by Kate Hewitt
I glance at Heather; she is sitting up, wiping the gel off with a rough paper towel. ‘I told you,’ she says with an attempt at a laugh, ‘Kev and I only make girls.’
‘I like girls.’ I have an urge to hug her, to thank her, but the words feel jumbled in my throat, a pressure in my chest. ‘Heather…’
‘Everyone tells me girls are terrible when they’re teenagers,’ she continues determinedly, ‘but we’re not there yet.’ She glances at the technician, a proud tilt to her chin. ‘I have three girls already.’
‘How nice.’ I wonder how many complicated situations the technician encounters in this darkened room; families made of disparate parts, jammed together any which way, trying so hard to fit.
Heather stands up, struggling a bit, and I take her arm again. She accepts it with a grateful smile, and I feel that sense of solidarity that I didn’t expect now but which we both need. For better or worse, we’re in this together.
Heather turns to me with a smile. ‘Now you can start shopping for baby clothes.’
‘Yes, that will be fun.’ I haven’t bought anything yet, haven’t dared. Now I think of all the wonderful things I can buy, the nursery I can decorate, the life I can plan. It’s really happening. I’m going to have a baby, a family. Finally, finally, I’m going to feel part of something – someone – again. I’m going to have everything I’ve wanted.
Seven
HEATHER
A week after the ultrasound Grace calls me and asks if I’d like to go shopping.
‘Shopping?’ I repeat, as if she’d spoken in a foreign language. These days the only shopping I do is with a fistful of coupons and my EBT card. I know the rules now. No hot food, no beer, no toiletries or paper products. I’m never going to make that kind of mistake again.
We’re managing so far, but only just. Less than one hundred dollars in our bank account, and Kev hasn’t found a job, not even a hint or hope of one. Lucy’s eczema has flared up again, all over her elbows and knees, red and sore and angry-looking. The only cream that helps isn’t covered by insurance, and so I spent twenty-six dollars on a tiny tube of cream, and then Emma mistook it for regular lotion and slathered it all over her hands. I actually had the desperate gall to wipe it off her and then try to force it back in the tube.
‘I’m sorry, Mom,’ Emma gulped, fighting tears.
‘It was a mistake, sweetie. Not your fault.’ Easy to say, not so easy to feel. We can’t afford another tube, and Lucy’s preschool sent home a note because her elbows were bleeding.
Yet even though money is as tight as ever, things feel good, or at least a little more settled, in my own mind and heart, and also between Kevin and me. I don’t feel like I’m fighting everyone any more, pushing against the tide that felt so relentless. We’ve given in, and sometimes that feels like a good thing. A relief.
When I got back from the ultrasound appointment, I told Kev it was a girl, and he nodded. We didn’t say anything else, but I think he felt the treacherous flicker of relief that I did, although I don’t know if either of us would admit it.
It feels wrong, but how could I hand over our only son? The boy I think every father must secretly long for? I picture Kevin playing football in the yard, wrestling in the living room while I look on, smiling. The two McCleary men. At least I’m not giving away that dream, although that’s all it would ever be, anyway. Kev can’t wrestle or play football, not with his back.
Still, seeing that screen made me remember with an ache what a newborn is like. The snuffling noises they make, the way they curl into you, the sweet, sleepy smell of them. The knowledge slammed into me that this baby is a part of me, a part of Kevin; a sister to my girls.
But then I watched Grace watch the screen, and I knew this little girl also belonged to her. I saw it in the way her eyes lit up, the tremulous smile that spread across her face. She’s so excited, and despite all the pain and regret and sadness I still feel, I’m happy for her, and I’m happy that I’m happy. It feels good, to want that. To feel it, even if just a little.
Grace will love this baby. She already does. I picture them hand in hand walking through Central Park, or playing together on that plush rug in Grace’s living room. Mother and daughter.
Now Grace wants to meet me at some swanky store on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, which will take me an hour on the PATH train plus the bus. I can’t make it there and back during the three government-paid hours of Lucy’s preschool, so I call Stacy and ask for a favor.
‘You want me to pick Lucy up? Why?’ She sounds suspicious, which she has since she found out I was pregnant. Suspicious and disapproving, even when she doesn’t say anything. After her blistering life-running-you-over comment, we’ve talked less than usual. I certainly haven’t asked her for any favors, because I don’t want the lecture that I know will come with them. I know Stacy means well, she always does, but I can’t handle her brand of sisterly advice right now. I just need some help.
‘I’m going into the city, to meet Grace, the adoptive mother.’
‘The dad’s not going to be there?’
I bite my lip, cursing myself for the slip. ‘There is no dad.’
‘What—’
‘Can you just do it, Stace?’ I’d wanted to keep Grace’s single status quiet, because the last thing I need is more judgment. Single motherhood is common enough in my town, but it’s hardly ever chosen.
Stacy sighs. ‘Yes, okay. Of course I can. I’ll always help you, Heather. But I really don’t like this.’
‘Trust me, I know.’
‘Not for my sake, but for yours.’ She pauses. ‘I’m sorry for what I said before, about you being a victim. I know that wasn’t totally fair, but… I’m afraid you’re going to regret this later, when you can’t go back.’
I feel a pressure in my chest and I close my eyes. ‘Stacy, if we could keep this baby, we would.’
She is silent.
‘Do you believe me?’ I ask, my voice turning a little ragged. ‘Do you honestly believe that if I could see a way to make it happen, I would do it? Whatever it took, if it really were possible?’ The words throb through me.
Stacy doesn’t answer and I suck in a hard breath. ‘Do you?’ My voice rings out, filled with pain.
‘Yes, Heather.’ My sister’s voice is quiet and sad. ‘Yes, I believe you.’
I sag in relief.
‘Whatever I can do to help, I will.’ She let out a shuddery breath. ‘Of course I will.’
I take the train to Penn Station, and then walk to Thirty-Second Street and Seventh Avenue to get the M4 bus uptown. I’ve only come into the city a handful of times, even though we live so close. We went to see The Rockettes once, and we took the older girls to the Empire State Building when they were little, peering through those old-fashioned viewfinders to see the city up close.
New Jersey feels like a different world from the Upper East Side. It’s a sparkling, sunny day in February, and everything seems cold and shiny and bright, little flecks in the sidewalk glittering like silver.
Everyone walking by me seems purposeful and important, smartphones clamped to their ears as they hurry along, sipping their fancy Starbucks coffees, or mothers pushing strollers that remind me of race cars, their hair expertly highlighted, looking chic and skinny and so not like me. For a second I want to go home, back to the familiar, but I also don’t. This is my one day out, my one chance at something different. I keep walking.
The store where Grace asked me to meet her looks just as expensive all the other boutiques on the block, with the name spelled out in big gold letters. Inside it’s all crystal chandeliers and white velvety sofas, and when the sales assistant catches my eye I immediately feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.
I’m wearing my best maternity dress, but it’s an old sack compared to the stuff in here. I try for a smile and look around for Grace, but I don’t see her anywhere.
‘May I help you?’ The sales assistant has exactly the skeptical sort of tone I�
�d expect her to. My smile freezes. I am not going to let her intimidate me. At least, I’m not going to let her see it.
‘I’m waiting for someone.’
‘All right.’ Her expression is cool as she nods to the racks of clothes placed artfully around the room that only have about two or three items on each one. ‘Feel free to take a look around.’
‘Thanks.’ I walk over to a rack of t-shirts in different pastel colors and randomly glance at the price tag of a white one. It’s a plain short-sleeved t-shirt and it costs one hundred and twenty-eight dollars. My wedding dress didn’t cost that much. I back away from the shirt, afraid I might have stained it or something. What if I have to pay for it? What am I doing here?
‘Heather.’ Grace’s voice comes out like the peal of a bell and I turn around.
‘Hi.’
‘I’m so glad you made it.’ She looks smart and sleek in a navy skirt suit like in the photo on the Open Hearts website, everything crisp and tailored, a black leather messenger bag slung over one shoulder. She’s carrying a smartphone that looks top of the range and she slides it into the inside pocket of her suit jacket as she stands in front of me and looks me over. ‘You got here okay? Great.’
‘Yeah.’ I glance around, shifting from foot to foot. ‘The stuff here is really expensive.’ As soon as the words are out of my mouth I wish I hadn’t said them. They’re obviously not expensive for Grace.
‘You don’t need to worry about that,’ she says with a smile, and for a second I resent how easy she has it. Does she even realize? Then I tell myself to relax, that this is the point of being here, of doing it this way.
‘Why don’t we get settled, have a drink, and see what the sales assistant can rustle up for us?’ Grace nods at the frosty woman behind the cash register, who comes forward, all beaming smiles now.
‘We need a full set of maternity clothes,’ Grace says briskly. ‘Everything you’ve got. My friend is—’ She glanced at me, perfectly plucked eyebrows raised. ‘Five months now, right, Heather?’
‘Yes, just about.’
‘And we’d like some mocktails as well,’ Grace says as she sits down on one of the velvety sofas and crosses her legs. ‘How about some virgin strawberry daiquiris?’
She glances at me for confirmation and I smile and nod, trying to relax.
Another assistant joins the first and they scurry about, now eager to serve us. The place is empty except for us, so we have their full attention. Grace has taken her phone out of her blazer and is scrolling through emails or texts or whatever. After a minute or two she looks up with a guilty, distracted smile. ‘Sorry, hazard of work.’
‘What exactly is it you do?’ It was something important and financial, but beyond that I can’t remember and never really understood anyway.
‘I work for a venture capital firm.’
I stare and Grace laughs lightly. ‘It’s a type of private equity, a form of financing that provides funds to emerging start-up firms with maximum growth potential.’
I still don’t get it, and it must show in my face.
‘Basically, we invest in companies that we think will succeed, and when they do we get a percentage of the profits.’
‘You must be busy.’
‘Yes—’ Grace stops suddenly, and it takes me a second to figure out why.
‘Will you take time off when… when the baby is born?’
‘Of course,’ she says, a little too quickly. I’m guessing not much.
‘And then what?’ I ask. ‘A nanny?’
‘Well, yes.’ Her gaze assesses me, checking to see if I’m going to judge her. Am I? I don’t know. I’ve been a stay-at-home mom since Emma was born. I only started working nights cleaning offices after Kev got hurt, and even then I was at home all day with Lucy. I’ve wiped so many noses and butts, watched endless hours of Barney and sung ‘The Wheels on the Bus’, fetched milk and juice and cut PB&J into countless squares and triangles. It all blurs together, and some days I wonder if any of it means much. As long as a nanny does the same thing, does it matter?
Or am I just trying to make myself feel better for choosing Grace and not one of those smug couples, where the woman would plan to stay at home until the kid’s eighteen, making organic lunches and volunteering as class mom every year? Being a better mother than I ever could be?
Is that why I really chose Grace – because I know she won’t? Because I feel like I’m one up on her, however much she might have? I’d told her I wouldn’t compare myself to her, but now I feel confused. Everything feels complicated.
The assistant starts bringing out clothes: jeans and t-shirts and dresses and underwear, everything. She lays it all out for Grace to inspect, even though I’m the pregnant one.
Grace looks at it all, choosing some things and sending away others without even asking my opinion, which annoys me a little, because I would have liked to pick out something pretty, and a lot of the clothes she’s choosing are totally impractical for my life… but I’m guessing they work for hers. A slinky black cocktail dress? Where on earth am I going to wear that? To work in Newark, cleaning the piss off the men’s toilets?
‘Why don’t you try some of this stuff on?’ Grace asks, and then belatedly she adds, ‘Sorry, I should have asked your opinion. Do you like this?’ She gestures to a pale blue button-down blouse with a side tie to accommodate a baby bump.
‘Yeah, sure,’ I say, although it’s not really my style, if I even have a style. One of the assistants arrives with two virgin strawberry daiquiris garnished with fresh mint leaves and fancy straws. I take one sip of the fruity drink before Grace ushers me toward the dressing rooms, fancy ones with thick velvet curtains and gold ropes. The assistant follows me, carrying all the clothes.
With the curtains closed I slip off my clothes, avoiding studying the pale, doughy body I see in the mirror, and reach for the first piece of clothing.
It’s a t-shirt top with lacy sleeves that Lucy would use it as a Kleenex in about two seconds. There is a pair of skinny jeans to go with it with the tiniest stretch of elastic band for my belly, and I marvel at these new, trendy maternity clothes that certainly never made it into my wardrobe back in the day.
‘Heather?’ Grace calls. ‘What do you think? Will you show me?’
Shyly I part the curtain and step out. I feel self-conscious, but Grace’s wide smile is worth it. ‘Heather,’ she exclaims, ‘you look fantastic! Oh, we’re definitely getting those. Those jeans are great.’ She looks at me anxiously. ‘Do you like them? Am I being too bossy? Tell me if I am.’
‘Well…’ I laugh a little. ‘Sort of.’
She slaps her forehead, and I laugh again. ‘Sorry, sorry. I’m an idiot. You pick the clothes, okay? Whatever you want. Whatever looks and feels good.’
‘I wouldn’t mind a pair of sweatpants.’ A few seconds later the assistant bustles toward me with a pair of slinky black yoga pants. Not quite what I had in mind, but I’ll take them.
As I’m changing into them, Grace pokes her hand through the curtains, holding out the black cocktail dress.
‘Why don’t you try this?’ she suggests. I peek out and see that she looks flushed, happy. ‘I know it might not be the most practical thing, but…’ She shrugs and laughs. ‘It could be fun.’
Fun. I feel like I haven’t had fun in I don’t even know how long. And this is meant to be fun, isn’t it? No matter how we got here.
‘Okay.’ I take the dress, which feels like spun spider webs, thin and silky. ‘Thanks.’
Grace insists on seeing me in the dress, and so, with a self-conscious smile, I sashay out into the store. The dress is ridiculous and sexy – low-cut, swishy around my legs. I’ve never worn anything like it.
‘Oh, wow.’ Grace claps her hands together. ‘You look amazing! One hot mama.’
I laugh, a little bubble of pure happiness rising inside me. I didn’t expect to have fun here, but I am. And Grace seems to be happy too – asking me to try on other stuff, insisting on s
eeing me in each outfit, exclaiming over everything.
‘We’ll take it all,’ she announces at the end, and I boggle. All of it? I’ve tried on a dozen outfits at least. She sees my surprise, and shrugs, smiling. ‘Why not? You look great in everything. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had so much fun shopping.’
‘Me, neither,’ I admit. I have had a lot of fun, something I never expected.
Back in the dressing room, when I am taking a top and jeans off, I notice the price tags. One hundred and thirty dollars for the shirt, two hundred for the jeans. It’s like a bucket of ice tipped down my back. How can I buy this stuff, how can I let Grace buy this stuff, when Amy is still going to school with a duct-taped shoe, and Lucy’s elbows are covered in scabs? How?
I sink onto the plush stool in the dressing room, the clothes crumpled around me, my fragile happiness burst like the soap bubble it was. I feel guilty for having fun, and yet helpless too. What can I do, besides accept the clothes as the gift they are? Then Grace pokes her head in, her eyes sparkling.
‘Do you have time for lunch?’
Eight
GRACE
I’m still buzzing slightly as I pay for the clothes, surprised at how much I’ve enjoyed myself. Today was meant to be simply something to tick off my list, but watching Heather come out of her shell, shy and hesitant, and then start to enjoy parading around in the clothes… it was nice, to see that. To know I made it happen. And the truth is I don’t get out with friends much, or even at all. Can I call Heather my friend? In this moment, yes.
‘I hope you enjoy these,’ I say as I take the six gold-corded shopping bags and loop them around my wrists. Heather seems a bit quieter since she came out of the dressing room. ‘What about lunch? There’s a cute little place around the corner that does salads and soups. Why don’t we go there?’ I don’t really have the time, but I’m also weirdly reluctant to have the morning come to an end.