November Surprise (18 page)

“I prefer liberal elite.”

I look at him now, and his eyes are warm and smiling. I
squint at him in return. “Whatever,” I say.

“Whatever? That’s the best you can do? You’re so lame!”

I throw my magazine at him, and he grabs it and starts
leafing through it.

The nurse comes through the lobby door. “Lucy?”

I stand up and Monty stands too. “I want to hear the
heartbeat,” Monty says to the nurse. “That’s okay, right?”

“It’s fine,” she says, addressing both of us. “But that
usually comes at the end.” She looks at me. “Why don’t we do your weigh-in and
internal exam first, and we’ll call him in for the good part.”

I appreciate her diplomacy, but I wonder if she’d be so
considerate about sparing Monty from the uglier parts of this appointment if we
were wearing wedding rings. “That’s fine,” I say, and I look towards Monty for
confirmation.

“Sure,” he says. He leans in and kisses me on the forehead.
“I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

I follow the nurse through the doors, and Monty sits back
down. Soon I’ve had my weight and blood pressure checked, and I’m wearing
nothing but a backless hospital gown. The doctor interviews me, I tell her how
nauseous I’ve been, and she nods in sympathy. I ask her if it’s okay to take Pepto-Bismol,
and she says to take Tums instead. Thrilling.

She examines me, everything’s normal, and I take my feet out
of the stirrups. I pull a blanket over my legs, lift my gown up to bare my
belly, and Monty is called in.

“Everything okay?” he asks me.

The doctor answers for me. “Lucy’s looking great.”

Monty looks down at me as I’m lying back on the examination
table, and grins. “I agree,” he mouths.

The doctor spreads jelly on my stomach, and presses her
Doppler monitor against my belly. We wait in quiet anticipation, but all we can
hear is static.

“Sometimes it doesn’t pick up right away,” says the doctor.

She moves the monitor around, and after a moment it picks up
a more rhythmic sound. “Is that it?” Monty asks.

“No, that’s Lucy’s heartbeat.” She continues to move the
Doppler in circles against my belly, and the thirty seconds or so that go by
feels much longer. Tension starts to rise in my chest, and breathing becomes
slightly difficult. What if something happened? I look over at Monty. He’s
biting his lip and staring at my stomach, as if he could will it to make the
right sound.

Then the doctor smiles and a rapid
whish whish whish
fills our ears.

“There we are,” she says. “Your baby’s heartbeat.”

“It’s so loud,” Monty says. “Isn’t it only about as big as a
bean?”

“Maybe a little bigger,” she replies, “but not by much.”

“Amazing,” he says. His eyes
move from my midsection to my face, and we share another smile.

After the appointment we go back to his apartment, and he
makes soup with crackers for dinner. He’s quiet as he prepares the food, quiet
as he sets it out, quiet as he sits and stirs his soup. I take tentative sips,
and wait for him to say the words that are taking so long in their journey from
his mind to his mouth.

Finally, he speaks. “I thought about you a lot when I was
sick.”

I try not to sound too shocked. “Why?”

He crumples some crackers into his soup and stirs them in.
“I don’t know. I guess because you felt like a lost opportunity. I would lie
there, convinced I was about to die, and all the lost opportunities of my life
would swim around in my head. You were one of them.”

I would have thought he’d be thinking about Evelyn. “But you
were with…”

He cuts me off before I can say her name. “It wasn’t like
she was at my bedside all the time, bringing me ice chips and praying for my
recovery. And in retrospect, I didn’t miss her as much as I should have. I know
that now.”

How serious should my response be? This is the first time
he’s brought all this up, but I don’t want him to scare himself away.

Monty continues before I figure out what to say. “So you
would think I’d have this amazing outlook since I nearly died, like I’m ready
to embrace whatever life throws at me. But honestly, when you first told me you
were pregnant I was terrified.”

“What about now?”

“Now I’m not. I’m really pretty calm.”

“Great,” I reply, reverting to my standard defense of
sarcasm. “That’s high praise. But how do I know you don’t say that to all the
women you’ve knocked-up?”

He laughs. “Just you.”

“Well, here I am. More booby prize than lost opportunity.”

He arches an eyebrow. “Meaning?”

My hands travel the length of my chest area, game-show
hostess style. “Can you believe how big they’ve gotten?”

“They’re massive,” he says, but he’s lying. That doesn’t
bother me, because my breast size has never been our issue.

I wish I could say we just don’t have issues, period. But we
do, and now feels like the time to clear the air.

I launch in. “I don’t know if I can give you much. It’s hard
enough to start a relationship under the best of circumstances. But I have tons
of hormones rushing through me and I’m tired and crazy. I can barely tolerate
my work schedule, and it’s not even all that bad. Meanwhile, I’m getting fat
and I feel about as sexy as Janet Reno, and at the end of it all, there will be
a baby to take care of.”

He drums his fingers on the table during my little speech,
but he stops when it’s his turn to talk. “Lots of couples get through it.”

“Lots of married couples. We’re not that familiar.”

“We’re hardly strangers.”

True. If we were strangers the idea of letting him go
wouldn’t send me into such a tailspin. We may be familiar, but not familiar
enough. I can’t trust that this is real or lasting, that it won’t suddenly end
the way Bill Richardson’s bid for the nomination did. “But we’re definitely not
married.”

He winks at me. “That could change.”

I say nothing. It’s not a proposal, so it doesn’t deserve a
response. People don’t seriously propose and wink at the same time. He’s
kidding around like we always do, and that’s fine, because I’m not sure I want
to get married anyway. Besides, to talk of marriage right now would be like
running for president before completing a single term as senator.

Oh. Oops.

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. This is
a common idiom, meant to imply that cosmetic changes don’t alter something on
the inside. Obama said this at a campaign event, and the McCain camp claimed
that Obama was indirectly calling Sarah Palin a pig. That it was a reference to
her hockey-mom/pitbull/lipstick joke rather than an implication of making
changes that are only skin deep.

Meanwhile, the surface of my life has changed. Everyday, a
little bit more, my nausea subsides, my energy resumes, and Monty and I can
pretend we’re just a couple of single professionals, without looming
responsibilities and impending middle age. We hang out and act like we’re in
our late twenties, as if our options and our youth is limitless. It’s a
cosmetic change, and it doesn’t alter the truth. The reality still remains; in
a few months we’re going to be parents. Living in denial is fun while it lasts.

Then Jack calls me.

“Monty is turning thirty-nine,” he says. “He keeps telling
me he hasn’t really made any friends yet in Seattle. I thought I’d fly up
there, surprise him, and take him out for his birthday. Would you like to meet
us for a drink?”

Jack still doesn’t know that Monty and I are dating. The
whole thing just sort of snowballed, one lie after the other, like the John
Edwards/Rielle Hunter affair. Back in 1994 we agreed not to tell Jack that we
hooked up at his wedding. So, after that, we of course didn’t tell him about
New York in 2000. Then we thought we’d wait, see how things went when we
started dating a few months ago. Then I got pregnant. But so many pregnancies
end in miscarriage, especially at my age. So we held off on telling him. Again.

But now? I may feel as scummy as John Edwards, cheating on
cancer-stricken Elizabeth, but my time for deception is probably up.

I gulp. “You’re surprising him? Wow. That’s great. Really,
really wonderful. I bet Monty will be so happy! Is Petra coming too? When are
you getting in?” My words come out in a squeaky rush.

“Umm… no, it’s just me. Petra’s staying home with Mikey. And
I’m getting in on Wednesday.”

“Wow. That’s great!”

“Yeah, you’ve already said that…” Jack’s tone is
questioning. “Are you okay?”

“Of course! Why wouldn’t I be?” I’m talking way too loud,
but I can’t help it.

“I don’t know.” He pauses, and waits for me to say
something, but I don’t. “So,” he continues, “I was thinking you could call
Monty. You’ve met up a couple of times, right? It wouldn’t be weird for you to
call him?”

I try to rein my voice, and myself, in. Evenly I say, “No.
Not weird. I could call him.”

“Great. So tell him to meet you for a drink, and then I’ll
show up and surprise him. Okay?”

“Okay!”

“And Lucy…”

I swallow roughly. “What?”

“Don’t ruin the surprise.”

“Definitely not. I promise.”

 
“Jack is coming
here to surprise you for your birthday!” It’s the first thing I say when Monty
walks through my door that evening. He was in the process of leaning in for a
hello kiss, but he steps back. His face and hair are damp from the drizzle
outside.

“What?”

“He’s worried that you haven’t made friends yet in Seattle.
So he’s flying up to take you out for your birthday.”

“I’ve made friends.” Monty scowls, takes off his jacket, and
walks the length of my small living room. “I haven’t made
a lot
of friends, but only because I spend all my spare time with
you.”

“
I’m
not accusing
you of being unpopular.” Sometimes I wonder if Monty’s identity is still
wrapped up in who he was in high school.

“But Jack is,” Monty replies.

“And that’s what you care about right now? Monty, this is
really, really bad. I’m starting to show. We have to tell him; there’s no way
around it.” I rub my eyes, then my temples. “Oh God,” I groan. “It’s going to
be so awkward.”

He grins at me like this is a party game. “It will be a lot
more awkward if we wait until after the baby comes out.”

“This isn’t funny,” I demand. “We waited too long.” I sit on
my overstuffed armchair and hang my head in my hands. “It was a bad idea, not
telling him sooner. I don’t know what I was thinking. I
wasn’t
thinking. I must have lost my powers of rational thought
once I became pregnant.”

“You seem really upset.”

I raise my head. “I’m surprised that you’re not.”

“Jack was going to find out some time. It’s not that big a
deal.”

“But he’s going to feel betrayed.” I hit my hands together
to stress my point. “We’ve been lying to him this whole time, and now his
feelings are going to be hurt.”

“
We’ve
been lying
to him, huh?”

I give him a quizzical look, and Monty leans against the
wall beside me. “From the beginning, you’re the one who wanted to keep it a
secret. I agreed only because you insisted.”

“So this is my fault?”

“Yes.” I look at him in his disbelief, but he doesn’t
flinch. “Lucy, I’m sorry, but if it was up to me, I would have told him a long
time ago. You’re so worried about Jack’s feelings, but I could never figure out
why we were keeping it a secret in the first place, unless…”

I wait for him to finish his thought, but he just shakes his
head and walks to my refrigerator. He opens it and grabs a beer from the
six-pack he brought over for himself earlier this week.

“Unless, what?”

Monty walks back to the living room to face me. “Either you
never planned on staying with me long-term anyway, or you still have a thing
for him.”

Monty’s face is no longer without tension; his jaw is
clenched. I should take his statement seriously, because obviously it was
difficult for him to say. But a laugh bubbles up inside of me, and suppressing
it is as difficult as not scratching a new mosquito bite. “Come on,” I say
between giggles.

Monty takes a swig of his beer. “Why is that funny?”

“Because it’s so off base! Me having a thing for Jack is
ridiculous!”

He cocks his head to the side and squints. “Why? You dated
him once.”

“Years ago. He was the first guy I dated. Ever.”

“I know. I remember you then. I was happy he’d finally found
a girlfriend.”

“And that was as much as you noticed me, right?”

He looks at me like what I just said is from left field.
“What does that have to do with anything? Were you hoping that I’d notice you?”
He stands above me, in his defensive lawyer mode, one hand clutching his beer,
the other on his hip.

The summer I dated Jack, Monty was in and out of their house
like a force of nature. He was always rushing off to some party, or some
pick-up game of soccer, or to work as a lifeguard at the lake. Even if I hadn’t
been dating Jack, Monty was so far out of my league that it never occurred to
me to think of him as anything other than that guy who lives in a separate
stratosphere. In turn, I’m sure I never even appeared on his radar. “No.” I try
not to sound too guilty. “I was with Jack.”

“Exactly my point,” he says, like he’s just won this
argument that I can’t even follow.

I press my palms against my leg. “Monty – you don’t
honestly think I’m still harboring feelings for Jack.”

“I didn’t before, but now you’re awfully worked up by the
thought of him finding out about us.”

“Well, it’s complicated.”

Monty takes another swig of his beer and swallows. “Maybe
you should try and explain.”

“I just never wanted him to know because…”I pause and square
my shoulders. It’s impossible to find the right words here. Jack was the first
guy to see something in me, after I was so hurt and humiliated by Reggie. I can
never thank him enough for that, even though he doesn’t realize the full story.
And I know that I was the first person to see Jack as someone other than Monty
Bricker’s younger brother. So it’s the ultimate betrayal, to fall for Monty
after rejecting Jack, no matter how many years have gone by.