by Pepper Pace
***
“Okay, Mom, this will be cold.” Juicy looked at the little Asian woman and blinked. Mom…Then she felt the cold gel on her stomach and she lurched slightly, catching her breath.
The woman gave her a practiced smile; one she had probably used a thousand times in her career. Juicy smiled back. At least she had made the effort. The woman held a wand and pressed it firmly to the mound of Juicy’s belly. She kept moving it, and watching the monitor. She then gave Juicy an apologetic look.
“It sometimes has a hard time picking up sound if the mother has a lot of fat layers.” Juicy ignored her comment and stared at the monitor. And then suddenly came a loud woosh woosh sound.
“Oh! That’s a loud baby you have there.” The nurse reached over and adjusted the volume.
“That’s my baby?”
“Yes, that’s the heartbeat.” The technician was staring at a screen and Juicy looked over at it too. The image of a baby could be seen. It lay curled into a ball with arms and legs crisscrossed over themselves.
Juicy’s mouth hung open as she stared. The technician rolled the wand over her belly, taking measurements and pictures. Juicy had seen ultra sounds before; of babies that looked like deep sea creatures. But this was her baby…
Tears streamed down the sides of her face, pooling on the paper cover until they formed little salty puddles beside both of her ears. She was both alarmed and horrified that she was crying in front of someone, yet there was nothing that she could do to stop her tears as she watched the little being sleeping comfortably in her belly.
“Do you want to know the sex, Mom?”
Juicy gave her a surprised look. She didn’t trust her voice. She knew that she was only one word from a full out crying jag so she just nodded; head bobbing up and down.
“You have a girl.”
She stared so long at the monitor; at her daughter…a daughter. The nurse finally turned off the machine and Juicy almost protested before she was handed several pictures, a bright smile on the technician’s pretty face as she handed them to her.
“Your daughter’s first baby pictures.” Juicy sat up, it wasn’t easy, and the petite woman used both hands to help pull her up into a sitting position. Embarrassed, Juicy quickly dried her eyes and left the office. She couldn’t wait to get to her car so that she could examine every line, every detail of her daughter.
CHAPTER 13
Troy hung up the phone, staring at it for a full five minutes before he pulled himself around. It had been nearly two weeks now and Juicy hadn’t answered the phone in days.
He knew that meant that she was pretty peeved. So he made sure that his messages listed every single thing that he did. He would ramble on until the voice mail shut off and the busy tone was all that he could hear.
He rubbed his tired eyes and lay across the single bed that had been his so many years before. It wasn’t even night yet, but the medication didn’t follow the same timeline that the rest of the world followed. When he got tired he slept and that could be even two hours after he’d risen for the day.
Troy’s eyes drooped and he was soon sleeping deeply and dreaming of the same thing; Juicy.
***
The day that Troy had left their apartment, he had seen the hurt in Juicy’s eyes, but all that he could think of is how piss poor of a father he would make. Troy knew the facts, and that fact is that a child of his would likely have the same disorders that he had.
His life had been hell because of his illness. And now he’d passed that fate on to someone else! This child was going to hate him. Hadn’t he hated his parents, just a little bit for having him? The hatred had been compounded by the fact that they’d given birth to two perfect children before him.
And even if the kid didn’t hate him…he would hate himself when he’d have to watch his own child struggling with the issues that he’d had to.
With anguish he had paced in the living room of the apartment as Juicy sat in the kitchen forlornly because he hadn’t been the man that she deserved; someone who could give her a healthy baby. Then it dawned on him. Even if he couldn’t make a child that would be free of mental illness, he knew that he could show a child how to live with it!
And that’s when he’d had known what he had to do. He had to stop being selfish, and fix the things that were wrong about him so that he could be the father that he needed to be. He’d told her something and had hurried out of the apartment and bounded down the stairs, sprinting toward town. In his mind he kept chanting, ‘I have to get right.’
It was the middle of the night. And though he knew that there wasn’t much that he could do, he couldn’t just do nothing. So he bought a train ticket and without so much as a backpack, he made plans to return home; his first home, Connecticut. His family had told him not to forget about them and he never had; speaking to his parent’s on a regular basis and Bob and Lorie once or twice over the last few months. And now he hoped that they would be able to help him complete a task that he had not wanted to do before; but for his child, he would.
Dad’s stark white hair stood up on his head as he opened the door at five am in the morning. He wore pajamas and a t-shirt covered with a hastily pulled on robe. Mom peeked behind him and Troy felt guilty when he saw that she had pulled on her own robe and it was inside out.
He’d considered getting a room at a hotel; it wasn’t the money that had stopped him; he just needed to be at home. He had to talk to them about this. And now, as he watched them, having obviously pulled themselves up out of their sleep, he knew that the decision had been selfish and that he should have at least waited until the crack of dawn before ringing the doorbell.
“Troy!” His Dad ushered him into the house.
“Is something wrong, son?” Mom looked worried and he knew that she would probably always be more worried than anything else where he was concerned.
“No, there’s not anything wrong. I…” He closed the door and they stood there watching him expectantly. “I just needed to talk to you.”
Dad watched him with big, accepting eyes. “Well…Troy that’s fine. You come home whenever you want, but son…you could have just called. It’s a long way from Cincinnati.”
Troy blushed. “It can wait until morning.” He took in a deep breath. “Mom, dad, go back to bed and I’ll-”
Mom was frowning. “Troy, what’s wrong? No one’s going to sleep now that we’re up.”
“Right.” Dad patted his shoulder and led him to the kitchen. “Come on, we’ll have some coffee and you tell us what’s got you all wound up.”
Troy followed them and his mother moved about the kitchen making the coffee and his dad retrieved a coffee cake from the refrigerator and began cutting big slices of it.
“What brings you home, son?” He prompted.
“I’m going to be a Dad.”
His mother put down the coffee pot that she had been filling with water from the tap. She turned to her son. “You and…Chubby? Was that her name?”
“Juicy.”
“Ahh! Juicy. She’s going to have a baby.” His mother seemed very thoughtful.
“Congratulations.” Dad said, seeming genuinely happy.
“Yes, congratulations.” His mother responded brightly.
Dad was staring at him hard. “You don’t seem very happy, Troy. Is there a problem?”
He tapped his fingers absently along the table. “Yes…I’m a-afraid.”
Dad didn’t so much as crack an understanding smile. He nodded his head. “Good.”
Troy gave him a confused look.
“Being a father is tough work, and it’s scary, but it’s worth every trial and tribulation. Being a father is the biggest joy in life.” Troy’s head ducked. He was silently thinking that it’s good unless you get stuck with a fucked up kid like him. His father reached out and touched beneath his chin. He gently lifted his son’s head. The look he gave him was filled with so much love that Troy was momentarily overwhelmed.
“The fact
that you’re afraid tells me how much you want to be a good father.” He placed a slice of coffee cake on a plate and slid it to his son. “Tell me, why did you come home, though?”
Troy used his fingers to pick at a corner of the pastry and popped it into his mouth. Yuck. It was store bought and tasted like it was filled with tons of preservatives. Maybe tomorrow he’d make them a real made-from-scratch coffee cake.
“I want to get back on medication.”
Now this time his father looked shocked. He gave him an incredulous look. “Troy…”
Mom sat down hard. “Honey, I thought you said that you always felt that you weren’t bipolar. I mean, I believe that’s true. I don’t think that you ever were. Later, when I thought back on it all, it just seemed that they wanted to fill you up with as many things as they could; almost like they were rolling the dice.” Troy gave her a surprised look. He never thought that his Mother had an opinion about what was going on with the medication. Even now, he had thought that she was Dad’s parakeet—and if he should change his mind about everything, then so would she. But the look on her face showed so much regret.
“Back then, your Dad and I thought that we should just trust the doctors without question. Now I know better.” Dad reached over and hugged her briefly.
After a moment Troy spoke. “I know I’m not bipolar. That’s not what I want the medication for.”
“Okay.” His father waited for him to continue.
“But I have tics, and migraines which I can live with; but not the seizures.”
“I didn’t think that the seizures were ever that bad. I mean, a few times you had a large one but most times no one knows you’re even having one.” His mother’s expression was speculative.
Troy nodded. “Yes.” He had several a day, but because all he mainly did was to stare off into space, most people thought that he was wool-gathering or didn’t realize that he had drifted off at all, especially since they only lasted less than even a minute.
“I’ve done so many odd jobs over the years that I felt pretty comfortable in doing the rehab on the shop; especially when I called in some of my buddies. I know a few guys that worked on houses for Habitat.” Habitat for Humanity built houses to give away to needy families. “Some had helped down in Louisiana after Katrina and some had worked as dry-wallers and non union laborers so I was pretty confident that we could put the place together without much effort.
“You should have seen the place before we gutted it.” But somehow Juicy had looked at it, and even though it was nothing more than a rat trap, had seen all of its potential. But the bones had been good and they had been able to transform it completely.
“The place has ten foot high tin ceilings that we wanted to preserve. I was up on a ladder with an electric reciprocating saw trying to cut away an area that we wanted inset lighting.” Dad grimaced.
“One minute I was holding an electrical tool in my hand. The next thing I remember is lying on the floor with an electric saw resting on my crotch. Luckily the safety had engaged when I’d plunged to the floor. Had that not happened, well I probably wouldn’t be fathering anymore babies.” His father gave him an incredulous look, while his mother dropped her head into the palms of her hands.
“I was okay. I had a huge lump on the back of my head and I had knocked myself silly, but…I never told Juicy. About three other times I had similar incidents. I stayed off ladders and away from power tools as much as possible, but I spilled a wheelbarrow of wet concrete into the grass out front.” They’d been trying to repair the walkway. Instead they had spent three hours digging up the lone patch of grass before the concrete hardened.
“Another time, I woke up in a pile of fresh drywall mud, not to mention the countless times I missed calls, deliveries, or had friends ready to deck me because they thought I was ignoring them.” He sighed and Mom stood and retreated to the coffee. She placed a steaming hot mug of it in front of him while Dad grabbed sugar and cream.
“I..um, don’t want to be holding a baby…”
His father gave him a quick, understanding look. He nodded. “I see.”
“I want to take medicine in order to control the seizures and the tics and headaches if possible.”
“How often do you have them?” He asked as he sat down with his own mug of coffee.
“Three a day isn’t abnormal. I might go some days without any. And some days, depending on what I’m going through, I might have five or six.”
“Okay.” Dad sighed. “You’re definitely going to need to do something about them for the sake of the baby, but for your own sake, as well.” He watched his son curiously. “Is this what had you scared? Not that you’d need anything else, but…”
Troy looked around restlessly. “I don’t…” He shrugged. “What kind of a father will I make?” He stared at each of them. When he awoke from a seizure, he didn’t know what was real or what wasn’t. And he knew that he looked at life in a strange way. Would his kid be ashamed of him? Maybe the kid wouldn’t want to bring his friend’s around because Troy would be making all of these oddball points about traps and invisible people. Maybe his kid would wish that he had a different father!
“Troy,” his mother’s fork was cutting through her slice of cake. “No one that meets you could resist loving you.” She said it so matter-of-factly, as if that should be the least of his worries when it ranked up high, almost at the top of his worry list. His eyes shifted to his father who had just scooped more cake into his mouth.
“You’re being a good father right now because I know how much you hate the idea of medication. So, don’t you worry about that, kid. You will be a great father.”
He sighed in relief. And this is the reason that he had come home. So that he could get reassurance from his parents.
They didn’t talk much longer. His parent’s offered to make some calls and to find him a good doctor, and he had felt good enough to go upstairs and to drop exhaustedly into bed. He considered calling Juicy but decided that since she got up so early, he definitely didn’t want to get her out of bed any earlier then she had to. He would call her when he got up. He ended up sleeping late in the evening and that’s when his parent’s broke the bad news to him.
It would take several weeks and in some cases even months, before any of the neurological specialists that they’d been referred to would be able to see him. And everyone that they talked to agreed that he shouldn’t even waste his time with a general practitioner unless he wanted to risk the same things happening as it had when he was a kid; inaccurate medications. Besides, for something like this, even a family doctor would refer him to a specialist.
Still, his parents continued to make calls and made appointments anyway even though they were sixty and sometimes ninety days down the line. Feeling disappointed and anxious, Troy wondered what in the hell people did when they had an emergency and couldn’t wait? Didn’t the fact that he had a baby on the way constitute an emergency?
Thinking about Juicy and her being pregnant still made him anxious, but behind it was an awe and a joy that they’d created something special together. He went back up to his room and called her. He hadn’t intended to make her wait all day, but he had not realized that he would sleep so deeply.
At the last minute he decided to leave a message on the answering machine instead of calling her cell. He had visions of her yelling at him in front of the customers…or worse, not yelling at him and just sounding disappointed.
He cleared his voice nervously and waited for her recorded message that ended with, ‘have a blessed day.’
“Hi, Juice.” He began pacing in his small bedroom. “Sorry that I left the way I did. It’s not you or…th-the pr-pregnancy. I needed to…” He paused. “…I needed to get some things straight in my head. So I decided to go back home. I’m at my parent’s house now. I know you’re at the shop and I know you won’t be happy when you get this message.”