The Baby Plan

by Kate Rorick

  “Eat soup?”

  “When Maisey was about two, she started asking me every day to ‘eat soup.’ So I made her every kind of soup imaginable. Chicken Noodle, Minestrone, Tortilla, New England Clam Chowder. If Campbell’s made it, I bought it. But she would take one bite and then not eat it any more. It took me weeks to realize that ‘eat soup’ was actually,” she held her arms wide and started singing, “Iiiiiiiiit’s Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know, from Mary Poppins—which she’d seen at her grandmother’s house and fallen madly in love with. We watched Mary Poppins once a week after that for an entire year. To this day I have that damn movie memorized.”

  Sophia was lost in the memory, thus, she didn’t notice as Nathalie began to tear up again. But this time, it wasn’t caused by extreme laughter.

  All the little things that make up the big thing. They were so much more important than anything she was going through now. Any worries, any wondering. Any little annoyance at her stepmother or her little sister . . . or even at David . . .

  WHUMP.

  Nathalie’s eyes went wide. Her hand flew to her stomach.

  “Oh!” she said, surprised.

  “What is it?” Sophia asked immediately.

  “I think . . . I think she just kicked me.”

  Nathalie looked down at her lumpy stomach in wonder. The belly she’d been gaining wasn’t flabby, it felt like a small medicine ball sitting beneath her skin—solid and full. And now, it felt like there was something moving in that medicine ball.

  She’d felt little flutters the past couple days. Mostly, she thought it was related to the anxiety she’d been feeling about, well, everything (and possibly also, her favorite Mexican food she picked up for dinner). But this wasn’t a flutter. This was a definite kick—or punch. Whatever it was, it was made independently of Nathalie’s body, and it had actual impact.

  It was her daughter, saying hello.

  She was there. She was real.

  She would have Nathalie’s eyes and David’s dark hair and his soccer skills—

  . . . David.

  And suddenly, Nathalie started tearing up again. But this time, she couldn’t stop it.

  She didn’t know why—it just opened up a flood of emotions that she’d been keeping below the surface. And she was doing it all in front of a student’s mother—who had the grace to not look too alarmed.

  Just a little bit alarmed.

  “Are you okay?” Sophia asked, leaning over the desk and pulling tissues from the box that Nathalie kept nearby, handing them to her.

  “Th–thank you.” Nathalie sniffled. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me today.”

  “Might I suggest hormones?” Sophia said wryly.

  Nathalie choked on a laugh. “I was . . . She kicked me, and the only thing I could think was that my husband wasn’t here to feel it.”

  Sophia nodded. Although, she would probably nod at anything to deal with the hysterical crying pregnant lady. “Understandable.”

  “He’s been so distant lately, I can’t explain why—we’ve been together forever, I thought we were on the same page about having a baby. But now that we actually are . . . God, I’m so sorry, this is deeply unprofessional. If we weren’t a teacher and a parent, and if we weren’t pregnant, I’d offer you a drink.”

  Sophia paused. Then . . . “Would you like some pregnant lady contraband?”

  Nathalie’s eyebrow went up between dying sniffles. “What do you got?”

  Sophia reached into her bag, and drew out the most beautiful thing Nathalie had ever seen in her life.

  It was glistening. Just out of the fridge, it looked like, from the slow beads of sweat sliding down the most beautiful silhouette market testing had ever managed to produce. Sixteen ounces of heaven, the deep amber color of a whiskey held up to firelight.

  Diet Coke.

  Nathalie’s mouth watered. Soda wasn’t *really* on the Do Not Consume If Pregnant list. But caffeine was best limited, if not outright avoided, and all the (wonderful, delicious) artificial colors and sweeteners in a Diet Coke surely were not great for a developing fetus. And as Nathalie wasn’t about to do anything that could harm the baby, she hadn’t had a soda in ages.

  She’d tried to assuage her cravings for carbonated beverages with seltzer water, mixed with fruit juice, but it wasn’t the same. It couldn’t be. It didn’t slide down the throat and spread across the chest in the same way. It didn’t offer anything close to the satisfaction.

  She must have taken an inordinate amount of time staring longingly at that bottle, because Sophia finally interrupted her nearly pornographic daydream about swimming in a pool of soda.

  “If it’s any help, I drank a little soda here and there with Maisey, and she turned out fine. Minor issues with doing her homework lately aside, of course.”

  Nathalie bit her lip. Then, gave a quick nod.

  Sophia handed over the bottle. She cracked it open (that sound!) and took a deep swig.

  “That’s amazing,” Nathalie finally said. She took one more long gulp, then handed the bottle back to Sophia—like they were sharing a flask.

  “I bet your husband is more tuned in than you think,” Sophia said, but Nathalie just shook her head.

  “He’s always working. And if he’s not, he’s de-stressing with video games. I can’t get him to focus long enough on the baby for him to realize we only have a short period of time before she’s here. It’s like he doesn’t pay attention to the fact that things are happening now.”

  “I get it, you know,” Sophia said, taking a swig of her own. “Sometimes it feels like you’re the only person who is pregnant. Like this is only happening to you—and everyone else around you is just going about their lives as normal.”

  Nathalie could only nod . . . and hold out her hand for the bottle.

  “My daughter’s not exactly into having a little sibling,” Sophia admitted. “And while Sebastian is much better than Alan was—Alan being Maisey’s dad—he’s still . . . clueless. Worries over every little thing I tell him, then that concern disappears as soon as he thinks it’s been solved with a blood pressure machine. Goes back about his life. Don’t get me wrong, I love him, and when he’s there, he’s there. But he’s . . . well, he’s younger than me. And sometimes that really shows.” Sophia sighed, and looked to the ceiling. “They have no idea about the upheaval a baby will cause. Because their lives aren’t upheaved yet. You and me, we can see it coming, because it’s growing and kicking inside us every day.”

  Nathalie’s hand went to her stomach again, the spot where she had felt the quickening.

  “I just wish I knew what to expect,” she said finally. “Everyone has a pregnancy story, but none of them are my story, none of them are a map for what is going to happen to me.”

  “Not knowing what to expect is great training for having a kid.” Sophia smiled ruefully.

  “I have over a hundred students every semester, I wouldn’t be able to handle them without having a plan.”

  “It also helps to have someone to talk about this stuff with.”

  “Do you? Have someone, I mean.”

  Sophia waved a dismissive hand in the air. “I just talk. I don’t care who’s listening. Kip, my co-worker, knows more about my body than any gay man should. My mother, she’s the same mold as me, oversharer, so we just talk over each other. When Sebastian is in town he tries to keep up but I can tell he’s panicking sometimes and just wants me to take care of everything. Maisey might never have sex in her life thanks to all she’s heard me say.”

  Nathalie shook her head. “Maisey’s going to bloom in college. I hope you’re ready for that.”

  “No mother is ready for that. But I can’t wait to see it.” Sophia smiled, her eyes getting a little watery herself. Hormones, no doubt.

  “But what about you?” Sophia continued. “Do you have anyone to talk to? Parents? Siblings?”

  “My stepmother
is . . . a bit much sometimes. And my sister—well, my little sister is pregnant, too.”

  “Well, there you go!” Sophia cried. “Someone who’s going through it.”

  “My sister is so irresponsible, she got knocked up by her bisexual roommate, I don’t think she’s the one I need.”

  Sophia’s eyes went wide, a hand covered her mouth. “Seriously?”

  Nathalie nodded.

  “How did that happen?”

  “I assume she tripped over something. She’s only twenty-four.”

  Sophia blinked. “Twenty-four’s not that young. My mother was married and had me by twenty-four.”

  “My mom, too. But . . . it’s different. Lyndi’s a young twenty-four—she doesn’t know what she wants out of life, bounces from job to job. She’s basically a kid herself.”

  Nathalie gave a little, hysterical giggle. Sophia followed suit. But then . . .

  A shuffle. She heard it, by the door. Probably a student, Nathalie thought. Although, something prickled along the back of her neck. The same feeling she used to get when Lyndi was a kid and hovering outside her bedroom door, hoping to borrow lip gloss.

  But when she turned around no one was there.

  She frowned. She could have sworn . . .

  But then, Sophia’s giggle had died down. And she’d grown reflective.

  “I was nineteen when I had Maisey. It’s . . . it’s hard. You hardly know yourself, and you’re about to have another person you need to know, inside and out. Once you get to our ages, you have the benefit of knowing who you are and how you’re going to take care of everything.”

  Nathalie’s smile fell immediately from her face.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to infer anything—”

  “No, I know,” Sophia said, waving her hand. “Trust me, I got used to speculation about my life when Maisey was little more than a baby. But it’s never easy. Even though I had a support system in my mom. Your sister, she’s going to need the same thing. Even if it’s just someone to talk to about how hard it is.” She cocked her head to one side. “You guys are lucky to have each other.”

  Nathalie let that settle in her stomach, next to the pop and fizz of the half-drunk soda.

  She was lucky to have her little sister in her life. Lyndi’s immaturity may be aggravating in the extreme, but she’d also always been the one to make everything better. Just her existence—her being born—made living with Kathy tolerable. And she deserved more than the annoyed scorn Nathalie felt every time she looked in her direction recently.

  But it was damned hard sometimes.

  “You know what?” Nathalie said finally. “Maisey is incredibly lucky to have you, too.”

  Sophia chuckled. “I don’t know how she turned out to be such a good kid. When I was her age I was obsessed with whatever boy I was dating and getting my eyeliner wings perfect.”

  Nathalie leaned forward in her chair. “Can I ask something?”

  “Shoot.”

  “How do you get your eyeliner wings perfect?” She’d been dying to know since Sophia had walked into the room how she managed to look so flawless.

  Sophia blinked. Then, she reached into her voluminous bag, and pulled out a makeup bag, and a rolled-up set of brushes. Then she took one final swig of the Diet Coke, finishing off the bottle.

  “Okay, but if we’re doing this,” Sophia said, “I’m going to need more soda.”

  Chapter 14

  I’M LUCKY TO HAVE HER, I’M LUCKY TO HAVE HER, I’m lucky to have her.

  Sophia had repeated that phrase to herself in her head more times in the last week than she had in the entirety of the previous seventeen years—and that included the fiasco preteen era when Maisey had been scarily intent on setting Sophia up with her then-best friend’s recently divorced dad.

  But ever since Sophia had gone to see Ms. Kneller—Nathalie, as she’d been told to call her after having given her a smoky-eye look that would no doubt tantalize her husband and high school sophomore boys alike—Maisey had gone from acting like an aloof but levelheaded responsible teenager to a . . . well, to a complete and utter Teenager.

  The shift had happened almost immediately. Sophia had made a concerted effort to get up early the next morning (night shoots had them not finishing up until nearly 3 AM) and talk to Maisey before she left for school. She was going on less than two hours of sleep, but she knew it was important enough to warrant a little bit of a sleep schedule interruption.

  It was also important enough to warrant waffles, she thought. For Maisey. It had nothing to do with the fact Sophia was craving carbs covered in maple syrup.

  The waffles were made and on the table before Maisey even emerged from her room, her school bag slung over her shoulder.

  “There you are!” Sophia had said brightly, as she quickly swallowed the bite of waffle she had just taken.

  “What’s all this?” Maisey asked, as she headed to the fridge.

  “Waffles. And talking.”

  Maisey’s eyebrow went up. “Talking?”

  “Come on kiddo, I texted you yesterday that I wanted to talk today.”

  “I figured you meant after school,” Maisey replied, nonchalantly grabbing a yogurt squeeze pouch and readjusting the heavy school bag on her shoulder. “You know that night shoots do a number on you.”

  “Well, this is too important to wait until after school. Or after night shoots. I had a conversation with Ms. Kneller yesterday.”

  Maisey hesitated for just a second. But then sighed. “Yeah, so?”

  Sophia blinked. “So? So . . . I hope there are some finished college applications in that overloaded backpack. And the paper you owe in your lit class from last week.”

  It only took a second. A fraction thereof. But Sophia’s eyes were glued to Maisey’s face, so she saw it. She saw the shift. From wary and aloof, to combative. To spoiling for a fight.

  “God, Mom, you have one conversation with a teacher and suddenly you’re a helicopter parent. Nice of you to show up.”

  Show up? Like she hadn’t shown up to every recital, soccer game, and parent-teacher night in seventeen years.

  “Hey now,” Sophia said, warning. “Ms. Kneller is just concerned about you. As am I.”

  “What’s the big deal? I didn’t turn in a paper? I assure you, my grades can take it.”

  Sophia felt her frustration rising. What her mother used to call “her blood getting up” whenever she had to deal with a teenage Sophia. “It’s the attitude that accompanied the lack of paper. Not to mention your college applications.”

  “My attitude is the problem? Okay then, I’ll smile and be super-duper cheerful and then you won’t care that I didn’t do my paper or my college applications.”

  “Maisey! This is your future we’re talking about—now is not the time to devolve into a spoiled brat!”

  “Right, Mom, I’m so incredibly spoiled.”

  “Maisey—” Sophia’s voice had taken on a warning tone. One that she knew only too well, from having heard it employed against her during her own teenage years.

  God, she needed to call her own mother and apologize for . . . everything.

  She took a deeeeeeeeeep breath, and tried to dredge up the memory of how close she and Maisey were.

  “This is important. I don’t care about the lit paper. You’re right, your grades can take it.

  “But these colleges—they don’t know you. They’re not going to wait for you, or give you leeway. I know you’re still disappointed about Stanford. And maybe, after a year or two at a different school, you can transfer. But right now, you need to finish your other applications so you can go to school in the fall.”

  During her (rational, well thought out, good job, Mom!) speech, Maisey had dropped her eyes to her bag, begun fiddling with the zippers. And when Sophia was done there was a long pause, the only sound Maisey’s breathing. She hoped that she got through to her. She crossed her fingers behind her back.

  But then, Maisey looked up, and if
possible the edges of her eyes had gotten even harder.

  “Why? Eager to have me out of the house so you can paint my room blue?”

  And with that, Maisey stormed out of the room, out of the house, and off to school, in a perfect teenager huff.

  Oh, yes. Sophia had learned in her last doctor’s appointment that she was having a boy. She could only hope that seventeen years from now, he was less stubborn than his sister.

  Over the course of the next week, it was as if Maisey, ever the overachiever, was determined to work through all the steps of stereotypical teenager-dom in rapid succession. Her interactions with Maisey ran the gamut from sullen silences, to disdainful sarcasm, to slammed doors and even to missing curfew. Not that Maisey had ever had a curfew, as she’d never tested the upper limits of what was allowed.

  But when Sophia came home one morning at 3 AM from night shoots, and discovered that Maisey was not in her room, she had called two police stations and one hospital before Maisey responded to her texts, saying that she had gone over to her dad’s for dinner, and decided to spend the night.

  Her phone call with Maisey’s father the next morning was in no way productive.

  “If you’re going to be working nights, Maisey should stay with me,” Alan barked, irritated. “She’s still a kid, you know.”

  “I have no problem with her staying with you,” Sophia said, trying to keep her calm with the man who’d only decided to be a parent a handful of years ago. “If she’s going to go out, she needs to tell me. But she’s being a brat right now, because she’s mad at me.”

  “Why?” Alan asked without sympathy. “What did you do?”

  Had a sex life, apparently.

  The fact that Fargone was on night shoots didn’t help. When Maisey was home in the afternoon, Sophia wasn’t. When she and Maisey overlapped for those brief few minutes in the morning, she was practically brain-dead and couldn’t find the energy to face off against her newfound teenager.

  But she was brain-dead most of the time to begin with. The flipping night-and-day schedule of sleeping until noon and working until dawn had been doable when she was in her twenties, but now that she was thirty-six, and pregnant, it was beyond exhausting.