by R. R. Banks
“That’s not what I think,” I said.
I felt the maître d’ come up to my side.
“Sir, I apologize, but I’m going to have to ask you and your lady friend to leave.”
“I’m sure you are,” I said.
I turned and started toward the door, figuring that I could act as the pied piper and lead her out of the restaurant. Fortunately, it worked and I was able to get her out and into the back of the limo without another word.
Not that she hadn’t said plenty already.
As soon as the door to the limo closed, she started again.
“Why did you even choose me?”
“What?” I asked, trying to get myself on this seemingly new path of conversation.
“Why did you even choose me?” She repeated. “To carry your baby. Out of all those other women I saw in the waiting room, what made you choose me?”
“You were different,” I answered.
It was the most honest thing that I could figure out to say, the thing that I had thought about her from the first second that I saw her on my computer screen.
“Different?” she asked. “You chose me because I’m different? That’s really the best you’ve got?”
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”
“I want you to tell me why you put me through all of this. Did you know when you were sitting in that office being all skeezy watching all of us get interviewed, did you look at me and see something that made you go…you know what? I think that she’s going to be the perfect one to bang to amuse myself since my girlfriend is like fucking a popsicle in Antarctica? This girl is going to be easy and then I can just go about my life when it’s all over and pretend that she never existed.”
“I never intend on pretending you don’t exist,” I said, both angered and deeply saddened by the thought. “That was never the point of any of this.”
“Of course, it wasn’t. You can’t pretend that I don’t exist because every time that you look at your daughter you’re going to see me. I bet that’s going to be a good laugh for you and Flora. One day she’s going to ask who carried her, who her biological mother is, and you’re going to get to say oh, she’s just some dumb chick from the sticks who was stupid enough to go along with this to save some house. You can even use it as a lesson about the people she should and shouldn’t associate with. I’m sure that it will be a very powerful learning experience. Like a social elite version of Scared Straight without all those pesky inmates and the drug talk, right?”
“That’s not true.”
I wanted to say more, but I was so stunned, I couldn’t get the words to come out. Tears were streaming down Rue’s cheeks, but she didn’t even seem to notice them. Suddenly the limo stopped, and I realized that we were in front of the building where I had secured Rue’s apartment. I hadn’t even noticed that we had started moving.
“Don’t follow me,” she said. “And don’t you dare think that you can show up to any of the rest of the prenatal appointments. Until I go into labor, you stay away from me. The midwife will send you reports after each appointment.”
“You can’t do that,” I said, feeling slightly panicked as I slid toward the open door.
“Yes, I can,” she said. “Remember pregnancy is not a spectator sport? You’re the one who insisted on a privacy clause in the contracts and who instructed all staff at the medical center to guard my anonymity every step of the way. If I don’t want you anywhere near me until the baby is born, then you can’t be.”
She slammed the door and I felt a sick feeling rush through me. My hand was still wrapped around the bouquet of flowers and I felt it slip from my fingers onto the floor of the limo. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The air in the car around me seemed to be getting thicker, suffocating me, and I clawed at my tie, trying to loosen it. Even when I tore it off and tossed it across the car, I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. I tumbled out of the car and chased after Rue even though she had told me not to. I couldn’t just let her go. I couldn’t just let her walk away from me without trying to make her understand.
The door to the apartment was already shut and locked by the time I reached it and I pounded on it with both fists, shaking the doorknob a few times as if it was going to change somehow.
“Rue,” I called through the door to her. “Open the door. Please. I just want to talk to you.”
She didn’t come, and I continued to pound until a door opened down the breezeway.
“Stop that,” an elderly woman’s voice scolded me. “She’s pregnant. Don’t disturb her.”
“I know she’s pregnant,” I snapped. “It’s my baby.”
“I don’t know what she’s been telling you, but she’s carrying my child.”
I gritted my teeth, my fists tightening by my sides.
“I really don’t need your input right now. Please go back inside and mind your own damn business.”
I think Rue has been a bad influence on me. Or an awesome influence on me.
“I never,” the woman huffed, and I heard the door slam.
“This is why I wanted to get you an apartment in a nicer building,” I shouted through the door and then immediately regretted it.
Being elitist had already gotten me into enough trouble with Rue. It probably wasn’t a viable means of trying to get back in her good graces. I pounded on the door for a few more minutes and then turned around, pressing my back to the door and sliding down so that I sat on the sidewalk with my head rested back against the door. The evening had long-since faded down into night and I was dozing in and out of consciousness when Abraham finally came, took me by the elbow, and peeled me off of the sidewalk. He brought me to the car and tipped me inside, then drove away. I didn’t remember anything else until I woke up the next morning, still in my clothes and an empty, hollow feeling in my stomach.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Rue
“Son of a bitch.”
I stepped back from the stove, sucking on the fingers that I had just burned on molten macaroni and cheese, and then paused. Rubbing my hand over my belly, I glanced down apologetically.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I shouldn’t be saying things like that. I wouldn’t want that to be what you remember about my voice.”
I suddenly felt my throat close up with emotion and my eyes start to sting with the tears that had become all too familiar in the last several weeks since I had seen Richard. I had been trying not to let this happen. In fact, I had been having some serious talks with myself about the reality that was going to befall me in just a matter of weeks. My due date was in exactly 16 days and I was counting them down with a mixture of emotions that I had a difficult time sifting through. I was looking forward to my back not aching anymore and to being able to look down and see my knees again. I was telling myself that by next summer I could be in a bathing suit again sitting in a baby pool in the front yard of Grammyma’s house waiting for Sue Ellen to come by with fresh homemade peach ice cream.
Alright, so that wasn’t so terribly different from what I had been doing the day before, but at least next summer I could wear something cuter and not look like a beached whale when I tried to get up out of the pool to eat a half gallon of said ice cream.
In the next breath, however, I was already grieving not feeling the baby’s little kicks during the day or the hiccups that made my belly bounce when I had had too much to eat too quickly. I was struggling to wrap my mind around the idea that I wouldn’t have her inside of me to talk to anymore. Though I knew that I could keep writing her letters, I didn’t know if I would be able to bring myself to do it. It was just too hard to think about. For now, the letters that I wrote were tucked safely away in the scrapbook that I had been making her, protected in the pages among pressed flowers and leaves, pictures and ultrasounds, doodles I had made in the waiting room at the maternity center, and notes from Christopher and Tessie. I could keep them there, pretending that one day I would be able to give them to her,
to hand her the book and sit with her while we talked about how she came to be and laughed about the memories that I had preserved from this time. Once she was born, though, I wouldn’t have that hope to hold onto anymore. If I wrote a letter to her I would have to put it in an envelope, address it with whatever name Richard and Flora gave her, and send it away. I would never know if she actually got it, or even if she did, if she cared what it said.
The thought was too much for me sometimes, and I had spent many nights since walking away from Richard that night wondering if I had made the right choice. Saving Grammyma’s house was so important to me that I hadn’t thought this decision all the way through. I had simply jumped on the opportunity, allowed my fear and the emotions that I was feeling in that moment to control me rather than taking a step back and trying to look at what was happening through some sort of filter of logic. Maybe if I had done that, I would have been able to come up with another solution. I would have been able to find another way to come up with the money to pay off the house and not have to go through this.
Even as I thought that, however, I knew that that would have been the truly wrong choice. No matter what I was going through right now and the pain and heartache that I knew was coming, if I had the opportunity to go back and change my mind, I knew in my heart that I wouldn’t do it. I had told myself in the very beginning that I wasn’t going to experience any of this. I was going into it with a clear mind and a confident spirit, I convinced myself. I wasn’t going to struggle with feelings of loss when it was time to give birth because I was never going to look at this baby as though it was mine, but that wasn’t the way that it had happened. I had connected with this baby in a powerful and completely unexpected way and for a brief moment in time I thought that I was going to be able to continue on with that connection and allow it to flourish. Losing that possibility made the impending separation even more difficult to fathom, but it also reinforced that this baby was something truly spectacular, and that I would never want for her not to exist. Even if my only purpose was to create and carry her, and ensure that she was brought into the world safely so that Richard and Flora could raise her, I was proud of that contribution and I would take the pain that was to come as payment for the joy that I was able to feel now.
I was reaching for the wooden spoon in the macaroni and cheese again, ready to try for a second time to get some into a bowl so that I could sit in front of the television and eat as had become my routine in the last several days, when I heard someone knocking on my door. I checked my phone to see if I had somehow turned it off. When I saw that it was still on and that no one had called, I got a sense of dread in my stomach. People around here might stop by in the late morning or early afternoon to drop off a pie or have a chat on the front porch, but they weren’t going to come over uninvited in the evening, especially not around suppertime. This meant that there was something seriously wrong. There could be a barn fire or some kind of accident. Jimmy Kudrow could be stuck up in the big tree again.
I rushed to the front door and pulled it open before even looking out of the window to see who it might be. Depending on how long he had been up in the tree, every second might count. When I saw what was waiting for me on the porch, though, I wished that I had taken those few seconds to check. Maybe then I would’ve just gone back to the living room with my bowl of macaroni and cheese and ignored the knocking until it stopped. Standing there in the glow of the porch light, silhouetted against the dying light of the evening, was Richard.
My mouth opened and closed a few times, but I couldn’t seem to get any words out. Instead, I stepped back and started to close the door. Richard reached out and flattened his hand to the door to stop it, stepping one foot inside to further prevent me from closing him out.
“Rue, please. Just give me five minutes.”
I wanted to tell him no. I wanted to just slam the door in his face, sit down on the floor, and cry. But something about the way that he looked stopped me. It wasn’t the expression on his face or even the emotion in his eyes, though both seemed deep and sincere. Instead, it was what he was wearing. I hadn’t noticed it when I first opened the door because I was so startled to be seeing him standing there, but now that I had had a minute, it was all I could focus on.
“What are you wearing?” I asked, looking him up and down.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
I nodded and stepped back, letting him come inside after me. I closed the door and turned so that my back was to it, still trying to get my mind to process the image in front of me. The body that was forever enveloped in exorbitantly expensive suits, silk, and khaki all tailored specifically to him was standing there in worn, faded jeans and what looked like a discarded old mechanic’s shirt. Richard held his arms open and I noticed he was holding a handful of wild flowers that appeared to have been just plucked out of the ground.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I think it looks like you got stuck in some sort of natural disaster and are showing the benefits of a relief effort. Where did you get those things?”
“I went to the thrift store in town,” he said, beaming at the revelation.
“The thrift store?” I asked, as shocked as I was bewildered. “How long have you been standing on my front porch? The thrift store would have closed at least four hours ago. Darryl does night fishing this time of year because it’s so hot and he likes to take the afternoons off so that he can nap before he heads out.”
“I offered him a little bit of extra cash to open up for me.”
I rolled my eyes and let out a sigh.
“Of course, you did.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Richard asked, looking crestfallen.
I shook my head, cocking my hip in a gesture that had the dual benefits of looking sassy and relieving the painful pressure that was building up in the joint from standing too long that day.
“Nothing. Is that it? You just came by to show me…what?... your poor holler-folk Halloween costume? Are you done now, because I’m really hungry and would like to get back to my dinner now.”
I walked away, hoping that he would see himself out, but he reached out and took my arm, turning me back toward him. A shiver went through me at the touch of his hand, but I pulled away from him.
“Come to dinner with me,” he said.
“Didn’t we already go through this?” I asked. “That didn’t go so well, either, so let’s just not revisit that particular disaster.”
“But that’s what I want to talk to you about,” he said.
“We already talked Richard. There’s nothing more that I have to say to you.”
I knew that was a big lie. My heart felt like it was tearing in two with everything that was inside of it to say, but I couldn’t bring myself to say any of it. Besides, I think that I used up all of the words that I was allowed to have about this particular situation when we were in the restaurant or in the limo afterwards. All of words that I was allowed to have, and quite a few that I probably wasn’t allowed but had gone right on ahead and used anyway.
“Well, there’s a lot that I still need to say to you.”
I was a little surprised with the force behind the words, and I fell quiet for a second. Finally, I nodded.
“Go ahead,” I said. “What do you want to say?”
“Please just go to dinner with me,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about this standing here in the middle of the foyer.”
“So, like always, you get to decide how everything is going to go,” I muttered.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Richard asked.
His voice sounded slightly hurt but I was so filled with emotion at that moment that I didn’t really care what he was thinking or feeling.
“Nothing.”
“So, will you go?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said.
By now the macaroni and cheese is going to be congealed anyway. Grammyma always said not to even try the boxed stuff, but did I lis
ten to her? Of course, not.
“OK. I’ll wait here while you get ready.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“What do you mean get ready? What if I told you that I was ready right now?”
To his credit, Richard barely even glanced at the booty-short length pajama bottoms and threadbare tank top I was wearing in an effort to combat the heat that was getting to me even though I was keeping the air conditioning blasting. He simply shrugged and pointed toward the door.
“Alright. Great. Let’s go.”
I glared at him and whipped around to stomp up the stairs to my bedroom.
“Out of your ever-fucking mind. Seriously think I’m going to be seen in public looking like this? What’s wrong with you?” I muttered under my breath as I stomped.
I knew very well by the time that I got to the bedroom that I was very close to falling off the rails, but I didn’t care. This baby was going to be inside me for another couple of weeks, and I was going to ride that hormone excuse right up until they popped a pacifier in her mouth and declared me officially done with being pregnant.
****
Richard
That was not the reaction that I was hoping for.
I had gone to town that afternoon and paid to have the thrift shop opened up to prove something to Rue, and that wasn’t that I was the same overbearing, over-indulged prick that she evidently thought I was. Now that she was up in her bedroom slamming drawers so loudly that I was slightly worried some of the ceiling plaster was going to come down, I realized that anything that I thought I was going to accomplish by showing up here was probably futile. She had made it very clear to me when she walked away from me at that restaurant that she didn’t want anything to do with me personally anymore. From that moment until the baby was born, we were nothing but business acquaintances on either side of a transaction, and when that transaction was over, we didn’t have any further need to be a part of each other’s lives.