“So how do you know these guys?”
“ Parties.” She shrugs. “Aren’t you dying? Why don’t you take off your coat?”
“I’m okay.”
Liz continues, “Yeah, so Nick, that guy over there, organized a big ski trip to Tahoe for spring break. There’s like twenty of us going.” She points to a good-looking, muscly blonde with his back up against the wall. He winks at her when he sees her pointing. I have to hand it to her, she is in her element.
Looking around the room filled with students from all classes and how friendly and familiar everyone is with each other; I realize what I’ve missed out on. I’m like a stranger on this campus. Even June from across the hall, who was so shy in September, is here laughing with a group of girls in the living room. Mikayla and Olivia barely acknowledge me.
“So, seriously, Laurel, where’ve you been?” Liz interrupts my revelation.
I bite my lip, contemplating how to answer. “I think this year just kind of overwhelmed me. The heavy course work plus some personal stuff…”
I worry that she’s going to press for more, but she doesn’t seem to have the attention span for anything too deep, and she quickly changes topic. “So what happened between you and Mike?”
“What do you mean?” My voice cracks a little.
She bites on the bottle top of her beer, eyes sideways with suspicion. “Something happened between you two.”
“What makes you say that?”
“’Cause every time he has more than a couple shots of Jagermeister, you’re all he talks about.”
“Really?” I feel the color burning my cheeks.
“Uh-huh.”
I play dumb. “What does he say?”
“What doesn’t he say?” She smirks.
The muscles in my jaw tense up. “Like what?”
“Stuff. I don’t know. I’ve started tuning him out.” She seems to be getting bored as her eyes are now scanning the room. She smiles when muscle man Nick meets her gaze.
When she remembers I’m standing in front of her, she says, “You’ve gotten under his skin. That’s all.”
Nick comes over and grabs her by the waist.
“Maybe you should make a move on him,” she says as she gets pulled into the dining room, now the dance room. “He’s supposed to be stopping by tonight,” she calls as she disappears into the crowd.
That’s my cue to duck out.
Chapter Thirty-five
Prof. Stoker passed me with a C- in Plant Biology after I turned in a pretty lousy essay on the evolutionary similarities of various plant DNA. I managed to get out of Intro to Biology 2, which I had registered for back in October and what would have been the logical follow-up to the class I took in the fall. But, with the threat of potential lab chemicals harming my baby, I switched to a course called Biology Theory. The joke in the science department is that it is the biology class for biology-challenged students, taken to satisfy Colman’s science requirement and it doesn’t involve a lab. The one problem is that Prof. Stoker teaches it. She’s a great teacher and all but she makes me uncomfortable every time she looks my way these days.
After class one icy morning, she calls to me, “Do you have some time to talk?”
I nod and swallow back the saliva pooling in my mouth. What now?
We walk the three arctic blocks to her office, battling the heavy wind blowing off the lake. Once we’re in her office and thawed out, she asks me to close the door.
“Is everything okay?” I ask. “Did I screw something up?”
“Your grades are fine.” She lets out a deep breath. “I’m not entirely sure how to bridge this with you.”
“What?”
“Well, you and I have been working closely together now for months. And I can’t help noticing how…you’re changing.”
“Changing?”
“Your body. Look, I’ve got three children. I know what pregnancy looks like even if it’s strategically hidden under sweatshirts.”
I swallow hard and pull my backpack onto my lap.
“I just want to make sure that you are okay.”
I don’t answer.
She continues. “It’s the reason you ran out of the lab in January, isn’t it?”
I have no words.
“I’m not passing judgment on you.” She sighs. “When are you due?”
“May 4th,” I whisper.
“Do you have a doctor?”
“I did, in Canandaigua, but I have no way to get there anymore, so I haven’t been in a couple months. I missed my glucose test, too.”
“Oh, Laurel.” She rubs her eyes. “You should have come to me. I can drive you.”
“I can’t ask you to do that.”
“Why not? I drive my kids over to Canandaigua all the time for sports anyway. Prenatal care is very important.”
I feel my eyes beginning to well up. “I was going every month in the beginning. But then my grandmother’s truck broke down and that was that.”
“Call and schedule your next appointment. You can check my calendar online to see where I have openings.”
I force back the burning tears. “Thank you.”
She continues. “Do you have any help? The baby’s father? Friends? Family?”
“A couple friends and a support group in Rochester, although I haven’t been there in months either. The baby’s father doesn’t know.” I whisper. “Or my dad.”
“So since you’re being so secretive, if you don’t mind my asking, are you planning to keep this baby?”
“I’m hoping to. Although, with everything that’s happened sometimes I wonder how.”
She lets the morning slip by while I tell her my story. When I’m done, she doesn’t say anything.
“Am I crazy to try this?” I ask.
“I don’t know, Laurel. I can’t answer that for you. But I will say this, and it sounds like you’ve heard it before, if that is what you think you want to do, you need to come out of hiding. You can’t have a baby in the dorms, you can’t conceal a child when you go home to visit your father and his new wife, and in all fairness to the baby’s father, you’ve got to tell him. It’s the decent thing to do.”
“I know.”
Chapter Thirty-six
I pass my glucose test with flying colors. I can’t say the same about my midterms. I’m a lot more distracted this semester – maybe it’s the hormones - but it’s not as easy to throw myself into work to get my mind off things as it was in the fall. I did fine in biology, but the test for my freshman seminar, Understanding Cultural Diversity, turned out to be much harder than I ever thought. And why I decided to take up French this semester for the first time, I can’t answer. Maybe I just needed to torture myself more with Madame Beurnier, who teaches it. And Sociology 101 is a crapshoot. I guess I’ll find out after spring break, which brings me to my other dilemma.
Since my conversation with Prof. Stoker, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to finally tell my father. With spring break coming up, I decided that the best thing would be for me to go home and just do it already. I’m so big now, even if I can’t find the words, my belly can do the talking. But the other day when I tried to use my voucher to make a reservation, I found out that the airlines won’t let you fly once you are more than thirty-two weeks pregnant. The last thing I need is to be singled-out and booted off a crowded plane. So I put my name on the rideshare board and then called my father to let him know I’d be coming home.
But based on how this year has gone, shouldn’t I have known that something else would get in the way? After three phone calls, two voicemails and a couple texts that he didn’t respond to, I knew something was up. So finally, I called his secretary, who informed me he and Sheryl had gone to Paris. They wanted some time alone before the baby arrived.
“They didn’t tell you?” she asked.
“I just forgot,” I lied.
Funny thing is, a few months back I would have been incensed that he didn’t bother to l
et me know he was traveling – especially with my spring break coming up. But mostly what I feel is disappointment for yet another missed opportunity.
I text Tara to see what she’s up to. She calls me back, and I can hear the waves breaking in the background.
“Where are you?”
“South Beach.”
“I was hoping you’d be in the city next week. When do you get back?”
“I’m here for two weeks. Why don’t you fly down? My grandmother would love to see you.”
“The airlines won’t let me fly anymore, and I can’t afford the ticket anyway.”
“How’s it going?”
“It’s not.”
***
Prof. Stoker drops me off in front of Dr. Adler’s office and tells me she’ll be back within the hour. She has to run her son to practice, swing by the grocery store, and pick up her dry cleaning.
“It’s no rush,” I tell her. And it isn’t. Riding around with her and her three kids provides a completely different window into her life. As organized and professional as she is in the classroom, in this world of kids, car pools and after-school activities, she is scattered.
I relish the quiet of the doctor’s office after the thirty-minute minivan ride. I need to see him every two weeks now since I’m getting close to the final stretch. The receptionist still does not ask me for payment when I check in. I’m waved along while everyone else is asked to take out their insurance cards and co-pays.
When I came back, I could tell Dr. Adler was relieved to see me. But he didn’t ask any personal questions and kept strictly to the exam – perhaps for fear of losing me again. When we finally listened to the baby’s heartbeat, I had to remind myself to breathe. It had been months, and even though she’s been moving like crazy lately, the sound and strength of that beating heart is what reassures me. When I hear it, I know everything is okay.
Just as I’m settling in with a magazine, my phone rings. It’s a local number I don’t recognize. “Hello?”
“Laurel, it’s Bill. Audrey’s husband.”
“Hi.”
“Listen, I’m sorry to bother you, but I could use your help.”
I toss the magazine on the coffee table. “What’s up?”
“It’s Audrey. She’s been in this – state – for the past month. She’s crying all the time, depressed, not eating. She’s due in two weeks, and I’m worried about her. She even lost a pound at her last doctor appointment.”
I can’t imagine Audrey depressed. “What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know. She won’t talk to me. She doesn’t talk to her friends because she thinks they can’t relate to the pregnancy, and the only girls left in the support group are too young now that you and Kyle are gone.” I forgot that Kyle was due back in February. I’ve been so out of touch.
Bill continues, “I thought maybe you could try.”
“I, um, okay. But are you sure I’m the person to do this?”
“Audrey cares about you. I can tell she misses you. I could come and pick you up today.”
The immediacy in his voice is alarming. “You want me to come over? Oh, I thought you meant call her.”
“I can be there in an hour.” He’s really sounding anxious.
“Wait. No, I’m not even in Milton. I’m at the doctor in Canandaigua. You can pick me up here, though.”
“Even better.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
By the time Bill gets me and we battle rush hour traffic, it‘s dark when we pull up to their new apartment complex on the edge of the city. The entire ride he clenched the steering wheel – hands at ten and two o’clock – so tightly it turned his knuckles white. He talked a mile a minute, too.
“I don’t know what happened. Everything was fine; her doctor appointments have all been good, we got the nursery set up last month, her sister and a friend from high school threw her a shower back in Buffalo. But now she won’t stop crying. She hasn’t put away any of the baby gifts she got, they’re just sitting in boxes, and every time I come home she’s on the couch staring at the wall – no TV on – nothing. I don’t even recognize her.”
We park the car, and Bill has me wait in the courtyard while he goes inside. There are no lights on, and it’s so quiet I wonder if Audrey is even home. But I hear Bill talking softly to someone down the hall, and soon he is gesturing for me to join him.
As I come around the corner to their living room, I am unprepared for what is before me. Bill’s right. Audrey is beyond recognition. Her normally beautiful red hair hangs like it hasn’t been washed in weeks; her face is tear-stained and swollen. She’s wearing a dirty Eastman T-shirt that is too small for her pregnant middle, which is protruding out all veiny, with belly button bulging.
“Audrey,” I whisper and sit down next to her, “oh my god.”
She doesn’t look at me or say anything, although she does attempt to pull down the T-shirt to cover herself. It slides right back up when she lets go.
I have no idea what to say, so I reach over and hug her. To my surprise, she hugs me back – tightly – and we embrace like this for a long time. Her warm tears roll down my shoulder as she buries her head deeper, sobbing. I am very aware of Bill nervously fidgeting nearby. I wave my hand for him to leave us alone, and after he’s turned on a couple lamps, he disappears.
When we finally release each other, I locate a box of tissues in the bathroom and offer them to her. She wipes her nose, which is as red as Rudolph’s. The apartment is a mess…tissues on the floor, laundry everywhere, baby gear that hasn’t been taken out of boxes piled up against the wall, dirty dishes in the sink.
I push a bunch of newspapers off a chair and sit down facing her. I’m not sure how to break the ice, so I just say the first thing that pops into my head. “Looks like things are going well!”
This is all it takes for Audrey to start laughing, a big belly laugh. And I start laughing, too. Soon, we are both laughing so hard, if anyone were to witness this and the crying five minutes earlier, they would think we are utterly and totally insane. Maybe we are.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I finally say, once we’ve drained our systems.
Audrey doesn’t speak right away. Her forehead crinkles up, and it seems like she’s trying to formulate her feelings into words. She shakes her head. “I don’t know. It’s like all of a sudden I’m having second thoughts about this.”
“About having a baby?”
“Besides that…rushing to marry Bill, dropping out of college. It’s like I never even gave myself the chance to try and handle this on my own. I took the 1950s’ housewife approach, and now all I do is sit around this apartment while everyone else is out living their lives.”
“But you love Bill,” I say. “And you’re going to go back to school.”
“Eventually…if we can afford it.” She stands up and walks into the kitchen. I follow her.
“I do love Bill and have since I met him. But did I have to marry him just because I got pregnant? We could have waited and gotten married later. I was too concerned with how things looked, making my parents happy, Bill’s parents happy. I never even thought about what would make me happy.” She fills a glass with water from the sink and takes a sip. “In a way, I’m jealous of you.”
“Jealous of me?” I splutter. “Trust me, Audrey. There is nothing to be jealous about here.”
“That’s not true. Look at you. You’re handling your pregnancy on your own terms. You are totally and completely relying on yourself to get through this. I’ve put my whole destiny into the hands of my husband. Going forward, my whole life is entirely based on how he does. I was valedictorian of my high school class, and now I’m just a knocked-up college dropout. I feel like a wimp next to you.”
“Audrey…” I had no idea she felt this way.
“You don’t know how hard it is,” she continues. “Everyone thinks they know what is best for me. My mother, my sister, my father. Bill even. I would love to be in your shoes
. You don’t take anyone else’s opinion into consideration. You make all your own choices.”
“But I’ve made some pretty bad ones. I wish I had a mother to annoy me. I wish I had a father who paid attention. I’m jealous of you.”
Audrey opens up the cupboards and looks in the fridge. There doesn’t seem to be much of anything in either. “Do you want to go out? I haven’t been out in ages.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
An hour and a much-needed shower for Audrey later, we are sitting at a crowded TGI Fridays. Happy hour is in full swing, and there is a thirty-minute wait for a table. The hostess begins to tell us to go to the bar, but when we take our coats off and she sees how very pregnant we are, she points to the bench next to her instead. “We’ll get you seated as soon as possible.”
When we’re finally settled into a booth, Audrey catches me up on what I’ve missed at pregnancy support. “Kyle had a boy on February 2nd. He was almost ten pounds.”
“Wow.”
“She went back home to live with her parents. She’s going to try to come back to Rochester. But she doesn’t know yet.”
“What about Janet?”
“I got an email from her. She’s nine days overdue and counting. The doctors told her if she doesn’t go into labor by Sunday, they’ll induce her Monday morning.”
The waitress comes over to take our order.
“Anything else new?” I ask when she’s gone.
“There are two new girls in the group. One of them is thirteen.”
“Ugh! Thirteen? I mean, I know we’re young, but that is too young.”
“I know. She’s in eighth grade!”
“Oh my god!”
“It’s bad. The other girl is fifteen. With you and Kyle gone, I don’t have anyone there I can relate to anymore. Other than Alison. She keeps asking about you, by the way.”
“She’s left me messages.”
Audrey grabs my hand. “I’m so sorry I haven’t called you.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t called you, either.”
Positively Mine Page 14