It's Complicated (3 page)

She was saying that a lot lately. It was about all she could say because what she really wanted to say was, “Jesus fucking Christ, Laura, get in the goddamn car and let me take you to the hospital right now.” But she wouldn’t. She would be Nice Josie and keep her mouth shut.

“So, this business proposition,” Laura said. “As you know, Mike and Dylan are filthy stinking rich.”

“I kind of noticed, and most of Boston knows that too, now that there was the news report.”

“Yeah.” Laura just shook her head. “Hell of a way for me to find out, right?”

Josie softened. It was hard to realize it had only been a couple of months ago. “Right.” When Laura had met Dylan and Mike they'd kept the fact that each had inherited more than a billion dollars from their late lover, Jill, from Laura. She'd found out from a local newscast. Not the most romantic way to begin a relationship. Shortly after, she'd discovered she was pregnant. The reunion had been rocky. So far, so good, though, and the three had carved out a most unusual, though thriving, relationship.

Something about Laura's demeanor put Josie on alert. It was the silences, the pauses, that were getting to her, not the actual words in between. The crafty part of her brain started to feel suspicious. She’d had a feeling that this conversation was coming, but she hadn’t expected it to be so soon.

“Mike and Dylan have given me…some…”—Laura stumbled over her words—“leeway in spending some money.”

“You mean they give you an allowance,” Josie said bluntly.

Laura pursed her lips. “Yeah.” As if in retribution, she leaned over and speared the last fried green tomato and shoved it indelicately in her mouth.

“Why fight it?” Josie said, waving her arms in an expansive gesture. “You’re with two billionaires. They make more money every year off the interest of that trust than most baseball players or football stars. Just go with it, Laura.”

About seventeen different emotions flashed across Laura’s face. Fortunately, for now, none of them was pain. A furtive glance showed Laura’s belly higher and tighter. That was good. As long as it didn’t suddenly drop lower, this was still fine. Avoiding a mad run for towels and shoelaces to boil in the back here at Jeddy’s was her short-term goal. Although, if the baby was born here maybe they could name her Jeddy.

Josie stifled a giggle and tried to look serious as Laura was saying something to her.

“And so I figure all you’d need is an office, very little advertising money, and maybe an assistant, a computer system with software—”

“
Whoa, whoa, whoa
!” Josie shook her head as if in a fog. “What are you talking about?”

Madge interrupted them. “Anything else?” She tore the bill off a pad, which Josie found puzzling. They used a computerized system for everything, and yet Madge still wrote out all the bills by hand. Slapping the paper down on the Formica, she said, “You need something, you flag me down.” She started to run away, stopped herself, turned around like a robot, and marched back. Squatting down slightly, Madge put a hand on Laura’s shoulder and caught her eyes. “It’s going to be okay, hon. You’re going to do a great job.”

Laura’s eyebrows raised high, and her bright green eyes watered, seeming to thank Madge without words. Josie felt tears fill her own eyes, the compassionate gesture catching everyone off guard. Satisfied that her words had helped, Madge’s impossibly clay-like face cracked into a semblance of a grin.

She stood up and said, “Besides, everybody forgets the pain of shitting out a ten-pound turkey.”

“Bring me a hot fudge sundae. NOW!” Laura gasped.

Madge cackled as she typed the order into her little device and ran to the kitchen.

Josie just rolled her eyes. “What is up with that woman?”

Laura waved her hand. “Eh, forget about it. I don’t want to talk about her. I don’t want to talk about shitting an eight-pound football.” Laura frowned. “Does it really feel that way?”

Josie pointed to herself. “How the hell would I know? I’ve never had a baby.”

“I still think it’s barbaric,” Laura said through gritted teeth.
Oh boy, here we go
, Josie thought. For the past month Laura had ranted about how
barbaric
birth was, and how unfair it was that biology had designed women's bodies this way. Why couldn’t there be a better way? And on and on and
on
. Even Mike—calm, peaceful, mellow Mike—was getting tired of the rant. It was born (
pun intended
) of fear. They all knew that. None of them had ever given birth, and two out of the three of them weren’t even
capable
of it.

Josie could just watch and observe and cringe on the inside as she imagined what Laura was about to go through. She knew all the arguments that the suffering was worth the baby, but the pain, the loss of control, and the sheer horror of just
imagining
the pain, had consumed Laura recently. The three of them might be there to support her, but they really couldn’t offer anything but a few clucks of sympathy and what they hoped were helpful factoids.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Laura said, shaking her head, her voice clipped and no-nonsense. “I want to talk about this business idea.”

“You want me to go in on a business with you?”

Laura snorted. “I don’t exactly need capital funding for a business project, Josie.” Madge delivered the ice cream sundae and Laura absentmindedly took a bite. “I want you to
run
the business,” Laura said, her voice low and serious suddenly.

“What business?” Josie asked.

Laura cocked her head and took a deep inhale, her upper body lifting higher as the rest of her stayed in place, like she was two parts of one being. “The business I was just describing.” She tried to lean forward and whispered, “I can’t be any more discreet because I can’t reach forward more.”

“Why do you have to be discreet?” Josie hissed back.

“Because the idea is for a dating company that…you know…” Laura motioned as if it were a secret or something to hide.

Josie mimicked Laura. “You know
what
?”

“A threesome dating service,” Laura whispered.

“What?” Josie screeched. She reached across the table and grabbed Laura’s sundae. “Gimme that. I need it more than you do right now.” Plunging the spoon in, she shoved a big gob of vanilla ice cream covered in hot fudge and salted caramel sauce into her shocked mouth. She enjoyed the rich, yummy goodness long enough to let Laura’s words sink in. Through a muffled mouth she said, “Are you out of your mind? You want me to run a business like that?”

And just then Laura bent her head down and took a deep inhale, and Josie knew exactly what the rest of her day was going to be like.

This one, by Josie’s calculations, was five minutes from the last one and forty-five seconds long. She knew that if she suggested to Laura that they go the hospital right now Laura would freeze, get angry, and rip her tongue out. Not necessarily in that order. It was time to be covert and to betray her best friend.

Josie stood and nodded toward the bathroom. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Laura smiled, a shaky grin that Josie hoped was a sign that somewhere on the inside she was facing reality and realizing that this baby was coming. Maybe not right now, but soon.

The bathroom was exactly the same as it had been the last time she’d been here, and probably the way it’d been ten years ago. No doors, shower curtains the only sense of privacy. No big deal to her because she didn’t need to use the toilet. She needed to use her smartphone. Dialing Mike, she hoped she’d get through to
him
because he’d be much easier than Dylan.

Luck was on her side.

“Hello?” his deep baritone answered.

“Hey, Mike, it’s Josie.”

“
Oooooh
,” he said, the word long and slow. “This isn’t a call to invite us over for dinner now, is it?” he said, a spark of merriment in his voice.

Of the threesome, Mike had taken Laura’s pregnancy most in stride, viewing it as an opportunity to work on patience, love, calmness, and some sort of awareness thing that he was always going on about. He and Dylan had gone with Laura to an eight-week birthing course that focused on hypnosis. Mike had been a thousand percent into it, while Dylan cracked jokes the entire time, asking the instructor where exactly in the parking lot Laura could sign up for the epidural. Dylan would have done his best unintentional Hammy-the-squirrel-on-crack imitation the second she uttered the words “Laura” and “labor.’

“No, I’m not calling to ask you if you want to watch the next game or come over for a Super Bowl party.” She could feel the smile in her voice coming through as if it matched his, met it in the middle, and danced with it. “I think it’s time. I can’t be sure, but the contractions are coming about five…six minutes apart and probably—well, the last one lasted forty-five seconds.”

He gasped. “That close?”

“Yep. She’s claiming they’re Braxton Hicks contractions and is guzzling water as if it were going out of style. But…I-I mean, I’ve never had a baby.” Josie stumbled over her words, trying to explain her feelings about this. She could be wrong, and this could be yet another example of false labor, but something about the way Laura was handling these was different. She tried to explain as succinctly as possible. “Bottom line: you and your hyperactive Speedy Gonzalez partner will be ready for me to call you to meet me and Laura at the hospital sometime today.”

“Today? You know, you don’t have to spend the whole day with her,” Mike said, his voice so neutral Josie had a hard time reading it on the phone. If they were face to face she could see the way the skin around his eyes wrinkled, the emotion in his irises and pupils, whether his hands were tight in fists or loose and free around his hips. Did he mean he didn’t want her to spend that time with Laura? Did he mean that he was grateful that she would spend that time with Laura? All of this reading of intentions and emotions was making her tired, and she wasn’t even part of the threesome.

She was, however, a fourth wheel most of the time—and maybe that was why she read intent and emotion into so many things. She was a foreigner in the country of Mike, Dylan, and Laura; culture shock, perhaps, had set in recently along with a healthy dose of jealousy. That was getting tiring, too.

“Mike, I want to spend time with her. This is important for me too, you know? And I think you guys will be there for the birth and she’ll need you two hundred percent.”

He chuckled. “And
we’ll
need you there, too.”

Her heart swelled at being acknowledged, at being wanted—
needed
—in the moment that represented the great bridging over for her best friend from “just Laura” to “Laura the mommy.”

“Thank you,” was all she could think to say.

“No, thank
you
,” he said, and sighed. “I guess I need to go let Dylan know, don’t I?”

“Yeah.”

“You know he’s going to go and buy another eight-foot bunny.”

“Yeah,” she said. The baby’s room was already filled with toys Dylan had been buying for the past few months, or that his parents had sent. The whole family had an apparent fondness for oversized African animals.

There was a hesitation on Mike’s end of the conversation. It was melancholic, uncertain, and she reached out to it. “Hey, Mike.”

“Hmm?” As the conversation continued she could sense him pulling into himself, charging up for the biggest event of his adult life. Hers, too. Hell, everyone’s.

“It’s going to be okay.”

“I know.” The smile came back in his tone, an easy, warm baritone that made her feel safe and secure, shaking off her earlier shattering. “It’s going to be
great
,” he answered.

“It’s going to be
horrible
,” Laura moaned as Josie wandered back to the table to find the sundae glass empty and Laura tight-fisted, leaning forward in her seat.

“What’s going to be horrible?” Josie asked.

“The birth!” Laura practically shouted.

Aha
. Time for a walk.

She threw a few bills on the table to cover the check and grabbed Laura’s elbow, helping her to stand. Josie peered at her, staring her down. Laura’s face was more flushed, with a red that crept down into her neck and upper chest, the outer edges of her hairline starting to get wet with sweat. Trying desperately to keep the accusing tone out of her voice, Josie said, “You had another contraction while I was in the bathroom, didn’t you?”

“I had a twinge.”

“You had a
twinge
?”

“A surge.”

“Twinge” and “surge” and “pressure” were the euphemisms that a lot of the people in the natural childbirth community had been using for contractions. And Josie got it, she understood. It was a way to train the mind to think of the pain differently. “Searing, fibrous, ripping pain that makes you want to eat morphine-laden donuts and drop acid to avoid it” wouldn’t make anyone want to have a baby, right?

So
surge
it was.

“All right. It wasn’t a surge,” Laura admitted. “It feels like somebody is reaching into my belly, and twisting it, wringing it like you would wring a wet shirt.”

“And how long did that last?”

Laura glared at her. “You’re trying to figure this out, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”
Time to be blunt
, Josie thought.

“I’m not in labor,” Laura said.

“And I’m not eighty-three,” Madge said as she walked by.

Ambling out the front door, Josie kept Laura on track, one step at a time. “Let’s just go for a walk. You’ve got plenty of water in you, plenty of food in you, and a walk will help you stretch out and just be—uh,
feel
more pleasant.”

“Okay.” Laura perked up. “And we can talk about the business.”

“The business,” Josie said.

“Yes.”

“The weirdo threesome matching business that you want me to run.”

“You
were
listening,” Laura said with relief.

“Oh, I was listening. That doesn’t mean I
agree
.” She said it lightly, though.