Renny watches him shuffle out of the kitchen and wishes that she could hide in the bathroom too. Only she knows that her mother would just yell her opinions through the door. The only escape is to put the Hudson River between them. She checks her watch. Only forty-five minutes until the next bus to the city.
***
Renny walks down the narrow bus aisle toward the last pair of empty seats in the back row. She stretches out across the two seats, glad that the bus isn’t full. The bus revs away from the curb and Renny glimpses her mother’s car still parked on the street, making sure that Renny is safely on her way. Even with a thirty-year-old daughter, her mother is still over-protective.
The bus passes through the center of Springfield. Many of the shops from her childhood have been replaced. She glimpses the darkened storefront where Ranwell’s Dance Studio had been, replaced now by a boutique that sells decoratively painted children’s furniture.
When she was seven years old, a friend told her that there was a town named Springfield in almost every state and Renny assumed that all the towns were identical. Even the people were the same, only they wore different clothes depending on which Springfield they lived in. Usually, Renny Shuler from Springfield, New Jersey wore an acrylic crewneck sweater with jeans. Renny Shuler from Springfield, California wore a bikini and had a surfboard. In her mind, Springfield inhabitants around the country were like an army of Barbies with a myriad of outfits and professions.
Only Renny never had a Barbie, she had Dolly instead. Dolly was the plastic Barbie knock off that they sold at the A&P for two dollars less than the famous doll. Her mother said, “She’s just as good.” Renny never quiet believed her.
Renny pulls her laptop out of her bag to do work, but is distracted by a guy sitting two rows in front who has yet to figure out that you don’t need to scream into a cell phone for the other person to hear you. After reading the same line for five minutes, she closes the computer and takes out her phone and dials.
“Hello,” Gaby answers groggy.
“Hey, it’s me. What are you doing?”
“Nothing. Just having a splash a wine and watching TV. Where are you?”
“I’m on the bus coming back from my parents.”
“How are Shirley and Herb? Is your mother still trying to marry you off?”
“She’s making me crazy. Now she wants to set me up on a blind date with a podiatrist. And get this name—Marty Toezoff.” She expects to hear Gaby’s loud guffaw, but instead there is silence. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Huh?”
“Are you listening to me?”
“Yeah, podiatrist, Toezoff. Sounds, whatever, footy.”
“She says she won’t be able to die in peace until I’m settled down.”
“I guess my Mama has no peace then,” Gaby’s voice is shakey.
Shit, Renny thinks, why did I say that? “Gaby, I—”
“It’s okay,” she tells her. “But look, I’m tired. I’ll call you tomorrow?”
“Sure.” Renny hangs up. She taps her phone on her thigh and then dials her answering machine. Bingo! Georgie called at nine forty-five, just as the bus was pulling away from the curb. Renny checks her watch. Ten. Is it too late to call back, she wonders?
“Shit!” She grumbles. “He can’t be asleep yet.” Before she can lose her nerve, she looks his number up on her Palm and dials. As it rings, her hands sweat and she almost hangs up.
“Hello.” His deep voice massages her ear.
“Hi, is Georgie there?” Renny keeps her voice steady.
“This is.”
“Hi, it’s Renny. I got your message.”
“I just called you. Are you home?”
“No. I had dinner with my parents tonight. I’m sitting on a bus heading up the New Jersey Turnpike.”
“Do you have a fat guy sitting next to you?”
“That’s not very pc,” she admonishes.
“Oh, sorry. I meant a weight challenged individual.”
She laughs. “No, I have my own row.”
“Lucky you, wish I was there. So what did Mom make for dinner?
“Chicken. That’s all she ever makes. If not for the bird, I’d have grown up a vegan.”
“I’m a meat and potatoes man myself. There’s a great little steak place out in Brooklyn that my agent took me to a couple of weeks ago. The Embers.”
“I don’t think I’ve heard of it.”
“I’ll take you some time.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure. I called you tonight to see if you wanted to come out and meet me for Italian ices or something.” He emphasizes the ‘something.’
“Something, huh? What kind of something?”
“Close your eyes and imagine, oh, a kitchen counter.”
Renny has goose bumps. “My bus should be in about ten-thirty. Something could happen then.”
“That’s really tempting. But, I’m in bed now. I’ll take a rain check. Okay, tunnel girl?”
“Okay.” Renny keeps the disappointment from her tone.
“Have a good night. Get home safe.”
“You, too. I mean okay.”
Renny closes her phone. “You, too. Duh.” She thwocks her forehead with the phone.
Chapter Eight
Sara’s hair hangs wet around her shoulders, creating water spots on the lime green shirt she bought at Liz Lange Maternity. Coupled with a pair of cropped khaki maternity pants and beige Tod drivers, Sara is fashionably pregnant and ready to go to her Wednesday morning OB appointment. Kneeling in front of Megan in the kitchen, Sara holds up three child-sized shirts.
“No, I don’t want those,” Megan cries clutching the sides of the Barbie nightgown she wears.
“Megan, please! Pick one or Mommy’s going to be late for the doctor’s.”
“No, they hurt.”
“Megan there is nothing wrong with any of these shirts. They don’t hurt.”
“I’m wearing this.”
“You can’t wear a nightgown. That’s just for sleep.”
The doorbell rings. Sara knows it’s her mother coming to accompany them to the obstetrician’s office. At this rate they’ll never make it, Sara thinks, throwing the shirts on the kitchen table and going to answer the door.
“What’s going on here?” her mother asks, her long legs keeping stride with Sara’s as she follows into the kitchen. Dressed for the day in a peach sweater set and a long floral skirt, Sara’s mother is an older and slightly rounder replica of herself.
Sara knows Megan’s frazzled expression is a perfect match for her own. “Do you want to tell Grandma Perri why you won’t get dressed?” Sara says, kneeling down.
Megan shakes her head.
“What are my two girls doing to each other?” Sara’s mother asks.
“She won’t get dressed. We’re never going to make it to this appointment.” Sara picks the shirts up again.
“They hurt,” Megan says defiantly crossing her arms across her chest.
“All of them?” Sara’s mother asks, her hazel eyes glowing as she looks at her granddaughter.
Megan nods.
Sara’s mother holds out her hand to Megan. “Okay, come upstairs with Grandma. We’ll find something and we’ll let Mommy finish doing her hair.” The little girl lets herself be lead away. Her mother has a special bond with Megan and Sara is confident she will persuade her to put something on. Being an only child, Sara sensed long ago that her mother would have liked to have more children, though she never said so in words. When she was five Sara had asked her mother, “When will I have a brother or sister?”
Her mother told her, “You fill our hearts to the brim. Any more and Daddy and I might explode.”
It tickled Sara imagining a heart filling up like a giant water balloon. But as she got older and wondered the same question aloud, Sara noticed the sadness pooling in her mother’s eyes. She learned not to ask anymore. With Megan, her mother became the definition of the doting grandmother.
After drying her hair, Sara finds her mother and Megan taking turns on a toy xylophone in the kitchen. Megan is dressed from head to toe in purple. Purple floral leggings, purple sweatshirt, purple socks and purple barrettes clipped in her hair.
“Mommy, know what day it is?” Megan asks.
“What sweety?”
“Today is purple day.”
“So it is. Okay, let’s get our shoes on.” Sara grabs Megan’s sneakers from a neat row of little shoes in the closet.
Small hands reach past her and pick up a pair of red rubber rain boots with ladybug faces at the toes. “No, these.”
“Megan it’s not raining out. Put on your sneakers.”
“No, these!”
“Honey, you don’t wear rainboots unless it’s raining. Besides, they’re red, not purple. I thought today is purple day.”
“No, they’re purple, too. Right, Grandma?”
Sara’s mother says, “I remember when you were four, Sara, and you insisted on wearing the same pink ballet tutu for three weeks. Do you remember that?”
“Not really,” Sara says.
“I let you wear it, you weren’t hurting anyone. And boy, did you howl when I tried to put it in the wash.”
“How’d you get me to stop wearing it?”
“After three weeks it was a very ripe gray tutu. I think by then it just lost its appeal to you.”
“Okay,” Sara nods, “rainboots it is.”
“Purple rainboots,” Megan reminds them, slipping her feet in.
***
“Turn the page now, Megan,” Sara’s mother says, holding open a children’s book in the waiting room of the obstetrician’s office.
Megan points, “Sam!”
“That’s right.” Her mother continues reading while Megan swings her feet to the rhythm of the words. Sara sits next to them on the waiting room’s muted green chairs, arranged in orderly rows around the room. Sporting her bright purple and red ensemble, Megan stands out from the chairs like a pop-up in a book. If Bart saw her he’d be horrified. “Why does she have to dress like a pedestrian child?” he would have demanded.
Sara sees that she is the only preggie unaccompanied by a husband. She thumbs through the neat pile of magazines that sit on the side table. Parent, Child, Working Mother, Sara wonders if any of them contain an article on how to be an abandoned single mother with one on the way.
“Damn him,” Sara blurts, startling her mother and Megan. Sara forces a smile.
Without missing a word of the children’s book, her mother gives Sara’s hand a gentle squeeze. Sara recalls a comment her mother made not long ago. They were in the parking lot after one of Megan’s classes, swinging her between them on the way to the car. “You know how much you love Megan?” her mother asked.
“More than anything,” Sara said, puzzled by the odd question.
“It’s the same, you know. My love for you and your love for Megan. I love you just as much.”
“I know that Mom.” But at the time, Sara found her mother’s declaration hard to absorb, thinking her own love for Megan to be the most possible.
Her mother squeezes her hand and the warm pressure cradles her. Sara gets it now.
“Sara Matthews,” beckons a smiling nurse in the doorway.
Sara stands and tells Megan, “Mommy will be back in a minute. Stay with Grandma.”
This being baby number two, Sara knows the drill. First stop, pee in a cup. She makes a mental check of whether or not she needs to. Of course she does, she’s pregnant. Taking the little plastic cup the nurse hands her, Sara goes in the lavatory and does her business. She leaves the specimen behind on a shelf with a little door that can be opened on the other side in the lab. The tart floral smell of the wet wipes clings to her hands and for the rest of the day it will remind her of the Jean Nate she used to drench herself with as a teen.
Second stop, the scale. “You gained twenty-five pounds,” the nurse announces while scribbling in her chart. “That’s excellent.”
“I try and eat healthy.” Sara knows some women foolishly pack it on during pregnancy. But she gained twenty-five when she was pregnant with Megan and popped right back into shape after. Weight was never Sara’s problem.
Last stop, the lab. Sitting in a chair one nurse wraps a blood pressure cuff around Sara’s arm. Another nurse retrieves the urine from behind the little door and dips a litmus strip in. What a job, checking pee all day. The nurse nods at Sara approvingly. Her pee is fine.
Moments later in the exam room, the nurse lays a paper sheath on the table. “Everything off from the waist down. You can cover yourself with the drape. Dr. Rumson will be in shortly.”
“Could you have my mother and daughter come in?” Sara asks. “They’d like to hear the heartbeat.”
“Sure.” The nurse closes the door behind her.
Soon everyone is in place, like the second act of a play before the curtain rises. Megan’s face reflects a mixture of wonder and worry as she eyes her Mommy on the exam table.
Dr. Rumson, a stocky man in his late fifties with brown curly hair, enters just as Megan’s hand reaches for Sara’s drape. Her mother intervenes, allowing her daughter to retain a shred of modesty.
“So Sara, are things going well?” The doctor flips through her chart.
“Yes. But, I have been having more Braxton Hicks.”
“That’s to be expected at this stage of the game.” He tells her.
The nurse squirts a glob of gel on the heartbeat listening device with a flick of her wrist, as though she is adding the final spices to simmering stew. She gives the slimy scanner to the doctor.
“Okay, this going to feel cold,” Dr. Rumson warns. Sara grimaces as he squirts goo on her stomach. Going on cold and wet and Sara knows it will be impossible to wipe off. The doctor smiles at Megan. “I see we have some company today. Those are lovely red boots.”
“They’re purple!” Megan declares.
“I see.” He sneaks a wink at Sara. “You’re right, so they are. They’re lovely purple boots.”
Megan beams.
“Let’s see if we can hear anything in Mommy’s tummy, shall we?” Dr. Rumson positions the device low on Sara’s abdomen. “What did you have for breakfast, Sara?”
“Cereal and orange juice.”
His hand slides the device casting ripples over the monitor like ocean waves lapping at the shore. “I think I hear Cheerios. Megan, do you hear that?”
The child’s eyes are wide as she giggles and hides her face in her grandmother’s long skirt. Then over the little speaker the thump-thump of a tiny heartbeat broadcasts loud and clear.
“Baby, baby!” Megan shouts.
Sara sighs. Each time she hears the heartbeat she can’t help being flooded with relief.
Megan points at her mother’s belly, “Megan’s baby.”
How could Bart walk away from this? Sara thinks, blinking back tears.
***
After being poked and prodded in the most invasive way, Sara is left alone in the exam room to reassemble herself. She dresses and then walks to Dr. Rumson’s office, where she finds him in the middle of a phone call. He looks up and waves her in.
“Everything looks good, Sara,” he says, after hanging up the phone.
“How much longer do you think?” she asks taking a seat opposite his desk.
“A few more weeks. That baby is locked up tight as Tupperware. Go ahead and schedule your next appointment for a week from today.”
Tight as Tupperware, Sara thinks. He said she’d be late delivering Megan too, but instead she went into labor a week early.
“Any problems or questions?” Dr Rumson asks.
Problems—just one, her husband left her. Questions—she has a biggie, what is so wrong with her that Bart could walk out at a time like this?
“Sara?
“No everything is fine.”
Dr. Rumson reaches for the phone and Sara takes that as her cue to get up. As she walks t
oward the door, the doctor remarks, “And make sure you tell Bart to rest easy, everything is great.”
Sara feels her heart race.
“Sara, are you alright?” He asks.
She stammers, “Why, why did you say that about Bart?”
“He seemed concerned about your condition when we spoke yesterday. I tried to reassure him. I thought he’d be here with you today.”
Gripping the chair, Sara’s face turns ashen.
“Are you all right?”
She fights to contain her emotions but tears spill out along with the whole story of Bart’s abandonment. Dr. Rumson walks around his desk and eases Sara back into a chair. He slowly slides the tissue box to the edge of the desk closest to her.
She takes gulps of air to calm down and fills up with a mixture of relief and embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lay this all on you. It just caught me off guard that Bart called here. I don’t even know where he is. He called just once and said he was on his way to California.”
“Sara, I had to return his message. I think the number was a 212 area code.”
“I don’t understand.”
“In fact I’m sure it was a 212,” Dr. Rumson drives home the point. “Apparently Bart is still in New York my dear.”
Sara’s head throbs.
Dr. Rumson hands her a tissue. “Sara, you’re not the first patient I’ve had to go through something like this. Expecting a baby can bring out all sorts of feelings and emotions for both the mother and the father. Many can be overwhelming. Right now, the most important thing is for you to concentrate on your health and the health of the baby.” He scribbles quickly on a pad on his desk and then rips off the top sheet and hands it to Sara. “That’s the name of a therapist, in case you need to talk. Everything else will fall in to place. You’ll see.”
Nice words, but they don’t console her. She glances at the doctor’s name in her hand. Maybe she’d go talk to him, but right now she feels as though something is compressing her chest. This must be what heartbreak feels like.
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