Until the Real Thing Comes Along (12 page)

“I don’t have a cat.”

Ethan’s face changes.

“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Do you want to get another one?”

“No, not yet. Not yet.”

“Well. Maybe you’ll have … you know. Something else.”

“You don’t have to keep it a secret from
us
, Patty. We can say it. Maybe I’ll have a baby. Maybe we will.”

“Yes.”

“God!”

“I know.” I smile, tighten the belt on my bathrobe, full of what I might call pride.

“Walk me out to the car,” Ethan says.

I put on my coat, go out with him. The day is clear, beautiful. A good sign.

Ethan starts the engine, rolls down the window. “I’ll see you.” He looks shy; I want to touch his face. Instead, I wave good-bye.

On the way back into the house, I see Sophia coming down her steps. She’s after the morning paper. I pick it up, bring it to her.

She stares after Ethan’s car. “He is sleeping here now in the night?”

“Well, we’re trying to get me pregnant,” I say. And then, “Oh, Jesus.”

Sophia’s eyes widen. “This is for true?”

“I wasn’t supposed to tell.”

Sophia draws an
X
over her heart.

“I can’t believe it! It just popped out!”

“Well, some excitement, it can’t wait.”

“Please don’t tell him I told you.”

“We never speak! If I speak on Ethan, maybe I’m faint. Whew!”

I look down, smile. “Yeah.”

“You want to know?” Sophia asks.

“What?”

“You want to know if you have pregnant?”

“Well, I … It was just last night, you know. I’ll wait a couple weeks.”

“I can tell now.”

“You can?”

She nods gravely.

“Okay. So … am I?”

“No, you must come in. Lie down. I have to see your belly. And
some … twine? I need some twine and one some thing from you and from Ethan.”

“I have a sock.”

“Yes. Good. Bring it, two socks, one from you, too. And I can tell you. Many times, I have done this. Guess how many times I am wrong.”

“None.”

“That is it. You have a bingo.”

I am lying on Sophia’s nubby green sofa. It carries the faint smell of mothballs, which I hope does not cause birth defects. Lace curtains are pulled back from her window, and the light shines prettily through the blue glassware she has lined up there. Blue. Boy. It’s a boy.

“It’s a boy,” I say.

Sophia opens her eyes and stops swinging the bundle of socks over my stomach.

“You got it so soon?”

“No. I’m just kidding. Guessing. You know, I saw blue, I thought ‘boy.’ ”

She tsks, begins speaking rapidly,
“You
must only lie still, I telled you! If you, you’re thinking, What is baby? What is baby? and
I
am thinking, What is ba—No! If I am thinking,
Is
baby?
Is
baby?, not
What
is baby?, is too confusing for answer to come!”

“Whoa. Pardon?”

Sophia leans down into my face. “Here is your part: nothing. Easy.”

“Okay.”

“Close your eyes.”

I feel a tiny breeze, the movement of the prophetic sock bundle. It glides back and forth across my stomach. And then Sophia draws in a sharp breath.

“What?” I say. “What’s wrong?”

She shakes her head solemnly.

“Oh God, I’m too old, aren’t I, there’s something wrong with it, isn’t there?”

“No. What it is, you have the new life. Is there. Starting.”

“Oh, Sophia.” I start to laugh, sit up, close my robe. “You can’t really tell.”

“I have never wrong. I have never check so early, is true. But! I have never wrong.”

“Well.” I smile.

“So.” She smiles back. I hear her clock chime the hour, as though something else in the house needs to mark the moment.

“I feel so … God!” I laugh loudly, then flush, embarrassed at my excessiveness. “I’m sorry, I guess I’m—”

“No! Not to feel shame. Is every time, a miracle. On every woman. You can be high up glad, is okay. Is right.”

“Yes. It is right.”

“You want now some tea?”

“No. Thank you, no.”

“Later, you can help me with some few letters?”

“Sure.”

“I have lately winned some microware.”

“You did?”

She shrugs. “You help me fill out on some paper, I send it, and—pah!”

“You won some microwave dishes?”

“I show you.” She shuffles out to her kitchen, opens her cupboard, and shows me neatly arranged white containers with glass lids.

“Wow. How did you do that?”

“You help me! I fill out form, is all.”

“Huh!”

“You want, I can share.”

“No, I don’t need it. You keep it.”

“Okay. I thank you some more.” She bows her head, curtsies a little.

“You’re very welcome. Thank
you
. For the … test.”

“So, you knew anyway. You did. A woman can know, if she does want.”

“Yeah. I think you’re right.”

“Today I make cabbage soup. And I save some for you. For you and you-know-who. Sweet and sour, is good to introduce on life.”

B
ack in my house, I start a pot of coffee, dial Elaine’s number. “What?” she says, on the second ring.

“Can you come over?”

“Patty. Jesus. Do you know what time it is?”

“No.”

“Eight o’clock. Do you know what day it is?”

Do I ever.

“Saturday. Listen, I was up around six. I waited two hours to call you. Pretend it’s a workday. If it were a workday, you’d be up already.”

“The purpose of a Saturday is to have it
not
be a workday. And the purpose of it not being a workday is to have eight o’clock not matter. I think this makes sense. I’ll hang up now and you think about it and in a few hours call back and tell me if I’m right.”

“I’m pregnant.”

Silence.

“Elaine?”

“By whom?”

“Well, actually, Ethan.”

Another silence. A bigger one. Then, “My God, Patty, are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“You’re
preg
nant?”

“Yes. Perhaps yes. I could actually be pregnant.”

“Well, are you or aren’t you?”

“Okay, I haven’t done the test. But that’s just a technicality. I’ve done everything else.”

“With
Ethan
?”

“Yeah. Ethan.”

“I’m coming over. Wait right there. Don’t go anywhere. Goddamn it. Make some coffee.”

“It’s made.”

“And don’t you DRINK any, either, if you’re pregnant!” This last is yelled into the phone from somewhere across the room. She’s getting dressed, I know. She flings her pajamas into the farthest corner of the room. Then she puts her socks on first. “You can’t have coffee ANYMORE!”

“I had milk,” I shout.

I hear her pick up the phone again, say impatiently, “What?”

“I had milk.”

“That’s disgusting. Here I come.”

I was wrong; Elaine has no socks on when she comes in. Snow is caked along the edges of her sneakers. She is clutching her coat closed, shivering.

“Jesus, Elaine. It wasn’t an emergency.”

I take off my slippers, slide them across the room toward her.
She steps out of her shoes and little clumps of snow fall out like frosting. She puts on the slippers, pulls her coat tight around her, starts picking up the snow.

“Leave it,” I say. Later, I’ll scrub the floor. Happily. This happens when you get pregnant, you get very domestic. “Take off your coat.”

“It won’t be easy. I think it’s frozen onto me.”

“Why didn’t you wear your boots?”

“I couldn’t find them. Anyway, who cares about boots, tell me everything.” She hangs her coat up, goes to the kitchen table to sit down. I give her a mug of coffee, then sit opposite her.

“Well?” she says, her blue eyes wide and beautiful, which, for the first time, does not get on my nerves in the slightest.

“Well,” I say. “I just think we both realized—”

“No, no, no,” she says. “Not in the abstract. Do it like, ‘He came over and he was wearing yak yak yak and I hung up his coat and I was thinking yak yak yak and he walked up to me and carried me to the bed’ … Like that.”

“Well, he hardly carried me to the bed.”

She shrugs unhappily. “I know. They never do.”

“Well, why do we
want
them to?”

“I don’t know. But we do. Don’t we? I do.”

“Why? It would just be embarrassing when they needed to buy a hernia belt later.”

“Some time today, Patty, you’ll probably tell me what happened.”

“I know. I am. Okay, I called him last night because I couldn’t sleep, I was all anxious and upset.”

Elaine sits motionless for the whole story, and when I’m done
she gets up and comes over and hugs me. Then, suddenly, she lets go. “Did I hurt you?”

“I’m
fine
” I say. “It’s just me, Elaine.”

“No. You’re different now.”

“I’m not any different.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I know.”

“Does it feel different?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Maybe … in my belly, low down in my belly. It feels softer. Like there’s this liquid spot of … happening.”

“Wow. Really?” She puts her hand to me, gently.

I start laughing. “I don’t know. I think so. There’s just something, I feel something.”

Elaine puts her cup in the sink. “Get dressed. We have to go shopping.”

“For what?”

“Maternity clothes. And those little baby OshKosh jeans. And … you know, a giraffe or something.”

“Not yet!”

“Okay then, how about a pregnancy test?”

“Yeah. Okay. But I am, I just know it.”

“We’ll see.”

“Fifty bucks,” I say.

“Five.”

We shake. And I am aware, as I never was before, that her hand used to be a baby’s.

•    •    •

Late that evening, the phone rang.

“I told,” Ethan says. “I’m sorry.”

“Ethan!”

“I know, but I … it just slipped out. To Ed McCracken. He won’t tell anyone, though. I don’t know, it’s like I had to say it to someone else.”

“Well …”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I told, too.”

“Who?”

“Elaine.”

“Oh, I knew you’d tell her. It’s all right.”

“And … Well, kind of Sophia, too.”

“Why
?”

“Well, the same thing as
you
, Ethan, it just slipped out! But she did this test? And I’m pregnant, she said. Plus Elaine and I bought a test from CVS, I’m going to wait ten days and then I’m going to do it.”

“I’m coming for that.”

“Yes, I thought so.”

“Those you can believe.”

“Yeah. Although … I believe Sophia.” My voice is small saying this.

“Me, too.” His voice is reverent.

“We bought some other things, too.”

“What?”

“Oh … clothes. For … you know, both of us. Me and it. Him
or her. And a few toys. And … just … a mobile.” Actually, “we” did not buy all that. Elaine did. It’s going to be pretty wonderful to have her live vicariously through me. Certainly it’s going to save me some money. I’m glad she makes so much writing ad copy. “Oh, and one stuffed animal,” I say, “one of those big chimps in the window at Kids And.”

“Holding the banana?”

“Yeah! Have you seen it?”

“I bought it.”

“Ethan!”

“Well, you did too!”

“I think we need to slow down.”

“Listen, all I got is one chimp. You’re acting like the buyer for Bloomingdale’s.”

“I’m going to do the test on Friday the third,” I say.

“Friiiday the thirrrd,” I hear him say under his breath and I know he is writing me down in his calendar. I feel a sudden sense of security, of pride, knowing I will be appearing on those calendar pages often, now.

“Do it at seven o’clock,” Ethan says.

“Well, you’re supposed to do it in the morning.”

“I know, that’s what I meant. Seven in the morning, then I can be there before I go to work. Don’t forget, we need to get your first voided specimen.”

“What?”

“The first pee of the day. That’s when you have the most concentration of the hormone it looks for—hCG, it’s called. Human chorionic gonadotrophs.”

“How do
you
know all this?”

“I asked. Did you get the test where there’s two in one?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “We’re all set.” Did I get
the
test? That
one
? I go into the bathroom, look at the pregnancy tests all lined up. Four different kinds. I look at my face. Then I lift my shirt, unzip my jeans, and look at my belly. “Hey,” I whisper. And then I cover my mouth hard, holding something in.

O
n Friday the third, I wake up at 6:57. Then I head for the bathroom. There is a chair in the way. Right. I move it, wash my hands and face, look at my watch. Ethan needs to get here. I have to go.

It’s going to be positive, I know it is. I get my favorite test out of the medicine chest, bring it into the kitchen. Then back to the bathroom. Then back to the kitchen. I’ll read the instructions—again—while I wait for Ethan.

After I’ve read the instructions twice more, I start a pot of coffee. Ethan will like that.

Seven-fifteen. What is the matter with him? What kind of a father is he?

But there, there is a knock at the door. I yank it open and Ethan says, “You didn’t do it yet, did you? I’m late.”

“I
know.
”

“I couldn’t help it, there was an accident.”

Oh, God. A bad omen.

“Nobody got hurt.”

A good omen.

“Want some coffee?” I ask.

“You can’t drink coffee. Didn’t I tell you?”

“I didn’t—it’s for you.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

He fills a cup, and I take the pregnancy test off the kitchen table. “Okay, so … I’ll be right back.”

“Wait, do you know what to do?”

“Yes, Ethan, it’s not that difficult.”

“But … should I come with you?”

“No, I think this part I can handle unsupported.”

“Okay.” He sits at the kitchen table. He’s a nervous wreck.

“Ethan?”

He stands up. “Yeah?”

“Take your coat off. Sit down. Relax.”

“Okay.” He does none of these.