This is what even thinking about this girl does to me. Nothing floating through my brain makes sense right now. Even just entertaining the notion of her being home, of her driving to my side of town and leaving me a message on my car that I would recognize… It strikes me stupid. I’m a mess. Juliana makes me a complete idiot. I loved being an idiot for her when we were together. Now it just hurts.
I’ve never been so glad to get one of Gemma’s bear hugs and sloppy kisses when I pick her up from dance. She chats my ear off while I drive her home and make us macaroni and cheese for dinner. She’s settled in with her homework by the time Mom gets home, and between helping her and cleaning up the mess I’ve made of the kitchen, I’m busy enough to keep my mind off the drink I so desperately want. I keep drafting a text to Ryan to tell him what happened, but I can’t phrase it in any way that doesn’t sound like me wanting it to mean more than it might. It might be a message better sent to Anja, really, but I don’t send her one, either.
But still… I have a feeling that the solution of an incredible coincidence and mix-up of dark cars on a snowy street is not the answer here. Whether I want to or not—and I do want—and whether I’m ready and might never be, I’m going to be seeing Juliana again—sooner rather than later.
***
The snow isn’t as bad as Marta’s weather app indicated it would be, but I’m glad I don’t have appointments to keep. I go to an early-morning meeting, because this is definitely an occasion that calls for it. I draft a long email to Ryan explaining the whole saga, but I don’t get a reply. I call and bump my next appointment with Linds up by a day. When I can’t stall leaving for Anja and Mattias’s any longer, I grab an overnight bag in case I don’t feel like driving back after dark sets in. I text Anja when I’m on my way, and ask her if there’s anything she wants to tell me before I get there. If Juliana is in town, Anja will know—but when it’s come to the fallout from the breakup, she’s keeping silent on what Juliana is up to so as not to upset me. She doesn’t reply before I’m on the highway, and I puff away on a cigarette as I drive. I’m still doing my best to ignore the niggling feeling in my stomach that something else is up, which sits heavier and heavier as my phone chimes in the front pocket of my overnight bag. I’m not risking totaling my car and killing myself to check a text message in this weather and this traffic.
I’ve pulled into their driveway and am reaching for my phone when I see Anja rush out her front door. She isn’t wearing a coat in spite of the weather, and she rushes towards me when I get out of my car, but not in the way I expected her to greet me. She looks frantic and worried. I don’t need to look at the phone to know the messages I have waiting for me are from her.
“I don’t know if you should be here tonight, Ez,” she says, forgoing any sort of welcoming hug when I step out of my car.
“Um… I just drove almost an hour to get here. Even on not-snowy, no-traffic evenings, I don’t exactly live nearby, remember?”
“I know, I’m sorry. It’s just… Oh, fuck it. Jules is back home. I didn’t know when I talked to you yesterday, but she’s staying with Mama A, and Lukas brought her over. She came in on something of a whim and she’s… Shit. I can’t tell you. But I don’t know if tonight is the night you should find out.”
My blood sluices cold in my veins, but I try to keep my shit together. I’ve wanted the validation the note on my car was what I thought it was since I saw it last night, but I also wanted to be in control of how and where I saw Juliana for the first time since we broke up. I can’t keep my face straight enough and Anja figures me out.
“Did you know she was here? She told me she hadn’t called you yet, but did she actually?” she asks.
“She didn’t call.” I suck in a breath of cold air through my nostrils and try again to get my nerves in check. “If she came tonight when you’d, I assume, told her we had plans, then I guess she wants to see me?”
Anja looks flustered. “I’m not sure Lukas gave her a choice.”
“What? Why?”
“I really don’t know if tonight is the night,” Anja says again.
“It’s fine with me,” I say, even though it’s anything but fine. “Look, I had to see her again at some point, right? I’ll stay out here and if she’ll come out real quick, we’ll get the awkward part out of the way in private.”
Anja shakes her head. “Ez….”
“It’s okay, Anja, really. If it still feels awkward, I’ll head home so you can all spend some time with her while she’s back in town and I’ll see you guys next week or whenever. But we’re grown-ups, right? We can be civil and polite to one another.” I’m trying to convince myself of this as much as I’m trying to convince her.
“Ezra, I’m telling you, this might not be the best way to….”
She’s cut off by the squeak of the front door. That’s what initially draws my attention, even though Juliana could get my attention if she were silent and appeared out of thin air. She’ll never lose that indescribable way she can draw me to her, that thing about her that drew me to her at the very first moment I met her. She invades my every sense all over again, and I’m actually delirious looking at her.
She sighs and sort of half-waves to me. “Hi, Ezra,” she says.
I’m about to wave back, and then I notice everything that’s different about her. Her face is fuller than I’d last seen. Her breasts are heavier and her gait is saddled. It’s the sort of gait a woman has when she’s….
“I wanted to tell you,” Anja murmurs. “I was trying to warn you without telling you because it wasn’t my place to say anything.”
Anja is right. The only person who should be telling me that Juliana is pregnant is Juliana.
***
I can’t stop staring at her stomach.
I’ve seen plenty of pregnant women in my life—I got certified in prenatal massage when one of my favorite spa clients got pregnant three years ago. But I’ve never known one so personally and intimately as I know Juliana. I’ve always thought of it as endlessly fascinating—a spine forming organs and a brain and flesh until it’s actually a tiny human. An amalgam of two people, however imperfect and flawed they might be, transmuted into a small creature that gets a fresh start. Alcoholics are very, very interested in fresh starts.
Anja leaves us alone and I stagger up onto the porch. Juliana leans against the railing and watches me staring at her belly. The question hangs between us unasked, unconfirmed.
“When are you due?” It’s the most sensitive way I can think of to get the confirmation I need.
“End of February.”
This can only mean one thing. A million thoughts battle in my brain at once, but not one of them makes it past my lips.
“I’ve wanted to tell you,” she says, her voice nervous. “I drafted emails, half-dialed your number. I even wrote out a postcard that I tore up before I put a stamp on it ’cause I’d actually written, ‘Hey, by the way, I’m pregnant and it’s yours.’ I was so far away. And I was hurt. And honestly… I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
My mouth is dry. Maybe more than I have any other moment since my relapse all those months ago, I want a drink.
“When did you… How did you…?”
“I didn’t know when we were still together, if that’s what you’re wondering. I didn’t find out until after I moved back to Sao Paolo. I figured I was late because of the stress of the move and tired because I was sad over the breakup, but I wasn’t sick at all so I didn’t even put two and two together. I didn’t find out for sure until I was a couple months in. And then I just didn’t know how to tell you.”
“You were on the Pill.”
“I guess there’s something to Mama’s theory of the women in my family being super-fertile.”
“I guess so.”
“I’m sorry. I know I messed this up.”
“Yeah, well, coming back here after you started showing certainly is one way of telling a guy you’re having his kid.” I’m a lot me
aner than I intend to be, and wasn’t that exactly why I left her to begin with? To keep her from the dark, craving, asshole version of myself? But then, I’m not reacting this way only because I’m still dark, craving, and an asshole. I think I sort of have the right to be a little pissed over this. “So… congratulations.”
She throws her hands up and rolls her eyes. Sure, I’m being sarcastic and kind of petty, but I don’t know where she gets off being exasperated. She wasn’t blindsided with this like I was.
“I was always going tell you. But you were the one who wanted space and distance in order to avoid screwing me up while you fixed yourself. I wanted to respect that. But cut me a little slack, huh? Because this wasn’t how I ever intended for this sort of thing to happen. Being single and pregnant and hopelessly in love with the father—with a guy who didn’t want me anymore—is about the worst way I can imagine doing this.”
As soon as she says the words, I can see her face change. I can’t tell if she wants to pluck the words out of the air and take them back, or shove them down my throat. I’m not sure it would hurt as much if she actually punched me in the gut.
“I don’t know what to say,” I say. “I never meant to ruin you.”
“That’s just it, Ezra,” she snaps. “You didn’t. You wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have let you. And this—” her hands fly to her belly “—didn’t either. But that didn’t stop me from being scared out of my mind!”
There are words on the tip of my tongue that I have to force myself to bite back. They’re the sorts of things you can’t take back once you say them. They’re the sorts of words I broke up with her to protect her from, to protect me from feeling rotten about later. And there is a just-rational-enough part of my brain that knows how unfair they are. So I take a lesson I should have learned ages ago and keep my mouth shut.
It strikes me that she isn’t wearing a coat. I shrug mine off my shoulders and go to her. She allows me to wrap it around her, but we keep a careful distance between us. My forearms brush against her. She’s actually radiating warmth. Pregnant women tend to do that, as I recall. She smells the same, only more intoxicating. Even when we’re furious and snapping at one another, everything about her is enticing. Perfect, even when she’s flawed. I realize now she’s a lot more flawed than I’ve ever given her credit for being. She always seemed so together in comparison with my own mess that she struck me as perfect. But now that I see her as scared and vulnerable and decidedly not together, I feel the pang in my stomach all over again that is the pang of wanting her. I want someone just as fucked-up as I am. Instead of saying as much, because how would that possibly go over, I go back to staring at her stomach.
“Look, I don’t want anything from you you aren’t able to give me. You don’t have to choose this. If you can’t handle it, you can’t handle it.” She clasps her belly protectively. “I’ll respect whatever you decide. And I won’t think any less of you one way or another.” I think she means it to be freeing for me. A way to liberate me of culpability if I decide I can’t have anything to do with her or…. She’s giving me permission to continue using the out I crafted for myself, even though the stakes are higher and harder to swallow. She’s endlessly noble, my Juliana, even when it means sacrificing so much at her own detriment.
“When are you… You’re going back to Sao Paolo, or are you…?”
“I took a leave of absence. My maternity leave will kick in soon anyway—it’s longer down there. But I don’t know what I’m going to do after the baby comes. I don’t know if I want to go back. I haven’t decided anything yet.”
After the baby comes. After our baby comes. Because even if I chicken out, it’s still the baby she and I made together.
“So you might stay.” There’s a hopeful edge in my voice that obviously confuses her.
“Mama wants to help, of course. Mattias and Lukas are pretty pissed I kept this from them for so long, if that’s comforting for you at all, but they’ll help too. I don’t know if I can do this all by myself, at least not at first. So yeah, I think I need to be close to home. I think that’d be best. And it gives you the option to be involved. If you want to be, that is.”
There hasn’t been a moment since I last walked out of the house in LoHi that I haven’t wanted Juliana in any and every way. And maybe there was some tiny part of me that always thought that if I ever had kids, I’d have them with her. But this isn’t something I’d ever have bargained for. This is so much bigger, so much more real, and it’s one more thing I could screw up so, so easily. And it wouldn’t just be her I’m screwing up anymore.
“Can I… Is it unreasonable for me to ask for some time to… just figure this out?”
“No. I expected time. I can give you time,” she says graciously.
I look nervously towards the house, half-expecting Anja, Mattias, and Lukas’ faces to be pressed against some window watching us. They aren’t, but it doesn’t really set my mind at ease at all.
“I think I should take off. Seems like it’s a night for an Almeida reunion….”
“You’ve always been an honorary Almeida, you know, Ezra. Even before this—although I guess, by blood at least, this really makes you part of us now.”
My eyes drop away from her stomach to the ground. “I always wished I had Almeida blood. My Mackenzie blood is pretty fucked up. It seems almost unfair to wish it on a….” I don’t know why I can’t say the word.
She shrugs the coat back off to give it back, but I shake my head. I’m eerily not cold. Frantic, sure, but not cold. I turn to march down the three little steps to my car, but I have to check one more thing before I go.
“You didn’t tell anyone until you came back? Really? Not even Mama?”
She shakes her head. “I wanted you to be the first to know. I figured I owed you that. That didn’t happen, I realize, and I’m sorry. But I wasn’t going to ask you to come pick me up from the airport.”
“I would have done it in a heartbeat.”
“I know. That’s why I didn’t ask.”
I look at her belly again, but I’m not staring.
“Do you know yet if it’s a… what gender it is?”
“Yes. But does it matter right now?”
“No. I suppose not.”
“I won’t rush you, but please figure out what you need to sooner rather than later, Ez, okay? ’Cause what you decide is going to change a lot of things and February doesn’t feel that far away when it’s snowing.”
I fell in love with Juliana on a day it snowed. On another, she’s asking me to choose to be a father or not. It was only a year ago—how can so much happen in so short a time?
“I’ll think as fast as I can,” I tell her. “Tell them I’ll be back, though. Regardless of what I decide. I’ll be back even if it’s just to say….” I don’t want to say the word ‘goodbye.’ But if I choose to walk away from Jules and this—our—baby, I’ll be walking away from the entire family for good. I’m not going to get to choose one or the other any longer.
“They’d never expect anything less, Ez.”
She lets herself back in the house as I slide back behind the wheel of my car. My tires spin as I pull out of the driveway and head down the street. My mind goes the speed my car can’t safely travel in the snow, and I know I won’t be able to slow it down. Maybe not ever.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Lukas: Dude, I’m sorry to spring it on you like that.
Anja: Are you okay?
Mattias: Call us if you need to talk about this. We’re all pretty pissed at her, too.
Lukas: I wasn’t going to let her chicken out of telling you any longer.
Anja: I’m sorry again I didn’t tell you.
Mattias: For whatever it’s worth—I think you’d be a kick-ass dad.
My friends are magical. But I don’t drive back or take them up on talking. Sometimes the only way to really suss something through is to think about it on your own.
***
I drive slowly,
without purpose or direction. The snow is still coming down, and it’s taking more oomph from my windshield wipers to keep it clear. My defogger can barely keep up with how high I have the heat cranked versus the cold outside. I find myself really missing my old place, as rundown as it was, because at least it would have been a place to brood by myself where I wouldn’t be expected to sit in just one place. I’m not quite ready yet to go home and tell Mom what’s happened. I think that will make it a little too real, a little too tangible. I drive past about a dozen bars and notice them all. I give myself exactly one minute to be proud of myself for not swinging into one and drinking myself into oblivion. It’s an achievement for me, even if it’s just a tiny one.
It hits me all over again: Juliana is having a baby. Juliana is having my baby. Even though I know it’s a real and true statement, it feels so foreign. It feels a lot like remembering that I’ll never see or hear Mac again. And I’d be lying if I said anything but this: I don’t know if I can handle it.
It’s not my addiction or my recovery, as much as those are the easy, convenient excuses. Maybe the truth isn’t all that much better. But, damn it, it’s all I have to work with. I don’t know how to be a father in a world my own father isn’t in.
When I thought about it in the past, it was something nebulous and intangible. Once, right out of massage school, a girl I’d been seeing had had a scare, but it was quickly resolved as an incorrectly taken test. Ever since, it wasn’t something that was any sort of imminent threat, so why concern myself with it? Now that it’s not nebulous and is very, very tangible, I’m scared out of my mind. Because in a world without Mac, who am I going to ask questions of when I get confused or start screwing up? Juliana will have Mama A, but both of our fathers are dead—so who do I get my sage advice from? Who tells me what to do when whatever instincts people are supposed to have when it comes to their kid fail me? How am I going to deal with him or her when I have no one to turn to?
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