as well announce it.

The Thursday before our wedding, I woke up early. It was dawn and the light coming through the window was a dull blue. It was peaceful, like a fading memory. That is until I realized the bed was empty next to me. I flew to my feet, threw on a pair of boxers, and darted out into the hallway.

I heard a small, sickly voice coming from the bathroom behind me. “I’m here.” I turned and saw Mia hanging over the toilet. She was pale and her eyes were bloodshot.

“Oh baby, what happened?” I started panicking. “What is it?”

She looked up at me with a painful smile. “I feel like… I feel like, remember that time when you bet Tyler you could drink a fifth of vodka and still play ‘Voodoo Child’ without missing a note?”

“Yeah, I did, twice, with my eyes closed, and I sang it too. I won a hundred bucks. I felt great.”

“No.” She paused to dry heave. “Remember how you felt the next morning? Remember, you thought you were dying? You made me write a letter to your family.”

“Oh yeah, I felt like shit.”

“That’s how I feel.”

“Really? That bad, huh? I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, baby, you look like death warmed over.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re still beautiful. It’s just, there’s this green tint to your skin.” When she dry heaved again, I asked, “Should I call a doctor? You’re gonna be one very unhappy bride on Saturday if you’re still feeling this.”

“I know. Just call Martha. I’m pretty sure I’m okay. I think I’m experiencing that phenomenon known as morning sickness.”

I kissed her on top of the head. “I’ll call her right now.” I walked into the bedroom, picked up our landline, and dialed Martha.

She didn’t even say hello. “Is she having morning sickness?”
The sixth sense thing was getting creepy.

“Yeah, she’s in the bathroom, throwing up. She doesn’t look so good.” I went back to the doorway of the bathroom and found Mia hunched on the floor.

“You need to get some food in her.”

I held the phone away from my ear and said, “You want me to make you some eggs, baby?”

“No!” Mia and Martha both shouted.

“What should I make her?”