by Selena
“Yeah, you’re right.” I forced a little laugh. “It’s your body. I wasn’t trying to say, like, I wanted to touch you. It’s just, sometimes I wonder if you remember it’s my baby in there, too.”
“How can I forget?” she asked bitterly. “I’m living in your tour bus with you and your girlfriend. Why else am I there? It’s not like either of you actually like me. I know you’re just waiting for it to pop out so you can kick me to the curb.”
“That’s not true.”
“You don’t have to lie. I know I’m only there because you’re too guilty to make a pregnant lady live on the streets. I’m not stupid.”
“What if we got you an apartment?” I asked.
“Where?”
I shrugged. “Seattle. LA. Wherever.”
“I thought your manager wanted to keep tabs on me.”
“There would be some confidentiality agreements to sign,” I admitted, shifting on the seat that was suddenly too small for two people.
“I knew it was too good to last,” she said. “I guess it’s a blessing, in some ways. I got to be spoiled and pampered for a while. I kept reminding myself it was temporary. To enjoy the shit out of it, but not to get attached.”
“And her?” I asked, nodding to her belly. “Are you attached to her?”
“I can’t let myself do that,” she said, turning to stare out at the shallow pool of water again. After a minute, she turned back and lifted her jacket and the hoodie she wore beneath. Her little belly was so strange and unnatural looking that it shocked me for a second. Since the ultrasound, it had gotten bigger, and that had been the only time I’d seen it. She wore hoodies almost every day, which disguised most of the bump. And it wasn’t like a little belly fat. This was harder, rounder, all in one place. The rest of her body was still thin, though not as painfully thin as it had been when she first came to us.
“Go on,” she said. “Touch it if you want to.”
“I thought—.”
“Just get it over with,” she snapped.
Hesitantly at first, I reached out, halfway expecting her to slap my hand away when it got close. My fingers prodded gently against her belly, which was softer than it looked. From the way it looked, I’d expected it to feel like a melon, but it wasn’t that hard. Not soft like a belly fat, either, though. For a minute, my fingers moved as if up the neck of my guitar, trying to find the right note for my other hand to play.
As if in response, someone played the note back to me. It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Uma. I jerked my hand back by reflex, and Uma laughed and dropped her shirt. My hand flew out to stop her, but she’d already pulled down her thick jacket, covering the bare skin from the punishing wind. All I wanted was to touch it again, longer, to feel it move, to explore that mystery that Uma took for granted every single day. I wanted to put my whole hand over her belly, both hands, to feel it move as if by magic. There was another human being in there. A little person.
It blew my mind. For the first time, I really saw what was ahead. It hadn’t sunk in yet, not fully anyway. My mother said you were never ready, even when it came. But this was different. This was a human being that no one had wanted to create, that no one wanted now that it was here. And that didn’t seem fair. It hadn’t asked to be given life. It hadn’t asked to be born into the world at all. But here it came, more unprepared than we were, into a world that didn’t want it. A world where there was no place for it.
thirty-four
Laney
As was tradition, the Tuckers and the Villineses went to church on Christmas Eve. I hadn’t been avoiding Brody, but I hadn’t been exactly communicative, either. As our families crowded into the small hall of the church, exchanging warm greetings to the members whom we hadn’t seen since the last Christmas Eve, Brody’s eyes found mine across the group.
“Hi there, Laney,” Grandpa Othal said, reaching for my hand. He was mostly recovered, though Brody said he still had a nurse come in a few days a week. The corner of his mouth still tilted downward, but only the far corner, and his handshake was firm, if not as firm as it once had been. The biggest change was the cane he kept clutched in one hand, leaning heavily on it now.
“Hi,” I said, giving him a quick hug. All these people, our families, melded together like one. I knew it would break my mother’s heart if I didn’t marry Brody. It would break my own heart. But how could I?
“Hey,” Brody said, squeezing between Piper’s father and Grandpa Othal to take my hand. After everything, his touch still made my blood sing.
“Hi, Brody.”
“I tried calling you last night.”
“I just needed a little time.”
He laced his fingers through mine and held our hands to his heart. “I don’t like the way that sounds.”
“Where’s Uma?”
“She says she doesn’t believe in church,” Brody said. “And it would be hard to introduce her to people, anyway.”
I nodded. “Hard to explain that one away.”
“So what was that comment about needing space? What does that mean?”
I should have known he wouldn’t let me off the hook that easily. He was never one to stand on propriety, not when it came to me. Like he’d said, he’d always been honest with me, at least in word if not in deed. But after enduring his deeds, I wasn’t quite as forthcoming with my own feelings.
“Let’s just have a nice Christmas,” I said. “We can talk about this later.”
Brody untangled his fingers from mine and dropped my hand. Instantly, my fingers groped at the chill air in the church atrium, searching out the warmth and safety his hand promised. But it was an empty promise. He’d never be safe. No matter how closely I held my heart, how much I vowed to protect it, he could shatter it with a snap of his fingers. I’d tried not to fall in love again, had told myself I could handle being close to him. Famous last words of a fool.
I ignored the wounded look on Brody’s face and ducked off to the restroom. When I came back, they’d left me a spot in the pew next to Brody. I glared at my mother, who returned the look with an innocent smile. When I sat, Brody took my hand. “I want to talk to you, too,” he said.
A chill ran through me, despite the stuffy, overly heated air in the church. I’d said the words first, I reminded myself. But it didn’t stop a knot of dread from pulling tight inside me. I knew what I should do, the right thing to do. I also knew that if Brody did it for me, because I wasn’t strong enough to do it first, it would destroy me.
“After Christmas,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. “The day after tomorrow, then.”
The service started before we could pick a time and place, but I knew. It killed me that I knew, that we knew each other so well. It was like we’d never been apart, like those years had never happened.
But they had happened. And Uma was living, breathing, walking proof of that. And soon enough, the baby would be. It would remind me for the rest of my life what Brody had done. I knew that I was a terrible person for resenting that innocent, unborn child. But I did, nonetheless.
thirty-five
Brody
The Villines’ Christmas Dinner was the family gathering of the year. All the aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews packed into the high-ceilinged dining room, filling in every seat at the long table and the ever-expanding kids’ table. My father sat at the head of the table, with his wife on his left and his father on the right, as it had been since Othal became a widower and the traditional dinner had moved from his place to ours.
Beyond Othal sat his son and his wife, then the daughters and their husbands. Beyond Virginia sat her sons, arranged from oldest to youngest. Now that my two older brothers were married, their wives sat beside them. I usually sat at the end of this line, with various cousins beyond me. When we arrived at the table this year, I shot my mother a questioning look, not sure if I had been downgraded for bringing shame to the family. Of course, it probably wasn’t the first time a Villines had knocked up
a woman without marrying her. But it was the first time he’d brought her to the family dinner table.
“Come sit here, dear,” my mother said, pointing to the chair next to hers. “I thought we could enjoy each other’s company this year, since it’s likely to be the last Christmas you’re unmarried.”
I shuffled around the table, knowing that despite what Virginia said, this was more of a punishment than an honor. She was keeping me close, since I’d been a bad boy when she let me wander.
“And Uma, I’ve set an extra plate at the end for you,” she said, gesturing to the seat to the left of the foot of the table. The seat of disdain, usually reserved for the lowliest niece or nephew, the one who had just moved up from the kids’ table that year.
But Uma didn’t know that, I reminded myself as she scooted in next to my cousin Ned, always near the foot of the table since he’d grown his hair past his shoulders and gone to art school. She didn’t know she was being insulted. I wasn’t sure if that was worse or better than if she had known. Everyone else knew, which made her the butt of an inside joke known to everyone but her.
“I can’t believe you sat her there,” I muttered to my mother. She gave me a haughty smile and gestured to my place card, my name printed in silver calligraphy. My money had probably paid for those cards, for all of this. But to Virginia, that didn’t matter. I was her son, her property, like the rest of the family. She ruled supreme, and if she sent my child’s mother to the lowliest seat, that was her right as queen of the household. Like a good, obedient son, I sat at my mother’s left without argument.
“Looks like somebody sucked up to Mom this year,” Richard said, scooting into the chair next to me.
“Trust me, it wasn’t intentional,” I said. “I have no interest in stealing your spot.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“Leave him alone, Richie,” his wife said. “He’s the baby, she just wants one year with him before some other woman steals him away. You get her left side every year. You can share one time.” She spoke to him in a sugary, cajoling way, like he was a spoiled child.
“I think it’s less about him being the baby and more about him making the moolah,” said Jim, the middle brother. His wife grimaced and smoothed her napkin into her lap.
Both my brothers had married women approved of by our mother. Women like Laney, smart and attractive, poised, from good backgrounds. Women who were supposed to keep them in line, I figured. My mother might have been content sitting on my father’s left side, but everyone knew she belonged at the head of the table. Only her love of tradition kept her from assuming her rightful place.
“That must be it,” Richard said. “You don’t have a family to take care of yet. And if I was a betting man, I’d say you’re not sitting there because Mom thinks you’ll be married next year.”
“Brody’s never getting married,” Jim said. “I don’t blame you, man. Enjoy it as long as you can.”
His wife had to go check on one of their kids at the kiddie table, who had spilled Christmas punch on her white skirt and was shrieking in horror that she’d gotten dirty. A toddler started crying then, and one of the other toddlers fell out of his chair, pulling the table cloth, which upset several more cups of punch.
“Next year, we’ll get a nanny and put that table in the other room,” Mom said, sipping her wine and watching the commotion with indulgent irritation on her face.
I glanced down the table to where Uma sat, expecting her to be staring in horror at the scene, imagining her own life as a mom. Instead, she was talking to my cousin, seemingly oblivious to the preview of her future playing out before her.
When the shrieking had subsided, Othal led us in the blessing, Dad carved the turkey while Jim carved the roast and Richard carved the ham. The food was all taken to the kitchen, where the night’s staff had gathered to load the plates before bringing them to the dining room. The table was too crowded for the food, and a buffet didn’t work with so many people having to make the trip through the line.
I recognized one of the waiters as a girl I’d taken selfies with in town, and I hoped she didn’t spread our family dynamics around on social media.
“Who’s that?” I asked my mother when the girl had returned to the kitchen.
“This really isn’t the time to be asking about yet another girl,” Virginia said, an edge in her voice.
“I’m just not sure you know how careful you have to be about who you let into the house now. People take pictures, souvenirs…”
“It wouldn’t be the first time the help has stolen from me,” Virginia said. “It won’t be the last.”
“I just know she saw me in town one time. She knows who I am.”
“Everyone knows who you are, dear. I’d think you would be used to that by now. You know I like to hire locals who could use a little extra around the holidays.”
I stuffed a bite of ham into my mouth to keep from reminding her that she was keeping them from their own families on Christmas evening. But if they took the job, I supposed they were willing to make that sacrifice. Lots of people ate Christmas dinner in the middle of the day, anyway.
“I could have hired your little guest,” Virginia said with a nasty smirk. “She could probably use the help. But that unsightly bulge would be unappetizing.”
I clenched my fist around my fork.
“In our day, you kept that hidden as much as possible,” Virginia went on.
“It’s all the baby-bump watchers on social media,” Richard’s wife said.
“They were in the magazines before that,” one of the aunts said. “Remember that Demi Moore magazine cover? That was the start of it all.”
“Shocking what people will do for attention,” Virginia said.
“Nothing shocking about that,” Richard said, shooting me a disgruntled look.
Dinner could not end soon enough. Finally, though, the plates were cleared, and the relatives moved off in little groups. Some went to the den to play cards and drink scotch, some went outside to play croquette or walk the garden paths, some of those with younger children packed up early and left, much to Virginia’s consternation. “They’ll be sitting further down the table next year,” Richard muttered, elbowing me in the ribs as we three brothers headed out beyond the wall to practice our golf swings in the open field beyond the fence.
“Dad’s talking about putting a real course out here,” Jim said. “That your Christmas gift, Brody?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. They take what they need from my account.”
“Damn, no wonder Mom had you sitting by her,” Jim said. “You’re her sugar daddy now.”
“That’ll change when you have your own wife sucking your bank account dry,” Richard said. “She’ll nip that in the bud real quick.”
“How are things with Laney?” Jim said. “Still together?”
“Of course,” I said. “Why wouldn’t we be?”
My brothers exchanged a look.
“So you got the wife and a little something on the side,” Richard said. “Now I heard of that. But I never heard of anyone getting the wife to be okay with the thing on the side!” He and Jim burst into laughter and back slaps.
“There’s nothing going on between Uma and me,” I said.
Jim pounded me on the back. “Just giving you a hard time, little brother.”
I considered a moment, then said, “The problem is, I don’t think I’m making either of them very happy. I’m not sure what to do about it.”
“Stop trying,” Richard said, and he and Jim burst into more laughter.
I didn’t know why I bothered. This was the way it had always been with us. My older brothers giving me shit, never advice. I’d always be their little brother, a joke to them, no matter how much money I made.
“Seriously, little man,” Richard said, slinging an arm around my shoulder while Jim lined up a shot. “The minute you start worrying about that is the minute they’ve got you by the balls. And once they do, they ne
ver let go.”
The ball sailed high into the air, and they squinted as they watched it arc slowly against the stark blue of the winter sky. “It’s true,” Jim said. “Enjoy being single, man. Don’t rush the inevitable decline. Everything goes downhill after you get married. I think that’s what ages a man, not years but marriage. Kids. Nagging wife. Lack of sex. Shutting up to keep the peace. I’m thirty and I’ve already got grey hair coming in. I feel fifty.”
Far off, I saw a figure walking away quickly, head tucked against the chill air, hands stuffed in the pockets of the pumpkin orange coat.
“I’m gonna go,” I said, shoving my club into Richard’s hand and taking off at a jog across the field.
“Don’t do it,” Jim yelled behind me.
“Never chase after a girl,” Richard called. “Let them come to you.”
“Save your balls!”
Ignoring their further taunts and laughter, I continued jogging. When I came to the path, Uma had almost disappeared behind a swell of land, so I kept going. At last, I caught sight of the line of weeping willows between our property and Laney’s. In winter, even my favorite tree looked ghostly and drab with the leaves gone, the branches nothing but bare grey twigs bowing their heads in despair.
Uma stood with her back to me, looking up at the line of eerie trees, their draped branches swaying and rattling together like teeth. The wind had carried off plenty of the underlying carpet of fallen leaves, but a sparse golden brown circle still lay beneath each tree. A plume of breath puffed up from Uma’s mouth, and after a second, the smell of it hit me, the stinging, burnt smell of smoke.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked, grabbing her shoulder and spinning her around to face me.
She jerked away before raising the cigarette to her lips and taking a slow drag, her eyes locked on mine. Rage exploded inside me, hard and quick like a bottle rocket. I ripped the cigarette from her fingers and threw it on the ground, grabbing her forearms when she moved to sidestep me.
“What the fuck,” she said, yanking at her arms. “Let me go!”