Maybe in Another Life

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  “Oh,” Ethan says, “we weren’t—”

  “And if we did,” I say, interrupting him, “would we just schedule an appointment with you guys to get all of that stuff taken care of? Get her spayed and chipped?”

  “Yeah,” the vet says. “And she’ll need a series of shots. We can help you with fattening her up, too. Although, assuming she has consistent access to food, she’ll probably take care of that one on her own.”

  “All right,” Ethan says. “Thank you very much for your help.” He extends his hand for a handshake. The vet reciprocates. I do the same.

  “My pleasure,” he says. “She’s a sweetheart. I hope you guys can help her find a good home. If not, contact the front desk, and we can help you try to get her into a no-kill shelter. It’s not easy. There are already so many other dogs in the city taking up spots, but we try to help.”

  By the time we leave the animal hospital, the sun has set, and the air is crisp. I have Charlemagne in my arms, her leash wrapped around my hand. She’s shaking a bit, maybe because of the cold. I can’t help but wonder if it’s because she knows her fate is uncertain.

  “What are you thinking?” I ask him.

  “I don’t know,” Ethan says. We are standing by our cars. For a moment, I’m stunned that I bought the car just this afternoon. Feels like a lifetime ago. “I can’t really have a dog at my place.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “I mean, I want to help her, and I don’t want her on the street, but I had no intention of adopting a dog,” he says. “And I don’t know how you can adopt her, you know? Because . . .”

  “Because I don’t have a place just yet.”

  “Right.”

  He looks at me. I look at Charlemagne. I’m not bringing her to a shelter. I’m not doing it. With everything that has happened today, my fate is uncertain, too. Charlemagne and I are kindred spirits. We are both directionless idiots, the kind of girls who run out into the street without thinking.

  I may make a lot of mistakes, and I may act without thinking, and I may be the sort of woman who doesn’t even realize she’s pregnant when it should be blatantly obvious, but I also know that sometimes I get myself into messes and then get myself out of them. Maybe I can get Charlemagne and me out of this mess by throwing us into it.

  Charlemagne and I rode a city bus today with just a backpack and a smile. We are a team. She is mine.

  “I’m not letting her go back to people who mistreat her,” I say. “Not that we could find them even if we wanted to. And I’m certainly not leaving her out on the street or headed to a kill shelter.”

  Ethan looks at me. I can tell he understands where I’m coming from but doesn’t necessarily get where I’m heading. “OK . . .” he says. “So what do we do?”

  “I’m going to keep her,” I say. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

  She’s not his problem. She’s my problem. I’m choosing to take care of her.

  The parallels do not escape me. And maybe that’s part of the reason I am doing this. Maybe it’s a physical manifestation of what I’m going through emotionally right now.

  I have a baby that’s not his. I’m taking on a dog he didn’t ask for. I’m not going to make these things his problem.

  “OK,” he says. “Well, she can stay at my place for tonight, and then tomorrow we can figure out a long-term plan.”

  He says “we.” We can figure out a long-term plan.

  “That’s all right,” I tell him, moving toward my car. “I should sleep at Gabby’s tonight.”

  “You’re not going to stay with me?”

  I shake my head. “I should really sleep there. She won’t mind Charlemagne for the night.” Yes, she will. Mark is allergic to dogs. Taking Charlemagne back to their apartment is kind of a crappy thing to do. But I need space away from Ethan. I need to be on my own.

  “She can be at my place,” he says. “For tonight. Really.”

  I shake my head again, moving away from him. I open my car door. I put Charlemagne on the passenger’s seat and shut her in.

  “No,” I tell him. “It’s fine. This is the better plan.”

  “OK,” he says. He is clearly dejected. “If that’s what you want.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” I tell him.

  All he says is “Cool.” He says it looking at my feet instead of my face. He’s upset, but he doesn’t want to show it. So he nods and gets into his car. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, then,” he says out his window. Then he turns on his lights and drives off.

  I get into my car. I look at Charlemagne. Suddenly, the tears that have been waiting under the surface all night spring forth.

  “I screwed it all up, Charlemagne,” I tell her. “I ruined it all.”

  She doesn’t respond. She doesn’t look at me.

  “It was all going to be perfect. And I ruined it.”

  Charlemagne licks her paw, as if I’m not even talking.

  “What do I do?” I ask her. If you were watching us from the outside, you might think I expect her to answer. That’s how sincere my voice is, how desperate it sounds. And maybe, on some level, it’s true. Maybe if, all of a sudden, she started talking and told me what I need to do to fix this, I would be more relieved than shocked.

  Alas, she remains a normal dog instead of a magical one. I put my head on the steering wheel of my brand-new used car, and I cry. And I cry. And I cry. And I cry.

  And I wonder when I have to tell Michael.

  And I wonder when I have to tell Ethan.

  And I wonder how I’m going to afford a baby.

  And I wonder how I could be so goddamn stupid.

  And I wonder if maybe the world hates me, if maybe I am fated to always be screwing up my life and never getting ahead.

  I wonder if I’ll be a single mom forever. If Ethan will ever talk to me again. If my parents will come meet my kid or if I’ll have to fly internationally with a baby on holidays.

  And then I wonder what Gabby will say. I imagine her telling me it will all be OK. I imagine her telling me this baby was meant to be. I imagine her telling me that I’m going to be a great mother.

  And then I wonder if that’s true. If I will be.

  And then . . . finally . . . I wonder about my baby.

  And the realization hits me.

  I’m going to have a baby.

  I find myself smiling just the tiniest bit through my heavy, fearful tears.

  “I’m going to have a baby,” I say to Charlemagne. “I’m going to be a mom.”

  This time, she hears me. And while she doesn’t start magically talking, she does stand up, walk over the center console, and sit in my lap.

  “It’s you and me,” I say. “And a baby. We can do that, right?”

  She curls into my lap and goes to sleep. But I think it speaks volumes that I believe if she could talk, she’d say yes.

  It’s early in the morning when I hear a knock on my door. I’m alone in my room. I’ve been up for only a few minutes. My bun is half undone around my shoulders.

  Ethan peeks his head in. “Hey,” he says, so quiet it’s almost a whisper. “Can I come in?”

  “Of course,” I say. It’s nice seeing him. I may have gotten a bit infatuated with the idea that he and I have something romantic left between us, but I can see now that we don’t. I will probably always love him on some level, always hold a spot for him in my heart. But dating again, being together, that would be moving backward, wouldn’t it? I moved to Los Angeles to put the past behind me, to move into the future. I moved to Los Angeles to change. And that’s what I’m going to do.

  But that doesn’t mean that we can’t still mean something to each other, that we can’t be friends.

  I pat the side of the bed, inviting him to sit right here next to me.

  He does. “How are you feeling?” he asks. He has a bakery box in his hand. I’m hoping I know what it is.

  “Is that a cinnamon roll?” I ask him, smiling.

  He smi
les back and hands it over.

  “You remembered,” I say.

  “How could I forget?”

  “Wow!” I say as I open the box. “This is a huge one.”

  “I know,” he says. “I saw them a few years ago at this bakery on the Westside, and I thought of you. I knew you’d love them.”

  “This is so exciting! I mean, I’ll have to eat this with a knife and fork.” It’s way too big for me to eat on my own. I resolve to wait and share it with Henry tonight. I hand it back to Ethan. “Can you put it on the table?”

  “You don’t want it now?”

  I do sort of want it now, but I’d rather wait for Henry. I shake my head.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he says. “About how you are feeling.”

  I wave him off. “I’m OK. I’m feeling good. There are some ups and downs, but you’ve caught me at an up moment. Word on the street is I get to try out my wheelchair today.” I watch as the look on Ethan’s face changes. I get a glimpse, just for a moment, of how sad it must be to hear me excited about a wheelchair. But I refuse to be brought down about this. This is where I’m at in life. I need a wheelchair. That’s OK. Onward and upward.

  Ethan looks off to the side and then down at the floor. He’s looking everywhere but at me.

  “What’s up?” I ask. “What’s bothering you?”

  “It just all seems so senseless,” he says, looking up at me. “The idea of you being hit by a car. Almost losing you. When I heard what happened to you, I immediately thought . . . you know, she should have been with me instead. If I had been able to persuade you to stay out with me, you wouldn’t have been standing in the middle of the road when . . . I mean, what if this all could have been prevented if I’d . . . done something different?”

  It’s sort of absurd, isn’t it? How we grab on to facts and consequences looking to blame or exonerate ourselves? This has nothing to do with him. I chose to go home with Gabby and Mark because that’s the choice I made. Nine billion choices I’ve made over the course of my life could have changed where I am right now and where I’m headed. There’s no sense focusing on just one. Unless you want to punish yourself.

  “I’ve looked at this problem up, down, and sideways,” I tell him. “I’ve lain in this bed for days wondering if we were all supposed to do something different.”

  “And?”

  “And . . . it doesn’t matter.”

  “What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?”

  “I’m saying things happen for a reason. I’m saying there’s a point to this. I didn’t stick around with you that night because I wasn’t supposed to. That wasn’t what I was meant to do.”

  He looks at me. He doesn’t say anything.

  “You know,” I continue, “maybe you and I would have gone out that night and stayed out partying and drinking until the early morning. And maybe we could have walked around the city all night, talking about our feelings and rehashing old times. Or maybe we would have left that bar and gone to another bar, where we ran into Matt Damon, and he would say that we seemed like really cool people and he wanted to give us a hundred million dollars to start a cinnamon roll factory.”

  Ethan laughs.

  “We don’t know what would have happened. But whatever would have happened wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  “You really believe that?” Ethan says.

  “I think I have to,” I tell him. “Otherwise, my life is an absolute disaster.”

  Otherwise, my baby is gone for no reason.

  “But yes,” I say. “I really do believe that. I believe I’m destined for something. We are all destined for something. And I believe that the universe, or God, or whatever you want to call it, I believe it keeps us on the right path. And I believe I was supposed to choose Gabby. I wasn’t supposed to stay with you.”

  Ethan is quiet. And then he looks up at me and says, “OK. It wasn’t . . . I guess it wasn’t meant to be.”

  “Besides,” I say, trying to make a joke, “let’s be honest. If I’d stuck around with you, we’d just have ended up making out and ruining everything. This way is better. This way, we can finally be friends. Good, real friends.”

  He looks at me, looks me right in the eye. We don’t say anything to each other for a moment.

  Ethan finally speaks up. “Hannah, I—”

  He stops halfway through his sentence when Henry comes walking in the door.

  “Oh, sorry,” Henry says. “I didn’t know you had visitors.”

  I feel myself perk up at the sight of him. He’s wearing the same blue scrubs from last night.

  “I thought you were night shift,” I say. “Deanna is my day nurse.”

  “I’m covering,” he says. “Just for this morning. I’ll come back if I’m interrupting.”

  “Oh,” Ethan says.

  “You’re not interrupting anything,” I say over him.

  Ethan gathers himself and looks at me. “You know what? I should be getting to work,” he says.

  “OK. You’ll come visit me again soon?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Or maybe you’ll be out of here in a few days.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.”

  “Anyway,” he says, “enjoy the cinnamon roll.”

  Henry laughs. “This is a girl who loves her cinnamon rolls,” he says.

  Ethan looks at him. “I know,” he says. “That’s why I brought her one.”

  I took three pregnancy tests in the bathroom of the CVS just down the street from Gabby’s place. I could have left Charlemagne in the car, but I felt terrible doing that, even with the windows cracked, so I put her in the backpack and brought her with me. She yipped in the bathroom once or twice, but no one seemed to care.

  All three sticks were positive. And there wasn’t a single part of me that was surprised.

  Now it’s almost nine p.m., and I’m pulling up in front of Gabby’s. She must hear my car, because she looks out the window. I see her and laugh. She looks like a crotchety old lady. I’m half expecting her to call out, “What’s all that racket?”

  By the time I open her front door, Charlemagne trailing behind me on the leash, Gabby is standing on the other side of the door. I feel bad about what I’m doing, by the way. I feel bad about bringing a dog into Mark’s house. I know he’s allergic, and I’m doing it anyway. But I couldn’t stay with Ethan. And I couldn’t abandon Charlemagne. So here we are.

  “You bought a car?” Gabby says. She’s in her pajamas.

  “Where’s Mark?” I ask her. Charlemagne is behind me. I don’t think Gabby can see her.

  “He’s working late again,” Gabby says.

  “I have some news,” I tell her.

  “I know, you bought a car.”

  “Well, I have more news.”

  Charlemagne yips. Gabby looks at me askance.

  I pull Charlemagne around to the front.

  “You have a dog?”

  “I am adopting her,” I tell her. “I’m really sorry.”

  “You are adopting a dog?”

  “Is it OK if she stays here just for tonight? I bought Mark a whole bunch of allergy pills.” I take the five packages of medication that I got in the over-the-counter antihistamine aisle.

  Gabby looks at me. “Uh . . . I guess?”

  “Great. Thank you. I have news.”

  “You have more news?”

  I nod, but Gabby continues to stare at me. I stare back, unsure if she’s really prepared for this. Unsure if I’m really prepared for this.

  “We should maybe sit down,” I tell her.

  “I need to sit down for this?”

  “I need to,” I tell her.

  We move over to her couch. I pick up Charlemagne and put her in my lap. Quickly, Charlemagne moves off me and sits on the sofa. I see Gabby waver about whether she wants a dog on her sofa, so I pick up Charlemagne and put her on the floor.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Hearing it out loud, hearing the words come out of my mouth,
brings forth a flood of emotions. I start to cry. I bury my head in my hands.

  Gabby doesn’t say much at first, but soon I feel her hands on my wrists. I feel her pull my hands away from my face. I feel her take her fingers and put them on my chin, forcing me to face her.

  “You know it’s going to be OK, right?” she says.

  I look at her through my tears. I nod and do my best to say “Yes.”

  “Does Ethan know?” Gabby asks.

  I shake my head. “No one does. Except you. And Charlemagne.”

  “Who is Charlemagne?” she asks me.

  I look at the dog and point to her.

  “Oh,” Gabby says. “Right. Makes sense. I didn’t think we were still naming people Charlemagne.”

  I start crying again.

  “Hey,” she says. “Come on. This is good news.”

  “I know,” I say through my tears.

  “It’s Michael’s,” she says, as if it’s just dawning on her.

  “Yeah,” I say. Charlemagne starts whining and jumping, trying to join us on the couch. Gabby looks at her and then picks her up and puts her in my lap. She curls up and closes her eyes. I do feel better, honestly, having her in my lap.

  “OK, stop crying for a minute,” Gabby says.

  I sniffle and look at her.

  “We are going to handle this, and we are going to be fine.”

  “We?”

  “Well, I’m not going to let you go through this alone, you moron,” she says. The way she says the word moron makes me feel more loved than I’ve felt in a long time. She says it as if I’d be a complete idiot to think I was ever alone. And to know that the idea is absolutely absurd to her, to know that it’s so far-fetched as to make me a moron, it’s a nice feeling. “You know, years from now, you’re going to look back on this as the best thing that ever happened to you, right?”

  I snort at her. “I’m having a baby with a married man, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to ruin my relationship with my new old boyfriend.”

  “First of all,” she says, “let’s not go assuming things. You never know what Ethan will say.”

  “You know what I’m pretty sure he’s not going to say? ‘Hey, Hannah, I’m super excited to take on the responsibilities of raising another man’s baby.’ ”