by Bex, Alice
Lunch was very awkward. After twenty minutes of completely meaningless small talk, Sydney came to the point. “I know you’re worried that Adam and I are going to get back together,” she said.
That was exactly what I was worried about, but I’d never voiced my fear out loud to anyone—unless you count Dickens or Poe.
“Adam never loved me,” Sydney said.
That was probably true, but how did she know?
“I broke up with him because I knew he never would love me.”
She had no way of knowing that.
“Do you love him?” I asked.
“No.”
He didn’t love her. She didn’t love him. Nobody loved anybody. There didn’t seem to be much of a problem here. Except for me.
“Adam loves you,” Sydney said.
That was exactly what Shasta thought.
“Adam is very fond of me,” I said. “And I’m very fond of him.”
“And you’re sleeping together.”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t love him?”
Of course I loved him. How could I not?
“I don’t know. There are lots of different types of love.”
“That’s true, but—“
Just then the waiter brought the check. Sydney never did finish her sentence.
“Look—“ she said, once the waiter was gone. “I have no intention of doing anything to jeopardize your relationship with Adam.”
That was nice of her to say, but it wasn’t that simple.
“I think Adam would really like for you and me to be friends,” I said.
I thought Sydney was going to cry there for a second, but she didn’t. Instead she came around to my side of the table and gave me an awkward hug. I’m chalking up that embarrassing display of emotion to pregnancy hormones.
“Let’s go shopping,” Sydney said.
I didn’t want to go shopping, but I couldn’t very well follow up my let’s-be-friends speech with an I-hate-shopping-and-we-have-absolutely-nothing-in-common speech.
Shopping wasn’t as bad as I’d anticipated, but I still have to say that it’s very weird to pick out onesies for the baby of the man you love and not be the mother.
I hadn’t anticipated how enthusiastic Adam would be about the whole Sydney-and-Libby-are-friends-now thing. I’d failed to grasp—when I’d made the gesture—just how important it was to him. He started wanting the three of us to do things together. I was less than thrilled.
We found out the baby was a boy, and he got even more excited. The day the OBGYN showed us the ultrasound, Adam went straight out and bought a tiny baseball mitt and a little jersey. I guess he thinks that’s what fathers-to-be are supposed to do. Adam doesn’t even like baseball.
It was at about that time that our sex-life took an interesting turn.
“You know, Libby,” Adam said, one Sunday morning as I lingered in bed, enveloped in a post-coital haze, “I know you’re having a good time, but I’ll feel really bad if we end up going our separate ways and you have nothing to show for it.”
I didn’t like him talking about us going our separate ways. The only thing that would have made that statement worse was if he’d said, “when,” instead of “if.” I also had no idea what he meant by, “nothing to show for it,” so I just looked at him blankly.
It turned out that he was referring to my love-making skills. According to him—although I was an enthusiastic and appreciative lover—I was lacking in certain areas. This was a blow to my pride, but due to the limitations of my experience, I couldn’t refute his opinion. No doubt he’s right. My technique could probably use some tweaking.
It turns out there are techniques I didn’t even know existed. He claims these things are common knowledge, but I’m maintaining that at least one of his girl-friends used to be a professional and kept her colorful past concealed.
I’m still working on the basics. When I tell you I’m thinking about investing in a good pair of kneepads, you’ll know exactly where progress seems to have stalled out.
Then, just when I was starting to show real promise, we had to suspend our educational endeavors.
Adam’s mother came to visit. Unexpectedly. I stopped sleeping over. I wasn’t about to risk Adam expecting me to finesse the finer points of fellatio with his mother in the next room.
Eleven
Adam’s mother stayed for two weeks. I think she’s lonely. I always thought she was a real homebody—although, now I’m questioning whether the decision not to travel may have been more her husband’s than her own.
Her visit did more than disrupt our sex-life. It brought up questions about my relationship with Adam which I’d never even thought to worry about. It also brought up the issue of Sydney, and, more importantly, the baby.
It had never occurred to me that Adam hadn’t informed his mother that she was going to have a grandchild. I suppose it should have occurred to me, because he’d never told me how she’d reacted. I guess I’d had too much else on my mind to realize he hadn’t.
“How can you not have told her, yet?” We were at my house. It’s the only place we have any privacy, these days.
“It just didn’t seem necessary.”
“When were you planning on telling her? When you invite her to attend Baby Boy’s high-school graduation?”
That was a little harsh, but I was pretty peeved with him. Withholding that kind of information didn’t seem fair to anyone: Not to his mother, not to Sydney, not to the baby.
“I just thought it might be kind of a shock and with Dad—“
I guess he had a point there, but this was way too big to just sweep under the rug.
“You have to tell her,” I said.
“You’re right. I’ll tell her.”
Three years from now, maybe. I can always tell when Adam’s just placating me and has no intention of actually doing anything.
“You have to tell her today.”
“Why today?”
“Because if you put it off until tomorrow, then you’ll put it off until the next day, and before you know it you’ll be putting your mother back on the plane to Dallas and—“
“Alright. I’ll tell her tonight.”
He told her that evening. After dinner and before dessert. He’d gone all out and made all of her favorites. I think she knew something was up, because before we even got the plates cleared, she asked what we were celebrating. I think she thought Adam and I were getting engaged or something.
Not hardly.
“There is something, actually,” Adam said. I could see the resolve seeping out of him as he stood there holding a stack of empty plates and looking longingly in the direction of the kitchen. He was about to bolt and leave me to do the dirty work.
I went and stood beside him, gripping his forearm a little too tightly.
“Keep going,” I said.
Adam’s mother was looking from my face to Adam’s and back to me.
“The thing is—“ Adam stopped again. I didn’t know Adam’s mother that well, but I was betting after she got over the initial shock, she was going to be happy. I’ve yet to meet one grandmother who isn’t over the moon about her grandbabies—even if their parents don’t happen to be in a conventional relationship, or, in the case of Adam and Sydney, in any relationship at all.
“I’m going to be a father,” Adam said.
Adam’s mother started to cry. I think they were tears of happiness. Then she came over and gave me a big hug. I didn’t think she was ever going to let go of me. It was about then that I realized she’d gotten the wrong end of the stick. I could hardly blame her. Any reasonable person would have jumped to the same conclusion.
“Mother!” Adam was patting her on the shoulder, trying to get her to let go of me, I think.
“I knew it!” she said. She’d finally let go of me, but not before she’d kissed me on both cheeks.
“Mother!” Adam didn’t seem to be getting anywhere with setting her straight.
>
“I’m not the one having a baby,” I said. Somebody had to say it.
I thought she might start crying all over again, but judging by the look on her face, they weren’t going to be tears of joy.
“I don’t understand,” she said. That made two of us.
“Why don’t we all sit down,” I said. “And Adam can start at the beginning.”
It took almost half an hour before Adam finally got things straightened out.
“But I’ve never even heard about this Sydney person,” Adam’s mother protested.
“She’s very nice,” I said. “You should meet her.”
I expected Adam to be more in favor of that, but he wasn’t. I ended up being the one to call up Sydney and arrange a meeting.
“I feel kind of weird, doing this,” I said to Adam.
“Then don’t do it.”
We met at a little café. Neutral ground. Adam’s mother was nice enough to Sydney, but there was none of the crying and hugging and kissing that she’d subjected me to when she thought it was me who was pregnant.
“I just don’t understand how this happened?” Adam’s mother said as we were driving home.
I don’t think she was confessing to an ignorance of the finer details of contraception and reproduction. I was in the backseat, keeping my mouth shut.
“If Sydney is four months along, that means she got pregnant not long after your father—“ she continued.
“That’s right.” Adam said.
“But, you and Libby—“
This wasn’t putting Adam in a very good light.
“Adam and I weren’t really together, when I came for the funeral,” I said.
“Yes, you were.”
“No—“ said Adam. “At that point, we were just good friends.”
Sort of.
Adam’s mother still didn’t believe us, I think, but she must have decided that no good would come of prying into our private affairs.
She left three days later, but not before she and Adam got into a tremendous fight. It happened at his house, the night before she left. I was in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher. It started as indistinct arguing. Then I heard Adam’s mother clearly say, “Ask her to marry you!” I couldn’t hear Adam’s reply, but then his mother got loud again. “That’s not fair!” and a little later, “You can’t just play her along like this.” Then Adam shouted at his mother that it was none of her business, and she shouted back that he was making the biggest mistake of his life, and then I heard two doors slam, one after another, and it got very quiet. I started the dishwasher and left without speaking to anyone.
For the next several days, Adam was very subdued. We saw each other every evening, but I didn’t stay, or he didn’t stay. We barely kissed, much less made love. At first I thought it was just the aftermath of the stress caused by his mother’s visit, but after five days, I’d had enough.
“What’s going on?”
He said nothing was going on, and I said I didn’t believe him. Nobody said anything for a few minutes, and then Adam suddenly got talkative.
“You can’t have missed the fight I had with my mother.”
He was right. That would have been hard to miss.
“I gathered she thinks you should get married.”
“You gathered correctly.”
“It’s not that surprising,” I said.
“It isn’t?”
“Not really. She was born in a different era.”
“What does the era she was born in have to do with it?”
“You know. People used to assume—“
Adam was giving me a blank look. I couldn’t believe he didn’t know where I was going with this.
“I mean, it used to be that when a man got a woman pregnant, he was expected to marry her—if she’d have him.”
“You think my mother wants me to marry Sydney?”
Adam was laughing at me now, which made no sense. Nothing about this conversation was even remotely funny.
“My mother doesn’t want me to marry Sydney,” Adam said.
“But I distinctly heard her say—“
“My mother thinks I should marry you.”
Pickle me and call me a kumquat!
That was the end of the conversation. I didn’t have the nerve to ask him what he thought of his mother’s audacious opinion. I don’t think marriage has ever occurred to him. It has occurred to me, but not as a realistic option. I would just be happy if Adam would stop inserting little remarks into our conversations reminding me that, someday, our relationship—at least in its present form—will come to an end.
Then, a couple of weeks after his mother had gone, and we’d lapsed back into our former routine of sex and eating and going to work and more eating and more sex, Adam surprised me by resurrecting the subject.
“I always assumed I’d get married, someday,” Adam said, completely out of the blue.
“Did you, really?”
“By someday, I mean around 38 or so.”
That was six years away for him, no, make that seven.
“Did you, now?” I didn’t know what he expected me to say to a statement like that.
“You don’t want to talk about this, do you?”
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk about it, it was that once I started talking, I wouldn’t be able to take back whatever I’d said.
“Do you think I’ll ever get married?” Adam asked. That is a very weird question to ask of someone with whom one is having carnal relations.
I had always assumed that he would get married someday, and—that when he did—it would be to somebody else.
“I guess I see you as the type who would go on vacation to Mexico and come back married to some woman you met on the plane.”
I was making that up. A more likely scenario is that he’ll gradually grow older and less attractive, and one morning he’ll wake up and realize that he’s lonely and middle-aged and had better get while the getting is good, but I didn’t like to say so.
“You think I’m that impulsive?”
Yes.
“No.”
“Libby—“
“Yes.”
“Never mind.”
Shasta and I threw a baby shower for Sydney. We had it at my house. Lots of women came. Shasta had wanted to do one of those gender-inclusive baby showers where the men come, too, but Sydney vetoed the idea. She said a lot of her friends had never even met Adam, and it would be awkward to have introduce him to everyone at once. I was relieved about that, to tell you the truth.
Sydney was getting pretty big, and every time I saw her she was a little weepier. When she arrived for the shower, she insisted on hugging me, her big belly bumping mine.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this for me,” she said. She was crying again, but I didn’t think much of it. She’ll cry at anything now: Stray cats, diaper commercials, old people holding hands.
After we’d eaten all the cupcakes, and Sydney had opened all the presents, and the guests had departed, Shasta and I started cleaning up. Shasta was taking Sydney home, and we’d already loaded everything into the back of her station wagon.
We made Sydney sit on the couch and eat the last cupcake.
“I have to tell you guys something,” Sydney said. She was crying again.
“You OK?” Shasta asked.
“It’s something big.”
Shasta stopped sweeping, and I put down my garbage bag.
“I’m getting married.”
For three horrible seconds, I had a vision of Sydney in a wedding dress, standing at the alter beside Adam. Then I came to my senses. I’m pretty sure somebody would have mentioned something about them getting married before now.
“Who’s the lucky guy?” Shasta asked.
“I met him a while back.”
Shasta was fiddling with her cupcake wrapper, folding it into smaller and smaller squares until she couldn’t fold it any smaller. She seemed awfully nervous and not nearly as happy
as I would have expected.
“I met him while I was still seeing Adam. While you guys were in Dallas—“
The room was spinning. I had to sit down.
“What are you trying to say?” Shasta sat down beside me.
“I had my fiancé do a paternity test. They can do that now. They just take your blood and—“
“No.” I heard my voice saying. “It’s not true.”
Shasta put her arms around me.
“I really thought Adam was the father. Dan and I only—just once—I was on the pill and we—“
“Get out!” I was screaming. I never scream. Shasta got Sydney out of there in a hurry.
I didn’t know how to tell him. It shouldn’t have been me who had to, but I couldn’t bring myself to let anyone else do it. Not even Sydney. Especially not Sydney. It took me a week to work up to it.
Adam and I went for a walk, down by the river. Autumn had arrived and the leaves were falling. I’ll never forget the smell of those leaves. We sat down on a bench and watched the water flow by, and I told him. He didn’t cry, but I did.
We sat there for a long time, not saying anything. Adam was holding my hand. I figured he was thinking about the baby boy who wasn’t his, but when he finally broke the silence he said, “When my mother was here—during our big fight—she said something about you.”
I thought he was going to bring up the whole marriage thing again, but he didn’t.
“My mother said I’ll never find another woman who loves me half as much as you do. She said no one gets that lucky twice.”
That was probably true. I don’t think it’s possible to love someone any more than I love Adam.
“She said that I wouldn’t know it ‘til I lost you, but if you ever left me, it would feel like I’d lost a piece of myself.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just let him keep talking.
“Libby—“
“Yes.”
“Promise you’ll never leave me.”
We went to Sydney and Dan’s wedding. Sydney looked beautiful in her white dress, and Dan seems adequate—husband-material-wise—although, I personally would never have considered trading in Adam for an anal-retentive accountant who wears monogramed socks. The maid of honor held the baby—they named him James—and he cried through the entire service. Sydney cried, too. I tried to be happy for her, and I mostly succeeded. At the reception we sat with Shasta and Brad. I’m starting to like Brad. He’s been headhunted by a company who contracts with NASA, so I’m guessing he smarter than I thought. He’s talking a little more, too, but not much. It turns out he’s not unfriendly, just painfully shy.