“Kind of? I am the king of caregivers for Soapie.”
“He is. That’s his official title: king of caregivers for Soapie.”
“And what? So, you’re the BFF?” he says to Greta, and she smiles. It’s the condescending smile she’d give to one of Sandrine’s friends, Rosie realizes.
“So what do you think of this baby bump, huh?” he says. “Quite a little surprise, huh?”
“Actually,” she says, “I always knew that Rosie had this in her. She just liked to make us think she wasn’t going to do it.”
“Oh, yeah, she’s gonna be amazing at this!” he says. “You can just tell. Look around the eyes—that’s where you see it the most. Like—see? I look at you, and I see you’ve got a whole bunch of kids you love. Are you a teacher, or something?”
“No, I’ve just got four of my own,” says Greta.
“Four!” he says.
“Yeah, I’m like a baby factory,” she says and gets up and gives Rosie a hug. “I’m going to go save my family from imminent destruction. Be careful with yourself, okay? And if you get freaked out when you realize that you’re going to need a father figure for this little kid, just remember that you have lots of friends who are out of their minds with happiness about this. We’ll all help you.”
She puts her hands on Rosie’s little pooch of a belly and closes her eyes. “I’m your Auntie Greta, you little pumpkin,” she says. “Don’t worry about that father of yours. He’s going to come around.”
“You bet he is,” says Tony. “Nobody can resist a baby.”
[fifteen]
The next week, on a hot, humid day, she goes for her first prenatal visit, and she’s so nervous in the morning that Tony asks her if maybe he should drive her there. “I don’t have to be in Fairfield until school lets out,” he says. “I could take you if you want.”
She rolls her eyes at him. “I should drive you to Fairfield,” she says. “Then I could have a talk with Annie and Dena. Get them to come to their senses.”
But then, when she’s sitting in the waiting room, she really does wish he were there to keep her amused. He’d no doubt have a little routine to do about the other fathers: the thin guy who keeps checking his cell phone while his pregnant wife glares at him, and the man who looks like a trucker and keeps falling asleep on his wife’s shoulder.
Dr. Stinson takes the pregnancy news with the right amount of gravity.
“Well, this is certainly a surprise,” she says. She’s been Rosie’s no-nonsense gynecologist for the past twenty-five years. Each year an annual visit, an occasional bladder infection necessitating antibiotics, one or two conversations about feminist politics, a discussion of how women don’t really need to be married to be fulfilled, that sort of thing.
“To me, too,” says Rosie, and Dr. Stinson laughs dryly.
“You might have done this just a tad earlier if you were going to do this,” she says. “But, whatever. We have good outcomes anytime. Congratulations,” she says flatly, pushing the rolling stool away from the examining table.
She snaps off the rubber gloves and smiles. She’s got crinkles now around her eyes, and her brown hair is shot through with gray.
Rosie sits up and moves down to the end of the table, covering herself with the gown. “But you do think I’m going to be okay, right?”
“Define ‘okay.’ ” Dr. Stinson scoots over to the sink on her stool and washes her hands. “There’s most likely going to be a baby in your life. Is that what you mean by okay?” She stands up and yanks paper towels out of the dispenser.
“Tell me the truth: am I too old?”
“Old, schmold. Actually you’re not even the oldest woman I’ve delivered this year. Most women your age have problems becoming pregnant. But once the pregnancy is started, most of them do come to term. Especially when they’ve passed the nine-week mark, which you obviously have.”
“So I can do this?”
“Your body can do this. I don’t know about the rest of you. What kind of support are you getting? How does Jonathan feel about this?”
Rosie is surprised that Dr. Stinson remembers his name, although they have mentioned him every year—his pottery, then his disenchantment with the creative life, and then the teacups. She doesn’t say anything.
“Oh, I see,” says Dr. Stinson. “So you’re going this alone?”
“Yeah.” Rosie looks down and starts ripping at a little edge of the paper on the examining table.
“Well,” Dr. Stinson says. “They used to call this a change-of-life baby. Lots of women have made this mistake. But then I guess it’s only a mistake if you think of it that way. It might even be considered a blessing in some cases. Is that how you feel about it?”
Rosie laughs. “I’m still too scared to consider it a blessing.”
“Let’s listen to the heartbeat, shall we? Lie back down.”
Dr. Stinson goes and gets a little wand thingie and smears her belly with gel, and then hooks everything up. The sound that comes out of the speaker is loud and whooshing. It sounds like the wind blowing intermittently through a tunnel.
“That’s it,” says Dr. Stinson. “You hear?” She smiles. “That’s your baby.”
Rosie suddenly can’t speak.
“I know,” says Dr. Stinson. “It gets me every time, too. It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
“Listen, can I tell you something? I wasn’t sure at first, you know. I hope I didn’t jinx it or anything, but I didn’t know if I could handle it, and I made an appointment for—you know. And then I walked out.”
Dr. Stinson looks at her mildly. “Well, sure,” she says. “That happens, too.”
“Do you think—I mean, do you think I somehow communicated to the baby that—well, that I didn’t want him or her? Is that bad, do you think?”
Dr. Stinson looks at her very seriously over the top of her glasses. “You’re allowed to have doubts, Rosie,” she says. “Reasonable people do. The fetus doesn’t know from thoughts. It just goes on nutrients. But if you’re still not sure, then we have to move fast—”
“No, no. I’m sure now.”
Driving home, Rosie suddenly has a hit of fresh energy and heads for a bookstore, where she buys ten books on pregnancy, nutrition, labor, delivery, breast-feeding—and just for good measure, one that promises to tell everything anyone might need to know about six-year-olds, for Tony.
Then she goes to the YMCA and signs herself up for a prenatal swim class and a prenatal yoga class; and then she drives way across town to an organic food market in New Haven, where she befriends the cashier, a young woman named Leila whom she overhears talking about her own pregnancy, which is just at the same point as Rosie’s. Leila is also manless, and they get into a spirited talk about how good they’re going to be at doing this all on their own.
Then she stops in at a maternity shop, looking for pants she can fit into, which normally would have been something that took a whole morning and would find her in the dressing room gnashing her teeth in distress, but which is now pure pleasure. Bring on the big pants! She tries on five pairs of loose, stretchy yoga pants, and then two body-glove-type shirts that show every pregnancy curve.
She takes stock in the three-way dressing room mirror, which gives her a bit of a shock. To be honest, she still looks more like somebody who has just let herself go to seed, rather than the radiant pregnant woman she had hoped to resemble. The only thing that’s really dynamite is that she now has huge, outlying breasts that seem to be straining against all fabrics, as though nothing can hold them back. It’s too bad really that Jonathan isn’t around to appreciate how impressive her breasts have become. She thinks of them as two old aunties who thought they were going to spend the rest of their lives in a retirement bra and had given up on keeping themselves nice anymore, and now they find themselves looking like porn stars.
She buys them an industrial-sized maternity bra (the kind with gigantic cups and six hooks!) just because the elderly, friendly bra fitter assures
her that she’ll be much happier with her postnatal breasts if she gives them the support and love they need right now when they’re working so hard getting ready.
“You want to nurture these hardworking girls and show them some extra love. They need a lot of coddling and support at such an important time in their lives,” she says, and it’s hard for Rosie to believe they’re still just talking about the strap width on foundation garments.
When she gets home, Tony is in the kitchen, pacing around the room, talking on the phone. “So what kind of dog can jump higher than a building?” he says. He cups his hand over the phone. “Did you get to hear the heartbeat?” he whispers. “Everything okay?”
She nods, and he smiles and gives her a thumbs-up.
“Any dog!” he says into the phone. “Ha ha! Buildings can’t jump.” Then he’s silent for a moment. “No, no … you see, the joke sounds like the building would be jumping, but—okay, okay, you get it. Talk to you later. I love you. Five million dinosaurs today. Yeah, extra because I like the way you laugh.” He does a hundred smooches into the phone and then flips the phone shut and turns to Rosie.
“So! Tell me, tell me! Did you get a picture from the ultrasound?”
“No ultrasound, just the heartbeat.” Rosie puts down her stack of pamphlets, brochures recommending breast-feeding, and the samples of prenatal vitamins—really an overwhelmingly frightening amount of baby propaganda, all plastered with photos of gurgling, fat infants and serene young mothers. She’s already starting to fantasize about deformities and miscarriages.
“Damn. I hoped to see a picture. No ultrasound? What kind of doctor doesn’t let a new mom see a picture of the baby? You’d think he’d want to see for himself that everything’s coming along hunky-dory.”
“It’s a she.” She gets a glass out of the cabinet and fills it with tap water.
“The baby?”
“No, the doctor.”
“So why didn’t she do the ultrasound, do you suppose? That’s the moment—that’s the moment when you see the baby all forming in there—you almost want some time-lapse photography, so you can see the little arms and legs forming and growing fingers and toes.” He draws a baby in midair, and wiggles his fingers and toes to show all the growing that’s going on. “Wouldn’t that be something? I don’t know why she didn’t let you see it.”
“I don’t know. Maybe next visit. Maybe she doesn’t even have an ultrasound machine.”
“Huh. I think with Milo, our doctor let us see him at the first.” And then he is off, reminiscing about all the prenatal visits—the first time he saw Milo’s little feet and his rib cage—oh, the rib cage! And that little heart, thumping away there like a beacon—
She looks at him and thinks that he really should be doing so much more with his life. His hair, for instance, is really nice, and he maybe shouldn’t hide it under that baseball cap all the time. And really, he should be thinking about moving along. Getting his own place, finding somebody to go out with.
“I don’t mean to be rude or anything,” she says, “but—”
He grins. “But you’re going to be?”
“I just want to know why you’re not dating anybody.”
He bursts out laughing. “That’s what you want to know? Look at me! Who’s gonna want a date with a guy like this? A guy who’s got a kid he’s gotta go look after all the time.”
“Well, that’s another thing,” she says. “I think you need to just call up Annie and Dena and say that you want Milo to come down here and visit, and that you’re living with very nice people who want to meet him, and tell them they have to agree.”
He shrugs, and suddenly she just loses her mind.
“How long are you going to stay stuck like this, going and spying on your kid like you’re some kind of criminal? You talk about him all the time, and yet you don’t do anything to help him. What the hell, Tony? You’ve got to go and reason with these women. You’ve got to try. These are days you’re going to wish you had back.”
“It won’t work,” he says.
“Tony,” she says, “you’ve got to make it work. I can’t stand it anymore! I didn’t have a father, Milo doesn’t have a father, and this baby of mine isn’t going to have a fa—”
“Milo has a father!” he says, and his voice is fiercer than she’s ever heard from him. “He has me!”
“Yeah, four hours a week. What does that tell him?”
“Stop it, Rosie! Milo has me.” His eyes are suddenly furious. “I’m sick of the way you act as though I’m doing the wrong thing. I love him, and he knows it.”
“Then you should be there!” she says. “You shouldn’t just be doing domestic espionage. Why do you let them do this to you?”
“Well, it’s not what I want, but—” He stops talking and narrows his eyes. “Oh, I get it. This isn’t about me at all, is it? This is about Jonathan, isn’t it?”
“No, this is all you,” she says. “What are you teaching this kid? That your rights don’t matter? That his wishes don’t matter?”
“Stop it,” he says in a voice so low it’s almost a growl. “This conversation is over.” He walks out of the kitchen and slams the front door.
She stands there with her hands at her sides, balling up her fists. Now she’s done it. What, is she going to become some pain-in-the-ass parenting expert now because she’s had her first prenatal visit? And really, what does she know about Tony Cavaletti’s little kid up there with two mommies? Maybe his life is just peachy keen without a dad.
And maybe her baby’s life will be perfect without Jonathan, too. Who needs these fathers anyway, with their cowardly fears of commitments, their inability to stand up for themselves or anybody else? Superman! Ha!
She’ll do this without Jonathan and his pinched-off, tiny, ice-encrusted soul. At least her child will have her, somebody who loves it and wants it and is thrilled to be getting this second chance at a real life. This baby will be so much better off than Rosie was. She’ll make sure it’s better.
[sixteen]
Her students can’t believe their eyes when they see her at the first class of the new fall semester. She’s sixteen weeks pregnant, and you would think, she tells Greta later, that the Pillsbury Doughboy himself showed up to teach the class, by the way they react to her size. She can feel herself actually doubling in volume as she stands there before them, explaining that no, no, she’s fine; she’s just pregnant. Goldie and Mara smile knowingly, worriedly—and then everybody wants to hear the story of the wedding cancellation, which they had all known about, as their invitations had been rescinded. But why didn’t she go to California? Start new life? Did Yonatan realize stay right here? Did teacups go alone?
She sighs. No English will be taught this day, that’s for sure. The administrator comes in for a moment for a first-day welcome, with his officious little clipboard and his bow tie, but he soon realizes they are all consumed with Woman Talk, and so he backs out of the room and closes the door, so that at least the middle school won’t be contaminated by such goings-on.
She keeps trying to move the class to a lesson about subject/predicate agreement, but they would rather know what she’s eating, how her nausea is, the due date, possible baby names, and does she know the sex. They surround her, petting her, hugging her. Goldie dabs at her eyes when she hears that Jonathan has gone away and that he is not thrilled about the baby. Rosie didn’t mean to tell that part, but of course they weaseled it out of her.
The class settles into a respectful, tragic silence.
“So,” she says, taking a deep breath. “For next time, I would like you all to write about a time in your life when something happened that at first seemed bad, but then turned out to be such a good thing. Because that is what this is for me.”
Nobody writes the assignment down. They just look at her like maybe they know what she’s in for.
“This is good thing?” Leo asks.
“It is a good thing,” she says. “Go, go, write it.”
There is no day quite as fraught as this one, she thinks. She’s read everything in the chat rooms, she’s polled her friends, and hardly anybody thinks it’s as bad an idea as she thinks it is. Seriously? A needle—next to the baby? What if they accidentally stab it and kill it? Rosie is of the opinion that this baby would prefer to live and isn’t going to think highly of a sharp intruder coming in to steal some of its valuable amniotic fluid. She just hopes it doesn’t blame her.
Greta says the people wielding the needles know what they’re doing. Not that she ever had one. She was smart and had all her babies before she turned thirty-five.
Tony, the self-appointed expert on obstetrical procedures and chief of medical transportation, goes with her. He tells her he has to, that he’s a sucker for fetal heartbeats, for ultrasounds, and he can stand up to amnio as well. They’ve been careful around each other since their argument. She hasn’t brought up Milo, and she’s stopped talking to him about his domestic espionage surveillance tactics. Most evenings they hang out with Soapie and George in the rehab center, and very slowly, they can see that Soapie is getting better. She’s actually started complaining about things again, instead of being so overly pleasant. That, they’ve decided, is a good thing.
“You know what I hate? All these medical procedures I have to do,” Rosie says in the car on the way to the hospital clinic. “Why does having a baby give people the right to stick you with needles all the time?” A week ago, she had to go get a four-hour glucose tolerance test. And before that, there were endless other blood tests. It’s awful for a person who mostly doesn’t even like to acknowledge that she has bodily fluids.
The Opposite of Maybe: A Novel Page 16