by Kate Rorick
“Speaking of people coming, where’s David?”
Kathy just blinked at her. “Honey, he’s your husband. Where did you leave him?”
“I . . . I thought he was coming,” she answered lamely. “From work.” It was a Sunday, but he had been working so much recently it was entirely probable that Kathy wouldn’t blink twice at this lie. And she didn’t.
“Honey, this is a baby shower! Purely female space. No boys allowed!”
“I . . . I don’t think that’s been the case since the mid-eighties.”
Kathy just waved her hand dismissively, spilling a little of her pink “momosa” as she did so. “Call him and have him come if you want, but it would just be so strange. Marcus isn’t even here—and we have crafting, and you’ll love the baby games . . . Pin the Baby on the Uterus is supposed to be a real hoot!”
“I imagine it is,” Sophia said, when Nathalie couldn’t muster an answer.
“Kathy, I thought you were going to keep this more low-key—WHAT IN THE HELL IS THAT?”
They had migrated over to the food table, where there were the expensive sliced cucumber and other no doubt vegan delights . . . but there was also something that looked like a dark red gelatinous mass balanced atop a short column of confection.
And it was bleeding.
“Placenta cupcakes!” Kathy cried out, delighted. She picked one up, showed it off. “I read on that blog that lots of new mothers are eating the placenta . . . it’s supposed to be wildly healthy.”
“That’s not . . . It’s not really—” Lyndi said, looking a little wan.
“No, it’s just Jell-O,” Kathy replied, her disappointment obvious. “I couldn’t find real placenta anywhere.”
Well, there was really no response for that.
Luckily, Kathy was easily distracted by new arrivals coming in behind them. “Hello! Welcome! Gifts go on the gift table. The pink one. No, the other pink one!”
As Kathy moved off, that left three pregnant women staring at a table of placenta cupcakes and each other.
“Do you think anyone is going to eat those?”
“David would,” Lyndi said. “If he were here.”
It was true. David would try almost any food at least once. It was one of Nathalie’s favorite things about him. His willingness to step into the unknown and give it a shot.
Maybe . . . maybe he could give this a shot, too?
“Give me a sec, Sophia, I just have to send a text,” she said, taking two steps away.
“So you work with Maisey at the flower shop?” she heard Sophia say.
“It’s a floral co-op. Let me introduce you to Paula, she’s the owner . . .”
As Lyndi and Sophia continued to chat, Nathalie took out her phone. Kathy was right about one thing. If she wanted David there, she should invite him.
* * *
Want to come to a baby shower?
* * *
She typed the message, hit Send. Waited.
Nothing.
No little loading dots, nothing to indicate that he’d gotten the message.
He was probably just away from his phone. No doubt, he would get the message in a couple minutes. She turned on her ringer, so the phone would audibly ding when he texted back.
She kept the phone in her hand as she turned, and scanned the crowd for Sophia—her emotional support person. And the spike of petty jealousy rose from her stomach to her throat, when she saw, near the pink-encrusted hashtagged step-and-repeat, Sophia applying eyeliner to Lyndi’s lids.
Once again, nothing was Nathalie’s own. Not even her friends.
She checked the phone clutched in her hand.
Still nothing from David.
This was going to be a long baby shower, Nathalie thought.
And she was very quickly proven right.
Nathalie had noticed a distinct change in how people reacted to her, ever since her belly became decidedly oversized. No one asked “how are you feeeeeeeeeeling” anymore. It was assumed you felt pretty darn pregnant. No, the comments became far more . . . observational.
“You’re having a big one, aren’t you?”
“My goodness, your baby looks ready to drop!”
“Aren’t you hot with all that weight?”
“I can tell by the way you’re carrying that you’re having a boy.”
That last one was from one of her own co-workers, who must have been blind, considering their Pepto-colored surroundings.
But she was a trouper, Nathalie told herself, and she could handle overly personal comments with people she usually only saw in the teachers’ lounge.
It would just be a lot easier if she didn’t feel the need to check her phone every five seconds.
But David . . . he wasn’t responding. By now, he had to have seen the text. There was only one explanation—he didn’t want to see her. He didn’t want to talk.
He was still angry and sad about yesterday’s fight.
And it just made Nathalie angrier and sadder.
Add to that Sophia had disappeared with Lyndi and set up a makeup station in the corner, with a line of ladies waiting to have their makeup done, Nathalie’s mood was becoming a murky mix of frustration and sadness that could have only been compounded by her hormones.
“Oh what a fabulous idea!” Kathy cried out, her voice carrying across the patio. “A makeup artist at the party; Lyndi you think of everything.”
Sophia wasn’t there to be put to work, Nathalie fumed. She was there to enjoy placenta cupcakes and roll her eyes with Nathalie at the decorations. She was about to cross the room and intervene when Kathy called out, “Everyone! It’s time for the games!”
So Lyndi and Nathalie were trotted to the front of the patio, where chairs had been set up for them, displayed to the (now very nicely wingtipped) crowd.
Nathalie slid Lyndi a glance. Lyndi’s face was shining with her smile, practically glowing from all the attention.
“Any idea what we are in for?” Nathalie muttered.
“Mom told me a bunch of different games,” Lyndi said. “They all sort of sounded like fun.”
“Okay, everyone! The first game is called Guess the Weight!” Kathy said, clapping her hands. “It’s pretty self-explanatory.”
Oh, hell.
After a casual round where the partygoers constantly thought she weighed more than she did—and of course thought that Lyndi weighed less—it was time for the next round of Compare Lyndi to Nathalie, which took the form of . . .
“Old Mom vs. Young Mom!” Kathy called out, to the titters of the crowd. “As many of you know, my Lyndi is a wee bit younger than her sister. So I have a list of things an old mom might do, versus what a young mom might do—and we get to guess which is which! First up: watching Disney movies vs. making a YouTube channel of minimovies you make with your child!”
But that wasn’t the worst of it. No, the straw that broke the pregnant lady’s back came when the games were finally dispensed with and the presents were opened.
By this time, Nathalie had grown weary of checking every phantom buzz of her phone, only to find blankness staring back at her. Her face hurt from grimacing through the humiliation of the games.
And she was freaking starving, because the only thing served at the party that wasn’t raw cucumber was placenta cupcakes.
So by the time she and Lyndi moved on to the pastel-wrapped pile of boxes and bags with soft elephants or bunnies on them, Nathalie just wanted the whole thing over with.
But as they opened each gift, the oohing and aahing over onesie sets or a baby bathtub, Nathalie began to feel a little bit better. Sure it was an endurance test, but she was enduring it for her baby. She couldn’t help imagining her daughter playing with that toy, or in that particular outfit.
Or possibly, Lyndi’s daughter in that particular outfit, because . . .
“It’s weird how people keep giving us the same stuff,” Nathalie whispered to her sister.
“I figure all babies basically
need the same things,” Lyndi replied with a shrug.
“Yes, but . . . not the exact same stuff.” They had just opened a pair of gifts from Aunt Carol—who had flown down from Seattle for the occasion and was currently consuming a bloody cupcake and a non-nonalcoholic momosa near the back of the crowd—and had each received a set of purple printed crib sheets.
The exact same crib sheets.
“It’s like they think we are having twins. Did you let Kathy know how to find your registry?”
“Oh, I didn’t do a registry,” Lyndi said, looking up from opening a big stuffed bear—no doubt exactly the same as the bear Nathalie was currently opening.
“You didn’t?” Nathalie asked, alarmed.
“I didn’t really have any idea what the baby would need. I figured you would know better, so I told Mom just to tell everyone to work off of yours.”
Nathalie’s hand froze in pulling the bow off the oversized bear. And suddenly, she couldn’t take it anymore.
“You can’t do anything on your own, can you?” she said, her voice shaking.
“ . . . what are you talking about?” Lyndi replied.
“You couldn’t even have a different registry?” Her voice was a harsh whisper. “Couldn’t think for yourself on that one?”
Now Lyndi stilled. “I didn’t think it was that big a deal.”
“No, of course not, because nothing is that big a deal. Not stealing my registry. Not making my friend do your makeup. Not having a shower at your favorite restaurant where they apparently don’t serve actual food.” Nathalie shook her head, letting the bear fall to the ground as she stood, brushed out her skirt. “It’s like I have nothing of my own. Not my own pregnancy, because I have to share it with you.”
“It’s not like I planned it!” Lyndi said, rising to meet Nathalie. There was a decided pause in the oohs and aahs of the roundtable of women passing the presents from one to the other. “You’re the one who was always going on and on about your plans! You used to tell me you were going to be pregnant when you were thirty.”
“Yes, I’m so terribly sorry that it took me three years to have a healthy pregnancy, Lyndi. And meanwhile, you manage to get knocked up the first time you trip over your roommate’s penis!”
Lyndi drew back as if struck. “That’s not what happened!”
“Really? Because that’s basically what he wrote in his article!”
The crowd gasped and shuddered. There was no pretense anymore from their guests. Everyone was riveted, watching the sparring sisters like Ali/Foreman.
“Why are you acting like this?” Lyndi said, hurt. “It’s our baby shower.”
“No, it’s Lyndalie’s baby shower, whoever the hell that is. Certainly not me. Because I wouldn’t have done all—” she waved her hand at the sea of pink they were mired in “—this.”
“Now there’s no call for that, Nathalie.” Kathy stepped forward from where she was organizing the gifts. “I tried very hard . . .”
“Not really. You never asked me what kind of shower I would like. Never thought that maybe what I want would be different than what Lyndi wants.”
“Well, of course you would want something different,” Kathy said, throwing up her hands. “You never like anything I’ve ever done. Lyndi likes everything. So I went with the one person I knew could be pleased.”
“You went with your daughter. Shocking,” Nathalie said. The edges of her vision were getting blurry with red. “Unfortunately my mom isn’t here, so I don’t get a shower.”
“Now, that’s enough!” Kathy cried. Lyndi reached out and placed a hand on her mother’s shoulder, but Kathy held firm. “I long ago accepted the fact that you would never call me mom, but I have been your mom for the last twenty-five years! She was only your mom for ten!”
Cold settled across Nathalie’s skin, while heat fell down her cheeks—tears. She hadn’t even realized she was crying.
“She will always be my mother.”
Nathalie couldn’t see Kathy’s face anymore. Whether or not it was because her eyes were filled or because she didn’t want to, she could not say. But she turned as quickly as she could, and moved through the crowd, which parted for her like she had an infectious disease.
She threw open the doors of the patio, and was nearly running when she ran directly into a familiar form.
“Hey,” David said, steadying her by her shoulders. “What’s going on here?”
Nathalie looked up into his face, and his expression changed immediately. “What’s wrong?”
“What are you doing here?”
“You invited me,” David replied. Then, forcing her eyes to meet his. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” she said, wiping her face. “Can you just . . . take me home? Please?”
David looked down into his wife’s face, then into the over-pink patio beyond. She knew exactly what he saw. The frozen crowd. The hurt on Lyndi’s face. The pain on Kathy’s.
Then he looked down at her, and saw the shame on Nathalie’s.
Then David, smart man that he was, simply nodded, and ushered Nathalie out the door.
Chapter 18
“LYNDI, CAN YOU COME IN HERE, PLEASE?”
Paula’s voice echoed down from the lofted office space, above the flower assembly area. Lyndi was busying herself with sweeping up the last remnants of cut stems and errant leaves. Everyone else had already gone.
It had been a brisk morning for work. Their orders had been ruthlessly organized, the assembly stations well stocked and laid out with military precision. The bouquets were wrapped and loaded into the cars and on the bikes before morning rush hour had even had time to clog the freeways. Lyndi had even assembled over fifty of the bouquets herself.
Which wasn’t much of a surprise, as all of this was Lyndi’s doing.
For the past three days, she had gotten into work early, partially because she was unable to sleep, and partially because Marcus—following Paula’s advice—didn’t let her take her bike in to work anymore.
“Let” her take her bike. God, she hated that. As if she wasn’t an independent adult, and had to be given permission to do anything. But she wasn’t strong enough to be defiant right now, even with Marcus still away in New York. Instead, she deferred to his and Paula’s wishes, and took an Uber, cutting her commute time into fractions.
But ever since the capital D Disaster of a baby shower, she’d made it her mission to make the Favorite Flower more efficient, more profitable—and more in her control.
She’d basically banned idle chitchat on the assembly floor, keeping a steady supply of peppy house music on the stereo (a trick she learned from the one SoulCycle class she ever took) to keep people moving at a respectable pace. Even Judy, who usually was the chattiest of them all, was bopping along to the music, as if they were all in a race for both speed and bouquet-perfection.
Indeed, it was, if Lyndi said so herself, a vast improvement over the way things usually went.
So why did Paula’s command sound so . . . commanding?
Lyndi abandoned her broom, and trotted up the steps to the office, her expression as neutral as her expectations. After all, maybe she wasn’t about to get scolded for her choice in motivational music. Maybe it was about something benign, like spreadsheets or carnations (although she had strong feelings about carnations).
Turned out she was right—and wrong, on both counts.
“Lyndi, are you seriously playing house music to get people to work faster?”
“Yes.” Lyndi kept her hands behind her back so Paula wouldn’t see her nervously picking her nails while she answered. “That, and it helps keep me awake this early in the morning.”
“You have never had trouble staying awake at work.” Paula shook her head with a hint of a smile.
“I’m told sleepiness is a symptom of pregnancy.”
Lyndi had meant it as a joke. If anything, she had more energy than before—and a driving need to accomplish things before the baby arrived, w
hich her pastel emails told her was a nesting instinct. But the way Paula blanched had her rushing in with reassurances.
“Don’t worry, I’m not sleepy. I was just making a quip. And I suck at making quips.”
“Good. Good,” Paula said, holding a hand to her chest. “I’m sorry, I just know nothing about pregnancy, and babies. The very idea of it . . .” Paula wriggled her shoulders, shaking off her queasiness.
“That’s okay.” Lyndi nodded. She was more used to than she’d ever acknowledge the reaction her peer group had to babies. Their bewilderment was like the anti–biological clock.
“Just keep the volume down a bit on the house music tomorrow, please.”
“No problem,” Lyndi replied, and stood there awkwardly for a moment. Waiting for something else to do.
“Do you need anything else?” she said eventually.
“No, our flower orders are already in with the wholesalers for the rest of the week,” Paula said, shaking her head. “I can’t believe how fast and thoroughly you put your lists together.”
“Did you get the lilacs?”
“Yes,” she replied, “although I’m still not sure about the scent. Lilacs can be overpowering.”
“Oh, but they’re special. They only bloom for a few weeks and they are so soft and lovely, the ultimate touchable flower. Trust me on this.”
“I do trust you,” Paula said offhand. “That’s why business has been up twenty percent since your hire.”
Lyndi felt herself blushing. It was totally like Paula to say something so complimentary, in such a vaguely disgruntled way.
“Unless you want to help me go through these résumés,” Paula continued, “you should get out of here. Enjoy an afternoon of freedom before you have a small creature to constantly worry about keeping alive.” She waved vaguely at Lyndi’s stomach.
“What are the résumés for?”
“For our new managerial position,” Paula said, flipping through the papers, seemingly bored and bewildered at the same time.
Lyndi stilled. Confusion trickled across her skin. “We have a new managerial position?”