Then it was my brother, Bob. “June, are you home? Pick up if you’re home…. No, huh? Okay, well, I’ll try to catch you later.” It was the first I’d heard from him or Charlotte since the scene at my parents’ party. Bob almost never called. In fact, make that never. Even on my birthday it was Charlotte who made the call for both of them.
As soon as I heard the start of the next message, my insides flip-flopped. “Hi, June, this is Troy. I’ve been trying to call, but you’re not an easy woman to get on the phone. I hate to leave this in a message, but here goes. I know we talked about my coming to your meeting Friday to—”
A knock on my door distracted me. Who would be here this late? I stopped the message—I didn’t need to hear Troy rejecting me again. He’d made it abundantly clear how he felt, and frankly, the knife twisting in my gut wasn’t that much fun the first time around.
I hollered, “Who is it?”
“It’s Bob.”
My brother? Here?
I threw open the door. Bob stood there, a dimpled grin on his face, holding a duffel bag. “I tried calling, but—”
“Come on in,” I said, stepping aside to give him room to pass. “Is Charlotte with you?”
“No.” He glanced around my apartment. “Nice place.”
I offered him a beer, poured myself a diet soda, and made small talk while he settled on my couch and I took a chair.
“So, what brings you to my neck of the woods?” I finally asked.
“I’m wondering if I can bum a spot on your couch for a few days. I’d stay with Mom and Dad, but…” He shrugged instead of finishing.
“Sure. You can stay here as long as you need to. I’ve got the spare room.”
“The baby’s room.”
“Right now it’s the storage room, so good luck fighting your way to the bed. But yeah, I plan to decorate after this weekend. What’s going on—you up here for work?” His company had a Los Angeles office not far from where I worked downtown. We’d talked about how we’d do lunch when he was up here, but we’d never actually gotten around to it.
“Yes. No.” He slumped back on the couch. “What I mean is that I can work out of the L.A. office, but that’s not why I’m here. Charlotte and I…we need a break.”
“You’re not splitting, are you?” That would be impossible. I knew how he adored her.
To my relief he said, “Not even close. But I can’t listen to her carrying on about this adoption thing anymore. I need breathing room.”
Now it was my turn to slump. “This is my fault.”
Instead of assuring me that wasn’t the case, Bob chuckled in agreement. “Finding out you were adopting a baby did send her off the deep end. We haven’t talked about anything else for the past week and a half. She wakes me up to carry on about it. I’m desperate for sleep.”
Part of me felt bad for him, but I also thought he’d brought this on himself by being so stubborn. I was probably overstepping my bounds, but I said, “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with my sperm count, does it?”
“No, but I’m curious: Why are you so opposed to adoption? I mean, just because a baby doesn’t have your genes doesn’t mean you couldn’t love it.”
Bob looked sucker punched. “You don’t think I know that? June, I’m not the one who’s against adoption. Charlotte is. I’d give my left nut for a kid. Any kid.”
“Charlotte?”
“She’s got it in her head that having a baby of our own is the only way to go,” Bob explained. “And I understand where she’s coming from. She didn’t even know her own dad—she wants to guarantee that I feel bonded. But I don’t give a crap at this point. Between her medical problems and mine, we’ve had a dozen doctors tell us our chances to conceive are slim to none. Most use the term miracle when they’re talking odds. I’m sick of the hormones and the thermometers. Hell, I’m getting sick of having sex.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
He smiled. “Okay, maybe I’m sick of sex on a schedule. Anyway, as soon as Charlotte heard you were going to become a mother, she freaked. She’s on my ass about another round of in vitro, more tests…and I’m done. She doesn’t want to hear it, but she needs to. I’m fucking done.”
“Well, for the record, I hope you work it out,” I said. “You’d be an awesome dad.”
“Thanks.” He swigged down the last of his beer. “And I enjoyed your letter, by the way. I always knew you worshipped your big bro.”
As I helped him make up the bed in the spare room, I saw his gaze fall on the baby gifts from the shower, which I had stacked in there. “Sorry about all this junk,” I said, wishing I’d had him sleep on the couch, where at least he wouldn’t be surrounded by what he deserved but for some freak reason I was getting instead.
Chapter 23
I shook my brother awake at three a.m.
“What the…?” he grumbled. I clicked on the overhead light, and he shielded his eyes in protest.
“You should adopt the baby,” I said excitedly. Everything in me felt buzzy. I hadn’t slept at all.
“No shit. Haven’t we already had this discussion? Yes, I hope to adopt a baby. Now turn the light off and let me go back to sleep.”
“You don’t understand. Not any baby. My baby…that is, I mean Deedee’s baby. I think she’ll go for it. You’re my family, so that’s practically the same as me. You’d be a great dad. And I realize that Charlotte doesn’t want to adopt, but if we explain to her that this isn’t some distant dream—that it’s a real baby due in a month—maybe she’d change her mind.”
Bob sat up in the bed, rubbing his eyes awake. “Slow down. You’ve lost me here. Why would you want us to adopt your baby?”
I sat on the edge of the bed. “Because somebody needs to, and I can’t do it.” The words fell like bricks around me.
“You can’t do it?”
I shook my head. “Or I shouldn’t, anyway.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been trying to come up with the answer to that question myself. I guess that I wanted to change somebody’s life so badly that I convinced myself that my biological clock was ticking. I don’t know…now I’m wondering if it was just gas.” I gave a halfhearted smile. “Instead of getting excited as the due date gets closer, I’m more and more certain it’s the biggest mistake of my life.”
“You’re scared. I’ll bet everybody feels that way.”
“If you were about to get a baby, is that how you’d feel? Scared?”
“Sure. A little.”
“But mostly you’d be thrilled, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not. Not at all. I’m either pretending it’s not going to happen, or I’m giving myself a pep talk. Trying to convince myself it’s going to be all right. That I’ll be fine once the baby shows up. But then tonight when I heard you talk about everything you’ve been through to have a baby, I couldn’t pretend anymore. I’m not ready to be a mom. At least not on my own. Not this way.”
Ever since I’d said good night to Bob a few hours before, my mind had been reeling. The growing feeling of unease that had started when I forgot Deedee’s due date couldn’t be ignored anymore. This wasn’t a task that I was crossing off a list. It was a baby—a soon-to-be living, breathing baby. I’d been preparing to grit my teeth and go through with the adoption. Suddenly I realized how wrong it would be. Sure, I’d be a better parent than a fourteen-year-old girl, but not much better. Yet I couldn’t leave Deedee in the lurch with only a month to go. She’d made plans with her life. Walking into her house on Saturday and saying, “I’ve changed my mind,” was unthinkable. But telling her I’d found a better situation—a couple who I knew for certain would give her baby girl everything she deserved to have—that I could do.
“You’re serious about this,” Bob said.
“As a heart attack.”
A smile crept across his face. “You know, Charlotte might go for this. The t
hought that there’s a baby who needs her—one who’d otherwise be stuck with a mom who’s only doing it because she said she would, not because she has any real interest.”
“I’m not that bad,” I said defensively.
“Whatever. What I’m saying is, I couldn’t come up with any other way to convince Charlotte to adopt, but this might work. She was good and pissed that you were getting a baby. She kept talking about how she would be so much better a mother to that baby than you could ever be. How it deserved two parents, not one who can barely manage to keep a plant alive, much less a child. This would be her chance to prove it.”
I was half about to rescind my offer, insulted as I was, when I realized my brother was already dialing his cell phone.
“Sugarplum, it’s me…. I’m fine…. Yes, I know I suck for taking off and it’s the middle of the night, but listen…” And he went on to propose the idea. He’d been right—it didn’t take a great deal of arm-twisting to get Charlotte to agree with this new plan. In fact, when he said the baby was due in a month, I could hear her squeal through the phone.
Over the next half hour on the phone, we made arrangements for Bob to go back to San Diego and pick up Charlotte, who was already saying she’d be willing to relocate to Los Angeles if that’s what it took. They’d come up Saturday morning and go to Deedee’s with me. She’d have a chance to meet them, and if all went well, we could arrange to switch over the adoption papers right there. I could practically hear Charlotte decorating the nursery as we spoke, and I’d be willing to bet anything she had names picked out.
Before he hung up, Bob said quietly, “Char, it’s so incredible. After all the waiting, this could be it.”
FRIDAY AFTERNOON, Martucci came into my office with a box of Matchbox cars left over from a promotion we’d run last year. “What did you want these for?”
“Just in the nick of time! They’re for my meeting with Bigwood at three o’clock.” As I grabbed the box, I looked at him and said, “Hey, there’s something different about you. What is it?”
“That’s perfect the way you said that. Bigwood will eat it up. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, you know.”
“I mean it! You look different.”
He shrugged me off. “So tell me why you wanted these cars.”
I showed him the four-by-six-foot 3-D freeway map I’d spent most of the morning making. I was especially pleased with the way my clay foothills had turned out.
Martucci grimaced. “Your fifth-grade science project?”
“It’s so I can demonstrate the freeway race. See, I’ll take the cars and go vroom-vroom like this”—I took two toy cars and set them on my model—“and the one in the carpool lane will win.”
Martucci was silent, which had me worried. He wasn’t one to hold back.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“All right. That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Slumping, I groaned, “It’s the best I could do. Troy Jones was supposed to help me do a live race on real freeways, but he bailed.”
“Why didn’t you ask me to do it?”
Good question. Why hadn’t I asked? Maybe it was because he didn’t have a spiffy race outfit like Troy said he’d wear.
“Oh, it would be wonderful if you could—”
“Too late. I didn’t drive in today, and the motor home’s off getting washed.”
“Then I’m back to the science project.” I sighed. “Because I’m sure not going to stand there and talk about my idea.”
“Why not?”
“Phyllis told me that I had to wow Bigwood. She said that’s what he expects—wowing.”
“I agree, but a race is a race. You can describe it in a sentence—only a moron wouldn’t get it. You’re missing the point. A race isn’t what you’re selling Bigwood.”
“Oh yeah? What am I selling?”
Martucci crossed his arms and leaned on the edge of my desk. “You.”
“Then I’m doomed.” When he rolled his eyes at me, I said, “I’m serious. I already tried that before—I wrote a big proposal with all kinds of ideas saying why I was so great, and he gave my job to Lizbeth.”
“I doubt Bigwood ever read your proposal. Even if he did—and don’t take this the wrong way—I don’t blame him for skipping you over before.”
“Thanks a lot!”
“It’s true. Frankly, you didn’t seem that excited about anything—like you were just going through the motions. I always got the impression that you were only here because you didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Well, that’s not how I felt. You didn’t know me.”
“Except for Susan, I don’t think anybody knew you.”
It was hard to have a comeback for that.
“So what you need to do,” he continued, “is make Bigwood aware that June Parker is a force to be reckoned with. That you’ve got a track record. You’ve got ideas. You’ve got balls.”
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
He slapped my arm. “Sure you can. Take him out for drinks—he’s a bourbon man, by the way. Show him the clips of your interviews from the gas giveaway.”
“You want me to remind him about that fiasco?”
“I want you to show him that you’re cool under pressure.”
“Well,” I hedged, “I guess I could get the interview files from Brie. And she has a portable DVD player. I could pack it up and take Bigwood to the Brass Monkey.”
“That’s the spirit. And whatever you do, don’t let him pick up the check, however hard he tries. Wrestle him to the floor if you have to. Paying is a sign of dominance.”
“Got it.”
“Good. But out of curiosity, why is this promotion such a big deal to you now? I’d figure with you about to be on the mommy track, you’d be laying low.”
“For one thing, you’re being sexist,” I admonished. “A woman can have both a career and a family. Secondly”—I picked an imaginary piece of lint off my shirt so I didn’t have to meet his eyes—“I’m not going to adopt the baby after all.”
“Sorry, I didn’t realize. Something go wrong?”
“Only that I changed my mind.”
“Then it’s a good thing, right? You can go back to your wild single ways.”
“Yeah, well, as far as that goes, the rumor that I was going to be a mom scared off my major prospect,” I said glumly. When Martucci looked at me confused, I said, “Troy. As soon as I told him that I was going to adopt a baby, he took off.”
“Ah. I see.”
“It’s so frustrating. I felt as if the list were helping me figure out my life. I thought, Aha! It’s a relationship and kids that have been missing. But it must not be those things—otherwise I wouldn’t have let my chance for them get away.”
“Come on. There are plenty more chances.”
“I suppose, but I’m still bummed. Deep down, I’d hoped the list would have a bigger impact…that it would help me identify what I truly wanted.”
“At least maybe you’ll realize what you deserve.”
“Such as…?”
“Sure as hell more than a guy who’d bolt the second you brought up the idea of a baby.”
“Yeah, Susan said pretty much the same thing.”
“She’s right. You deserve better…somebody who gets you for who you are—whether you have a kid or not. Or a dozen kids, for that matter. Believe me, some men would find it very sexy all that you’ve been taking on.”
“Aw, garsh, Martucci,” I said. Laughing, I grabbed him in a hug. As his arms closed around me, I glanced over his shoulder, and—knock me over with a feather—who should be standing in the opening of my cubicle but Troy.
“Hey, June,” he said, holding up his hand hesitantly in a wave. He was dressed in a racing jacket over a shirt and tie.
I pulled away from Martucci, flummoxed. What was Troy doing here?
“I—I thought you couldn’t make it
,” I sputtered.
“You didn’t get my message?”
He and Martucci shook hands hello while I tried to dredge up the memory of Troy’s phone call. I’d been listening to it when my brother showed up at the door. It had seemed so obvious that Troy was canceling, I’d never bothered to play the whole thing.
“It got cut off,” I said, aiming as close to the truth as I dared to get. “So…what did it say?”
“That I’d be here today unless you called to let me know you didn’t want me to come. And also”—he glanced self-consciously at Martucci—“I tried to explain why I left Vegas so fast.”
“Oh.”
Did Troy just say there was an explanation for his hasty retreat—or was that the sound of the two sides of my brain opening and clapping shut?
Martucci, hands in his pockets, ambled away toward the hallway, pausing by my cubicle opening. “Well, Parker, guess you’re back to plan A. Good luck.”
I glanced at my watch. Fifteen minutes to go until my meeting. The race would certainly be flashy—especially with Troy looking every bit the pro—but Martucci’s words rang in my mind. What was I going for? Did I want to sell Bigwood on the idea of a race…or did I have the guts to pitch myself?
Turning to Troy, I said, “I feel bad making you come all this way, but I’ve decided on a different plan.”
“No race, then?”
I shook my head.
“Oh…okay. Not a problem. But…” Again I saw his eyes shift toward Martucci. “If you’ve got a second, I’d like to talk about…a few things….”
I wanted to hear what he had to say, but not with minutes to go before my presentation. I needed to find Brie and burn the files of my interviews onto a disc. I needed to eat something bready if I was going to be drinking bourbon. After that, without anyone watching, I could scurry home and play the message to find out what Troy’s reason was for letting me down. Maybe it was a valid one—and if it was, well, then who knew?
“I wish I could,” I said, “but right now I’ve got to run.”
“I’ll let you go, then,” Troy said, and it seemed he wasn’t surprised by my reaction. Even though he was standing there in his race regalia, he looked as though he’d expected it. He added worriedly, “You still coming to the party on Tuesday?”
The Next Thing on My List Page 24