My Babies and Me

by Tara Taylor Quinn

Fifteen minutes later, Susan was ensconced in a quiet booth at Tricia’s club, sipping a decaffeinated frozen latte and marveling how friends could be found in the most unexpected places.

  Over the past six weeks, she and Tricia had formed an unusually frank relationship built, at first, on mutual respect, but more recently, on mutual affection, as well.

  “Michael’s still gone?” Tricia asked as the waitress left them.

  Susan nodded. He’d been gone almost constantly since the Saturday they’d seen Laura. And though she knew the Miller deal had been put on hold for at least a month, she couldn’t help worrying that Laura’s visit had something to do with his extended absence.

  “He’s still calling?”

  “Almost every day.”

  Chin puckered, Tricia nodded as though pleased. Susan was pleased, too. So pleased she scared herself. The frequency of Michael’s calls could simply be the result of a misguided sense of duty.

  “So what have you decided to do once the babies are born?” Tricia asked. Though her boss was impeccable as always in her violet suit, not a black hair out of place, Susan now knew the woman beneath the facade.

  “Hire a nanny for in-home care.”

  “Good, that’s what I’d do, too. I can get you some names if you’d like.”

  “That’d be great.” With all the charity and church work Tricia had done over the years, she knew everyone in town. “I’d feel a whole lot better working with referrals than with a service.”

  As they sipped their coffee, they talked about Tricia’s earlier days with young children at home. And then about her current days with teenagers ruling the roost. Susan couldn’t wait for either. They both sounded like heaven to her.

  “How was Amy’s dance?” Susan asked. She’d yet to meet the fifteen-year-old, but she’d already grown very fond of her through her mother.

  “She went with one guy and came home with another, but she had a wonderful time.”

  Susan smiled, her glass completely empty. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be fifteen again?”

  “Yeah.” Tricia’s eyes were downcast, and teary when she glanced up again. “I met Ed when I was fourteen,” she said. “He was the only man I ever dated.”

  “I never knew that,” Susan said, amazed. “You seem so worldly.”

  Tricia grinned through her tears. “I am worldly, just a one-man woman.”

  Susan sipped a bit. “So have you thought any more about having Eddie come into the office after school?”

  “Yeah. I think I’ll do it.”

  “Good.” It was Susan’s turn to grin. “No more worrying about what he’s doing with his time. Plus, he’ll get a taste of the business he’s so eager to join, and it’ll relieve a little of the weight on your shoulders.”

  “He won’t be ready for any decision-making.”

  “No, but just having someone to bounce things off will help.”

  Reaching over the table, Tricia covered Susan’s hand with her own. “I already have that, Susan. I wish I knew how to thank you.”

  “Believe me, Tricia,” Susan said, “you’ve done far more for me than I’ll ever be able to do for you.”

  And she had. Tricia had become the rope Susan was hanging on to as she faced life without Michael. Before, she hadn’t believed it mattered so much, and she’d coped just fine. But now that she had the inside scoop on her stupid heart, she couldn’t seem to get through a night without crying herself to sleep.

  THAT SATURDAY, while walking the treadmill, Susan entertained herself with possible plans for the day. She still had so much to do, and only a couple of months in which to do it. She’d been in for her sixth-month checkup the week before, and the doctor had told her again to expect an early delivery. And not to expect to accomplish much during her last month. She warned that Susan would be too big to move around comfortably.

  Susan figured she was already at that point. But who was she to know?

  “Okay, Zack, you still need overalls and tops, a dress outfit, and little-boy shoes.” Someone threw a hard blow to just beneath Susan’s ribs, and she chose to believe it was her son responding.

  “And no more of that while I’m walking,” she panted. “It’s hard enough to breathe.” She paused then forced herself to tread some more.

  “Now, back to business.” A few more heavy breaths. “Baby girl, you have all your clothes, but I’d like to get a couple more girlish receiving blankets. You two are probably going to throw up a lot and I don’t know how much time I’ll have for laundry.”

  Thinking about that, Susan continued to walk and to stare at the desk Michael had used during his stay with her.

  “I’ll call a laundry service as soon as I finish showering this morning.”

  Someone moved again, not so much a kick as a drag. “Zack, don’t tease your sister about her lack of a name,” Susan said. “If I hadn’t found your daddy’s note under the toaster, you wouldn’t have one, either.”

  Her timer went off, signaling the end of a murderous half hour, but Susan walked a bit longer. Her feet could still move one in front of the other, and she hadn’t finished her list yet.

  “We have to stop by the office, and I don’t want any argument from either of you,” she said as sternly as she could with no breath. “No acting up today, guys. That’s how I make the money to give you everything you want.”

  All quiet.

  Good.

  “And then I promised to make three dozen cookies for the battered women’s center fund-raiser. They have to be delivered by ten o’clock tonight.” She stared at the desk some more. Step. Step. Step. “Yeah, I suppose I could do another few dozen. Those ladies need a lot of things, and now I know how much it costs just to keep newborns in diapers.”

  Sweat was dribbling down the backs of her knees by the time she finished walking. But Susan was smiling as she headed into the shower.

  “With all this walking, you two are practically going to slide out in my sleep,” she told her stomach.

  Right before she passed out.

  “SETH?”

  “Yeah?” Seth rose up in bed, glancing at the clock. Only seven-thirty on Saturday morning. He still had a couple of hours before he picked up Paul from Brady’s house. And then he was driving out to Laura’s....

  “Could you come over?”

  “Of course.” He was out of bed instantly, pulling on yesterday’s jeans. “Is there a problem?” he asked, forcing his voice to remain calm. If Susan was having some kind of emergency, he needed his wits about him.

  “I’m just a little scared.”

  Shrugging into a T-shirt, he grabbed his keys and wallet off the dresser, taking the mobile phone with him as he made his way to the front door. “Is someone bothering you? You hearing noises?” he asked quickly. “Hang up and call the police.”

  “No, nothing like that.” She didn’t sound any stronger.

  And then it hit him. Oh, God. No. “Is it the babies?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said, but she’d started to cry. “I just fainted, okay? Can you come?”

  “Hang tight, sis. I’m on my way.”

  He dialed Michael’s hotel room in Atlanta from his cell phone. And breathed a bit easier once he knew Michael was on the first flight out. He called Brady next and talked to Paul, explaining why he’d have to miss their date at the batting cages. And then he called Laura, just needing to hear her voice.

  These babies meant everything to Susan. He was afraid to even think about what would happen if she lost them now.

  “I HAVE TO MAKE six dozen cookies before tonight.” Michael heard Susan’s voice as he let himself into the condo with his key.

  “Like hell you do,” he said, striding into the living room. She’d fainted less than four hours ago.

  Susan’s head swirled so fast, she should have been dizzy as she strained to see Michael. He couldn’t have mistaken the welcoming light in her eyes, or the wide smile on her lips. But in the next instant, he might have been forgiven f
or thinking so. She turned on Seth who’d been lounging in an armchair.

  “You called Michael.” That obviously didn’t please her.

  Seth shrugged, apparently not at all fazed by Susan’s anger. “Of course I did.”

  “I’m glad he did,” Michael said, sitting gently beside her. She lay on the couch, propped up by pillows. She was wearing one of the summer shifts she’d bought when he’d still been living there, but she filled it out a hell of a lot more now than she had then.

  “There was no reason,” Susan said, her eyes imploring him not to overreact. “I’m just fine.”

  “You’ve been to the doctor?” he asked, certain she had, but needing that reassurance anyway. He wanted to run his fingers through the layers of her hair, too—and to kiss the pout off those lips.

  Susan nodded. “She says I’m fine. I just overheated walking on your treadmill.”

  Understanding dawned. “You went for longer than half an hour, didn’t you?”

  “Um, a bit.” She looked down, picking some imaginary lint off her dress.

  “And you were probably walking on an incline at a faster speed than you should have been.”

  “Just trying to make the delivery as easy as possible,” she said. “Dr. Goodman told me to do as much as my body would allow.”

  He couldn’t believe she’d just said that, as if the doctor’s words were a strong defense on her behalf. “Then, why didn’t you?”

  “Because there’s no meter that tells you what it will allow,” she said crankily, sitting up beside him. “Your body only tells you when it doesn’t allow something.”

  “Laura’s on her way over.” Seth jumped into the conversation. He sat relaxed in his chair, with a huge grin on his face. “She had to drop the kids off at a swim party, and then she’s going to help Susan bake cookies.”

  Michael looked at Susan, his expression serious. “You aren’t baking today.”

  “It’s no big deal, Michael,” she said, brushing him off with a wave of her hand. “I can sit at the table the whole time. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with me that a good dose of air-conditioning can’t fix.”

  Alarm returned, cramping his stomach. “What exactly did Dr. Goodman say?”

  “Just that I overheated. Nothing more.”

  “She also said Susan shouldn’t try to do quite as much now as she did before she was pregnant.”

  “Believe me, baking a few cookies isn’t nearly what I had on the agenda for today,” Susan quipped dryly.

  Standing, Michael went for the phone. “Would you mind if I called her myself?” he asked Susan, waiting for the number.

  “Yes, I’d mind!” Susan stood, too—but very slowly, Michael noticed. “I’m not a child who needs looking after,” she muttered.

  “She really did say there’s nothing to worry about,” Seth added, resting his head against the back of the chair. “The babies are fine. Susan’s fine.”

  Still uncomfortable, Michael turned to Seth. “Did you ask if there’s any reason Susan shouldn’t stay here alone?”

  “I asked,” Susan snapped. Fainting certainly did nothing for her disposition.

  “And?”

  “None.”

  “She said there’s no reason at all,” Seth elaborated.

  Michael wished his friend’s words had reassured him. But they hadn’t. The pressure in his chest grew until he knew his time was up. Susan could have been in serious trouble that morning, and she’d been there all alone. He couldn’t take a chance that something like this would happen again.

  Which meant that whether he chose to or not, he was going to have to come to terms with living a life he’d never wanted. Being a man he’d never needed to be.

  He just didn’t know how in hell he was going to pull it off.

  “You AND LAURA set a date yet?” Michael asked later that afternoon. He and Seth were in the nursery, assembling the furniture Susan had purchased sometime since Michael’s last visit.

  “She wants to wait until after Susan has the babies,” Seth said easily. “She wants Susan to stand up with us.”

  Michael froze, crib directions in hand. “You’ve actually asked her to marry you?” He’d been ribbing Seth, not expecting a serious answer.

  “Yep.” Seth pushed his way under the crib, clutching a screwdriver.

  Grabbing a wrench, Michael held the bolt Seth was twisting a screw into. “I’m happy for you, man,” he finally said. And shocked. He knew Seth and Laura were seeing each other again, but the last he’d heard, Seth was still holding out on tying her kids to an absentee dad.

  Seth looked up, wearing the stupidest grin Michael had ever seen. “Yeah, me, too,” he said sheepishly.

  The bolts on the first crib finished, Michael went back and double-checked every one of them. A tiny life was at stake here.

  “My work satisfactory?” Seth asked, laughing at him. He was standing across the room, the pieces of the other crib spread at his feet.

  “Smart-ass,” Michael said, wishing he felt a little more like laughing himself.

  Without directions this time, they silently set to work on the second crib.

  “So, what made you change your mind?” Michael asked about halfway through.

  “The kids,” Seth grunted, twisting a bolt so tight Michael was surprised the screw didn’t break right off. Seth was making damn sure Michael didn’t have to check his work a second time.

  “I thought the kids were the reason you weren’t asking her to marry you.”

  “They were until a couple weeks ago, when Jeremy broke down one day on the soccer field. He thought I wasn’t marrying his mom because I didn’t love him and Jenny, didn’t want to be their dad. He thought they were keeping her from being happy. It suddenly became clear to me that while having a man at home every night might be good for them, having a father who loved them was more important.”

  Michael wished he could believe it was that easy.

  “Besides,” Seth said from beneath the second crib. “I’m home every weekend. I can still coach, help them with their homework, take them to the zoo, keep tabs on their friends.”

  Michael wasn’t home on weekends. He was lucky if he made it home long enough to turn on some lights.

  “And if they act up during the week, I can yell real good by telephone.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out.” Michael removed plastic wrap from the second mattress and dropped it in the crib.

  “You know,” Seth said conversationally as he laid out the pieces for the changing table. “You might give marriage some thought yourself.”

  “Lay off.”

  “I see you’re as open-minded as usual.”

  Studying the directions in his hand, Michael concentrated on leaving Seth with his head intact. “You have no room to talk, little brother,” he reminded the other man.

  Seth got the hint. Setting to work on the changing table, neither of them spoke for quite some time.

  “Tell me why you work every hour of every day,” Seth finally said.

  “Because I love what I do.”

  “More than you love being with Susan?”

  “Of course not,” Michael snapped. And then wished he hadn’t. Seth’s eyes took on an I-told-you-so-light, even if he didn’t say the words. But he had it all wrong.

  “Look, man, I know how you grew up.” Seth had started in again, and Michael wondered what it would take to shut him up. “Susan says you were working odd jobs by the time you were ten just to help out. That you were buying all your own clothes by the time you were in junior high. And all through high school you held down a full-time job at the local grocery.”

  Michael tried to tune Seth out. Everything he was saying was old news. Irrelevant news.

  “You put yourself through college on loans and two part-time jobs, and then had to pay off the debt as soon as you graduated.”

  “You can stop anytime,” Michael said. Silence was less boring. “This bar goes across there.” He
handed Seth the piece he’d been looking for.

  “I understand why the career choices you made seven years ago were necessary. Why supporting yourself while getting far enough ahead to send money to your family was utterly important.”

  Though he still wished Seth would simply be quiet, Michael was a tiny bit gratified to know that he had his friend’s endorsement on what had—until today—been the most difficult decision of his life.

  “But why now?” Seth went on. “You’ve got to be loaded.”

  “I do okay,” Michael acknowledged. It was one of the few things he had to feel proud about.

  Seth studied the diagram for assembling the drawers that were supposedly going to line up on one side of the table. “It seems to me—” he dropped the page and took the pieces Michael had assembled and was already handing to him “—that your life has changed drastically in the past three or four years, but you’ve never reassessed your goals accordingly.”

  “I am what I am,” Michael said. He wouldn’t kid himself, or try to pretend that things were better than they were. If he was going to commit himself to a life of regret, he was at least going to do so with his eyes wide-open.

  He could just hear Coppel’s voice when he handed in his resignation. They’d probably be able to hear him from Atlanta to Ohio. And Michael could hardly blame him. Only an immature idiot took a job like Michael’s and quit a few months later.

  Seth stopped what he was doing and stood, hands on his hips, while he looked straight at Michael. “All I’m saying is that maybe you should give some honest, open-minded thought to your life,” he said, his eyes unusually serious. “You’ve been pushing yourself at a frantic pace your entire life—since childhood, for God’s sake. Isn’t it just possible that this need to give everything you are to your career comes more from a lifetime of pushing, of habit?”

  “You don’t understand,” Michael said automatically. No one ever had.

  “Maybe not.” Seth went back to putting the gliders on one drawer while Michael worked on another.

  “My career isn’t work to me.” Michael needed to explain it for himself, if not for Seth. “It’s who I am. I’m very good at what I do.” Michael felt bound to make Seth understand.