Lullaby and Goodnight

by Staub, Wendy Corsi

  Neither can pregnant, officially. But it can keep a woman from getting promoted, no matter what anybody claims. It isn’t fair, but it’s true.

  Damn that Tara, anyway.

  Peyton has repeatedly told herself that she can take whatever her boss wants to dish out. She wants this promotion. Or maybe she doesn’t want it as much as know that she deserves it.

  In the end, she’s too preoccupied to truly want anything these days, other than Allison back where she belongs.

  After descending the steps to her apartment, Peyton locks the door, checks it twice, then goes straight to her blinking answering machine.

  Please let it be Allison, she prays as she presses the button and listens to the tape rewind. Or news about Allison. Good news.

  It isn’t. But it’s the next best thing, and she finds herself smiling faintly despite her anxious state.

  “Hey, Peyton, it’s Tom. I just got back from D.C. . . .”

  D. C.?

  Oh, that’s right. That last-minute business trip he mentioned on Saturday. She forgot all about it in the drama since.

  No wonder he hasn’t called her these last few days . . . not that she really even acknowledged that fact until now.

  “Listen,” Tom’s recorded voice goes on, “I’ve got two tickets to see the Yankees annihilate the Red Sox next Saturday afternoon. Are you game? Pun intended, ha, ha. Call me when you get home.”

  Well, she’s home, but she can’t call him. Maybe later. Or tomorrow. Or whenever something as inane as a baseball game seems to matter again.

  She busies herself filling a cup with tap water and setting it in the microwave. A nice hot cup of tea is what she needs right now.

  Herbal tea.

  That should steady her frayed nerves.

  Herbal tea, and—

  She reaches for the phone again.

  She can’t help it. Baseball aside, she suddenly, desperately, needs to hear Tom’s familiar voice.

  Her own breaks unexpectedly at the sound of it when he answers on the first ring.

  “Peyton?”

  “Yes,” is all she can manage.

  “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s my friend. Allison. She’s missing and she’s . . . pregnant.”

  There’s so much more she wants to tell him, things she couldn’t say even if words were flowing easily past the anguish welled up in her throat.

  “Allison. I think you mentioned her,” he says, although Peyton is certain that she hasn’t.

  She was careful not to, knowing that there was an off chance he might ask too many questions.

  Like how she met Allison.

  She tearfully spills the details, careful to stick with only the most cursory of them.

  Eventually, she’ll tell him more. But if he finds out that Peyton is pregnant now, he might very well walk away. And she isn’t ready to handle that. Not yet. Not tonight.

  “Do you want me to come over?” Tom is asking.

  “No. I’ll be okay. I just . . . I got your message and I thought I should call you back tonight. You know. To tell you what’s going on.”

  “I don’t think you should be alone, Peyton. Especially after that break-in you had. It’s been hard enough for you to deal with that.”

  The break-in. This is the first time she’s arrived home since it happened and entirely forgotten to search the closets and under the bed.

  She begins to do so now, carrying the phone and turning on lights as she goes.

  “Let me come over,” Tom says again. “I can be there in two minutes.”

  There’s a certain comfort in knowing that. Knowing that if the phone rings in the middle of the night with bad news, she doesn’t have to be alone.

  “You don’t have to come over, Tom. I know you just got back from your trip, and—”

  “But I—”

  “Look, I promise I’ll call you if I need you, okay?”

  He hesitates. Then says, reluctantly, “Okay. I’ll be here. And I can be there, too. Two minutes. Remember?”

  “I remember.” She smiles, but only briefly.

  A sudden twitch in her stomach has caught her off guard.

  She goes still, wondering if it could possibly be—

  A startled gasp escapes her as she feels another sharp twitch, down and to the left of her navel.

  This time, there’s no mistaking it.

  The child within her has just kicked for the very first time.

  “Are you all right?” Tom is asking. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. I—I stubbed my toe.”

  “Are you okay?”

  She says nothing, standing motionless, hoping to feel the miraculous stirring of life once again.

  “Peyton?”

  “Hang on a second,” she says abruptly, and sets the phone down.

  She wraps her arms around her abdomen, pressing gently in the spot where the baby’s tiny limb was moving.

  Where are you, little one? What are you doing in there?

  No response.

  For a long time, she waits.

  Are you sleeping now, baby? she asks silently, feeling less alone, less lonely, than she did just minutes ago.

  Then the sound of Tom calling her name emerges from the receiver.

  She reaches for it slowly, realizing that she can’t go on fooling him, or herself. She can’t sustain this relationship—if it can even be labeled a relationship. They’ve seen each other only a handful of times.

  Yes, there’s an undeniable connection. An attraction. Yes, this could go somewhere, if she let it.

  But she won’t. She has to tell him she can’t see him again. Now.

  Or at least, tell him that she’s pregnant—and let him be the one who curtails the relationship because of it.

  Why prolong the inevitable? That isn’t fair, and it isn’t healthy.

  Steeling herself for the turmoil to come, she lifts the receiver to her ear. “I’m here. Sorry.”

  “I think I should come over. I’m really worried about you.”

  “No, you shouldn’t come over.”

  “But—”

  “Tom, just wait. Just . . . stop. I need to talk to you.”

  A beat of silence. Then he asks quietly, “What’s going on? Is there more? More than just your friend?”

  She’s poised to tell him about the baby.

  Just say it. You have to.

  She does. And she will.

  But not tonight.

  Because before she can utter another word, her confession is curtailed by the urgent beep of call-waiting.

  Lowering the receiver to check the ID window, she recognizes Wanda’s number.

  “I’ve got to get that, Tom,” she says hurriedly. “It could be something about Allison.”

  “Want me to hang on?”

  “No, hang up. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  But I won’t, she tells herself firmly, ending the call with a trembling finger. No matter what happens, I won’t let myself need you.

  “Here.” Derry walks across the living room, lit only by the flickering blue light of the television. “You forgot this.”

  She’s tempted to fling the alarm clock at Linden, newly settled on the couch with his blanket and pillow.

  If I do that, he might haul me into jail for spousal battery, she thinks wryly, though the premise isn’t entirely without validity.

  “Yeah, I’ll take it since you don’t need it anyway. Ever.” He sits up, snatches the clock from her outstretched hand, and plugs it in.

  Yet another nasty crack about her unemployment.

  The fight that erupted earlier in the bedroom didn’t even revolve around her idle lifestyle, nor around the prosthetic that strains the bodice of her lone summer nightgown.

  No, this time, they were at each other’s throats over Linden’s failure to say good night. It started out as yet another a minor tiff in a week filled with them, but quickly escalated.

  All because he just ploppe
d himself down in bed beside her with a grunt, and ignored her when she said good night. He pretended he was asleep, which irked her because she’s not gullible enough to believe that a person can possibly be that deep in slumber two seconds after hitting the pillow.

  Linden claimed that it’s possible for him, because he works so hard, of course. What he didn’t say—at least, not aloud—is that he wouldn’t have to work that hard if she would get a job.

  Things plummeted from there, snowballing to encompass other topics, stupid topics, things Derry was once able to live with.

  His grammatical skills. His ever-present monosyllabic pal Richie. His snoring.

  “What are we going to do when the baby comes?” she demanded. “How is the baby going to sleep through all that noise?”

  “What the hell can I do about it?”

  “You can see a doctor, like I’ve been telling you for years.”

  He dismissed that idea with a curt “What the hell for?”

  “So you can have an operation to fix your nose so you won’t snore!”

  “An operation? Where are we going to get the money for that?”

  “Oh, stop it, will you please? Stop harping on me about money. It’s always about money with you.”

  That was when he grabbed his bedding and stormed out of the room, leaving her to flip over and mutter a heartfelt “good riddance” into her pillow.

  But she couldn’t sleep. She was too worked up. She couldn’t just leave it alone.

  “I told you I’d look for a job this week, remember?” she spits at him now.

  “Yeah, well, I’ve got news for you. This week is already happening.”

  “Well, I’ve got news for you. It isn’t over yet,” she shoots back at him. “Or as you would say, it ain’t over yet.”

  A week ago, that would have been a lower blow than she’d have been capable of dealing to the man she promised to love, honor, and cherish. The man with whom she once had everything in common. Everything that mattered, anyway, from a unique shared affinity for retro rock music to a mutual vision of their ideal future.

  Not anymore. Things have changed.

  These days, they seem to have very little in common. Derry is no longer sympathetic to Linden’s underprivileged upbringing, his typical excuse for not being as polished as she would like. Her usual gentle hints and good-natured teasing about his grammatical lapses have given way to white-hot anger.

  He used to make an attempt to speak properly. Now he seems to deliberately choose the wrong words, just to get on her nerves.

  It’s working.

  Linden glares at her from the couch.

  She glares back. Then, seething, she marches back to the bedroom, so blinded by fury that she accidentally bumps her fake stomach into the doorjamb.

  “Ouch!” she blurts, though it more or less bounces off like the rubber ball it technically is.

  Linden snorts.

  How dare he?

  “You wouldn’t think it was so funny if our baby had been injured,” she snaps at him over her shoulder.

  “I hate to break it to you, Derry, but our baby isn’t in there.”

  “It could be!”

  “But it isn’t!”

  “No kidding!” Those last two words, screeched, are met by a loud pounding on the wall.

  Old Mrs. Steiner next door again. She banged earlier, during the bedroom argument. She bangs whenever there’s the slightest noise from the Cordells’ apartment, which would be forgivable if she didn’t pretend to be deaf whenever they pass her in the hall.

  “Will you please just shut up?” Derry hisses at Linden. “What if she hears what we’re saying about the baby?”

  “You’re the one who’s screaming,” he says with a maddeningly docile shrug before pointing the remote at the television.

  He turns up the volume to spite Mrs. Steiner, and Derry.

  She spins on her heel and storms into the bedroom, somehow resisting the urge to slam the door.

  “Wanda?”

  “Yeah. Were you on the other line?”

  Ignoring the question, Peyton clutches the phone against her ear and poses one of her own. “Any news?”

  “No. I just couldn’t sleep, and I knew you’d be up, too. Were you on the other line?”

  “It’s okay. I hung up.” Deflated, Peyton sinks into a chair. “I was hoping you were calling to say they found her. I can’t believe this.”

  “I know. I keep thinking she might be out there somewhere. . .”

  “Or she might be . . .” Peyton can’t say it.

  She doesn’t have to.

  “I know,” Wanda says again, her tone hollow. “I talked to her uncle Norberto just now. He answered the phone there. He started crying so pitifully when I told him I was a good friend of Allison’s.”

  Uncle Norberto. The bald uncle who teasingly called Allison and her lookalike newborns Peludo.

  Peyton swallows hard over a painful lump in her throat, remembering her friend’s tale that afternoon in Tequila Moon barely a month ago. Will she ever see that mischievous grin again?

  Wanda is still talking; Peyton forces herself to listen when all she wants to do is break down and sob.

  “He said her parents weren’t there. They’re keeping a vigil in church.”

  “I can’t imagine what they’re going through,” Peyton says, although in truth, she can. She rests a trembling hand on her stomach. “What about Allison’s kids?”

  “I guess they’re home with the uncle. You’d think the parents would stay with them at a time like this.”

  “But they’re not tiny children,” she points out. Remembering her herbal tea, she stands and returns to the galley kitchen. “Allison’s kids are teenagers, right? They don’t need a babysitter.”

  “No, but still . . .” Wanda sighs. “You know what I mean. Allison always said that with her mother, God comes first and foremost.”

  “That’s not such a bad thing, Wanda,” Peyton says cautiously, knowing Wanda is a self-proclaimed atheist.

  “Well, I think her priorities are messed up and so did Allison. God has always come before Allison’s father, before Allison, before the grandkids.”

  Knowing it’s best to get off the hot-button topic, Peyton says simply, “I think Allison can use all the prayers she can get right now, wherever she is.”

  “I know. It’s just that she just always resented her mother’s holier-than-thou thing. She’d probably be pissed about this vigil. She never even went to church.”

  “I know, but I don’t think she resented her mother for going,” Peyton murmurs, finding Wanda’s words harsh no matter what her beliefs.

  She dangles a tea bag into her cup and swishes it around at the end of its string, absently watching the tinted swirls permeate the clear water.

  “Maybe she doesn’t resent her for going to church,” Wanda concedes, “but trust me, Allison’s mother’s been in her face preaching at her from the second she found out she was pregnant.”

  That, Peyton doesn’t doubt. She heard the same thing from Allison, time and again. But she says nothing, allowing Wanda to continue her tirade, sensing that she needs to vent.

  “I mean, give me a break. She even left a Bible under Allison’s pillow, for God’s sake, all marked up with references to illegitimate children.”

  Peyton cries out as hot water sloshes off the side of the teacup, burning her hand. She flings the cup into the sink, where it shatters against the porcelain.

  “Peyton? What was that?”

  On the verge of hysteria, she asks shrilly, “Are you sure her mother left it there? The Bible?”

  “That’s what she said. Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, I just . . . I burned myself. I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Peyton hangs up on Wanda’s protest.

  She clutches throbbing fingers to quaking lips.

  A Bible.

  References to illegitimate children.

  Peyton’s brain w
hirls with thoughts so terrifying, so utterly impossible, that she fears not just for Allison’s life . . .

  But for her own.

  “You’re doing great, Jessica.” Rita wipes the panting woman’s head with a cool washcloth.

  “. . . can’t . . .”

  “Yes, you can, sugar pie. You’re almost there.”

  Taking Rita’s cue, Jessica’s husband leans over and says, “You did it before, honey. You can do it again.”

  “. . . hospital . . . please . . .”

  The husband, Kevin, looks up at Rita. “Is it too late to take her in?”

  “Yes, and it isn’t what she wanted.”

  “She just said it. Maybe she needs drugs. She’s been at it for hours. How much more can she take?”

  “She doesn’t need drugs or the hospital,” Rita informs him, checking the birth canal again, shuddering inwardly at the sight of the deep scars from Jessica’s episiotomy.

  She doesn’t want one this time, and she doesn’t want drugs like they gave her with her son two years earlier. That’s what she told Rita when they met last winter, and Rita assured her that neither would be necessary.

  “Promise me,” Jessica said with absolute conviction.

  And Rita promised.

  “Beautiful,” she says now, lifting her head and smiling at her patient, whose face is contorted in agony. “We’re almost there.”

  “No . . .”

  “Come on, Jessica. This push can be the one. Kevin and I are going to hold your legs and we’re going to count to ten.”

  “No,” Jessica wails pitifully. “Please . . . stop . . .”

  Kevin looks at Rita with tears in his eyes. “Oh my God, can’t you see she can’t take this? Please help her.”

  “I’m helping her. We both are.”

  “But you’ve got to do something.”

  “No, she’s going to do it,” Rita assures him with the serenity of somebody who has been here before, hundreds of times. “Now.”

  “No! Not now!” Jessica protests, yet her body is straining forward, bearing down on its own accord.

  “You take her other leg, Kevin,” Rita commands, gently but firmly lifting Jessica’s ankle. “Come on, let’s go. One . . . two . . . three . . .”

  A piercing scream fills the room.