When You Least Expect It

by Whitney Gaskell

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  Thirteen

  INDIA

  “Lower. A little lower,” I told Miles. He was holding up the very last photograph to be hung for my show that evening. Miles had spent the afternoon at my studio, helping me hang photos. In return, I’d promised him an unlimited supply of junk food and a video game he’d been pining for. “Wait, that’s too low. A little higher.”

  Miles blew out a long, martyred sigh and lifted the picture up a half-inch.

  “Right there!” I darted forward to mark the spot with a pencil. “Okay, you can put it down.”

  “Finally,” Miles said. “My arms were about to break off.”

  “No one said that Mutant Martians was going to come cheap,” I said.

  “It’s called Mutant Zombies from Hell,” Miles corrected me. “And it’s the best game ever. My friend Crunch has it.”

  “You have a friend named Crunch?” I asked.

  Miles nodded.

  “I really hope that’s a nickname,” I said. “Go rest your arms. There’s a package of Oreos in my office.”

  Miles bounded off in search of chocolate while I nailed in a picture hanger at the marked spot. Once it was secure, I carefully hung the photograph and then stepped back to admire the effect.

  Stripped of equipment and props, my studio made a pleasingly stark gallery. I stood in the middle of it and looked around at the exhibition of my maternity portraits. I’d had the pictures framed simply, with white mats and thin black frames, and with Miles’s help, each series had been hung in a chronological grouping. A flat stomach, a gently curved stomach, a full round belly. A woman pregnant in one photograph and holding her baby in the next. A small boy gazing up at his mother’s swollen belly, and then smiling down at his new baby brother, with their mother blurred in the background. There were ten series in all, including Lainey’s, beginning with that first photo shoot on the beach to a portrait I’d taken of her just last week, in which she sat on the rickety wooden stairs at the end of the boardwalk, her knees bent in front of her, gazing contemplatively out at the ocean. Maybe I was biased, but the photographs of Lainey were my favorites. I thought I’d managed to capture how her tough façade would sometimes slip away, giving a glimpse of the vulnerable young woman underneath.

  “I look fat,” Lainey complained from behind me.

  I started and turned. I hadn’t heard her come into the gallery.

  “I thought you were home napping,” I said.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Lainey said, scratching her stomach. “I’m too uncomfortable. Every time I lie down, the baby starts squirming around.”

  “Mimi says that the last few weeks are the worst,” I said sympathetically. “Can I get you anything? A cold drink? A chair?”

  “You can talk to your future kid, and tell him or her that it’s time to move out. I want my body back,” Lainey said grumpily. She rubbed her lower back and glanced around at the display. “You got them all up?”

  “What do you think?”

  I was normally confident in my work, and had put on a number of shows over the years. But this one was different. The women in these photographs all had something I didn’t—couldn’t—have. Was my longing transparent? Or had it given me a unique perspective on the subject matter?

  Lainey looked thoughtfully over the photographs. She’d seen them all before, although not hung all together like this. She walked over to the series that ended with the new brothers.

  “I like this one,” she said. “This kid is funny. He has an old face. Like he’s wise or something, you know?”

  “That’s exactly why I picked that photograph. There were others where he was smiling at the camera, but there was something about his expression in this shot that seemed special,” I said.

  “It’s the light, too. The way it’s falling over them.”

  “That’s the nice thing about natural light,” I said. “You can’t manipulate it, like you can with artificial light, but you get these amazing results.”

  Lainey nodded thoughtfully. “Did you see those candids I took at the Wagner wedding? I picked up the prints earlier and left them on your desk. There’s a good one of the bride looking over her shoulder and laughing at something one of her bridesmaids was saying.”

  “I did. It was a great shot,” I said, feeling as proud of her burgeoning talent as I was of my show. The photograph she was referring to was extraordinary. The bride had not just been laughing—she’d been lost in hilarity, her head thrown back, her eyes screwed shut. She was ethereally beautiful in her mirth. “The client’s going to love it. I’m putting it in the front of her album.”

  When Peter had referred to Lainey as my apprentice, his patronizing tone had annoyed me. But there was some truth in it. She had learned a lot during her time at the studio. Still, while I could take credit for teaching her the mechanics of how cameras worked, how to judge the light, even how to placate an overanxious mother-of-the-bride, Lainey had a feel for the work that couldn’t be taught. An understanding of what to look for in your subjects, when you should draw closer and when it was better to hang back, the perfect moment to press the shutter button. Lainey was a natural.

  “I think you’re ready to start taking on a few jobs on your own,” I said, keeping my voice neutral.

  “Really?”

  I nodded, and smiled encouragingly. “Absolutely.”

  Lainey rubbed her swollen belly. “But I’m due soon,” she said.

  It was a simple statement of fact that belied the layers of complications. Once the baby was born—Lainey’s due date was only two weeks away—what then? Would Lainey move out of the guesthouse? That had always been the agreement—that she would move out and that we wouldn’t have any further contact after the adoption was finalized. Still, I felt uncomfortable kicking her out. Where would she go? Could I really drive her to the bus station and buy her a one-way ticket to Los Angeles? But at the same time, how could she remain in our lives once the baby was here?

  “Hey, Lainey,” Miles said, reappearing with the bag of Oreos in hand. He held it out to her. “Want one?”

  “Thanks,” Lainey said, taking a cookie. “What are you doing here?”

  “Helping,” Miles said, through a mouthful of cookie.

  “Yes, you’re clearly hard at work,” Lainey said, smiling at him. Miles grinned back at her.

  The bell on the front door jingled. “Anyone need three cases of cheap-but-not-too-cheap wine?” Jeremy asked, struggling under the weight of the boxes as he came in. “Because if so, I’m your guy.”

  “Thank God,” I exclaimed, rushing to help him. “I thought you’d forgotten.”

  “Nice. Glad to see you’re keeping the faith,” Jeremy said. He grunted as I slipped the top case of wine out of his arms. “Where do you want these?”

  “Over there,” I said, nodding toward a long table, already draped with a starched white tablecloth. Rows of wineglasses were set up on it.

  “Is this all you’re serving? Just booze?”

  “No, we’ll also have bottled water. In fact, it’s back in my office, so when you have a minute, would you bring it out? And my mom is bringing hors d’oeuvres.”

  Jeremy flinched. My mother did not have a stellar reputation for her culinary talents.

  “No, it’ll be okay,” I assured him. “I ordered platters from the deli. She’s just picking them up. Oh, and someone has to take Miles home. Maybe my mom will do that.”

  “Can’t I stay for the party?” Miles asked indignantly.

  “Do you want to stay?” I asked, surprised.

  “No,” he admitted. “But it’s nice to be asked.”

  “What happened to Georgia’s poetry?” Lainey asked. “I thought she’d written a poem for each series of portraits? She read one of them to me. It was … interesting.”

  I flushed with guilt, but Jeremy just laughed.

  “India told Georgia that the poems would upstage the pictures, and the show would be more
powerful if it remained a wordless event,” Jeremy said.

  “Some of her poems were really over the top,” I said defensively. “I don’t want the C-word in big, twenty-four-point font next to my photographs.”

  Lainey laughed—everything Georgia did seemed to delight her—and Jeremy snaked a hand around my waist and gave me a squeeze.

  “Everything looks great,” he murmured in my ear. “And you look fantastic.”

  “You think?” I smoothed down the sapphire blue slip dress Mimi had practically forced on me. I rarely dressed up, but Mimi had insisted that this was not the night to show up in jeans.

  “I definitely think,” Jeremy said. He gave me one last squeeze and then turned to set up the bar.

  When I turned back around, I noticed that Lainey had gone still and quiet, one hand resting on her swollen abdomen and her face inscrutable.

  “Maybe you should go sit down,” I said. “You look pale.”

  Lainey glanced up and smiled briefly. “I’m fine. The baby’s just kicking a lot.”

  “It’ll be a while, at least an hour, before anyone arrives.”

  “No, really, I’m fine,” Lainey said, waving me off.

  Mom breezed in then, empty-handed.

  “The food has arrived,” she announced portentously.

  “Where is it?” I asked, frowning. “Where are my trays?”

  “Out in the car, waiting for Jeremy to bring them in,” Mom said. “And you’d better hurry. Otis is in the car, too, and he was sniffing at them.”

  Jeremy hurried off to save the food. My mom took his place at the table, deftly uncorked a bottle of red, and poured herself a generous glass.

  “This looks nice,” she said, sipping at her wine and looking around the room. “They’re really quite powerful, aren’t they? All of this naked femininity surging forward. And you,” Georgia said to Lainey, “photograph like a dream.”

  I took the glass away from her. “No wine yet. I need you to take Miles home,” I said.

  Mom looked sadly after her glass, but sighed and nodded. Jeremy came back in, sweating and carrying the trays. He also had Otis, straining on his leash and sniffing the air excitedly.

  “What exactly was the reasoning behind bringing Otis?” he asked my mother.

  “Why should he be left out of the festivities?” she asked. “Besides, I put his nicest collar on.”

  Otis sat down and began to gnaw enthusiastically at an itchy spot on his back leg. Jeremy stared down at him and then looked at me.

  “I’ll take him home with me,” Miles offered.

  “Thanks,” I said gratefully. I glanced at Jeremy. “Please tell me Otis didn’t get into the food.”

  “No, although not for lack of trying. I think the Saran Wrap confused him. Otis has never been a brainiac,” Jeremy said.

  “Poor Otis. You’re unfairly besmirching his reputation,” Georgia said reprovingly. She sighed, and glanced around the room again. “I have to say, I think my poems would have been a nice touch. I know you were worried about being upstaged, India—and I’d never want to do that to you—but I still think they would have worked well together. There’s such a synergy between photography and the written word.”

  “India, should I start opening the bottles now, or wait until the first guests arrive?” Jeremy asked, winking at me.

  “Definitely now,” Georgia said. She jingled her car keys. “As soon as I get back from taking Miles home, we’ll get the party started.”

  When you’re hosting an event, there’s always that stark, scary moment when you worry that no one will show up. So when seven o’clock rolled around and the studio was still empty, save for myself, Lainey, Jeremy, Mimi, Leo, and my mother—who was now noticeably tipsy, face flushed and voice merry—I began to experience the first pangs of terror.

  No one is going to come, I thought, my stomach shifting sourly. I’ll have gone through all of this work, put in all of this time, and no one will bother to show up.

  But then, to my great relief, the guests began to arrive, first slowly and then at a steady trickle. Suddenly, the studio seemed filled to capacity. Laughter and chatter mingled, and guests crowded around first the photographs and then me, congratulating me on the show. Several people asked about my availability— one was getting married and shopping for a wedding photographer, another was expecting a first grandchild and wanted to have a portrait taken of her daughter-in-law. But one couple took me aside to inquire if the photographs were for sale.

  “Absolutely,” I said, delighted.

  “I think that series there would look wonderful on the blank wall in our living room,” the woman said to her husband, pointing to the group of black-and-white close-ups of one woman’s bare torso. “Don’t you agree?”

  Her husband nodded enthusiastically. “It’s what we’ve been looking for.”

  I was jubilant. I’d hoped to get bookings—that had always been the best outcome of my previous shows—but actually selling photographs was an unexpected bonus.

  “You, my dear, are a hit,” Jeremy said, appearing beside me. He looked especially handsome tonight in a charcoal jacket over a crisp white shirt. His cowlicks were sticking up, as usual resisting all his efforts to gel them down into place. His hair drove him crazy, but I loved the ruffled effect. “I’ve had crowds of people complimenting me on my talented wife.”

  “And what did you say?”

  He smirked. “I told them I taught you everything you know.”

  “Liar.” I laughed.

  “Guys, we have a little situation,” Mimi said, appearing out of the crowd. She looked lovely, dressed in a creamy confection of layered sheer silk. I coveted her strappy silver sandals, which added four inches to her height.

  “What’s wrong?” Jeremy asked. “We’re not out of wine already, are we?”

  “No. I think Lainey just went into labor.”

  Leo drove us all in his cavernous Suburban to the hospital. I felt oddly calm. Lainey, too. She sat quietly, breathing deeply, turned inward.

  Jeremy, on the other hand, was freaking out.

  “Don’t stop for the red, don’t stop for the red! Man, what are you doing? Do you want her to give birth in your car on the side of the road? Do you really want to set up flares, and hope that the placenta won’t stain your upholstery?” Jeremy roared.

  “The four cars ahead of me all stopped for the light,” Leo pointed out.

  “It’s okay, we’ll get to the hospital in plenty of time,” Mimi said soothingly.

  “Aren’t we supposed to get a police escort in this sort of situation? I’m calling 911,” Jeremy said, grappling with his cell phone.

  “There’s no point. We’ll be there before they could get a patrol car—or, more likely, an ambulance—dispatched to us,” I said.

  Jeremy ignored me. “Hello, 911? Yes, I’m with a woman who’s in labor. We’re on our way to the hospital, and we’re stopped at a red light. Do I have permission to run the light?” He paused, scowling into the phone. “What do you mean you can’t give permission over the phone to override traffic laws? What good are you?”

  I plucked the phone out of Jeremy’s hand. “Please excuse my husband. He’s just a little panicked right now. But everyone’s fine, and we’re almost at the hospital.”

  The 911 dispatcher—a woman with a deep voice—chuckled. “My husband was the same way when I had our first baby. Men can’t keep it together when they’re about to become daddies,” she said. “Good luck to you, ma’am. I hope you have an easy delivery.”

  She thought I was the one in labor. I don’t know why this surprised me—it was the obvious conclusion—but her words flattened me. The fact that I wasn’t the one going through this—the contractions, the broken water, the outward push of the baby—made it suddenly all seem like make-believe to me. I felt like an impostor, the artificial sweetener of mothers.

  “Thank you,” I said, and hit the off button on the phone. “You’re in luck, Jeremy. The dispatcher has an idiot
husband, too, so they’re not going to arrest you for making harassing phone calls.”

  “Harassing? Did she say that? Give me the phone back, I’m going to—oh, thank God, the light’s green. Lainey, are you timing your contractions?”

  “No,” Lainey said. “I’m not wearing a watch.”

  Jeremy glanced at his wrist. “Shit, I forgot my watch. Leo, do you have a watch?”

  Leo reluctantly unbuckled his watch and passed it back. Jeremy stared at it intently. “All right, Lainey, tell me the next time you have a contraction. I’ll start timing them.”

  The night passed by in flashes, slowing down and speeding up in turns, making it all seem somehow unreal. Going from the darkness of the night into the hyper-bright hospital. Waiting patiently while Lainey was checked in by a nurse in Labor and Delivery. The long hours that stretched by, interrupted by Lainey’s gasps of pain as yet another wave of contractions washed over her, and the occasional visit by the attending doctor to check how dilated she was. Lainey and I passed the time watching a Project Runway marathon on cable television, while Jeremy asked Lainey how she felt every five minutes, until she finally lost her temper and threatened to ban him from the room. The arrival of Dr. Jones, looking crisply professional in her scrubs and white jacket, assuring us that everything looked fine. Lainey finally getting the green light to push. The rush of activity as a nurse-midwife appeared to assist the doctor. Lainey’s cries as she worked through the contractions. Jeremy’s hand tight on my shoulder. The midwife’s no-nonsense encouragement. Dr. Jones’s quiet efficiency. Lainey’s tremendous effort as she endlessly strained and sweated and groaned.

  And then, finally, just as the sky was starting to lighten into a new day, Dr. Jones announced, “I can see the head. Come on, Lainey, you’re almost done.”

  A now sobbing and exhausted Lainey gave one final great push. And suddenly there he was, sliding out into Dr. Jones’s waiting hands. He was surprisingly long, and covered in blood and white slime. His eyes were shut, his mouth opened in an outraged squawk. Tiny hands closed into fists. His head was slightly squashed.