Cross Your Heart

by Layce Gardner

“I hope so. Right now, my nose is killing me,” Amy said, touching it gingerly.

  “You should write a column about it. You know, Erma Bombeck style. People will be rolling around the floor with this one,” Clementine said.

  “Parker and I were kind of hoping to keep it on the down-low, you know, until we know for sure that it’ll… you know.”

  “Don’t even think such thoughts. Besides, most of the town knows already, I’m sure,” Clementine said.

  “True.”

  “Know what?” Jeb asked. He walked to the Mr. Coffee and poured another cup into a stained and much-loved mug which was emblazoned with the words World’s Best Dad.

  Before Amy could answer, a giant teddy bear sauntered in the door. As it made its way toward them, Amy realized it was in fact Luke, Jeb and Clementine’s son. He was carrying huge, stuffed bear that was bigger than your average ten-year-old. He was wearing jeans, a vintage Pac-Man T-shirt, and flip-flops.

  Luke was back to wearing pants, after wearing dresses for the better part of the past year. Wearing dresses had been his way of showing solidarity with women. Plus, it had gotten him a lot of attention from girls.

  Luke had also cut his hair short and grown a big bushy beard. He was no longer sporting the man bun look. Jeb was happy about his son’s haircut; the beard, not so much.

  “Hey, peeps,” Luke greeted everyone with a big smile.

  “I am not a peep. I’m your mother,” Clementine said.

  Luke planted a loud kiss on his mother’s cheek, saying, “I haven’t forgotten.”

  “What’s the bear for?” Jeb asked.

  Luke set the bear on top of Amy’s desk, saying, “For Amy and her family.”

  Jeb still didn’t get it. “I think Parker and Amy are a little old for a bear. An enormous bear. Where in the hell did you find that anyhow?”

  “The enormous bear store, where else?” Luke said.

  Jeb rolled his eyes.

  “That’s so sweet,” Amy said, giving him a hug. She poked the bear in its big belly. “It’s really something. I had no idea they even made bears this big.”

  “Aw…it was nothing. You think I’m excited? You should see Sam, he’s ecstatic about the news,” Luke said.

  “What news? Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” Jeb asked, his voice raised in consternation.

  They all turned and looked at him. “You really don’t know?” Clementine said.

  “Evidently not,” Jeb said, peevish.

  “Do you want to tell him?” Clementine asked Amy.

  “I’m having a baby,” Amy announced.

  Jeb dropped his coffee cup. The cup clunked to the floor unharmed, but the coffee splattered everywhere. Jeb was frozen to the spot. Clementine ran to the closet and grabbed a roll of paper towels.

  “I found out last night and I was so surprised that I tripped and fell. That’s how I got this,” Amy said, pointing to her face.

  Clementine dumped a wad of papers towels over the spilled coffee and mopped it up with her foot. She teased Jeb, saying, “And you call yourself a newspaper man. You should’ve been the first one to know.”

  “I certainly didn’t expect that,” Jeb said. He still looked stunned.

  “Dad, you’re supposed to be happy and congratulate her,” Luke admonished.

  Jeb shook himself out of his stupor. “I am happy. I’m really happy.” He strode across the room in three big steps and gave Amy a tender hug. “It really is great news. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, Jeb.”

  “Do you have a name picked out yet?” Jeb asked.

  “Uh no, not yet.”

  “I hope the name thing isn’t going to turn out like the ever-postponed wedding thing,” Jeb said.

  “Jeb, leave her be. She just found out,” Clementine said.

  Amy blushed. “We’re working on the wedding. Neither one of us expected this to happen so quickly. First time and bingo!”

  Clementine said, “The universe works on its own timetable. I should know. Luke was a surprise baby.”

  “You never told me that,” Luke said.

  “Oh, yes. Your father and I had to run away and get married then pretend you were premature. Just to save face for our mothers,” Clementine said. She wrapped her arm around Jeb’s waist and gazed up into his face.

  “Why haven’t you ever told me I was a lovechild?” Luke said.

  Jeb blushed. “It wasn’t our proudest moment.” He kissed his wife on the cheek. “But it was one of our happiest moments.”

  Amy smiled at their family. It was like they were starring in a Hallmark commercial. She unconsciously placed a loving hand on her belly. It still seemed so unreal to her. She couldn’t believe that she was carrying a child inside her. A child that she was going to wrap up in a great big blanket of motherly love.

  Oh my god, Amy thought, my hormones are already making me super sappy.

  ***

  Across town, Parker was building a deck. Mrs. Chesterfield’s husband had bought a Harley-Davidson motorcycle so she had decided she was going to have her own midlife crisis and the deck of her dreams. A lot of Parker’s work as a carpenter came from disgruntled wives seeking revenge and remodeling. Word-of-mouth recommendations of her skills got around to other wives and that generated even more work.

  Parker loved her job. Working with her hands was a joy. She had an idea and then designed the best way to make that idea happen. With the right tools and a little sweat, she saw her creation take form and come to life. There is nothing better, she thought.

  Her work had been her one great love until Amy came along—now Amy, and by extension, their baby were her great loves.

  With each swing of her hammer, anticipation of the baby’s birth mounted. Seven months was a long time to wait, but she knew that each day of the pregnancy would bring her one day closer. It was like when she built her house. Every day that passed, the house of her dreams took structure and moved forward to the glow of completion.

  What the others didn’t know about their baby was that it was her fertilized egg that had been implanted in Amy’s belly. Amy hadn’t wanted to use her own egg. Amy’s mother had Alzheimer’s and that gene was inherited. Amy had refused to be tested. Mainly, out of the fear that she would have the gene. What if she did have it? What if she were doomed to go out of this life just like her mother had?

  Amy reasoned that if she did have the Alzheimer’s gene, there was nothing she could do about it now. So, instead of knowing, Amy vowed to make the most of every day of her life. She felt like the baby was more theirs because her womb would nourish Parker’s egg.

  Parker wondered if their baby would look more like her or the sperm donor they had used. They had intentionally chosen a donor that resembled Amy. That way they figured the child would look like both of them.

  “I hope our baby looks just like you,” Amy had said, teasingly. “Tall, beautiful, blond and blue-eyed, and with your amazing ass.”

  Parker had blushed. “But what about my Asperger’s?”

  “Not a problem. Everyone loves you and they’ll love our baby, too,” Amy had said. What she didn’t say was that having Asperger’s was a lot better than having Alzheimer’s.

  As Parker worked, she thought of all the changes in her life: falling in love, moving in together, proposing marriage to Amy, and now the baby. Parker was a true believer in manifestation. Believe that good things will happen and they will. Think bad. Get bad. It was the simple law of the Universe that governed all things. Like attracts like. Simple. It was black and white, just the way Parker saw things.

  Her mind roamed to her plans for decorating the baby’s room and building a crib. She’d never done furniture before, but she knew that she could do it. She had seven months to get it right and she wanted it to be a surprise. Parker didn’t like surprises, but Amy did. The crib would be a lovely surprise.

  Her cell phone rang. It was her friend, Steph Rizzo. She was a firefighter and married to Rosa. Steph was th
e planner in their group, the cohesive glue that kept all their friends together—friends who stuck with each other in crisis and in celebration.

  Steph dispensed with preliminaries. “When were you going to tell me?” she asked.

  “I knew I didn’t have to. It’s all over town.”

  Steph harrumphed. “True. Still, I didn’t even know you two were trying. You could’ve told me that much.”

  “And disappoint everyone and make it harder on Amy if it didn’t work out?”

  “Okay, you’ve got a point. But I get to plan the baby shower. Oh, I can hardly wait to get started! I’ll think we’ll do it alfresco,” Steph said, thinking out loud.

  Parker refrained from saying it was March, which was a mercurial month when it came to weather, although this one had been mild so far. If Steph wanted alfresco, she assumed the weather would follow her lead. Steph was party planner, a matchmaker, and the mother hen of all of them. When she set her mind to something, it was as good as done.

  “You two need to stop lollygagging around and get married already,” Steph said.

  “I know. Working. Goodbye.” Parker clicked off. Sometimes having Asperger’s worked in her favor. She could be abrupt, disengage from conversations she didn’t want to be a part of, and people would just chalk it up to her disorder.

  She quickly finished the section of deck she’d been working on before Steph had called. She took a break, getting out the stack of bridal magazines she had stashed in the back of her work van. She sighed heavily as she leafed through the well-worn pages. Just keep it simple, she told herself. Having a baby seemed so much simpler than the wedding. She got a pen and paper and made a list of essentials: clothes, pastor, food, and wedding cake. They had finally decided on rings which currently sat on their dresser—a disapproving reminder of their wedding dilemma.

  She got back to work and was screwing the last board in place when she heard the familiar rumble of the Judge, Millie’s orange GTO muscle car. Millie got out of the car holding a wicker picnic basket. Parker hoped that the appearance of Millie and the basket meant she would be getting lunch.

  Millie sat on the half-finished deck. “Another disgruntled wife?” She set the picnic basket next to her and began to unpack it.

  “They’re my best customers.”

  “Good for them. It’s about time women started taking back what they’re owed.”

  “It’s all because of Clementine. Her ascension to mayor has stirred the Amazonian heart in all of us,” Parker said.

  Millie chuckled and handed Parker a sandwich wrapped in wax paper.

  “Thank you very much,” Parker said. She was always formal in her politeness. It had been hammered into her by her grandmother.

  “You’re very welcome,” Millie replied.

  Parker bit into the pastrami on rye. It was her favorite and Millie knew it.

  “I think that Wonder Woman movie did more for feminism than anything ever has,” Millie said. She took a bite of her own sandwich, chewed and swallowed, then said, “It sure made me want to go out and kick some ass.”

  Parker laughed. She imagined Millie, with her white hair and diminutive stature, dressed in hot pink active wear and cross trainers, kicking the ass of a horde of old white men.

  It wasn’t that far from the truth. Last year Millie had formed her very own senior citizen militia. All the gray-haired ladies were pistol-packin’ mamas. They were the amped-up neighborhood watch. They had named themselves Millie’s Militia.

  The women all owned guns and met weekly for target practice. Allen Spencer, the owner of Top Gun, a shooting range and gun club, helped all the women become crack shots. “I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of those ladies,” he was fond of saying.

  “Congratulations, by the way,” Millie said. She finished her sandwich and wadded up the wax paper.

  “Thank you,” Parker said.

  Millie studied Parker. “How do you feel about this?”

  “It’s wonderful. I realize pregnancy is not pleasant to endure. And not easy. I have big shoulders, though, and I’ll get Amy through it.”

  “I know you will,” Millie said. She lightly touched Parker’s shoulder. “You’ll make a good parent.”

  “I hope so. I intend to do my best.”

  “Which will be more than is required by leaps and bounds,” Millie sipped her lemonade.

  Parker could tell she wasn’t finished. She waited.

  “I know you didn’t have a charmed childhood. I knew your grandma, you know. She was a good woman.”

  “She saved me,” Parker said. “My very own Wonder Woman, if you think about it.”

  Parker had never known who her father was. Her father probably didn’t even know he was her father. Her mother was a drug addict and one day she disappeared, leaving Parker in the care of her grandmother. Parker had never seen her mother again and she didn’t want to. There was nothing more to say.

  “I don’t want my mother to come back,” Parker said. It was a fear of hers. That her mother would show up one day and try to nose back into her life. Parker didn’t know if she was strong enough to go through all the drama that would cause.

  “She won’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because… she’s gone,” Millie said.

  “I know she’s gone.”

  “I mean, she’s dead,” Millie said.

  Parker’s eyes widened. This was news to her. “Really?” She waited for the sadness to hit her. But it didn’t. She felt nothing.

  Millie nodded. “It happened when you were a teenager. Your grandmother chose not to tell you. I think she was worried about your ability to handle it. I worried that one day you’d need to know, and I figured I was the one to tell it. Today is that day. You can start your family now without any baggage.”

  “How did she die?” Parker asked, not meeting Millie’s eye.

  “Heroin overdose.”

  “I hope it was a pleasant exit.”

  “Don’t Google it,” Millie said. She poured more lemonade tea in Parker’s plastic tumbler.

  Parker nodded. Her mother had never abused her. It was more like she didn’t even know Parker was there. Parker was a liability. She kept her mother from doing what she wanted. And what she wanted was to go out, drink, party, do drugs. Her mother was negligent. Parker hadn’t even known what love was, what it felt like, until her grandmother.

  She remembered the times she’d been hungry and scared when her mother went off on a bender, leaving her alone for days to fend for herself. She would comb the streets, eating half-rotten produce from the dumpster behind the neighborhood grocery store. And those were the good days. Most times, she went hungry.

  One day, she found a pile of comic books in the dumpster. She quickly ran home with her new-found treasure. The comics were the adventures of a superhero named Wonder Woman.

  Parker devoured the comics. They kept her company. Princess Diana became her best friend, confidante, and substitute mother.

  One night her mother came home with a group of people riding motorcycles. They pulled up to the house in a cloud of smoke and roar of engines. Her mother forced her to go to the basement with a comforter and a peanut butter sandwich.

  “Play like you’re camping,” her mother had said. She locked the basement door behind her.

  Parker had been terrified the entire night. Shadows looked like spiders and nasty men with knives. She hid under the comforter behind the hot water heater.

  As soon as it got light, Parker stacked some boxes on top of each other, and crawled out the small rectangular window. She found her mother and half-naked strangers passed out all over the house. Parker got a soda and her stack of comic books and climbed the silver maple tree in the backyard. She sat high in her perch with Wonder Woman to wait it out.

  She’d learned that out of sight meant out of mind. She could be invisible just like Wonder Woman. It was best. And safest.

  Her mother being dead was probably a good th
ing. She would tuck the memory of her mother away and think only of the present and future. The present was the only thing you could do anything about. The future was for dreams and goals. The past was nothing but a ghost land of bad memories.

  “You know, every parent experiences two childhoods,” Millie said.

  “How so?”

  “You have your childhood and you’ll have your child’s childhood. You get the one you had and the one you will create,” Millie said.

  Parker liked the sound of that. “I’ll create a good one.”

  ***

  Steph had finished her four-day rotation at the firehouse and it couldn’t have come at a better time. She’d have four days off to plan the baby shower and have a cookout with her friends. She planned get-togethers every time a weekend fit into her schedule. She loved to entertain. Her and Rosa’s house was a cozy bungalow with a big back deck. Steph had made the backyard into a garden paradise, full of flowers, herbs, bees, and hummingbirds. She had inherited her mother’s Italian genes. She was a good cook, had lots of friends, fierce loyalties, and a heart the size of Sicily.

  Rosa was already home when Steph pulled her Dodge Ram truck into the driveway. Rosa’s Sentra was dwarfed by the truck. Steph had finally persuaded Rosa to get a new car and she had chosen the updated version of her ancient Nissan Sentra. That was one thing about Rosa; she was consistent.

  Steph ran up the steps. “Hey, babe! Where are you?” Usually Rosa would be standing ready to embrace her wife whom she hadn’t seen in four days. Today Rosa was nowhere to be seen. “Babe?”

  Rosa didn’t answer. Steph’s brow wrinkled. Maybe she was out back. She went to the kitchen and looked out the back door and onto the deck. Rosa wasn’t there. Steph turned and walked down the hallway.

  A whimpering sound came from the guest room, which served double duty as an office and a storage room for stuff that wouldn’t fit anywhere else. They’d outgrown their house a long time ago, but they both loved it so much, they stayed.

  “Rosa?” Steph asked. She opened the guest bedroom door and found Rosa sitting on the bed, a small cedar chest and its contents spread out across the comforter. Tears streaked her face. She looked up when Steph entered. Her eyes were swollen and red.