HAPPILY EVER BEFORE (20 page)

“Hormones, hair, hard-
ons
, plus their voices change and they start having wet dreams, but that’s why you have Henry.”

They crossed to where the mailbox stood. Clair started mailing. Grace, with a degree of difficulty, sat on the curb. When she was done, Clair sat down next to her.

“Do you think I’m a--doubting nothing ever turns out right Grace?”

“Yes,” Clair answered a little too quickly.

 “Wow, you sure you don’t want to think about that?” a hurt Grace asked.

“Nope.”
Clair looped her arm through Grace’s. “You’re completely amazing, but don’t believe it.”

“Okay, Dr. Phil.” Grace put her head on Clair’s shoulder and thought about Sweet Mamas, the baby, and Jack--not necessarily in that order. She finally understood what the NB meant. “Our lives are never going to be the same again.”

“In a good way, right?” a nervous Clair asked.

“Absolutely,” Grace said. “Hey, did you see that? Hey kid, come here.” A five year old dressed as Batman walked over with his mom not too far behind. “Did that lady give you a
Zagnut
bar?” The kid looked at her like she was nuts.

His mom held up the prized possession. “You have good eyes.”

“When it comes to candy, I’m a heat seeking missile.” Grace was very excited.
“
Zagnut
!
I thought they went out of business.”

As the woman walked off she tossed out, “it looks like she’s running out.’

Grace nudged Clair and tried to stand up. “Can we please, please, please go trick or treating there?”

“Aren’t we a little old to trick or treat?”

“Come on, I’ll be the Stay Puff Marshmallow guy, you can be a
Ghostbuster
!”

And, so while the Higgins Sisters moved from now or never into the all-important take the plunge of their eighth month, life as they knew it was perpetually in motion, but what they were about to discover is that life can sometimes give you motion sickness.

The phrase “take the plunge,” much like the word swimmingly can mean so many things. There’s the obvious--to literally get wet and then there’s the whole jump in, take a chance, try something new connotation the phrase has. Grace was teetering between literally getting wet via her water breaking and jumping in, taking a chance, and saying those three little words--I love you. Grace who was mumbling, “
just
be calm, just be quiet, just be,” found herself counting down the minutes as they drove to meet his family
.

“Do we have to do this?” Grace asked Jack as he pulled her out of the car.

“Come on, they’re my sisters.” Jack took her hand.

“Yeah, but no husbands, boyfriends, or kids?
That’s like dinner with the members of the board. It’s not really fair, is it?” Grace hoped her bladder held out. “Your mom told them the pee story, didn’t she?”

Jack bit his tongue, then gave the keys to the valet. “They wanted to meet you. It was either this or Sunday dinner with the entire family.”

 “Okay, but for the record I’m hormonal. I’m crying over everything and I’m not being held responsible if I have a meltdown and if things take a turn for the worse, you’d better fake a seizure for me.”

Jack kissed her firmly on her lips. “I promise
,
I won’t let them hurt you. Okay?”

Grace held her breath as they entered Harry
Caray’s
Italian Steakhouse and rounded the corner into the bar. Jack nudged her. There they were, the
Faccinelli
sisters. The oldest, Toni, was knocking back cocktails like they never let her out of the house; next to her was Donna, dark haired, about five-five if she was lucky; next to her was Tina, who did not look like the sweet schoolteacher Jack swore she was; and rounding out this group was Debra. She had Toni’s legs, but wasn’t as tall and Donna’s thick hair, but wasn’t as dark and she totally had Tina’s hot body.   

“Hey, you!”
Debra said in her thick Italian Mid-Western accent. “How’s my brother?” She pulled Jack into a hug and turned to Grace. “You are just as beautiful as Jack said you were.”

Grace blushed. “Thanks.
Nice to meet you.”

“Did you fucking walk?” asked Tina, as she ordered another drink. “I was ready to gnaw off my arm for Christ’s sake!”

“Ignore her,” Donna added as she gave her brother a hug.   

Toni grabbed her fresh drink, swept past her sisters, stopped long enough to give Jack a peck on the cheek, and continued moving. “Move it or lose it; our table’s ready! Nice to meet you doll.”

Jack gave Tina a look. “What’s with the drinking? Is she on shore leave?”

Tina grabbed his arm as they followed Toni to their table. “Michael came home with his latest girlfriend. She’s got tits out to here, a skirt up to here, a nose ring, a belly ring and--drum roll please--she’s bald!”

“
Geezus
!
I think I need a drink!” Grace sighed.

Donna grinned. “She’s artistic.”

“She’s nihilistic--there’s a difference!” Debra put her arm around her sister. “She’s here to piss off mommy and she is living up to her end of the bargain.”

“Well, for his sake I hope she’s good in bed,” laughed Jack.

“Amen to that,” Tina growled as they found their seats.

“He’s eighteen,” Debra sighed.

“He’s twenty one.” Donna shook her head. “Can’t you keep track?”

“Be grateful I remember which ones came shooting out of my own body,” laughed Debra.

 “They shoot out?” asked Grace hopefully. “Like faster than a speeding bullet?”

“You wish!” Donna said, as she grabbed the basket of rolls.

Toni took a menu from the waiter. “Let’s not freak her out. It’s her first kid and thank God she doesn’t have to keep the ungrateful no-good-rotten-son -of-a-bitch.”

Debra smiled. “No one says, “I love you,” like a drunken, disgruntled mother!”

“So, Grace,” Tina drawled, “why are you having your sister’s baby?”

Donna grinned, “I thought I heard something about a drunken pact?”

Grace kicked Jack under the table. “I blame Nancy McKeon, Melissa Gilbert, and your brother who on our first date told me about his amazing sisters and how they’d step in front of a bullet for each other.”

“A bullet doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll lend them my fucking body for a year,” laughed Tina.

“You do know,” Toni stressed, “that the word fuck and every variation of it is not and will never be an adjective, right? You’re a teacher!”

Grace leaned over to Jack and kissed him. ‘What was that for?” He asked.

Grace almost said those three little words, but panicked.
“For being you.”

Debra caught the exchange out of the corner of her eye and smiled. “It’s time to order some fucking dinner.”

Dinner with the four
Faccinelli
women wasn’t as bad as Grace had thought it would be. For reasons she couldn’t explain, surviving dinner made her feel more secure in the whole Grace-Jack relationship thingy. So much so, that the entire ride home Grace tried to say those three little words. When they got into the car she was planning to say, “
dinner
was great; I love you,” but she only managed the dinner part. Then, while they were at a red light she tried a witty variation of “Stop! In the Name of Love!” but it came out more as “STOP! There’s a dove above.” Obviously, she was channeling her days as a member of Death Parade. Finally, as they pulled up to her apartment and Jack got out
to open
the door, Grace was ready to take the plunge until she realized she had to take the plunge of another sort and it wasn’t her water breaking.

Jack made his way around the car, opened the door, and helped Grace out. “Want me to walk you up? I have a half hour before I’m on.”

Her lower intestines were seizing and she felt the need to be in the bathroom,
NOW
? “No, no, go, I’m fine.” Grace kissed his cheek.

“Thanks, for tonight,” Jack said. “It meant a lot to me.”

“Me too.”
She felt a huge wave of gas getting ready to blow and scurried away. “Call me later, you know, if there are no fires or other disasters.”

“Will do.”
Jack grinned as he got back into the car.

Grace raced into her building, smiled at her doorman, Ben, did the pee-pee dance while waiting for the elevator, while in the elevator, and then all the way to her apartment where she burst through the door, blew by a confused George, ran to her bathroom and tried not to topple over as she put on the light, pulled down her pants and navigated her ass to the toilet seat where she let it rip. Grace was disappointed. The pain she felt couldn’t just be gas. That twenty-one-gun salute came out of her at such a force she could’ve sworn it left bruises. “
Yowza
,” Grace whispered as her teeth clenched and her stomach muscles hardened. She tried to relax. “Just be calm. Just be quiet. Just be,” she told herself.  Grace hoped and prayed that whatever was moving through the pipeline was getting ready to land. Her breathing got labored, so to distract herself she mentally listed everything she’d eaten that day. Granola and yogurt for breakfast, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, an apple, some strawberries, a banana, some Wheat Thins, and  a baked potato, spinach, and filet mignon for dinner. As her body began to tremble and sweat poured down her back she deduced that the granola with its sadistic honey nut clusters, was causing her the pain. Grace wondered how the hell she could she give birth to something that was
gonna
weigh at least eight pounds if she couldn’t handle taking a dump.

“Are you okay?” a concerned George called through the door.

An exhausted Grace answered, “I think I have to go to the emergency room.”

George immediately opened the door. There was Grace with her hair matted down, covered in sweat and sporting a splotchy red face.
“Oh my God!”
         

Grace, on the verge of tears, sighed. “It won’t come out.”

George quickly deduced what the problem was. “Oh. Wow. Uh, how bad is it? Is it like stuck?”

“I don’t know. I think so,” Grace moaned.

“Okay, okay,” George said, as she tried not to panic. “How about we walk you around to loosen it up? I’ll make you a cup of hot water, too, that may help push things along.”

Grace leveled her with a look. “You’ll make me a cup of hot water?”

 “Can you stand? Do you need help?”         

Grace sniffled. “Can I keep my underpants down?
Just in case?”

 “Maybe we should just take them off?” George pulled Grace’s panties off and tossed them into the laundry basket. “Let me get you up.” George almost had her standing.

“It’s coming, it’s coming!” Grace plopped down on the toilet, but it was just gas.

“Whoa!” George said, and then helped her up again. Grace leaned against the sink as George ran a washcloth under cold water and dabbed at her face and neck. “Maybe we should try walking?”

George put her arms under Grace’s torso and they edged their way out of the bathroom and into the living room. As they took one walk around, Grace stopped. “I can’t do this, I can’t do this.”

“Maybe you need to wiggle it a bit,” George did a little twist to demonstrate what she meant. “Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

Grace could see the headline: “Constipation Forces Pregnant Woman to Call Ambulance.” The article would then state that the pregnant woman was in pain for over seventy-two hours before taking a dump that landed in the
Guinness Book of World Records
.
“For constipation?
I can do this. I’ve been doing this all my life. Maybe you’re right and I should wiggle it out?”

As Grace did her version of a shit wiggle, George put on the teakettle and called Clair who picked up on the first ring. “Grace is like in a lot of pain.”

Clair slipped into her
Keds
and grabbed her coat. “What’s wrong? Did you call an ambulance?” The teakettle whistled in the background. “You’re boiling water! Is she having my baby?”

George poured the hot water into a mug and grabbed some concentrated lemon out of the fridge and squirted it in.  “She’s been trying to take a shit for over an hour and can’t.”

Clair stopped in the middle of putting on her jacket.
“Oh, whoa!”

“She’s all red faced and sweating and she doesn’t look good.”

“Call an ambulance, now.”

“She doesn’t want one.” George peeked in on Grace who was shit wiggling away in the living room. “She’s doing a shit wiggle--that might help.”

“I’m calling the doctor and heading over. If Fridge thinks she should go to the hospital, we’ll drag her if we have too. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

George walked over to Grace carrying the hot mug of water. “Did it help?” she asked, as she handed Grace the hot water. “Drink it as fast as you can.”

Grace drank the water. She felt her temperature rise, could feel the warm liquid as it permeated her body, and burned her tongue. She slowly rocked back and forth as she crouched down on her haunches and, then cradled herself as best she could on the living room floor. George raced to the bathroom, ran cold water on the washcloth again, and then ran back to the living room. She sat on the floor with her friend who was now lying on her side, grabbed a pillow for her, and put the damp cloth on the back of Grace’s neck.

Forty-five minutes later, nothing much had happened. Well, nothing other than George trying to calm Grace and creating a new mantra that would help her feel at one with the problem at hand. Grace was writhing in pain on the living room floor as she kept repeating over and over, “be the shit, love the shit, free the shit.”

A freaked out George was repeating the same mantra as she paced around the living room while waiting for Clair. “Be the shit, love the shit, free the shit--just push.”

 “If I push any harder, I’m going to give myself a stroke. Shut.
The.
Fuck.
Up!”

Clair finally opened the door, white paper bag in hand and was on the phone with Frigidaire. “Yes, okay. I have it right here, but… Okay, I’ll tell her,” she hung up.

“What the fuck took you so long?”

“I had to pick up a prescription for a stool softener. Grace never filled hers. Hence, the problem,” Clair said as she raced to Grace’s side. “Are you okay?”

“Hence?
What are we in
Pride and Prejudice
?” Grace looked up at Clair with flushed cheeks and pillow marks on her face and groaned, “I need an epidural. And for the love of God--if you ever loved me or even thought one fucking nice thing about me you will never speak of this, ever!”

Clair felt so bad. “Frigidaire says you’re going to be fine. This happens a lot.”

George walked over to them as Grace groaned. “What is happening to me?”

“Well,” sighed Clair, “it seems eating for two has some setbacks. With your prenatal vitamins and your body saving every bit of nutrients from your food to give to the baby, if you don’t take your stool softener it can create a situation with the pooping.”