We step outside into the cool air and I know it’s just my imagination playing tricks on me, but I think I feel a kick inside my belly. This imaginary kick sends my imagination reeling—I already love my unborn baby so much, and I know John will love him or her too. Scenes of the three of us playing in the park and relaxing in far away foreign places flood my mind.
The flash of a dozen cameras snaps me out of my fantasy.
“Get away, get away,” screams Janet, swinging her purse at them on its long imitation leather strap. “You vultures.”
“Come on, Janet,” I say, grabbing her my the sleeve and practically dragging her through the pack of paparazzi into the parking garage.
“You get used to it,” I say, once we settle into the car.
“They’re animals,” she says.
“It’s fine,” I say. “They’re always taking pictures of me now. I just have to remember not to read the tabloid newspapers or look online at the celebrity gossip.”
“Easy for you to say,” says Janet. “The whole world is watching your every move.”
15
John
I wake up in something of a daze and throw my two pillows to the other side of the bed. I sit up a little, resting myself
I pull out my phone and check the news sites as I always do before even getting out of bed. I have a number of alerts set to myself and my company. It’s one of the ways I stay on top of the competition.
The annoying thing is that occasionally the news alerts bring up some gossip stories about me and Sarah. There’s nothing that I haven’t seen before, though.
Nothing I haven’t seen before, that is, until today.
The headline catches my eye and I can’t get it out of my head.
“Billionaire’s Girlfriend Pregnant. Who’s the father?” reads the headline.
My head starts spinning. This isn’t going to make the morning any easier. I haven’t even had my coffee yet. I take a deep breath and clap my hands, turning the lights in the bedroom on.
I hold the phone closer to my face and keep reading. The brightness of the phone is somewhat jarring this early in the morning, so I turn it down on one of the settings.
“Cleaner girlfriend of billionaire spotted coming from prenatal visit. You’ll note from the pictures that she’s been wearing less and less revealing clothing over the last few weeks. Sources confirm that her baby bump is developing nicely. The doctor in question has refused to comment at this time…”
I’m just scanning the article.
My heart feels like it’s hit the floor.
I’m good at interpreting news. You have to be in my line of work. And while this article comes from one of the least reputable online sites, it still has the ring of truth to it. Or, in this case, the stink of truth.
Following the article are a series of pictures that show zoomed in shots of Sarah’s belly. There’s an unmistakable bulge, like the one I noticed yesterday. This isn’t indigestion, that’s for sure.
I’m not 100% certain Sarah’s pregnant, but right now I’d wager that there’s a 90% chance that she’s pregnant.
I take a series of deep breaths before calling Sarah.
“Hello?” says Sarah.
“Did you see the article?” I say, somehow unable to make my tone sound friendly and caring.
After all, how could she be hiding this from me? Is she seeing someone else on the side? Was she seeing someone right before me, and got pregnant with his kid? What the hell is going on?”
“What article?” says Sarah.
“There’s a new article about you,” I say.
“You told me it’s probably better not to read what the tabloids have to say about me.”
“Did you get a paparazzi attack yesterday?” I say.
Sarah pauses for a moment. “Yeah,” she says. “I was with Janet and I had to stop her from killing them all with her pocket book.”
Sarah laughs but I don’t.
“Where were you coming from?”
“Oh,” says Sarah. “A doctor’s appointment.”
“Are you pregnant?” I say.
I finally just say it. I don’t know how to skirt around the possible truth any longer.
There’s an incredibly long pause on the other side of the line.
“Yes,” comes Sarah’s answer, incredibly faint. Her voice sounds like it’s fallen off a cliff. It barely reaches me.
“I don’t know what to say,” I say.
“It’s not what you think!” says Sarah, her voice becoming livelier again, but sounding frantic.
“I don’t know what to say,” I say again, before hanging up the phone.
I’ve never hung up on Sarah before and she’s never hung up on me.
I look around the room and it suddenly appears incredibly bleak, as if nothing has ever lived in this room, including me. I feel horrible dead inside. My world is crashing around me. There’s nothing… My thoughts are jumbled.
My eyes close and I fall into a world of anxiety. No amount of deep breathing will help me now. No amount of meditation will help me.
My eyes open and the room appears again, but it looks fuzzy this time.
The cell phone lies on the bed where I dropped it. Sarah’s name is on the “most recently called” list.
I want the lights out. They’re too bright, even though they’re soft. I don’t have the energy to clap my hands.
All my fears about dating woman are rushing through my anxious mind. With good reason, I’ve always been worried that they’re just after me for my money. Everyone knows the best way to get a billionaire’s money is either marry him…but, what’s actually the best way is to have his baby. Countless lawyers have counseled me on the possibility.
What am I suppose to think? Sarah doesn’t seem like that at all. But has she been playing me all along? She got pregnant by me. I remember we’ve never once used a condom. She always told me she was on the pill. And I trusted her.
But, maybe it’s not my baby. Maybe Sarah knew she wouldn’t get pregnant from me because she was already pregnant.
But isn’t that possibility much, much worse? Sarah pregnant with another man’s child.
I don’t know what to think.
I spend at least an hour lying in bed not knowing what to think or how to think it. The phone rings more than a few times and I don’t check it, but I know that it’s Sarah calling me, trying to explain things. But I don’t know what to say to her and I don’t want to listen to her explanations right now.
She’s pregnant and she didn’t tell me.
My head is getting a little clearer now. If she has my baby, that’d be great. If she’s going to have someone else’s baby, that’d be OK too, and I’d be willing to help Sarah raise the kid…just like it was my own.
The part I can’t get around is that Sarah lied to me. And lied to me about such a big thing. This isn’t a little lie. This isn’t her telling me that she had something else for lunch when she really had a box of doughnuts. Not that I would care about that either.
The phone rings and this time I pick it up.
“Hello?” I say, my voice sounding strangely weak.
“The stocks have tanked again,” says Jeff.
“What?” I say, unable to comprehend what he’s saying.
“It’s bad this time. I read the news. I know you’re going through a lot…”
“Going through a lot? Is that all you have to say to me. I don’t give a damn about the fucking stocks, you asshole.”
“I just thought we had to keep the business going…after all, people’s jobs depend on those stock prices… people have their entire retirements in those stocks…”
I hang up the phone, and it doesn’t ring again.
Jeff is right but I can’t deal with that stuff now. Stock prices are the last thing on my mind.
The phone rings again and I look at it, this time actually hoping that it’s Sarah so I can talk to her.
“Hello?” I say, my voice st
ill faint.
“John, I want to explain everything,” she says, her voice sounding frantic. “I wanted to tell you. I really did. But everything was going so well. I didn’t want to ruin it.”
I let the phone drop to my side and Sarah’s voice continues talking. But I can’t make out what she’s saying because the volume isn’t loud enough to reach my ears.
I just stare at the phone, which is now on the floor, the battery case having fallen away. Sarah’s very faint voice continues to chatter away. I can just barely hear that’s there but I can’t even hear the tone of her voice. Eventually she stops talking and I see that the screen of the phone goes blank and black.
Somehow, I fall asleep. That happens to me sometimes with anxiety. The world goes dark despite the lights in the luxurious bedroom that now means absolutely nothing to me. I’d give all my worldly riches away and live in a cardboard shack if it meant Sarah and I could be happy together, but how can that be when she’s been deceiving me this entire time? Our whole relationship is built on a huge lie.
My dreams are terrifying I awake when it’s dark outside, shivering, in a cold sweat.
16
Sarah
“What am I going to do?” I say, sitting on my busted up hard wood floor.
“I don’t know,” says Janet, sitting on the sofa, looking about as concerned as I am.
“Isn’t this where you tell me it was going to happen? Isn’t this where you tell me that you were right all along and that I should have been more honest with him?”
“I don’t really feel like it,” says Janet. “You’re in enough trouble as it is.”
“I know,” I say, my voice sounding faint. “He’s not answering his phone.”
“He’s probably upset,” says Janet.
“Don’t you think I know that?” I say, snapping at her angrily.
“There’s no need to get upset with me,” says Janet. “I’m not the one who did this.”
“There you go. Now it starts. Come on, tell me what an idiot I’ve been.”
But to my surprise, Janet doesn’t do anything like that. Instead, she comes and sits on the floor with me and puts her arm around me.
“It’s going to be OK,” she says, her voice sounding surprisingly soothing for Janet’s voice. Normally it’s as shrill as my mother’s.
Oh God. My mother… I’d completely forgotten about her. It’s much easier to do now that I live on my own.
“I’ve got to call my mom,” I say. “She’s going to be freaking out.”
But just as I reach for my phone, the phone starts to ring. It’s my mother.
“Hi, mom,” I say, making an effort to keep my voice normal.
“You didn’t want to tell me you were pregnant? How long has this been going on?” She’s not yelling and her voice isn’t even shrill but from many, many years of experience I know that this means she’s actually truly angry right now.
“I…” I start to say, but my mom cuts me off and launches into another tirade.
“How could you?” she says. “How could you do it? Were you going to keep your grandchildren hidden from me too? Have you been pregnant since that day when you were stuck in the bathroom, talking on the phone with someone?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“OK,” says my mom. “That makes sense that you’re showing then.”
“Since when do you know so much about pregnancies?”
“Well I had you, didn’t I?”
For some reason, this makes me laugh. I don’t know if it’s tension breaking, since the problems are all still here, and the tension’s still here, but I laugh and laugh. Janet looks at me like I’m crazy.
“Feel better?” says my mom, her voice sounding more normal and more shrill. That’s actually a good sign.
“A little,” I admit. “I would have told you, mom, but I was scared of what you’d say. I didn’t even tell the father.”
“And he’s this billionaire you’ve been going out with?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know some of the tabloids are saying it’s his kid and some are saying it’s someone else’s but I haven’t been with anyone else in a long time, well before John.”
“And you were worried that if he found out he’d freak out and you’d ruin the relationship?”
“Yeah,” I say, surprised that my mom is being so understanding. “I didn’t want to start the relationship off on the wrong foot so to speak and then the days just went on and on and soon they slipped into months.”
“Have you talked to him about it yet?”
“Not really,” I say. “He’s not picking up the phone.”
“He’s probably just going through a bit of shock,” says my mom. “It’s a lot to digest from his point of view. I’m sure you two will work it out. I’ve seen the way you two look at each other.”
“Where have you seen that?”
“In the tabloids of course,” says my mom.
“I knew you followed the tabloids,” I say. “But I didn’t realize you followed me so closely in them.”
“Well of course I do,” says my mom. “You’re my daughter after all.”
With Janet sitting there and with John probably furious with me, I end up having one of the best conversations with my mom that I’ve ever had. I guess it took a tabloid crisis situation for her to act understanding towards me. Oh well, if that’s what it takes then that’s what it takes.
When I get off the phone, I tell Janet that I’ve got to talk to John.
“You’re going over to his place?” she says.
I shrug. “I don’t know what else to do. I’ve got to talk to him. I’ve got to make him understand somehow. First of all, I realize he doesn’t even know if it’s his baby or not. That might make him upset—if he thought I was running around with other guys and then keeping their babies secret from him.
“I’m coming with you,” says Janet.
I shake my head. “I’d better go alone,” I say.
“I’ll keep my phone by if you need me,” she says.
I still don’t have a car, and I wouldn’t want one in this city, so I take the train over to Manhattan and walk from the station over to John’s apartment building. I doubt he’d be at work.
It’s kind of interesting to me, if I can step back from the mild crisis situation—I feel strangely calm.
I doubt John’s feeling like that though. After all, I have the feeling that everything is going to work out in the end. But that’s because I know the truth about the baby. John, however, has no idea what’s going on. My heart reels for him momentarily. He must feel completely terrible. He must feel like I betrayed him.
I’ve never just gone into his building before without calling him. He’s always just suggested I call him and he’d meet me at the front lobby by the elevator.
So I try calling him again but of course he doesn’t pick up.
OK, I said I was strangely calm, but I’m starting to panic. After all, I remember, he hasn’t answered his phone all day. How many hours has it been now? I glance at my cell phone’s clock and I’m not sure.
I take a deep breath and walk into the building, realizing that I have no idea how this super fancy super high tech building works. All I know is that John has some kind of keyless entry device that opens up the elevator doors for him. He has one of those penthouses where the elevator door opens right up into his apartment without any extra doors. Of course, for a place like that, the security has to be extremely high.
“Can I help you, miss?” says the decidedly human doorman. And I was half expecting a robot doorman, but I don’t know why, since I’ve seen this particular doorman at least twenty or thirty times since I started seeing John.
“I’m trying to see John,” I say, and I explain that I’m worried about him and that he’s not answering my phone calls.
“John who?” says the man, his eyes not giving a hint of acknowledgement that he even recognizes me.
“John Clark,” I say.
�
��I see,” says the man. “And how do you know that Mr. Clark lives here?”
“Come on,” I say. “Don’t pull this crap with me. I’ve seen you a couple dozen times. And each time I’ve been with John. Can’t you just let me up to his apartment? I’m really worried about him.”
“I’m sure Mr. Clark will appreciate your concern,” says the doorman. “But I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
I walk away in a huff. I send John a text message with a ton of exclamation marks that says, “Are you OK? Doorman is being an asshole. Come down and let me in. Just let me know you’re OK!!!”
Of course, no response from the text message.
But now I’m worried for a slightly different reason. The way that doorman acted, it was almost as if he has special instructions not to let me up and to ignore me. That’s the way people act in positions like that when they’ve been told something, isn’t it?
Does that mean John’s just going to cut me off and stop seeing me? I go into a mild panic, and have to sit down against the building outside. The wind is cold and blowing fast and freely. I pull my knees up to my chest and sit there on the cold concrete sidewalk shivering like I’ve never shivered before.
I feel my slightly bulging belly against my legs and suddenly I begin to really freak out.
Is this the end of my relationship with John? Why isn’t he contacting me?
Why was I such an idiot? Why didn’t I tell him? Maybe this entire thing would have gone completely differently if I’d just told him right from the beginning that I was pregnant from that first night. I can’t believe it! I can’t believe I thought it was OK to do what I’ve done.
“Are you OK, lady?” says an old man who’s walking by. He’s dressed to the nines and holds a fancy looking poodle by a long leash.
I shake my head and now I’m sobbing. I can’t even get the words out.
“It’ going to be OK,” says the old man, squatting down to get a better look at me. He puts a comforting hand on my arm.
His dog comes over and starts licking my face. At any other time it would make me giggle but right now it just has the effect of making me feel a little better.
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