A Woman Gone Mad (32 page)

Thirty minutes later, I am curled in around myself against the cold tile in the bathroom with the two pregnancy tests I failed even before the five minutes was up. When Leo is home from work and can’t find me he comes barreling into the bathroom like a madman. “Baby! What the fuck? Baby… Baby, what happened?” His warm arms scoop me up from the floor and cradle me to his chest as my sobs finally just tear themselves from my soul. I guess they were waiting on him before they released…

Leo rocks me back and forth, petting my hair and wiping my tears for God knows how long before I am able to speak, and even then it is hard. “I fucked up Leo, I don’t—”

His hands pull the sticks from my mine that are gripping them to my chest. “What’s…” Bluish black eyes pierce mine. “Lil, this what I think it is? This why you’re cryin’?” All I can do is nod as tears start streaming down my face again. “Shh… I gotcha, baby. Hey… I gotcha.” He starts running his fingers through my hair and rocking me back and forth again, whispering that everything will be okay.

The night has grown as silent as the house. The ticking of the clock and the beating of Leo’s heart are the only sounds I hear until midnight when Leo clears his throat and pulls his face back, lifting my chin with his fingertips. His eyes are red and his eyelashes are spiky and wet.

He softly whispers as pain and devastation crumble his beautiful face, “You don’t want my baby. I’m so sorry, Lil. I thought it… I thought if you wanted to be my wife, that meant you’d want to have my baby too.”

I don’t know what to say to him. I know I’m happy without a baby right now. I’m happy with him. I know Nick thinks our marriage began falling apart when Bella was born, and I know he blames our divorce on Bella. I always thought it was because of her that we ended up getting married, not divorced. And Leo doesn’t know how hard it is when a marriage has a baby sleeping in between you every night. When a wife feels like her breasts are just there to feed a man’s child. When she’s not pregnant anymore but still looks like she is even after months of breastfeeding and exercise.

I know all of this, and I don’t know if Leo is ready for the cold, harsh reality of a nauseous wife with stretch marks and a waddle when she walks. I don’t think Leo knows this, but carrying a child isn’t always beautiful. And living with spit-up stains that blend with breast milk uh ohs on most of your clothes isn’t attractive either. Especially on three hours of sleep…

I don’t think either one of us is ready for this. So I roll over without saying a word.

L
eo doesn’t like me pregnant. I don’t like me pregnant. We…freaking
love
me pregnant!

Leo dotes on me hand and foot. I haven’t been nauseous once this pregnancy. And did I mention that I
love
being pregnant?

Leo measures my growing belly every morning in the shower with his big hands. This morning he excitedly whooped then hollered, “Hell yeah! As big as one of my hands now, baby!” With so much pride pouring out of him, I couldn’t help my own sense of pride swelling for our son. I just know it’s a boy.

And best of all, my baby—my man, Leo—started sketching again. So here we are in the living room, watching—yep—Knocked Up on DVD on Halloween night. He is sketching me while I scarf down the candy in between doling it out to the trick-or-treaters who already have too much candy. I only have this one bowl!

He loves to sketch me while I’m watching a movie. I don’t know if it’s because I stay still long enough or that he gets a chance to watch me while I’m distracted. These candid drawings always do turn out the best though. Hell, maybe that’s why he has overstocked two DVD cases with movies. He may be onto something.

After the doorbell hasn’t rung in an hour, Leo gets up to lock the front door and turn off the porch light. Then he sprawls out beside me on the couch just about the time when the camera on the movie pans down to the baby crowning.

The labor unit nurse in me gets tickled every time I see this part. It is the closest I’ve seen a movie delivery come to the real thing, but still… It is so freaking off that its hilarious. Leo, however, doesn’t find it funny—at all.

“Jesus Christ! Bella came out of you that way?” His pale face and wide eyes are shooting from my crotch to my face, back and forth.

“Ah…she didn’t come out of a stork’s bag, baby. And we both know I don’t have a c-section scar, so yeah.” I giggle at the mortification that washes over his face. “That’s where Bella came from.”

“Well how the fuck did it… How is it… I never saw any damn damage!” His voice gets high-pitched toward the end of his ranting concern.

“Oh, well, that’s because you lucked out, babe. See you married a Suell woman. We pop out healthy babies, every one of them eight to ten pounds, and we do it without even blinking. Then we bounce right on back to our five foot one inches and one hundred ten pounds
without
a damaged vagina.” My laughter is shaking the couch cushion. “However, the one hundred ten pounds usually takes a year, so please keep that in your pocket for when your son is six months old and I can’t squeeze my ass back into my jeans yet.”

I nip at his chin, which leads to a tickle fight, which leads to me almost pissing my pants and biting his underarm flesh until he grunts and pulls me back up against him, twirling the hair at my waist around his fingers.

“Son, huh?” I feel his lips smile against my forehead and look up at him. I swear that no one has ever loved me as much as he does. It’s right there shining in his eyes. Leo knows every single broken piece of me. He knows every secret, every dream, every wish. Most of all, he knows how long and how hard I hoped for my happily ever after, and even though our lives’ paths changed and we altered off course for a while, he tells me every day, that no matter what, it’s me and him until the end.

And I believe him, because I’d rather die than live a life without Leo.

The second week of November Leo and I are sitting in the waiting room at Dr. Majors’s office, waiting for Teresa to call us back. I know what’s in store for us this visit. I’m almost twenty-two weeks pregnant today, and that means it’s ultrasound time, baby!

I don’t even need to be told. I know without a doubt in my mind that I’m carrying Leo’s son. But I keep quiet, not wanting to ruin the surprise he doesn’t even know he’s about to witness.

This isn’t the standard ‘piss in this cup, stand on these scales, take blood pressure and temp, how are you, the baby is great’ checkup.

This is greater than twenty-weeks checkup. And Leo and I are about to lay eyes on our son for the very first time.

Leo Ethan Phillips, Jr.
Leo doesn’t know it yet, but he’s been Leo Ethan Phillips, Sr. since I came to terms with this pregnancy, which happened the second I heard the sound of our son’s heartbeat for the first time.

“Lillian Phillips,” Teresa smiles and about drops the chart when she sees me.

Memories of spending our holidays at work together, our Christmases together, our Mother’s Days together, either just staring at each other out of pure and utter boredom or busting ass with crazy delivery after crazy delivery flood me and I immediately yearn for the labor unit.

Dammit, that was my shit… And dammit, I still miss it. Even now.

But I don’t let it take away from the fact that I’m so happy to see Teresa.

“Hey, girl!” We hug each other tight and hold still for a second. Then she whispers in my ear, “Dayum, girl, where the hell did you find that sexy ass…” I pull back, looking at her, and we both bust out laughing. “Come on, Momma. You know the drill. Give me all your shit, coat, and purse and hop on the scales.

Damn. One hundred thirty pounds already?

When we get to ultrasound room, Teresa and Shannon both stay, excited to see the baby too. Same as before—gown to the front, lay flat on the table, gel is cold. However, this time I know what I’m looking at while Leo grasps my hand, moving his lips across my knuckles, kissing each one over and over until Shannon, Teresa, and I all shout, whoop, and holler, laughing, “It’s a
BOY
!”

Leo’s sapphire eyes shoot from the screen to me. “Wait, what?
Really
?”

Shannon tells him through a huge smile, “Yep. That right there”—she moves the arrow on the screen to the little turtle—“is your son, Daddy. Congratulations.” Then her hand twirls and scrapes the now warm gel around until baby Leo’s face comes into focus.

And just like with my Bella, my heart stutters, jumps, and then stops in my chest. Teresa flips a switch, bringing up the 3D image of our son smiling a smile I’ve seen dance across Leo’s face a thousand times.

Then his little heartbeat resonates through the small, dark room and all five of us, including my son, are smiling. And I know it in my bones and in my soul that I’ll remember this moment for as long as I live.

There are only a few handful of moments a woman holds on to, holds on to every single second of, and keeps close to her heart until the day she leaves this world. Leo now owns three of them.

I’m going to honestly say that even then, somewhere, I knew that when life is this happy, when everything is going so perfectly, that’s when you need to start getting nervous. You see, I learned way before this happy and blissfully perfect moment that any and every time life is too perfect, there’s a curveball, an ace up fate’s sleeve…

If you let the thought that this is too good to be true cross your mind, nine times out of ten you just bought your ticket to ride a roller coaster to hell. And apparently I bought season fucking tickets.

On our way home, Leo and I stop at a craft store. We find the perfect picture frames for our son’s smiling 3D ultrasound pictures. Before bedtime that night, Leo has pulled out every piece of office furniture in the room directly across the hall from ours and moved it all to an extra bedroom downstairs. He has the baby’s new room taped off, and I find him studying swatches of blue from shades of sky blue to navy blue.

“Hey, baby. I’m thinking navy blue.” A smile from ear to ear across his beautiful face has my heart melting and my hands on my belly, cradling our son.

“Oh yeah? And why is that?” I kneel down on the floor with Leo, my chest to his back, sliding my arms around his chest to settle behind him with my chin resting on his shoulder.

“Because, just think about it. If I hadn’t had that navy Camaro you’d have never looked at me twice.”

I giggle at his theory. I can’t help it. If he knew the love-hate relationship I had with that car, he’d know that it had nothing to do with me looking at him, twice or twice times a hundred.

“I say yes to the navy, but only because I want baby Leo’s crib smack dab in the middle of the universe where he belongs. I want his room night blue, with glow in the dark stars across the walls and 3D planets hanging from his ceiling, because he’s the center of our universe. Where better to lay him down to sleep?”

Leo turns around and slaps a piece of paint tape over my mouth before kissing me through it. “I love the way you think, firecracker. You know that?” After he has me straddling his lap, he smirks. “You ready for bed, baby?”

“Mm…mm…hm…mm…hm…hm…mm.” Leo’s fingers gently peel the not-so-sticky tape away and his eye brow shoots up.

“Come again, sexy?”

“I said, ‘I’m so tired, baby. Please carry me to bed and make me feel like the only woman in the world.” Batting my eyelashes, I run my hands though his hair. It’s my happy smile that has the man growling and standing to walk across the hall and toss me onto the bed before his hunger can break the thin threads of his control. He makes love to me like I’m a fragile piece of china, whispering words of devotion, insane and obsessive love, and forever.

It’s Valentine’s Day morning when Leo wakes me up with a stack of pancakes and homemade hash browns.
And damn it, I love hash browns.
We feed each other in bed. I fork up bites of pancakes and Leo forks up bites of his ham and cheese omelet as we share our Valentine’s Day breakfast in bed.

Fuck… I really wish my life would end in the next paragraph. However, when you hear them asking for the reason, tell ’em that this was the blow, this was the last blow, the one I wouldn’t live through…