When in Doubt, Add Butter (28 page)

I watched the taillights disappear into the darkness, then stood another moment on the driveway, still warm from the day’s sun, enjoying the quiet that hushed over the neighborhood. Overhead, stars dotted the black sky and a tiny sliver of moon hung like a light on a string.

It was a great night to be born.

And the lucky kid was being born to great parents.

All kids should be so lucky.

I breathed in the cool, wet air and realized with a startling thought that that would be me. In a little over six months.

Holy cow.

Where would I be in six months? Would Penny be driving me to the hospital? Would it happen for me in the middle of the night? Would … Paul be there? I’d have to move. Have to have an actual room for my son or daughter. There was a small thrill in me as I realized it would
be
one of those two. I’d be a mother.

But panic followed and took over the thrill quickly.

I was suddenly startled by a small voice just a few feet before me.

“Where are my parents?” Charlotte’s question quivered with fear and false bravado. “Who are you?”

“It’s me, Char.” I moved forward and knelt in front of her so she could see me more clearly. “Gemma.”

Her face crumpled. “I don’t have my glasses!”

That’s right, her glasses. Honestly, she should never venture out of the house without them; it was dangerous. “It’s okay, let’s go inside and find your glasses so you can get a good look. In the meantime, we can talk about that girl you were telling me about in your class a few weeks ago.…”

It wasn’t great, but it was the first detail that came to mind that might prove to her who I was in the dark as I took her small hand and led her into the house, where we could get her glasses. She pulled reluctantly against my hand, but I was afraid to let go for fear she’d run away, dodging into the dark slices of land between houses, where it would be hard to find her. “What was her name? Pamela? The one with the black cat clock?”

Charlotte nodded. “I saw it at her birthday party.”

“That’s
right,
and it sounds really cool. Maybe I can find one for you for your birthday.”

I dropped my purse and keys on the table next to Penny’s door—it was the same place I had mine—closed the door, and locked it. Charlotte, several feet ahead, had found her glasses. She turned wary eyes back to me, and I saw the recognition come into them.

Just before she burst into tears.

“Charlotte, what’s wrong?” I rushed to her, completely unsure how to handle this. Obviously, the one thing I couldn’t do was call her parents, and it was too late to call anyone else I knew who might have even an iota of experience with kids, so I was on my own.

“I … want … my … mom,” she sobbed, lifting her glasses and swiping a hand across her teary eyes.

“Your mom and dad went to the hospital—”

The horror in her eyes nearly made my heart stop.

“—because it’s time to have the baby,” I added quickly. Good Lord, hadn’t Penny and Dell warned her that the baby was due soon and that it would require a trip to the
hospital
?

Charlotte’s face crumpled again.

I was in way over my head.

“Don’t cry,” I said, as if that had ever helped any anguished person in the history of the world. I put my hand on her thin shoulder and felt it shaking with her sobs. This was awful. “Charlotte?” I tried the name her mother called her sometimes, “Char Char?”

She glanced at me.

I tried to think of what made me feel better in a situation where I felt like crying. “Do you want some ice cream?”

She sniffled and nodded.

Score! “Let’s go find some,” I said excitedly, and together we rushed to the freezer.

I shouldn’t have started patting myself on the back so soon. The freezer was filled with foil-wrapped items and a few plastic containers with unknown contents—all of which looked just like my mother’s freezer had when I was growing up—but no ice cream. Which was also like my mother’s freezer when I was growing up.

“Uh … Charlotte?”

She looked at me with wide eyes. Something about them seemed much older than her six years. “My mom doesn’t get ice cream,” she said solemnly.

“She doesn’t?”

“She’s bacteria intolerant.”

I bit my lower lip. “Okay.” I wasn’t sure what to do. It was only a little after two thirty in the morning, but both Charlotte and I were wide awake, and I’d promised her ice cream. “Is there anything else here you can think of that you want?”

She wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She took a deep breath that wavered with the aftershocks of her tears.

In that moment, I made a decision that Penny would never have approved of, but I didn’t care. I was the Adult in Charge, and I was going to do whatever I could to make sure poor Charlotte’s memories of the night her brother or sister was born weren’t imbued with negativity and a Mean Cousin Gemma.

“Then we’ll go get some ice cream.”

“What?”

“Come on. We’re going to Seven-Eleven to get ice cream.”

She looked hesitant. “My mom might get mad. It’s after my bedtime.” I could tell she really, really wanted to get the ice cream, though. What a good girl, I thought. She deserved a prize.

“Well, tonight is a
very
special night for you, Miss Charlotte. By tomorrow, you’ll have a little brother or sister. And if that doesn’t need a celebration, I don’t know what does.”

Her smile was wide, and I saw now that her two front teeth were growing in slightly crooked. “A
celebration
? Like a party?”

“Sort of.” I didn’t want her to get a big Chuck E. Cheese’s extravaganza in her head. “But just the two of us, while we wait at home to hear from your mom and dad about the baby.”

“I can’t wait to find out if I’m going to be a big brother or a big sister.”

I knew what she meant. “Me neither,” I agreed, and took her out to the car for a field trip to 7-Eleven.

That night ended up being one of the best of my life. Charlotte was such a great little companion, I couldn’t believe Penny ever went anywhere without her. Everything she said was cute, and when I spoke, she really seemed to listen, although that could be because I mostly talked about ice cream and the movie she’d chosen for us to watch when we got back,
Finding Nemo.

Around four thirty, as we were searching around for the copy of
The Aristocats
that she was
sure
they had, I decided she wasn’t going to school in the morning. At this point, I’d already made executive decisions that stood to make her school day unsuccessful—why send her in for that misery?

Besides, I was sure Penny was going to call any minute, and I didn’t want to waste precious time going to school to sign Charlotte out before getting over to the hospital to meet her new sibling.

She held up well, I’ve got to say. The kid hung in there until the first light of dawn started edging up on the horizon. To tell the truth, I was kind of disappointed to see it. There had been something so magical about the night, about us perusing the freezer section of the brightly lit convenience store and then driving home on empty streets with three pints of Häagen-Dazs, since we couldn’t decide which one we wanted most.

And sitting on the sofa, eating ice cream from the container, watching Nemo swim the seas while the evening wound down, exhaustion took over.

We fell asleep on the sofa, watching an infomercial for Total Gym. Chuck Norris had always bored me. I made a mental note to tape this particular infomercial on my DVR for the next time I had insomnia.

Anyway, we woke to the sound of the phone ringing. By now, Kelly Ripa was interviewing Russell Brand at a volume I don’t know how we’d slept through, so I hurriedly found the remote and pressed
MUTE
before answering the call.

It was Dell. “We’re having some trouble. Looks like it’s going to be a while.”

“Trouble?” I was instantly on alert. “What kind of trouble?”

“Labor started, then stopped. It’s pretty normal.” There was a catch in his voice that told me he either didn’t believe what he was saying or he didn’t know if there was any real truth to it. “They just gave Penny some Pitocin. That should get things moving again. How was Charlotte this morning?”

There was no point in telling him about Charlotte’s and my Excellent Adventure right now; he had enough to think about. “Perfect,” I said. “Not a problem at all, everything’s fine.”

“Good. Are you going to go in to work tonight?”

“Yes, but it’s pretty much a drop-off night, so I can take Char with me if you’re not back.”

“Thank you so much.” He sounded relieved. “That’s a load off my mind.”

“Don’t give it another thought. Just take care of your wife; she needs you right now.”

He gave a single hard laugh. “You’d be hard-pressed to convince
her
of that.”

“Aw, she adores you and you know it. It won’t kill you to just take it silently for the moment.”

“I guess not.” There was a loud announcement over the speaker on his end of the line, and then I heard him say, “I’d better go. They’re bringing the doctor in to consult about an emergency C-section.”

“Oh-oh. She’s not a fan of knives.” I know, stupid to talk like that with a kid a few feet away, right? All I can say in my own defense was that I was
never
around children and was therefore very stupid about them. “Give her my best, and call me as soon as you know anything.”

I ended the call and sat quietly for a moment, thinking about everything he’d said, but then I heard the sound of soft crying and looked to see Charlotte weeping quietly on the sofa.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. I shouldn’t have kept her up, I thought. She was a Craig as well as a Neiman, and we were all just useless piles of tears and complaints when we didn’t get enough sleep.

“Is someone getting hurt?” she asked tentatively.

“No, why?”

“You said something about killing,” she said, blinking behind the glasses that were still crooked from falling asleep with them on. “And knives.”

“Oh,
that.
” I went over to her and pulled her into the crook of my arm. “I was talking to your dad, but it was just an expression. You know, like, ‘Would it kill you to do the dishes sometimes?’” I’d deliberately chosen something I could totally picture Penny saying. “Do you know what I mean?”

She looked up at me and nodded. “But what about knives?”

This was tricky. I could tell her the truth—that they might have to have a routine operation to get the baby out, but that seemed unnecessarily honest. And I didn’t know how much Penny and Dell had told her about this whole
giving birth
thing, so there was no way I wanted to take a chance on freaking her out further.

I needed a lie, and I needed it fast.

“They took pancakes in for your mom to have breakfast, but she didn’t want to use a knife to put the butter on them.”

Miraculously, this seemed to satisfy her. “At McDonald’s, when I get hotcakes, I always put the butter on with a fork.”

“I do, too!” It wasn’t great—but, hey, whatever worked.

“We should have breakfast at McDonald’s today!” she declared.

Again, this was probably the sort of thing one would normally consult with the parents about, but while I was in charge, if she wanted to drink syrup through a straw for breakfast, that was fine with me.

“Let’s go!” I said, and we were off on another junk food–hunting expedition.

When we came back, a very sleepy Charlotte fell asleep on the couch. I picked out a book from the shelf by the TV and fell asleep only a little while after her.

I woke up to my phone ringing. I grabbed and answered before looking at the screen. “Dell?”

“No, this is the king of Sweden, who is this?”

Paul! I was so glad to hear his voice. “Queen of the Sweet Potato Festival.”

“Sounds like a match made in heaven.”

“If only sweet potatoes were big in Sweden.”

He laughed. “Aren’t they?”

“I don’t know.”

“So where are you?”

I looked at the time on my phone with a wrench in my stomach. “Am I late?”

He laughed. “I don’t mean to be all, ‘Where’s my dinner, woman?’ but…”

“I know! I’m sorry! How did it get to be—? My cousin Penny went into labor! I was up all night, I must have fallen asleep. I don’t know how—I’m so sorry!”

I hadn’t had this feeling since a summer job when I was a teenager when I was supposed to work the brunch shift—yes, brunch, not even breakfast—and I’d overslept. Only to wake up to an irate call from my boss.

Who fired me.

“Really? Wow, that’s big news! Don’t even worry about it. I’ll just um … I’ll throw something together. I really just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“No, no, I have your stuff here and it’s ready, except for tonight’s … Hold on.” I put my hand over the receiver. “Charlotte? Do you mind if I have a friend over to eat dinner with us?”

She looked as confused as I felt. “Is it already dinnertime?”

“Yep. Almost. So
do
you mind if a friend comes and joins us?

“No,” she said, her eyes still on the TV screen.

Paul heard me over the phone. “Oh, no, don’t worry—,” he started to say.

“I want you to.”

He paused. “Text me the address.”

We hung up, and I stepped outside to look at the house number. No, it’s not something I should already know. I knew
where
it was. That was enough.

One episode of
The Jetsons
later, the doorbell rang. I got that teenager-y surge in my chest and stomach, and ran to get it. It was only then that I realized I must look like I’d been up all night and eating at McDonald’s.

I pulled open the door to see him standing in the glow of the porch light and holding two bags.

He smiled and held them up. “You like sweet and sour chicken, right?”

I smiled back. “You didn’t have to—”

“Let me in.”

“Sorry.” I held open the door.

Charlotte came bounding around the corner and then immediately got shy. She stood behind me, peeking at him, and twirled her hair around a finger.