Pam of Babylon (13 page)

By noon, she had had enough and left to walk to the drugstore on Broadway to get a pregnancy test.
There, I said it! Pregnancy test. Pregnant. Baby. Jack’s baby.
She walked quickly down Broadway. The drugstore was crowded. She prayed that no one she knew would come in while she was waiting in line.

She read the labels on the different brands of test. They were all similar. One had a pink plus sign if the test was positive. Another had a smiley face, a yellow, round circle with a black smiling face on it if you were, in fact, pregnant.
Were they kidding? Where was the skull and cross bones if it dared to be positive?
She didn’t want cutesy; she didn’t want plus signs and balloons. She wanted negative. A giant NO printed in black.

She chose the test that was the quickest and also guaranteed to be accurate even before your missed period. She put it in her handbasket and walked over to the candy aisle, grabbing bags of M&M’s and mini Almond Joys, knowing she would end up eating every piece of candy. She couldn’t wait to tear into the bags and pop little candy bars into her mouth or handfuls of M&M’s. She put the obvious out of her mind and thought of a cupcake recipe her late mother used to bake, putting a piece of Almond Joy into the center of it. She would find that recipe in the box of cookbooks she had that had belonged to her mom and bake them tonight.
It was a fitting way to spend a Saturday night
, she thought sarcastically.

She paid for the test and her candy and hurried out of the drugstore before she ran into someone she knew. Getting home couldn’t happen fast enough. Throwing the candy bags on the chair in the sitting room, she dug the test out of the bag and read the directions again. She took the plastic stick out of the box and took it into the bathroom. She placed it on the edge of the sink and unbuttoned her jeans, pulling them down to her ankles. The stick was short so she had to contort to get the thing close enough to her crotch to pee on without taking her jeans off.

If it turned green, she was pregnant; blue, she wasn’t. She peed on it and waited. The she looked at her watch and waited some more. After a minute, she looked, and it was green. The stick turned green. She thought,
Great! What the hell am I going to do now?

She threw the stick in the trash and washed her hands, pulling her jeans up and buttoning and zipping them. She looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, at the dark circles under her eyes and her lips swollen from nightly crying marathons. It would be the first of many times that she would be relieved that her parents were both gone. Having to tell them she was pregnant with the baby of a dead married man would have been intolerable. Goosebumps on her arms and a sick feeling in her stomach taunting her, the idea that there was nothing she could do about the news right then was a relief. She would think about it later. The box of cookbooks that had belonged to her mom was in a closet downstairs. She ran down and dug it out, ripping the packing tape off and lifting the books out. She thought it was in a self-published, church fundraiser book and picked several of them out to thumb through. Taking the stack of books upstairs, she turned the teakettle on. A cup of tea and looking through cook books—a good diversion.

Sunday came. Marie had spent Saturday going through the chain of events of the previous Saturday, remembering each thing and trying to imagine what she could have done that would have altered the outcome. If she had made her presence known when she saw Sandra and Jack on the street, he wouldn’t have left town then, possibly having his heart attack in a place where help could’ve come sooner. She could’ve taken him back to her apartment and made him a drink so he would’ve relaxed, possibly not even having a heart attack. He would be alive. She would have been on her way to Pam’s afterward, expecting to spend the next three days on the beach; eating hot dogs and burgers off the grill, Mom’s potato salad, and cake and desserts from Heavenly Cake; playing Uno with Lisa; and sneaking a smoke from Bill’s pack. Instead, she had the worst week of her life, and her beloved Jack was dead! Once again she asked the unanswerable question;
What the hell am I going to do with my life now?

Sandra slept like a dead person on Saturday night. Having eaten three cupcakes with Almond Joys stuck in the center of them had no effect on her. They were hot and gooey, the candy bar melted and delicious.

Sunday morning came, and she was so depressed. Getting out of bed was a struggle.
What am I going to do today? Would another two thousand calories of candy help get me through the day?
She couldn’t force herself to bathe or dress. Mildly nauseated again, the thought of food was not an option. For a second she pretended that Jack was still alive, across the river and in Babylon. She imagined him wearing white tennis shorts and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, running around the tennis courts at his country club. Or with long linen pants on and a golf shirt, golfing in Bermuda. She never actually saw him like this, but he’d talked about those activities and she could see him in her mind’s eye. She stuck a cup of tea made the day before into the microwave and sat at the table looking at her brick wall and drinking the stale tea, pretending she was doing those things with him, that he was her partner in more than illicit sex. She suddenly felt so alone, so empty.

Pam couldn’t concentrate on the book she was reading. She made herself a huge iced tea, arranged cheese and crackers on a plate, got a sweater in case it was chilly out on the veranda, and picked up her book. She made the effort, but just couldn’t get into the book. She read the flyleaf, the last page, the back of the book. Maybe it wasn’t going to be a good fit.

She stood up and looked out at the water. Her footprints from earlier in the day were visible halfway down the beach and then mysteriously disappeared, as though she had picked herself up and flown away. The water had lost its allure so early in the season. She had no one to walk the beach with now, no one waiting for her at the house, no one inquiring if she found any of her favorite beach glass. There was a large, clear glass ginger jar on the kitchen counter filled with small pieces of blue and green glass and the rare red. Marie came into her mind. She walked to the phone and picked it up, keying in her number. She answered on the second ring, a breathless, questioning hello.

“It’s Pam, Marie. I was thinking of you. How are you?”
Inane. How did she think she was?

“I’m surviving. How about you?” Marie really wanted to know. She felt tender feelings for her sister, hidden by her jealousy.

“The same, I guess. I keep thinking what will the weekend bring if he doesn’t come home? Well, he’s not going to, so I guess I better get over it!” she said. “This week was a blur. How about for you?”

“I worked.” Marie said, and then asked, “What’d you do?”

“I stayed in bed Friday and Saturday, watching reruns, eating forbidden foods. And then today I managed to go to the gym. Oh, that was fun! And I walked on the beach. But I thought of something. You don’t have to answer now. But think about coming out for the weekend, why don’t you?” She didn’t say anything else.

“Okay, I’ll think about it, Pam. And Pam? Thanks for the invite.” They spoke briefly about their mother. Before they said their goodbyes, Marie mentioned Sandra Benson.

“I’m not ready to call her yet. I know you think it would help her, but I am not so sure.”

“Whatever you think. It was just an idea,” Pam said, and then they said goodbye. Pam didn’t want to get ahead of herself. She fully intended on calling Sandra and inviting her for the following weekend. She would tell Marie if and when she got a positive response. She didn’t fully understand what was compelling her to bring these two together.
Sandra was closer to Lisa and Brent’s ages than Marie’s
, a thought which made her bristle. But Sandra had loved Jack, as she was sure Marie loved Jack. They could offer some support to each other. Right now, all Pam felt was numbness. It was so strange. She had crying jags and those two days of relative inertia, but other than that, she wasn’t dwelling on his absence—yet. By next Friday, when there was again no chance of his weekly homecoming, she would be able to evaluate her mental status more realistically.

She picked up the phone and keyed in Sandra’s phone number. She, too, picked up with breathless and questioning hello.

“Sandra, it’s Pam Smith, again. I am sorry to bother you on a Sunday. Your name keeps popping into my head, so I thought I would call you. Is this a bad time?”

“God, yes! I have a house full of important guests. The servants are all busy serving. I barely have a minute to myself.” Sandra sat down again, her head hanging down, despondent. “No, I’m not busy, Pam.” Pam giggled nervously, not sure what to say next. Sandra was immediately regretful. Here was the woman whose husband had died. She needed to show some respect.

“How have you been, Pam? Has it been difficult for you?” Sandra asked.

“I guess I am doing as well as can be expected. How are you holding up?” She really wanted to know. Sandra thought of the unspoken, the unmentionable, the not-yet-revealed.

“I’m okay. The office was strange.” Sandra thought it might be helpful for Pam to know how lost everyone was without Jack, but maybe not.

“I’d like to hear what happened. No one called. I thought maybe Peter would call, but nothing. Jack’s partner not even acknowledging his death with a phone call? They’re probably worried I’ll ask for money.” Pam laughed, thinking how inappropriate that comment was.
Oh well, to hell with them.

“Good point! You should ask for money! I would if I could. All day Wednesday was spent in meetings, dividing up Jack’s projects. I hid in my office. No one knows or suspects anything about the other, you know. So there was no reason to treat me in any special way.” She stood up and started pacing. Measuring her words was nerve-wracking. “Not that I would have wanted that anyway.” She stopped yammering.
Oh, this was so hard!

“Did they make any announcement? I still think it is slightly amusing that Peter never called me!” Pam repeated. “He barely said anything to me at the funeral. Oh well, let the attorneys handle it.”

“Yes, well he is a strange one. I got in late, and they were already in the meeting. I think if anything would have been announced it would have been at that time. You know better than I do what Peter is like. He could hardly make eye contact when times were good.” There was a brief pause. Pam remembered the real reason for her call.

“I’d like to have you here next weekend. It’s supposed to be beautiful out; we are on the ocean, so it would be like having a mini vacation. You can spend the night if you are comfortable with that, or just stay for the day. My sister, Marie, is thinking about coming, too. What do you say? I’d love to have you.” She was sincerely hoping the answer would be yes.
How strange was this?
Pam was taking this step by step and had a fleeting thought that maybe she should have put more planning into it. What if she found out she didn’t like Sandra after all, that Marie was correct about her? Once the woman was in her home it would be difficult to get her out without causing a scene.