by Ashton Lee
Maura Beth managed a conciliatory smile and a half-hearted wave of her hand. But perhaps the person whose jaw had dropped the most as a result of Elise’s outburst was Alex Brandon, and he was left shaking his head as she headed for the exits as fast as her third trimester girth would allow.
* * *
Although the rest of Beryl Craine’s presentation went off without incident and was well-received, it was Jeremy who came up with the spontaneous idea of inviting Alex over for dinner later that evening. He and Maura Beth had just gotten home from the library and shed their coats when he picked up the phone in the kitchen and reached out to his cohort.
“If you haven’t already eaten, we’d love to have you. It’s just leftovers, but we’re both pretty good cooks over here on Painter Street,” Jeremy concluded.
In fact, Alex had not eaten anything since his forgettable lunch of chili, green peas, and a cardboard roll at the high school cafeteria and accepted gratefully.
“I think he’s probably in shock, Maurie,” Jeremy said after hanging up. “Bachelors need their nourishment, too, you know. Plus, I tried to warn him about Leesie, but I guess he just had to see for himself.”
Maura Beth sounded both resigned and guilty. “Well, we both told him to drop by the library for the meeting. I feel responsible, too. But now that I’ve had a chance to think about it a little more, I think maybe Elise got a bad rap at the meeting. She’s nothing if not highly researched, and I think she had a right to bring up the historical perspective on Lamaze. I, for one, had no idea any of that had gone on.”
“Well, this is hardly something new. Leesie will store things up until suddenly everything just explodes on her. You never know where or when it will happen, but the best you can hope for is to stay out of the direct line of fire.”
Maura Beth looked skeptical. “There was nothing dangerous about what she said at the library.”
Jeremy’s tone grew very somber. “Okay, I’ll grant you that. But I really wonder if she has the temperament to be a mother. She’s going to expect so much from this kid, and children shouldn’t be approached like classroom experiments. Does that sound like a horrible thing to say about my own sister? But I really can’t help believing she didn’t think this whole pregnancy thing through all the way. Her big problem is she thinks too much in terms of the theoretical, not the practical.”
Maura Beth moved to the freezer and retrieved a big plastic bag of frozen chicken gumbo she had put up during the summer, knowing there would be times ahead when she wouldn’t feel like making meals from scratch. That, some rice, and some jalapeño cornbread would be on the menu for their last-minute company.
“Of course, I’ve gotten to know Elise a lot better since we invented The Free Sample Sisters, so I’m well aware of her moods. But I can’t very well point my finger at her, since I move the needle on the preggers meter back and forth myself a good bit, as I don’t have to tell you.”
“Yeah, you do, sweetheart,” he said, blowing her a kiss. “But you have to know it’s all good with me.”
She caught his kiss and said, “The truth is, your sister has confessed to me that she’s had moments when she wonders if she can go through with the pregnancy. Then, she and I—and sometimes Periwinkle and Connie—will talk it all out, and Elise’s doubts seem to disappear just like that. She’s the ultimate chameleon among us very pregnant chameleons.”
Jeremy busied himself setting the kitchen table and said, “I had no idea she’d been researching Lamaze that way. Or that she would go on the attack quite like that in such a public setting. Sometimes it’s difficult to predict her triggers.”
“Poor Alex,” Maura Beth said, putting on a pot of boiling water for the gumbo. “We both saw his face when she started lecturing everybody. He even physically stepped away from her a tad bit like he’d forgotten to put the chain of garlic around his neck or something.”
Jeremy managed a skeptical grin. “His face was no worse than the others as I looked around the stage and out in the auditorium. Everyone showed up expecting something soothing and constructive to happen, which they eventually got. But it was rough going there for a minute or two. I know I felt uncomfortable until Leesie got it all out of her system.”
Maura Beth popped the slab of frozen jalapeño cornbread she had made earlier in the week into the oven and then sat down at the kitchen table, while a quizzical expression crept into her features. “So this is more like a ‘take pity on Alex’ dinner, am I reading you right?”
Jeremy pulled up a chair. “Not exactly. There’s more to it than that. I have a few questions I’d like to ask him about his interest in my sister. Maybe now that he’s seen her in action, he’ll come clean with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I suspect he has an ulterior motive in all this. Perhaps a good, home-cooked meal will draw it out of him.”
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll serve up the food. You serve up the questions.”
* * *
It did not take long for the dinner conversation to focus on what had happened at the library earlier. In fact, it was Alex who brought it up shortly after he had complimented Maura Beth on her gumbo and cornbread.
“I could eat this every day of the week,” he told her with a grateful smile. “You’re one lucky guy, Jeremy.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You sure weren’t exaggerating about your sister, though,” Alex continued. “That was something else this evening.”
Jeremy took a sip of his Chardonnay and quickly shifted gears. “Yes, it was, but if you want to know the truth, I still have the feeling you’re holding something back regarding your interest in Leesie. Or am I just imagining things?”
Alex put down his spoon, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and cleared his throat.
“You’re a pretty perceptive guy, Jeremy. I think that’s one of the main reasons we’ve hit it off as much as we have at the high school. So maybe it’s time I leveled with you. I teach history because it’s the one subject that changes with each passing day. Math is math, English is English, and so on. They’re pretty static. But give history a few weeks, months, or years, and a whole new chapter gets written about the world we live in. Things are always changing, and I want to keep up with them in a substantive way. I haven’t confided in you before because I wanted to wait until I had everything organized, but I have a special project under way with one of my classes.”
Jeremy sat back, looking puzzled. “Glad to hear it. But what does that have to do with my sister?”
“Here’s the payoff. My advanced class in Social and Intellectual History of America is tackling the theme of changes in the nuclear family in the millennium. Their term papers are expected to include various aspects of sociological changes, and it just seemed to me that your sister would make the perfect guest speaker for my class. Obviously, she’d be concentrating on issues like single mothers and their choices. If you want to know the truth, I guess I was a little bit intimidated by her academic credentials and wondered if she’d even consider working with me on something like this.”
Jeremy and Maura Beth made furtive eye contact, and he said, “Ah, the truth comes out at last. Well, I don’t think you have much to worry about. This sounds like something right up Leesie’s alley. You should have mentioned it to me right off the bat.”
“I seriously thought about it, but what if you didn’t approve? Teachers’ lounge talk over coffee and doughnuts is generally pretty superficial to pass the time between classes, although we’ve dug a little deeper now and then. I wanted to proceed cautiously.”
Jeremy made a whistling noise. “Nah, you don’t need to step on eggshells around me. I’m just a thickheaded guy.” He thought for a while and then became suddenly animated, as if a wave of energy had been poured atop his head and covered his entire body. “Hey, I just got this great idea. I’ve spent months tracking Maurie’s pregnancy—Leesie’s, too, for that matter. You should see all my note-taking. Maurie can vouch for the
fact that I’ve gotten a little intense myself at times. At first, I wanted to see if I could get a novel out of it. But now I’m thinking I’ve been going at it the wrong way. Instead of trying to be a man making sense out of a woman’s experiences, what if I wrote a book called Fatherhood for Dummies or something like that?”
Maura Beth’s voice was full of patronizing affection. “Sweetheart, I think that’s perfectly brilliant. You’ve gotten in my way so adorably more times than you can even imagine all these months. Writing a book telling fathers-to-be what not to do might turn out to be a bestseller. I say full speed ahead.”
Jeremy worked at pretending to be hurt but couldn’t pull it off. “Have I really been that much of a nuisance?”
She smiled at him sweetly. “As I said, you’ve been adorable about it all, and I even think Elise would be happy to help you organize things if you asked her. She’s got the credentials.”
“That’s a great idea, Maurie. Maybe we could pool our resources.”
“And I could talk up your classroom speaker idea to Elise the next time The Free Sample Sisters drop by The Cherico Market,” Maura Beth told Alex. “She’s always in her best mood when she’s nibbling those freebies. We all are. We just revert to carefree little kids in the candy store, and we’re pretty certain our babies don’t object.”
“That would be great. Maybe I could help you with your book, too, Jeremy,” Alex said. “I’ve got a few anecdotes about a man’s behavior during pregnancy I can pass along from my own family that my mom told me about my dad. Really funny but clumsy things he did when I was on the way.”
Jeremy nodded enthusiastically. “Well, go ahead. Share something with us right now.”
Alex laughed out loud. “Well, there’s one that particularly stands out. It seems Dad had seen that rerun of I Love Lucy where Ricky and the Mertzes rehearse what all they’re gonna do when Lucy announces it’s time to go to the hospital for the big event. I guess everyone’s seen it at one time or another since the show is still on TV somewhere. Anyway, Dad put together this checklist of things to do when the time came. Mom said he even had them printed out on a sheet—one through twelve. Things like making sure the car always had plenty of gas, a ziplock bag full of snacks for himself to munch on, a couple of his favorite magazines to read while he was waiting, and stuff like that. Mom said that most of the things on the list were about him, though. Not much about her. I mean, she could picture him out in the waiting room leisurely munching on Fritos and reading Sports Illustrated while she was busy pushing me out. I don’t think Dad was real big on the ‘coach in the delivery room’ thing. It wasn’t as big back then as it is now.”
Jeremy looked intrigued. “So what happened when the time for the delivery came?”
“Well, when Mom gave him the word, it didn’t fit his time frame. She said he obviously expected it to come conveniently for the both of them—maybe like while they were watching primetime TV, or after they’d gotten up in the morning, had breakfast, and had their eyes wide open and their wits about them. Instead, it came in the middle of the night. Dad freaked and suddenly couldn’t find anything, including the car keys. They’d only been on a hook in the kitchen since they moved into the apartment. He was frantic, running around their apartment, rifling through drawers, his coat pockets—anywhere but the usual place. Just like in the I Love Lucy episode, everything fell apart. But it got worse than that. Mom pretty much had to take charge right in the middle of her contractions and calm him down. It wasn’t too funny at the time, she said, but they both managed to laugh at it once they got me safely home. She said it just proved it was a good thing men couldn’t get pregnant. They would plan everything down to the last detail like it was an I Love Lucy episode and then promptly make a spectacle of themselves like roosters with their heads cut off. That was her exact phrase.”
“That’s great stuff,” Jeremy said. “What do you think, Maurie?”
“Put enough things like that together, and I think you’ve got a great book,” she said, winking at Alex.
* * *
In bed later that night, Maura Beth was particularly restless—perhaps because her baby was restless, too. A kick here, a kick there—there was no rhyme or reason to it—just a little trooper exploring its warm, cozy universe. As a result, sleep was eluding her for not the first time during her pregnancy, but a wide-awake brain gave her plenty of time to work certain things out. It suddenly came to her very clearly that too much was up for grabs, and there was no need for that to be the case now. So she reached over and grabbed Jeremy’s arm, vigorously shaking him out of his sleep, which had been accentuated with an intermittent gurgle.
“Whu-whut? Whuzz wrong?” he said, half mumbling. He sat up and caught the expression on her face by the light of the scented votive candle they had chosen to let burn all the way down. She did not appear to be upset. Instead, she looked positively inspired.
“No, nothing’s wrong. It’s not the baby or anything like that. I’ve just had an idea. I think you and I should go ahead and ask Dr. Lively about our baby’s gender, and we should tell Elise she should go up to Memphis Children’s Hospital and do the same thing.”
Jeremy blinked a couple of times while clearing his brain. “Okay, that’s fine with me. I told you I was going to leave it up to you anyway. But tell me why you want Leesie to ask?”
“I think it’ll help her come down to earth about her pregnancy. If she can know for certain that her life will be with her little girl or her little boy, she can plan accordingly. There won’t be any more guesswork. As things stand, she’s still too caught up in her sociology and gender politics for her own good. That’s not going to help her with the day-to-day tasks of taking care of a baby.”
Jeremy was nodding enthusiastically. “Well, it’s worth a shot. I agree that she’s got her head in the clouds about what it means to bring a child into this world. Hey, going off on Lamaze the way she did still makes me worry about her. But what about us? Why did you decide we needed to know all of a sudden?”
Maura Beth sat up straighter and drew in her breath as her baby kicked once again.
“Well, our little darling is pretty active tonight for starters. It just reminds me that we’re getting closer and closer to the due date in late January. But mainly I want to get Mama off my back with all this hounding about names. There’s no way I’ll end up pleasing her, so I’m going to call her after we see Dr. Lively and tell her that we’ve decided to do it our way, period. No more hemming and hawing over the phone just to try to keep the peace. She needs to know once and for all that we are not giving any of our children first names that were last popular in the nineteenth century and that actually used to be last names. They’ll go through school hating us for it.”
“You are one smart mama tonight, aren’t you?” Jeremy said, leaning over and gently kissing her on the lips.
“Yes, I am, and there will be no more discussion about this. I’m serious,” Maura Beth said, pulling back slightly. “So you and I need to make our own list tomorrow at the kitchen table after we have breakfast. Simple, respectable names for a boy and a girl. No boy names for a girl, and no girl names for a boy. Nothing cutesy or trendy or futuristic or androgynous, either. I’d like to get back to basics on this.”
“Give me a high five,” Jeremy said, and they executed it quickly. “For the record, I do not want a junior if it’s a boy. I’ve always believed everybody should have a unique name. A sensible name that belongs to them and nobody else. There are no juniors, seconds, thirds, and fourths in my little corner of the world. The gene split makes that impossible.”
“I agree.”
“And I didn’t want to say anything all this time, but I would have been pretty upset if you had caved in to your mother and saddled our child with a string of historical family names that are a trial to spell, remember, and pronounce. So we’re on the same page. We’ll get this done in the kitchen tomorrow.”
Despite what had happened at the library, Maura B
eth truly felt that she had won the day and took a deep, cleansing breath of gardenia-scented air. Maybe that would even calm the baby down long enough for her to drift off.
“Let’s sleep on it and see what we can come up with,” she said, sinking back onto her pillows with a hopeful smile.
8
Who’s in the Oven?
The Reveal Party at their Lake Cherico lodge was Connie’s idea, once she had found out that both Maura Beth and Elise would be going up to Memphis Children’s Hospital to get the big news from Dr. Lively. She lost no time in spreading the word, chiefly to her fellow Cherry Cola Book Club friends.
“It’s not going to be anything fancy,” she had told them all over the phone. “Just a few side dishes, canapés, and cocktails, obviously something soft or juices for the pregnant mothers. One level below our Cherry Cola Book Club outings, but come help us celebrate.”
Nearly everyone was on board with enthusiasm: Becca and Justin Brachle, Voncille and Locke Linwood, Periwinkle and Parker Place, library front desk clerks Renette Posey and Marydell Crumpton, and library benefactors, Mamie Crumpton and Nora Duddney. Newcomers such as Ana Estrella, who had won the Queen of the Cookbooks prize in July, then turned around and generously donated the money to the library for an ESL program, were excited to be coming as well.
“We seem to have become the staging area for all the major events in Maura Beth’s adult life,” Douglas said a half hour before their guests would start arriving. He and Connie were putting the finishing touches on the tempting buffet they had prepared for the gathering. “First, her wedding, and now this.”
“She’s very comfortable with us,” Connie said, placing sprigs of parsley in strategic places. Although she had originally intended to offer something more casual to her guests, the hostess gene within her simply would not let her settle for such a thing. She had also baked two small, almond-flavored cakes—one with pink icing and one with blue icing—to cover all the bases.