Melissa begged him for details regularly.
He would not budge.
One night, she woke up in the middle of the night and pretended that she had a craving to know precisely what it was that he was planning for them to do. He would cheerfully get her peanut butter and saltines and lemon juice and, later, ketchup and radishes and chocolate covered marshmallows, but he would not spill any details regarding his idea, or what it was that they would be doing when Melissa was done with her job.
Finally it came to be Melissa’s last day at work. She shelved one last pile of books, the new librarian whom she'd been training to take her place officially logged in under her non-training credentials to the library network system, and the small group of staffers and library aficionados threw her a tiny book-themed party. They made sure that she was given very old and battered versions of each of her favorite works by most of her favorite authors (they were library editions which Melissa had shelved thousands of times but were now being replaced by shiny, personality-free newer versions).
Melissa handed in her key and waved goodbye, and then drove herself home.
On the way, she passed her old apartment, and she looked at it wistfully. She'd just gone ahead and terminated her old lease. She was now living full-time with Rodger. Of course, this was what they'd been doing since she'd found out that she was pregnant with their little boy or girl (they were about to find out, and she was very excited; the anatomy ultrasound was scheduled for the next day), but the act of getting rid of her old apartment made it feel real in a way which she'd been mentally avoiding up until that minute.
When she walked in the door, she noticed a very large and conspicuous suitcase standing in the atrium.
“Are you moving out?”
She realized that she was talking to an empty room. Melissa dropped her purse on the ground and began to stalk throughout the rooms of their home, looking for Rodger.
He was sitting in their bedroom looking up at her with the devilish grin which he'd really been wearing far too often in the recent past.
“So, tell me,” said Melissa. “The suitcase.”
“How’d the party go?”
Rodger got up and walked around the room with a bemused grin on his face.
“Work go well? Tell me everything.”
“Stop it,” said Melissa. “Stop it! There’s a suitcase! In the atrium!”
And, more than that, there was a distinct sparkle in the air, a note of excitement which hadn't been there before. Or, well, hadn't been there since they were aware that they'd gotten pregnant. There had been a lot of excitement in the home after that revelation. But not for awhile.
It was back.
“Suitcase,” Melissa said again.
“Well, travel will be happening,” said Rodger.
“Wow,” said Melissa. “Thanks for putting that in the most vague way you possibly could have.”
“Any time,” said Rodger.
There was another pause while Rodger looked very happy and Melissa got more frustrated.
“You’re aware that you’re baiting a pregnant woman,” said Melissa.
“I’ve been doing that for months.”
“Yeah, and stopping that right about now would be the best course of action. Where are you going?”
Rodger sat on their bed. “What makes you think it’s just me?”
“There’s just one suitcase.”
“There’s just one suitcase in the atrium. I already packed yours.”
“Interesting.”
Melissa fell on the bed next to him. “So where are we going?”
“Well, I was trying to think o something which we could do that would be fresh and novel for me, but wouldn’t make you nauseated, and would fulfill the one criteria which you made clear was most important to you: that you have time to work on your book.” He paused and looked at Melissa expectantly, as if he expected to be applauded for this, that he'd deigned to remember something which she'd said to him approximately thirty times.
Melissa shook her head. She was in a very testy mood at the moment. He was doing something endearing; he was taking her wishes into account. That wasn’t something which every man did. She smiled, and let her gaze melt into Rodger’s. “Thank you, honey,” she said.
“You’re welcome, of course,” said Rodger. “I know that the next bit of your pregnancy is probably going to be rough for you.”
Melissa resisted the urge to correct him. As it stood, she was heading into her second trimester soon. She was very much hoping that everything she'd heard, both from friends and from people online, about the second trimester glow and the much hoped for cessation of her constant cramping and nausea, would soon be coming.
“You’re so kind to be thinking of all this, Rodger,” she said. “I hope I’ll be feeling better soon, but we really can’t count on much until the baby comes.”
His gaze softened. The pregnancy was an omnipresence in their lives, but whenever the baby, specifically, was brought up, Rodger could be counted upon to melt. Melissa knew that he was going to be an extremely thoughtful father. He'd already bought the baby an entire room full of gifts.
Suddenly, Rodger’s face lit up as if he himself were a small boy on Christmas morning. “Tomorrow, right? We’re finding out whether we’re having a boy or a girl tomorrow morning!”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Melissa, bemused. She wondered if Rodger had forgotten this salient fact.
“I’ve blocked off the entire day for the appointment,” said Rodger exultantly. “And then—and then, well, after that, we’re going on a cruise.”
“A cruise?”
Melissa had never been on a boat before. She felt a surreal mixture of excitement and abject fear swirl in the pit of her stomach. She reconsidered. Actually, it had probably just been something related to pregnancy hormones.
“Yeah,” said Rodger. “I found an incredible one that docks at a few islands in the Caribbean over the course of a month. There will be expeditions whenever the ship lands that I can go on to be all action-y, you know I’ll like that. And you’ll be welcome to come too, of course you will, but there’s also a spa on-deck and lots of lawn chairs that you can sit on while you write and just feel—oh, you’ll just feel amazing. You’ll love it, I know.”
“A month?”
”Yeah, a month,” said Rodger. “I figured it was long enough to completely relax us, as well as being just enough time for you to get some really solid work done on your novel.”
“Interesting, interesting,” said Melissa. “But, you see—I’m pregnant.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“But we have appointments and things to do, don’t you see,” said Melissa. “What if something goes wrong?”
“If something goes wrong, we’ll have access to instant medical care on the ship,” Rodger said. “Plus, you can officially go on a cruise as a pregnant woman up until about halfway through the pregnancy. We’ll get home just before then, it’s perfect. And I’ve cleared it with our doctor, and he’s going to officially transfer care and everything to the medic on board the ship. He has no concerns whatever for you, you’ll be right as rain.”
“That’s good to hear,” mumbled Melissa. She felt a little peculiar about having such a very large responsibility taken care of for her as a surprise, but then, she knew that Rodger luxuriated in such large, overt gestures of affection for her. She loved that about him.
“So, are you in?” Rodger said.
“When do we leave? I feel like I don’t know much about what’s happening,” said Melissa.
“Well, that’s because I haven’t told you.”
Melissa bristled at this. Rodger noticed, and hastened to add—
“So, sit back, relax, and let me tell you all about what we’re going to be doing. After I get you some ice cream from the fridge. Come on, let’s go, let’s do this….”
Melissa settled back against their headboard, carefully propped up
by a battalion of pillows, while Rodger scurried to the kitchen and back and then came to her with a whole basket of very good-looking treats.
“And here’s your ice cream,” he said, proffering a whole pint of something which looked as if it had every chocolate chip analogue the candy counter had to offer. Melissa took it and smiled. She even saw what looked like the back half of a Swedish Fish poking out of a scoop of vanilla.
“Right, then,” she said. “What are we doing? You’re so good at planning things, I’m not worried, but I would like to know what we’re getting ourselves into.”
“Well, it’s simple,” said Rodger, shuffling back into the cushions beside her. “We’ll leave straight from our doctor’s appointment tomorrow. We’ll be flying down to Florida, spending a night in a wonderful little boutique hotel I found for us, and then boarding our ship the day after.”
“Sounds simple enough,” said Melissa, whose brain was spinning. “Is there any paperwork I need to help with? Documents I need to have?”
“Nope, I took care of all that last week,” said Rodger crisply. “A few things you need to sign, of course, but I wanted this to be a surprise.”
“Well, it’s very much been one,” said Melissa. “You did a great job.”
“Thanks,” said Rodger, finally relaxing. “I’m really looking forward to it.”
“It’s going to be fantastic,” Melissa said, leaning into his shoulder and closing her eyes.
***
The next day, they were packed and ready to go and completely freaking out about the fact that they were about to discover whether they would be having a baby boy or a baby girl.
“What if I don’t like him? Or her?” Rodger was sitting at the kitchen table with his legs propped up staring at a pantone paint strip (or, rather, two of them: one blue, one pink) which he was dangerously close to dropping.
“I don’t really think that today’s decision is going to dictate that,” Melissa said mildly. “I think that their personality won’t be decided right now—”
“No, that’s not what I mean,” said Rodger. “What if the second I find out that we’re having a girl, I realize that all I’ve wanted my entire life is to be the father of a son?”
“Then we’ll talk it out.” Melissa came and sat next to Rodger; she had just finished putting together her carry-on and patted her passport securely into her travel wallet. “Why would you want to have a son?”
“I don’t know.”
“No, really, what comes to your mind when you picture yourself as—what did you call it —a father of a son?”
“Um. Throwing a baseball back and forth?”
“You can do that with a girl, too,” Melissa said drily.
“Oh, I know,” said Rodger. “It’s just—it’s a big thing, you know?”
“It’s a gigantic thing,” Melissa said calmly.
“How are you so calm about this,” said Rodger.
“Weirdly, I think that the fact that you’re freaking out is helping me, so please continue. We can’t both be freaking out, and all that.”
“Right,” said Rodger. “Cool.”
Melissa checked her watch. “Are you ready to head out soon?”
“I suppose I’ll have to be,” said Rodger.
“Come on,” said Melissa, slipping her arm around his back to comfort him. “This is something we want. And even if we get bad news, for whatever reason, we’re going on a cruise just after.”
They'd sent their luggage ahead to the cruise company so that they didn’t have to worry about lugging it around themselves for the day, which already felt like an incredible luxury in and of itself. Melissa was looking forward to a calm, un-panicky visit with her obstetrician, followed by thirty days of nothing but the blue horizon before her. She had her laptop charged and ready to go, and she was high on the idea of being some sort of novelist when the ship upon which they were sailing docked back after four weeks at sea.
Which sort of novelist, she had not yet decided. There were so many genres she enjoyed reading, but it didn’t seem that any specific voice or subject matter was calling to her; whenever she sat down to write, she dutifully stared at the blinking cursor and waited for inspiration and motivation to wave over her. When this didn't happen, she thought about her lack of brilliance for a moment and assumed that it had to do with the thousands of distractions and quotidian mundanity with which she was surrounded. When she saw pictures and read interviews with famous authors, were they not always writing surrounded by glamour, in velvet chairs with whatever the modern equivalent of peacock feather quills were? Of course they were. And so Melissa sought to surround herself with equivalent luxury, and she just knew that the second she'd done so, the idea for her first good novel (she’d written a few very, very bad ones already) would just pop into her head. It would be easy. It would be fantastic fodder for an interview held after the book was a smash hit.
She could see it now. The sides of her mouth curled upwards as she pictured the adoring fans which she would surely have…
But then she brought herself back to reality. She had to write the thing first.
Sighing, she tuned back in towards Rodger, then looked at her watch again.
“Want to head out to the doctor’s office?”
“Yeah, I’ll go bring the car around. Do you have everything that you need?”
Melissa patted her carry-on, and then gestured to his. “We’re set to go.”
“Fantastic,” said Rodger. He gave the atrium of their house one last look. “You know, this is the last time we’ll be looking at this place before we know what kind of family we’re going to be.”
Melissa smiled. “We already know what kind of family we’re going to be,” said Melissa. “A happy one.”
Chapter 9
And with that she pulled on his arm a little, gently, and they left. Rodger locked the door behind the pair of them and jogged off to pull the car up to the curb so that Melissa didn’t have to walk any further than she had to.
As she waited, Melissa reflected on just how helpful Rodger really had been. He’d been a model partner. And the two of them had just sort of slid together, hadn’t they? Melissa remembered the awkward conversations they’d had just before and early on in the pregnancy about what this meant for them as a couple. They were just—them, and it worked, and they were both very happy; it was simpler than it had any right to be, really.
She smiled and got in the car when Rodger opened the door for her, giving him a kiss along the way.
She noticed that his knuckles were white on the steering wheel. The poor guy was at his wit’s end. For all that he loved the stress and the adrenaline and the high-stakes life, being on the precipice of being a father was on a whole other level entirely. And—Melissa had forgotten where she had read this – but apparently the idea of becoming a father was entirely different than that of becoming a mother. For obvious reasons, she supposed. It would be easy, if the baby were growing in someone else’s stomach, for her to be somewhat—disconnected from it; to see it as a slowly growing alien or something to that effect. She knew that, while the mother (however uncomfortable pregnancy could be, which, now, she could personally attest to that) had nine months to grow used to the baby’s motions and become irrevocably aware that life was growing and changing and becoming more full, the father just had nine months of a progressively crankier partner and some strangely moving lumps on a belly growing ever larger. And then—at the end—he was offered a pair of scissors to cut a strange tube and then a small howling monkey was placed in his arms; it had to be completely disorienting, Melissa thought, smiling. Rodger must have been clinging to these moments where he could see what was going on, where he could point to definite proof that something was happening, where he knew that he was going to be a father for bigger reasons than Melissa simply telling him.
Not that he didn’t trust Melissa. Melissa knew that he did. However, she knew that the concept of parenthood w
asn’t something which you could just be told and then you would instantly assume. It was more something which had to be felt; and she knew that Rodger was just now feeling his way around as a blind man in the dark.
“How are you doing,” she asked after a moment of this contemplation.
Rodger blew out his cheeks in a long stream of air.
“I’m not sure,” he said. And then, instantly, “I mean—I’m so excited! We’re about to learn whether we’re going to have a boy or a girl, and, more importantly than that, we’re about to get a good sense of how healthy our kid is. And, less importantly, we’re going to head on a super-relaxing cruise later today.”
“Relaxing? It must sound horrible for you.”
Rodger smiled. “Different things relax different people. Remember, I’ve got my excursions; I’ll go off during the day while you’re sipping seltzer and writing the next great American novel and cliff-dive, or something, and then I’ll tell you all about it at night while we’re watching ridiculous sunsets.”
“That does sound nice,” Melissa admitted. “Although—I know you’re an adrenaline-seeker, and I’ve come to terms with that, but you’re not allowed in any way to die or do anything equally stupid. I’m not about to do this whole parenting thing on my own.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I’ve taken steps to make sure you’d be taken care of if I were to suddenly go absent,” Rodger said quietly. “I like jumping off things, but otherwise I’m not an idiot. You’ve been added, you and our kids, as recipients to my life insurance. And heirs to my estate. Everything would be okay.”
Melissa was silent at this. She hadn’t realized that their partnership had gone that far. But then her hand drifted to her baby bump. Of course it had. It was just like Rodger to quietly make that happen in the background while she was worried about which type of ice cream she would consume as she fell asleep.
“That’s a bit macabre,” she said quietly. “Thank you—I guess, of course, thank you; but please make sure that I don’t have to use that. You know? It’s more than just money. I want our kid to grow up knowing his or her dad.”
Be My Bride and Have My Baby Page 9