First Comes Baby

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “Aargh!” Laurel jumped to her feet.

  “Now, now,” he soothed. “Don’t upset the baby.”

  She picked up a pile of magazines from the coffee table and flung them at him.

  Caleb laughed as they rained down on him, slithering to the floor and to each side of him in the chair. “Temper, temper.”

  She stamped her foot. “Nobody could ever make me as mad as you do!”

  “Isn’t that what best friends are for?”

  “No! They’re supposed to support each other!”

  His amusement vanished, and he was dead serious when he said, “That’s what I’m trying to do. But I can’t support you if you won’t lean, just a bit.”

  Her expression changed, and they stared at each other for a wondering moment. She moaned. “I knew I shouldn’t eat dinner,” she said, then dashed to the bathroom.

  By the time Caleb got to his feet, she’d dropped to her knees in front of the toilet and was heaving up what she’d just eaten. Even as she puked, she was poking behind her with one foot trying to shut the bathroom door.

  He didn’t let her. Because he couldn’t get into the bathroom, Caleb sank to his haunches behind her and laid a gentle hand on her back. He waited until she was done and her body sagged, then rubbed.

  She groped with one hand until she found the lever and flushed the toilet. “I’m disgusting!”

  “It’s not the first time I’ve seen you puke,” he reminded her.

  Laurel never had handled booze well. They hadn’t been friends a month when she’d drunk too much beer at a kegger and hadn’t made it back to the dorm before she’d had to vomit. Caleb remembered the night, the day’s heat lingering, lights in dorm buildings around them, Laurel’s soft whimper as she sank to her knees beside a towering rhododendron. Him leading her home, taking her to the bathroom and helping her rinse her mouth before he tucked her into her bed and left her already falling asleep.

  “Don’t remind me,” she mumbled now.

  “Yeah, but just think.” He kneaded her shoulders as she slumped against the toilet. “That time you were sick because you’d done something stupid. This time, it’s because you did something smart.”

  “You think?” she whispered.

  “I think.”

  After a moment, she said, “I liked what you said to Dad. About how I’m embracing life.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

  Again, she was silent for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I hope so.” Her shoulders rose and fell in a deep sigh. “Thanks, Caleb.” She began to struggle to her feet. “I’ll feel better once I’ve brushed my teeth.”

  He hated taking his hands from her, but rose, too, and let her shut the bathroom door this time.

  Outside, in the tiny nook that passed for a hall in her house, Caleb realized he was going to be shut out often. He had to let her shut those doors, real and metaphorical, or she might believe that he didn’t have faith in her ability to cope.

  On the other hand, he wasn’t going to be waiting for her to invite him in, either. Or she’d be raising his kid alone, and he’d be wondering how it happened. Because if there was one thing Laurel had become good at, it was shutting other people out.

  Through the door, he asked, “You ever call Nadia?”

  Silence. Water ran, then was turned off. Laurel finally came out of the bathroom. “No, but I will,” she said, gaze sliding from his. “Do you want another cup of coffee?”

  “Doesn’t the smell make you sick?”

  “No, now that my stomach is empty, I’m starved again. Coffee would smell good.”

  He patted her on the back. “Six, seven more weeks. You’ll make it.”

  On her way to the kitchen, Laurel cast him a look that verged on dislike. “Easy for you to say. You’ll be out of the country for most of it.”

  “I don’t have to be,” he repeated. “I can delegate.”

  Still prickly, she said, “I’m not very good company these days. You might as well travel now. If you plan to be around more after the baby is first born.”

  If he planned to be around. Caleb counted silently to ten.

  “I plan to be around. But I think I’ll skip the coffee tonight, head on home.”

  “Oh?” She didn’t sound as if she cared. “I’ll walk you out.”

  “No.” Once upon a time, he might have wrapped her in a hug or kissed her cheek. Now he only nodded toward the refrigerator. “Get yourself something to eat. But call me if you want me, Laurel. I mean it.”

  Her voice softened, or at least he imagined it did. “I know you do, Caleb. Thank you for coming tonight.”

  “Any time,” he told her, and let himself out.

  Time to tell his own parents.

  HIS FATHER SET DOWN his drink so hard, liquid splashed onto the table. “Are you crazy?”

  Caleb had braced himself for their questions and concern, but he hadn’t anticipated the genuine shock on their faces when he told them right before dinner at their house.

  “You know how long Laurel and I have been friends.”

  “Friends don’t impregnate friends.”

  “Clay.” His wife shook her head in warning.

  “What?” he asked her. “I’m supposed to smile and say, Isn’t that nice? Do you think it’s nice that some woman who isn’t married to our son is going to be raising our grandchild?”

  “Some woman?” Caleb’s temper sparked. “Laurel’s a hell of a lot more than that! You claimed to like her!”

  “We do like her…” his mother began, but was interrupted by her husband.

  “What does liking her have to do with anything? She’s not our daughter-in-law. Hell, she could decide we shouldn’t see the baby if she feels like it.”

  “We have a parenting plan…”

  “Were you smart enough to lock in some legal rights?” He saw the answer on Caleb’s face. “No, she was hurt five years ago, and you still feel so bad you gave her everything she wanted. A baby and a check every month.”

  Caleb stood. “She didn’t want the check. I had to insist.”

  “Ever occur to you that you were reeled in like a big, flopping rainbow trout?”

  They shouted then, father and son, until Caleb’s mother stood, too.

  “Both of you, sit down!”

  They were surprised enough to comply.

  “Do I have permission to speak?”

  Two nods.

  “Caleb, what your father is saying very poorly—” she narrowed her gaze at him “—is that we worry about you getting hurt. It’s not that we don’t like Laurel. You know we always have. And we feel sorry for her. But once you hold your baby, you won’t want to let go. You don’t understand yet what you’ve given away.”

  He started to speak and she shook her head.

  “What if she marries someone else? If she no longer wants you to spend significant time with your child? Will you take her to court? Will you walk away?”

  “It won’t come to that…”

  “How do you know?”

  How did he know? Laurel had tried to sever their friendship once, so he knew she was capable of it. Had he been a fool, giving a gift this huge?

  No. He shook his head, refusing to believe it. They were best friends. The other time, she’d tried to shut him out because she hurt, not as a cold-blooded choice. They were having a baby together.

  Caleb stood again. “I hoped you’d be happy. But I can’t make you accept your grandchild. I guess you’ll have a choice to make.”

  He walked out, snagging his coat from the tree in the front hall and quietly shut the front door behind him.

  BIG SURPRISE, CALEB LEFT her a phone message only three days later to tell her he had to go to Costa Rica. “It’ll be a short trip,” he promised. “I’ll check e-mail a couple of times a day.”

  In a way, she wasn’t surprised that he was fleeing the country. He’d told her tersely a few days before that his parents weren’t happy he’d donat
ed sperm. She could tell they’d had a hurtful scene, one for which she was to blame. Caleb probably welcomed a distraction.

  The “short trip” lasted a week. He was home ten days, then gone to Paraguay and Uruguay for two weeks.

  Not that she had the energy for him anyway. Laurel was exhausted. She nibbled a cracker before stumbling out of bed in the morning. Somehow she put herself together enough to make it to work, laid her head on her desk and napped during her lunch break and robotlike caught the bus for the long ride home. She might or might not get something to eat, then fell into bed until her alarm shrilled at her to wake up the next morning. She was alternately starved, queasy and so nauseated she had to vomit. Eating became a grim matter of choosing foods her stomach would tolerate that also provided adequate nutrition for the fetus.

  She tried not to look at herself in the mirror, because all she saw was a pale, exhausted shadow of herself, a wraith. When she saw the doctor again she’d lost weight, not gained.

  Dr. Schapiro was satisfied with the diet she described, and decided to hold off on antinausea medication for another month. “But if you’ve lost weight again…”

  Laurel talked to Caleb several times during the ten days he was back from his travels and he came over on Saturday and ended up helping her with yard work.

  Which was nice of him, but she would have appreciated him keeping his opinion of how she looked to himself.

  Comparing her to survivors of malaria was unkind.

  Weren’t pregnant women supposed to bloom? Why wasn’t she blooming? Why was her body screaming, “Intruder alert! Intruder alert! Eject! Eject!”

  The next time Caleb appeared, it was in the lobby again as she was leaving work.

  Laurel didn’t even have the energy to be startled.

  “Caleb.”

  Although he’d already fallen into step with her, he stopped abruptly and swung her to face him. “Good God. You look like you’d topple over if the breeze picks up.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “You know what? I can tell.” His mouth a tight line, his brows pulled together in a frown, he steered her toward the revolving doors and then down the street a block and a half to his parked car. When he unlocked the door, she sank into the passenger seat gratefully.

  He started the car. “It’s Friday. You’re taking next week off.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  Taking his gaze from the rearview mirror, he surveyed her with disconcerting thoroughness. “You don’t look tired. You look like hell. If you won’t take care of yourself, I’m going to make you.”

  The angry, stern man beside her bore no resemblance to the laid-back Caleb she knew. Through her fog of exhaustion, Laurel once again was forced to realize that he was now a man, and one she didn’t know as well as she had that happy-go-lucky, idealistic boy.

  “I just need to catch up on sleep this weekend.”

  “Are you still sick to your stomach?”

  The organ in question lurched, and she clapped a hand to her mouth.

  Swearing, he braked with the car halfway into traffic and grabbed for a bag in the backseat. He dumped something out—she heard objects fall—then thrust it at her.

  Horns sounded.

  “Shove it up your…” Caleb muttered, then pulled out even as she hunched over the bag.

  Somehow she kept from vomiting, perhaps because she’d barely nibbled at lunch.

  “What does the doctor say?” Caleb asked, that same hard edge to his voice.

  Swallowing to quell the nausea, Laurel said, “She thought it sounded as if I’m eating enough. She’d rather I was gaining weight.”

  He shook his head. “She can’t do anything about the nausea?”

  “There’s medication, but I hate to take anything I can avoid.”

  Frowning, he said nothing for several blocks.

  “When do you see her again?”

  “Um…” Laurel pictured the calendar by her phone at home. “Almost three more weeks.”

  She received an incredulous stare.

  “Did you admit to her how crappy you feel?”

  “Uh…”

  “Didn’t think so.” Caleb brooded until he reached the entrance to the freeway express lanes and was able to accelerate.

  “Take some vacation days. Come and stay at my place next week.”

  Looking down into the plastic bag, a wave of longing struck Laurel. To have nine whole days with no alarm going off, to be able to sleep all she wanted, to have Caleb pampering her…

  Fighting the weakness, she shook her head. “I’m going to need all my vacation time when I have the baby.”

  “Then you’ll take some leave without pay after the baby is born. Laurel, you know I want to help with more than that damn child support you so reluctantly agreed to take. I have plenty. Believe me, you can afford to take a few months off. You need the break now.”

  She ought to be offended by his attempt to play the autocrat, but honestly…she was relieved. The first trimester was almost over. In another week, the nausea and exhaustion might pass.

  “My garden…”

  “Will survive without you. If you’re bored, you can pull weeds in my flower beds.”

  “Do you have flower beds?”

  “Remember the tulip bulbs I planted?”

  “Oh, right.”

  “They’re about to bloom, and I’ve got over fifty rhododendrons now. My yard is going to be spectacular.”

  She hadn’t seen his house in ages. She remembered a glorious view across the Sound toward Bremerton and Port Orchard. Built of wood and glass, his home had seemed like a natural outgrowth among the Douglas firs and cedars on the acreage he owned on Vashon Island. When she was last there, half the rooms were still unfurnished, and she was sure there hadn’t been more than a few scraggly shrubs that he’d inherited when he bought the place.

  “I haven’t been there in…” Laurel paused, trying to remember.

  “Years? I know. You never seem interested.”

  “I’m just…set in my ways.”

  “I know,” he said again. “It’s okay. I haven’t minded coming to see you instead of the other way around. I know Vashon is a trek.”

  It really wasn’t. The ferry ride from Fauntleroy in west Seattle was only about twenty minutes. She couldn’t use that as an excuse.

  The truth was, he’d made all the effort to maintain their friendship. She was glad to see him when he appeared, but had never roused herself to do more than e-mail when she hadn’t heard from him in a while.

  Laurel was ashamed to see how much he’d given, and how much she’d taken. And now he was trying to do more for her.

  Not just for her, she reminded herself. For the baby, too. For his baby. She didn’t have to feel entirely selfish if she let him help.

  She was aware of a wash of anxiety at the idea of going away—even if “away” was only a twenty-minute ferry ride from Seattle. She hadn’t spent the night anywhere but her father’s house and then hers since she’d been released from the hospital. In fact, it had been five years, Laurel realized in astonishment. And it wasn’t even that she was afraid to spend the night elsewhere, that was the odd thing. She hadn’t really turned down invitations, except Caleb’s to join him on a trip to Central America. Rather, she just hadn’t considered going anywhere. She liked her routine.

  Although truth be known, she was getting awfully tired of that routine.

  She didn’t really want to spend the rest of her life tied to her homely flat-roofed house, did she?

  Without giving herself time for second thought, she said, “Okay. I’d really like to stay with you. This has been a pretty rotten few weeks. I’ll e-mail as soon as I get home to let my boss know I’m taking next week off. Honestly, I doubt anyone will mind. I haven’t told them I’m pregnant yet, so they think I’m fighting some horrible flu. Nobody wants to come near me. I can clear the lunchroom just by walking in.”

  “And the restroom by tearing in and lunging for th
e toilet.”

  She gave a tiny giggle. “Well…yeah. A few days ago a couple of attorneys were putting on makeup and gossiping, and boy did they exit fast when they heard me start to puke.”

  “You will start feeling better?”

  “So all the books say.” Laurel sighed. “But most women don’t seem to feel this lousy the first trimester, either, so who knows?”

  “Maybe my sperm is toxic.”

  She rolled her head to give him the evil eye. “Oh, that’s a comforting thought. I suppose there is awful pollution in some of the places you visit.”

  “It’s especially nice when the planes dump chemicals on the marijuana fields. And on anyone and anything that happens to be nearby.”

  “You’ve seen it?”

  “Can’t miss it. Lethal crop-dusting.”

  “Maybe your DNA has mutated.”

  He flashed her a cross-eyed look with his tongue dangling out of his mouth. “Maybe he’ll look like me.”

  She was startled into a laugh. “No, she’ll probably inherit my limp, dishwater hair and eyes of such an indeterminate color the people at the DMV argue over what to put down.”

  His hand closed over hers. “She will be beautiful, just like her mommy. With hair the color of honey and eyes that change color depending on her mood.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me, ever.”

  Caleb laughed, a deep, merry sound. “Remind me not to compliment you again.”

  Embarrassed, she wiped her eyes and sniffed. “I’m sorry. Everything makes me cry lately.”

  “That’s traditional, I hear.”

  Now that she thought of it, the books said that, too, but she’d just assumed she was depressed. “How do you know?”

  “You’ve met Stewart, right?”

  She nodded. Stewart Deaver was a friend of Caleb’s from… Laurel couldn’t remember. The Peace Corps? She knew he had helped Caleb set up his Web site.

  “His wife just had their second kid. He claims to be scared of her when she’s pregnant. If she isn’t crying, she’s mad. Sara has always said she wants to have three kids. Stewart says no way.”

  It would take courage to get pregnant a second time, Laurel already knew. Three times? Her stomach wobbled. Nope. But maybe she’d change her mind after the baby was born.