The Most Beautiful

by Mayte Garcia

  “You have that eye,” he told me. “You have that sensibility.”

  One night we made plans to go to the Philharmonic and then to see Alanis Morissette afterward. During the symphony I suddenly felt this strange surge of sleepiness. I rested my head on my husband’s shoulder and drifted with the music while he breathed against my temple and played with the ends of my hair. During intermission, he made me laugh, doing little sound effects in my ear to illustrate what the people around us were thinking. In the car afterward, I took an Advil, and he asked me if I was all right.

  “Just feeling a little off.”

  He gave me that Scooby-Doo look, ears perking.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” I said. “I think I’m getting my period. First one since going off the Pill, so it’ll probably be hard core. But it’s good, because then I’ll be on a predictable cycle.”

  I hated to bail on the Alanis thing, but I could hardly keep my eyes open, so he suggested we go home and watch TV. I went up to the bathroom and was surprised to find I didn’t have my period. And my boobs looked… bigger? Yes. Definitely bigger. I felt a surge of excitement, but I didn’t want to get ahead of myself, so I called my friend and asked her, speaking in Spanish, if she would pop out to the drugstore and get me a pregnancy test. She came back with four different tests. I did the first one, and didn’t even have to wait. The little doodad showed a bright blue plus sign almost immediately.

  I went to the doorway and called out, “Um, hey.”

  No response.

  “HEY!”

  He muted the TV and said, “What is it?”

  “Can you come over here?”

  “I’m watching this.”

  “Come. Here. Now.”

  He turned away from the TV, and I held up the stick.

  “It’s positive?” he said. “Are you serious?”

  I laughed and hugged him, but he wanted to do all the tests, so he set them up like a science experiment on the counter. He looked at the four tests, each with their bright distinctive positives, and said, “We gotta go to the doctor right now.” The limo driver was on call, just in case we changed our minds about going out again, so by midnight we were at Urgent Care. They did blood work, and the doctor offered to do one of those down there ultrasounds with the wand, which we politely declined. The nurse came back with the blood work, and she was smiling ear to ear.

  “You’re pregnant,” she said.

  He hugged me hard, and we laughed for pure joy.

  “I’m gonna get fat!” I said.

  “Yes! Good!” He dropped to his knees and whispered something to my belly, then got up and took me by the hand. “Who should we tell?”

  It was almost three in the morning by this time, almost four in Miami where Mama was living. He got on the phone with her and said, “What’s up, Grandma?” It took her a minute to catch on, but then she was shrieking and crying. We went home, and I made him come in and look at my boobs in the bathroom mirror. Understand, people—I was never a well-endowed woman in that area, and he was always dead set against the idea of me getting my boobs done, so this was a spectacular development, so to speak.

  He nodded appreciatively. “Huge.”

  “I know! Right?”

  We huddled together in bed, living this perfect moment, knowing we were going to be parents, talking about all the things that needed to be learned and done and prepared. We were in those still, creative hours before dawn. The whole house felt full of love and joy and expectation. In the morning, I woke up wanting orange juice.

  “I need to start eating breakfast,” I said. “I need to start research and planning and I don’t know what all.”

  He was on the phone conducting business, telling people, “Cancel the tour. Mayte’s pregnant.” I could hear their happy voices on the other end of the line. When we walked into Paisley Park, it had become the joyful place in the song. Just happy, happy, happiness everywhere.

  At my first appointment with the obstetrician in Crystal, Minnesota, the receptionist kept sticking her head out the door and calling, “Mrs. Nelson?” I finally jumped up and said, “Oh, shoot! That’s me!” They did all the first appointment things and calculated my due date: November 6. Just a week before my birthday. The best birthday present I could ask for, every birthday for the rest of my life. And this confirmed my suspicion that I may have gotten pregnant on our wedding night. The OB flipped through my chart.

  “I see no reasons to worry,” she said. “You’re twenty-two. Healthy. Blood work looks fine. Next time I see you, we might be able to hear a heartbeat.”

  I don’t know what compelled me to do it, but on the way home, I impulsively stopped off at a pet store and purchased a puppy: a little female Yorkie. I was trying to decide what to name her and suggested to my husband, “You should put me under and ask me.”

  He stroked my face and whispered me into that deep, meditative space. When I woke up, he told me, “You said her name is Mia.”

  I smiled and said, “Of course. That means mine.”

  At the following appointment, there was the heartbeat, chugging like a little choo-choo. I called my husband at work, hoping he might be able to hear it over the phone, and he said, “I need that machine.”

  “What—the heart monitor? It’s like a doctor’s equipment thingy. It’s not for sale.”

  “I want to record it,” he said. “Put her on the phone.”

  Half an hour later, I walked out of the doctor’s office with the heart monitor and went straight to Studio B. I slathered the goo on my belly, and moved the monitor around while he bounced impatiently on a chair. When I caught the exact right location, and he heard that little choo-choo chugging away, his face lit up like a neon sign. Thrilled. Amazed. Scared, but in a good way. He recorded the sound, and people told me for years that he walked around with that tape, playing it for anyone who would listen. You can hear it blending into the percussion track on “Sex in the Summer.”

  Can’t U feel the new day dawning…

  We were so elated, so thrilled, but looking back I see this strange undercurrent of—I don’t know. Fate and coincidence have their dark sides. Remember the dear old cat Paisley, who’d been around since Paisley Park was built? When I was just a couple of months along, she died. My husband was so sad about that, but we got a kitten and named her Isis, and that seemed to cheer him up.

  We spent a lot of time driving around the lake and arboretum listening to music, just like we did the very first time I visited Paisley Park, and somehow the car always steered itself toward the shore of Lake Riley where the Purple House stood. Back in the ’80s, with the money from his early success, Prince had built the Purple House (not to be confused with the Purple Rain House) in Chanhassen, and he’d had it painted dark purple. Later on, after he built the house where he lived when I met him, his father, John, moved into the Purple House.

  Every time we passed by, I’d gently nudge, “So… your dad lives there now, right?”

  “Yeah,” he’d say and keep cruising right on by.

  He’d been estranged from his father for a long time. They hadn’t really spoken for five or six years. It was unusual for my husband to talk about his childhood, but one day while I was pregnant, he was feeling introspective. A conversation about music led to him reminiscing about his father, and I impulsively said, “I’m gonna go see him.”

  His eyes got wide. “What? You are?”

  “Yes! This is ridiculous. You’re just two people who—you love each other—but you let your egos keep you apart.” I grabbed my car keys and started toward the door, wondering if he would stop me. Kind of hoping he would. But he didn’t. So off I went. I wanted to unify the family because we were creating one, but all the way over there, I was thinking, Crap. What did I just do? I was certain John wouldn’t be mean to me in any way, but I had no idea what I was going to say when I pressed the buzzer on the gate. There was a long pause. I decided to count to 30 and then drive away.

  … 25… 26… 2
7… 28

  I jumped when I heard a gruff voice say, “Hello?”

  “Hi.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “It’s your daughter-in-law.”

  “Oh.”

  There was another pause, and then the gate creaked open. As I pulled up in front of the house, he came out. Feeling both butterflies and the baby in my midsection, I got out of my car and hugged my father-in-law. I didn’t care if he hugged back, but after a startled second or two, he did. He was clearly taken aback. I knew I had to smother him with love or this was going to go all bad.

  “I’m holding your grandchild,” I told him.

  He invited me inside and made me a cup of tea. We talked for a little while. Small talk. Nothing too intense. Everything that wasn’t being said was intense enough. I didn’t want to add to it. When I got back in the car a little while later, I called my husband, and he picked up immediately.

  “What happened?”

  “He was sweet,” I said, playing it cool, like we were buds now, though that might have been stretching it. “He said he’d come to visit.”

  “He did?” His tone had an unmistakable note of I’ll believe that when I see it.

  But a few weeks later, John showed up at Paisley Park. He drove up outside, and my husband did that thing you do when you’re trying not to run, but you have to run, and so you end up kind of trotting very fast. He hustled out to the parking lot where his father stood leaning against his car. He was not much taller than his son and only a little less stylish. I saw the way they hugged each other. That made me hang back so they could talk privately for a few minutes, and then I went out to say hello.

  John smiled as I approached. “So ya got married, huh?”

  The small talk was a little stiff, but not bad, considering how long it had been since they’d seen each other.

  “I’m gonna go inside,” I said, rubbing my arms, pretending I was going in because it was cold. As I walked away, I could hear them laughing and bantering, and it sounded warm and hopeful, but less than fifteen minutes after he arrived, John was gone.

  “What happened?” I asked my husband as he came back to the door.

  “He said he’s gonna come by another time.”

  “Well… yay!” I said. “Right?”

  He smiled and nodded. But it didn’t happen. I never saw John again. The Purple House is gone now. I heard that Prince had it demolished after his father’s death, but when I peeked inside Studio B during my last visit to Paisley Park, I saw John’s picture there, and it broke my heart a little.

  Things started to go sideways not long after that brief visit from my father-in-law. I woke up early one morning and realized my husband hadn’t come home. I called the studios, the office, every number I had. He didn’t answer. It was an ungodly hour, but I called one of the security people to go check on him. I laid down again, but I had this vaguely off feeling. The security person called me a little while later, speaking Spanish so my husband wouldn’t know what they were telling me. They were taking him to the emergency room. They’d found him passed out. There was vomit on the floor. He was saying it was because he took aspirin with red wine, which made zero sense to me.

  I ran to the garage and drove to the hospital. At the ER reception desk I said, “I’m his wife. What’s happening?” A doctor came to take me inside. He told me they pumped his stomach and gave him the charcoal treatment they give a person for an overdose. The moment I got inside the room, I threw my arms around him. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  He jumped off the gurney. Jumped. Like, sprang. Full of energy, like always.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  I followed him to the car, peppering him with questions. “What were you thinking? Why would you—”

  “I had a migraine,” he said. “I took too many pills.”

  “Too many aspirin.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? How is that even possible?”

  “I don’t know. My head hurt.” He turned and said to his security person, “Go back and get those records. This is private.”

  On the way home, I sat in the back of the car with my heart pounding, my hands spread protectively over my stomach. I kept saying, “I don’t understand this. I don’t get it.”

  He kissed my hands and told me not to worry.

  “It was a stupid mistake,” he said. And I accepted that.

  Yes, it’s lame. I look back now, and I see a dozen moments like this one, and I want to go back in time and shake this girl by the shoulders and say, “Wake up! Aspirin? Girl, please!” If this had been a daily or monthly or even yearly occurrence, of course I would have been all over it. I would have insisted that he get help, but on a daily basis, during the years I lived with him, this seemed like an isolated incident. I was pregnant and vulnerable and hopeful and young, so I accepted his word that it would never happen again. He promised me it wouldn’t, and it didn’t, so I didn’t question him any further.

  We didn’t mention it the next day—or ever.

  My husband was determined to be clean and healthy and fully present for his family. He went on one of those cleanse regimens where you drink psyllium husk smoothies and colloidal silver. We planned to do a home birth in the big bathtub upstairs. We watched educational videos on natural childbirth and circumcision and nursing. How to bathe the baby. How to burp the baby. How to change the baby’s diaper.

  We both read What to Expect When You’re Expecting, but there’s really no way you can know what to expect when you see that first ultrasound. We craned into it, fascinated at the murky image of our baby’s body, waiting to catch a glimpse of a hand or little toes. We took home a videotape and watched it over and over.

  “Wait! Rewind a little,” I said. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “No. Umbilical cord. That’s all.”

  We had agreed we didn’t want to be told the baby’s gender, but I was certain I could see a little you-know-what between his legs.

  By the beginning of my second trimester, I had a nice little pooch going. I had a dress with BABY printed on it and an arrow pointing down at my belly. He had a shirt that read BABY MAKER on the front and BAM on the back. We had them in every color. He also loved wearing my big baggy maternity sweaters. I didn’t get morning sickness, but I was tired all the time.

  “Your body is making a human being,” he reminded me daily.

  I said, “I want to listen to all your music and watch all your movies.”

  He leaned in and whispered to my tummy, “Your mama’s crazy.”

  We bought a scale, and I made him get on first. He weighed 118 pounds. I got on the scale and weighed exactly the same.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “All muscle.”

  “I’m going to weigh more than you by the end of the week.”

  And I did. I packed on several pounds before my next visit to the doctor.

  “You need to slow that down,” she said, and I didn’t know how to tell her I was eating healthier than a Tibetan monk. My husband was making sure of that. He was urging me to drink soy milk and get my fruit servings and be a vegetarian again. He noticed every change going on with my body and loved it. He couldn’t stop kissing and touching and whispering to my belly.

  When it came time to talk about names, he put me under, and asked me, “What is our baby’s name?”

  “Amiir,” I said.

  “Amiir?”

  “It’s Arabic for ‘Prince.’”

  “Amiir,” he whispered to my belly. “Perfect.”

  Oh—excuse me? What’s that?

  You saw on the Internet that my son’s name was “Boy Gregory”? I hate to be the one to tell you, but a lot of what you see on the Internet is fiction.

  When you’re a famous person—or a famous person’s wife or son—you can’t check into a hotel or a hospital under your real name, because tabloid journalists get wind of that. So when my son was born, I was checked into the hospital under the name “Mia Gregory.” Whe
n you have a baby in the hospital, until the birth certificate is filled out, there’s an ID on the baby’s bassinet or incubator that says “Boy” or “Girl” followed by the mother’s last name. This is how the “Boy Gregory” thing got started. Someone who had no right to share any information about my family tried to sell a photograph of my son to a tabloid journalist, who saw that label on his incubator and stupidly reported the baby’s name as “Boy Gregory.” To this day, it gets repeated over and over, and it offends and hurts me, because every time I see it, I’m punched in the throat with the betrayal of our privacy on top of the devastating loss of our precious child.

  While I was pregnant, gave an interview to Forbes in which he said that he intended to keep the names and genders of his children unknown to the public. He frowned when celebrities sold baby pictures to People or whatever, even if they were giving the money to charity. Fans had stalked and intruded on him in the past—fans as in “fanatics,” not the music lovers and concertgoers he referred to as “friends.” He wanted to keep our children physically safe and well away from the craziness of celebrity, and he wasn’t playing.

  Early in the pregnancy, I bought a charming old-fashioned baby carriage—a “pram,” they’d call it in the United Kingdom—and the next day I found it up in Wardrobe. My husband had instructed them to cover it with a black tarp.

  “The baby needs sunshine,” I said gently.

  The tarp was not happening, but I did understand his fears about the damage that could be done to a kid by privilege and being in the public eye. We wanted to be normal parents whose normal kids grow up healthy, hardworking, respectful, and kind.

  At the time, that didn’t seem like so much to ask.

  This next part of my story is very difficult to tell, so please bear with me. It’s something I’ve never shared before, because my husband was extremely protective of our child, and I honored his wishes as long as he was alive.