Expecting: A Novel (3 page)

“You sound like a new mom.” Grace looks serious. “You’re not going outside on smoggy days, are you? Check the pollution levels first.”

***

Laurie talks to Troppo all the time. She’s standing in his bedroom and facing the doorframe. “This is where we’ll measure you on your birthday. Right here,” she tells him. She sees herself carefully drawing a line and printing the date. “Look how big you are, Troppo. How did you get so big?”

“Growing like a weed,” Alan will say, and Troppo will look up at his parents, grinning. The lines will grow higher and higher on the doorframe and one day—surprise!—he’ll be taller than Laurie.

Even though she calls him Troppo, the baby’s room has a unisex decor. The room needed a fresh coat of paint anyway, so Laurie chose a light lemon yellow color. And as long as they were painting, why not add a cute animal alphabet trim along the wall just below the ceiling? A is for Alligator. B is for Bird. The Python wrapped around the letter P seems vaguely sinister. “To make sure the baby won’t grow up afraid of snakes,” Alan says.

“Really? Suppose the baby gets some terrible snake phobia?”

“Then we’ll buy
real
snakes. Isn’t that what you do with phobias? Confront them?”

“But maybe we
don’t
know how to have a baby,” Laurie says as she looks at the almost-assembled crib. Okay, it’s not as if they were going to completely finish the baby’s room, but the Juvenile Shop was having a sample sale and now that they’ve got the crib, she’ll go back when the Juvenile Shop has another sale to check out changing tables. Except—why does her maternal confidence seem to come and go these days? A baby? What were they thinking? “Suppose it’s not like riding a bike,” she tells Alan. “Suppose it’s more like building a particle accelerator. With Q-tips.”

“No going back. We’ve waited long enough.”

He’s not wrong
, Laurie thinks. They’ve been married for almost five years. No children right away—Laurie’s job meant lots of travel and Alan traveled for his job too, including to help organize a new branch of his company, Palmer-Boone, in Sydney. Friends told them they should travel now, prechildren. They listened to the advice, took advantage of Laurie’s job, enjoyed river cruises down the Volga, glacier trips in Alaska. Scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef, courtesy of Palmer-Boone.

Alan, the ideal travel companion. They have fabulous adventures. And then one day, they looked at each other and that was it. Time for a baby.

Now they’re decorating a baby’s room and putting together a crib. Years from now, in this room, Laurie will tell fourteen-year-old Troppo to pick up his clothes and he’ll roll his eyes and say, “Yeah, yeah. I’ll get around to it, Mom.”

Mom. That’s who she is. Alan is right; there’s no going back.

***

“You’ll hear the heartbeat for the first time,” Grace tells her. “Alan should go with you, it’s very cool.” But Palmer-Boone is having a “power breakfast” to welcome visiting VIPs from Palmer-Boone Great Britain, so Laurie arrives solo at her doctor’s appointment.

Dr. Liu is in a good mood, very chatty, and Laurie wonders what it’s like for Mrs. Liu, thinking about her husband rubbing gel on women’s stomachs and looking in their vaginas all day.

“We should hear the heartbeat, right?” Laurie asks Dr. Liu as he slides the ultrasound paddle across her tummy.

“Who’s the doctor, you or me?” He’s grinning as he maneuvers the paddle. The machine makes a
thunk thunk
sound, slightly wet.

“I vote for you. I’d make a horrible doctor. And I look terrible in white,” says Laurie. Dr. Liu moves the paddle to another spot.
Thunk thunk
. How loud will the heartbeat be?

Dr. Liu frowns, taps the end of the paddle. “Let me try another one, this one’s acting a little funky.”

Of course ultrasound machines go funky. So it’s not unusual for Dr. Liu to leave the room to bring in another machine. It must happen all the time.

Only Laurie knows, deep down, not even deep down, she knows right there on the surface that Dr. Liu won’t find a heartbeat; it isn’t a broken ultrasound machine. Something has gone wrong; it’s bad news, the worst possible news.

And it is. A second machine confirms what Dr. Liu suspected—no heartbeat. A blighted ovum, Dr. Liu explains, his face serious. No dimples this time. The fertilized egg attached itself to the wall of the uterus and began to develop a placenta, but there is nothing inside. No embryo. No baby.

No Troppo.

One morning when Laurie leaves early for work, Alan dismantles the crib. He looks down at the crib pieces scattered on the floor, and he’s tempted to throw everything away, but instead he gets a roll of masking tape and a Sharpie and a box of plastic bags and prints in clear handwriting where each piece should go. “Headboard, twelve six-inch screws, twelve matching washers and nuts.” He tapes the plastic bags to the corresponding pieces and carries everything out to the back of the garage. When he’s done, he covers the crib with an old beach towel with a picture of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio on it.

The room looks empty without the crib. Afternoon sun makes the yellow walls almost too bright. He looks up at the alphabet border.
A
is
for
anguish
, he thinks.
B
is
for
bereavement. L is for loss. Longing. Laurie.

***

Alan grew up as the youngest child in a noisy house in Virginia with three brothers and a sister, parents who spoiled them rotten and made up for it by making them wear matching red-and-green reindeer scarves and hats for their family Christmas card photo. It was a middle-class, white picket fence, Wonder Bread life. When Alan left home, finished college, and got married, no question about it, of course he’d have kids. Probably make them do stupid Christmas cards too.

Having children only to replicate yourself seems ridiculously narcissistic. Alan doesn’t need an Alan Lee Gaines Junior to feel complete. Or Alan Lee Gaines Junior who grows up to have Alan Lee Gaines III. And on and on until Alan Lee Gaines Infinity. Not that he dismisses genealogy. Alan’s mother would never let him get away with that.

Alan’s mother has always kept scrapbooks and researched family trees and has recently discovered (and become obsessed with) Ancestry.com. She follows various family members through different countries, tracks their trips on ocean liners, prints up obituaries. “Family means everything,” she says. “It’s the thing that’s
left
.”

His mother emails him black and white photos of men standing beside Model Ts, women in shorts and gingham-checked blouses sitting on picnic blankets. One woman with dark hair in a white bathing suit is so pretty she could be a pinup. He asks his mother about her when they talk on the phone.

“Bess, my mother’s older sister, isn’t she gorgeous? She never got married. Lived in Vermont with a woman named Catherine. They didn’t visit Virginia much.”

“Were they gay?”

“My mother said no. Not that she had anything against gay people. She just didn’t want to think about it.”

If it’s unpleasant and you don’t think about it, it goes away. Worrying if Bess and Catherine were gay might’ve made Alan’s grandmother crazy. So she ignored it. And life went on.

***

If Alan doesn’t think about Troppo, maybe he never existed. Of course, that’s the irony; he never
did
exist. Not exactly a ha-ha funny kind of irony, but irony all the same.

Does it make things easier? The fact that Troppo wasn’t close to being a real baby? From a medical point of view, he wasn’t. The pregnancy didn’t take, never got off the ground.

“It’s very common,” Dr. Liu tells Alan and Laurie in the office after the D & C. “Forty percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage. But you two are young, in your early thirties. You’re healthy. And more good news—you know you’re able to conceive.”

Dr. Liu is so cheerful Alan expects him to say that miscarriage is terrific, a wonderful learning experience. As they’re leaving his office, Dr. Liu mentions forty percent again, as if that will make them feel better. But Alan is only thinking one thing—why aren’t
we
the sixty percent?

***

“I can do the dishes,” Alan says to Laurie after dinner.

She shakes her head. “That’s okay.”

He feels guilty and he doesn’t know why. Of course the miscarriage is harder for Laurie—she was the one who was pregnant. But he feels the loss too. Laurie understands that, doesn’t she?

When the dishes are done, he sits beside Laurie on the sofa in the den. She’s watching
Dancing
with
the
Stars
. He knows she thinks it’s stupid, but her eyes are locked on the screen. “Doesn’t that dress make her legs look fat?” she says. He sees a heavy woman with too much makeup swirling in the arms of an orange-tan man with a shirt unbuttoned to his waist.

“Like sausages,” she says. “Cankles, isn’t that what they call fat ankles?” She puts her elbow on her knee and rests her chin on her fist. He should reach over and take her hand.

But he hesitates. Ever since the D & C, he’s been afraid of doing the wrong thing. “It’s going to be okay,” she told him in Dr. Liu’s office as they prepped her for the D & C. And when it was over, she said, “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Yes
, he wanted to say to her.
It was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. Watching the person I love more than anything in the world have the remains of what was supposed to be our baby scraped out of her. Wondering what they do with the remains of the pregnancy. Do they call it remains?
He decides he never needs to know the answer.

***

Another hard part of the miscarriage has been letting people know what’s happened, telling the story over and over. To his parents, Laurie’s mother, their friends. “Laurie’s doing fine,” he said. “Yes, we’re disappointed, but we’ll try again.”

He’s not sure how word got out at Palmer-Boone, but when he comes in, his secretary, Wendy, tells him how sorry she is. “My sister had a miscarriage and now she’s got three kids. And a fourth on the way.”

He hears that from everybody at Palmer-Boone, as if they’ve gotten together to come up with the same story—it happened to my sister/cousin/mother/brother’s wife and now they have a girl/boy/
oodles
of children.

Craig from accounting pops his head in Alan’s office, says he’s sorry but, “Hey, at least it wasn’t a stillbirth.”

Craig wears Ralph Lauren polo shirts, the version with the giant rider and polo pony, the one that announces, “My shirt is
really
expensive.” Alan is holding a cup of hot coffee and he wonders if he splashes it against Craig’s face if the burns will be first, second, or third degree.

“Yeah,” he says to Craig. “We’re pretty lucky.”

When Craig is gone, Alan looks out his office window to the San Gabriel Mountains, a gorgeous view on unsmoggy days. All the Palmer-Boone VPs get corner offices with floor-to-ceiling windows, another Palmer-Boone perk, like a lifetime supply of three-ring binders.

The best Palmer-Boone perk turned out to be meeting Laurie. Seven years ago, he was standing in line at a Staples in Burbank and noticed a pretty woman in front of him. She was wearing shorts and had great legs. Leaning forward, he peeked into her basket. “Those are mine,” he said.

“Excuse me?” She turned to him and frowned. Great legs, equally great big, gray-blue eyes.

“My company. Palmer-Boone. We make those. Pressure-sensitive materials.”

She looked at him as if he’d escaped from a mental institution. “Pressure-sensitive materials? You mean
mailing
labels
?”

“Palmer-Boone makes more than mailing labels. We’re a multibillion-dollar company with offices all over the world. Office supplies, retail branding, automotive and industrial products—you can probably tell I get a little too into this.” Shit, was he making a fool of himself?

“I’ve always wanted to know everything about pressure-sensitive materials,” she said.

“I could tell you. But then I’d have to kill you.”

She laughed when he said that, and he saw she had a slightly crooked, loopy smile and he thought,
That’s a smile I’d never get tired of
.
She had that smile as a child; she’ll have it when she’s an old lady. When I’m an old man and we’re growing old together.
Huh. Why was he thinking about growing old with a woman he just met in line at Staples?

She watched him—
oh no, is she reading my mind?
“Would you like to buy me a cup of coffee? My name’s Laurie,” she said.

***

Peter comes into his office and joins him at the window. “I heard the news. Sorry.”

“Thanks.” Peter is his closest friend at Palmer-Boone, probably his closest friend in L.A. They met playing company softball, colliding with each other in center field trying to catch a fly ball. Neither succeeded; the other team scored and won the game. Alan cut his lip; Peter sliced open his chin. Blood brothers.

“How’s Laurie?” Peter asks.

“She’s hanging in there.”

“Good. Give her a hug from me. How about you?”

“I don’t need a hug.” Alan forces a grin. “I’m hanging in there too.”

Peter nods. “Good. You know what helps? Beer. Lots and lots of beer.” Peter starts out, turns back. “Did you see Craig’s shirt? What an asshole.”

***

After dinner Alan asks Laurie if she wants to get frozen yogurt. Their house in Sherman Oaks is walking distance to Ventura Boulevard, lined with dozens of shops and restaurants.

“I’m too sleepy,” she says. “But you go. If you bring me a cup of cookies ’n’ cream and put it in the freezer, I’ll eat it tomorrow. Thanks.”

When he joins her in bed later, she rolls away from him. She needs her space. Or is she acting like she needs her space hoping he’ll come close, that he’ll comfort her? They’ve been together forever and suddenly he can’t read her signs.

He should roll over, bend his knees into hers, feel her body slide into his; his breathing will match hers, and everything will be like it was before.

Before the baby that never was. Thinking that makes him ache, a physical pain deep in his body, as if he’s aware of his bones.

***

Should he ask her more questions? How she’s feeling? He doesn’t want her to feel worse. For a smart man, sometimes he feels clueless. Like how he’ll make a joke instead of facing a problem directly. He knows Laurie gets annoyed, and when she calls him on it, he tends to make another joke. Which makes her more annoyed.

Not that they fight much. Their marriage is in a good place. Nine out of ten, ten being best. If you had to graph their marriage, he thinks it would compare to most marriages. Highs and lows. Troughs. Parts you slog through, like the miscarriage. A few years back, they had some money issues when some of their investments went south. And then the roof leaked and Alan’s car needed a new transmission. “When it rains,” Alan said. And Laurie didn’t laugh. “Blue skies up ahead,” Alan announced, and in retrospect he shouldn’t have made so many jokes—it would have been better to simply say their finances were fucked and they’d have to spend less and borrow money from his parents to get through the next couple months.

But nine out of ten isn’t bad—and it’s always important to have data to back up your analysis. When they were dating, Alan listed Laurie’s best and worst qualities and assigned values to each. He mentioned that to her but didn’t go into specifics. He thought she’d think it was funny. She didn’t. “You did some kind of
risk
analysis
on our relationship? Do you have a spreadsheet on me somewhere?”

“Of course not,” he told her, vowing to destroy the spreadsheet the minute he got back to his apartment.

“A guy who makes spreadsheets. And tells dumb jokes,” Laurie said. “What am I doing going out with you?” She looked at him. “So? When you ran the numbers in your analysis…how did I do?”

He grinned at her. And shrugged. “You’ll have to guess.” And he realized:
My
jokes
are
dumb?

***

“It’s freaky, thinking about getting fat,” Laurie said to Alan back when she found out she was pregnant. “Do you think I’ll get fat?”

“I’ll love you anyway,” he told her. “Blimpy.”

“Funny. Why can’t men get pregnant? If I got three wishes, that’s what one of them would be.” She checked her reflection in the mirror. “I hope I don’t gain eighty pounds.”

“Then can I call you Blimpy?”

“Sure, as long as you get used to being called One Ball. Because that’s what’ll happen if you make fun of my weight.”

She sounded serious. Eighty pounds or eight hundred pounds, he would always love her. Well…eight hundred might be pushing it. When they started dating, he was in awe of her body. She’d been a swimmer in high school and college and still had wide swimmer shoulders and strong thighs that tapered to high, tight calves. She’d told him he was the first nonswimmer she’d gone out with. “So that’s a little weird because all the other guys I dated, I already knew what they looked like practically naked.”

She hung out with guys in Speedos. He tried not to panic. His body was okay—he played lacrosse in high school, still went running and spent time at the gym. But compared to a swimmer?

“Why don’t we go to the beach next weekend?” she asked him.

She wanted to see him without his clothes on. He told her he had plans during the day. How about a movie?

Later she suggested he visit her at the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center, near his office, where she would swim laps sometimes in the afternoon. At this point they hadn’t had sex yet—would the reveal of his body be a deal breaker?

“It’s hard for me to get away,” he said.

Bull by the horns, he decided. He’d invited her to his apartment for dinner. Midmeal he left the table and came out of his bedroom wearing his boxers. And nothing else. She’d just taken a big sip of wine and almost did a spit take.

“This is what you get,” he told her as he pulled out the elastic of his boxers and let them snap back against his waist. “Does my body make you wild with desire?”

They didn’t finish dinner. Instead, they went into his bedroom and made love for the first time.

The first time, then many times—years of having sex and trying
not
to get pregnant and then trying to get pregnant and—
boom
—pregnancy. “I promise to never call you Blimpy,” he said to her. And then asked the more serious question, the harder question. “You’re going to love me the same, won’t you? After we bring home the baby?”