Plus One (39 page)

Alex dropped the folder to the counter, his mouth dry.

“Look—I'm sorry I was so checked out while I was away,” she said. “Things were so
bad
when I left. I want them to be better now.”

“Me, too.”

She gave him a sidelong look. “Are you crying?”

He coughed and swiped his cheek. “Maybe a little.”

• • •

Figgy was still upstairs getting ready for yoga class when Alex's
phone buzzed. Fuck—in his frantic preparation for Figgy's return, he'd forgotten to switch out his SIM card, and Miranda had chosen this precise moment to check in. He hadn't heard from her since that day in her apartment. “Hey stranger—How U?”

He deleted the message, stuffed the phone in his pocket, and went to check on lunch. He'd just assumed that he and Miranda would never speak again—what else was there to say? A minute later, his phone buzzed again. After a solid fifteen seconds of resisting, he checked it.

“Just following up re script. Don't mean to pest, but I hear Figgy's back today and DYING to know. Has she read it? Super excited!”

Alex pursed his lips and blew out a long, toneless whistle. Was she serious? She was still working the connection, still trying to get her pilot read. He took a deep breath and thumbed out a response: “Hi. Figgy read your script. Told me to tell you: It's a pass. Sorry!”

That closed the loop, didn't it? He made a mental note to circle back with Anne-Marie, find some natural way to confirm that
Gerald & Geraldine
was indeed just where he thought it was: deep in a pile of unread submissions that had about as much a chance of getting made as Alex did of finishing his punk rock novel. He headed up the stairs, through the bedroom, and down the hall toward Figgy's closet. He stopped at the closed door.

“Hon?” He shouldn't let this drag out. “We have to talk.”

“Hang on a sec.” Her voice was muffled by the floor-to-ceiling racks of clothes. “I can't find my good stretchy pants—”

“No, seriously—we need to talk.”

“Can it wait? I'm kind of—”

Alex rested his head against the door. “I need to catch you up on some stuff.”

“Stuff?” He could hear a drawer close, then another. “What stuff?”

“The trip you planned? That's so nice, so great—and a big
surprise. A really big surprise. It's just… when I saw that packet—I thought it was something different.”

“Did you want a new barbecue? Because we can still—”

“No. Not a barbecue. I thought you were serving me. Like, with papers. With our anniversary coming up, I thought you were going to end it. I thought maybe you and that guy Franklin Sykes, or maybe Zev the DP—”

“Franklin Sykes? Please. The guy barely bathes, and I'm pretty sure he's got TB. And Zev? He's dating a twenty-four-year-old from Anaheim.”

“I was afraid you were trading up. For a newer model. Because of the ten-year thing. You know that, right?”

Alex waited for a response from inside the closet. None came.

He plowed on. “I'm really glad that envelope wasn't what I thought it was, but look—I need you to know. While you were away—I did a bad thing. You were gone. I just got into this really fucked-up place. I felt like, how come
she
gets to go off and make her show while I deal with the house and kids and everything—which is crazy, I know. I mean, you've got a
job
and so do I, right? I run the business of the family, and you run an actual
business
. But you actually make something, you're out in the actual
world,
and what do I have to complain about? Anyway, I haven't been able to tell you because I've been afraid what you'll say.”

It was quiet behind the closet door. Then Figgy said, “What did you do?”

“I'm just warning you—it's bad,” he said.

“How bad?”

“Bad bad.”

Silence. He took a big breath. “I got involved… in a
reality
show. Clive's reality show. I started working on it.”

There was a beat, then: “The dog show?”

“Yes, the dog show.” Alex paused. “But really it's a show about people—”

“Oh, don't start. He's been shopping that around forever. You know he hit me up a year ago. Why? What did you do?”

Alex's heart pounded. “It was at your party—Clive approached me about coming aboard as EP. I thought it sounded nuts, but then I wrote him a check and before I knew it, I was all in.” He leaned his head against the closed door and waited a beat. “So what I'm saying is, I've been so crazy and I've had all these secrets and I totally understand if… if you
do
want to file papers… before the anniversary. If you want out, I won't fight or try to take the money you made—it's yours.”

The closet door swung open. Figgy was standing still in the center of the closet, one hand on her stomach. Her face was white.

Alex grimaced and took a step forward, bracing himself for her response. “So—what do you think?”

“Call Dr. Hudson,” she said. “I'm bleeding.”

• • •

By the time they got across town, Alex was dizzy. He'd managed to get from the east side to Beverly Hills in twenty-five minutes, which he knew must count as some sort of record but which involved two illegal left turns and a maybe-yellow-probably-red light on San Vicente that would undoubtedly result in a $550 fine stapled to an official notice with one of those grainy automated pictures of himself silently mouthing the word “shit.” He kept his eyes forward the whole way, unable to look beside him, where he knew Figgy was hemorrhaging their unborn baby all over the minivan passenger seat.

As he pulled into the underground garage, he worked up the courage to face her. She was calm, her hand resting serenely on her stomach. Okay, so maybe she wasn't bleeding out. She put a hand on his thigh. “Calm down,” she said. “It's all going to be okay.
You
know all about spotting, don't you Mr. Bloody Jock Strap? It's
nothing. This is just a precaution.”

“Just sit tight,” he said, jumping out of the minivan and hurrying around to help her. By the time he got around to her door, she was already sashaying across the parking lot as if heading in for a routine checkup.

“Slow down—no jostling!” he called, chasing her toward the elevators.

Dr. Hudson's office was crowded, the overstuffed shabby-chic sofas in the waiting room occupied by women in various stages of pregnancy, a few couples, and new moms with their infants swaddled tight against their engorged new-mom bosoms. Alex summoned a nurse, who thankfully ushered them straight into an exam room. After a brief wait, which Figgy passed flipping through a copy of
Us Weekly
, Dr. Hudson glided through the door, her clogs making a pleasant wooden thonk on the linoleum. Her strawberry blonde hair was tied back in a complicated bun, framing her soft features. “How you doing, Fig honey?” she said. “Why don't you just hop up on the table here and let's see what we got.”

“Hi, Janie,” Figgy said, an easy familiarity instantly taking over, Dr. Hudson having delivered both of their babies, in each case maintaining a cheerful calm during what Alex could only describe as a violent assault. She snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and wheeled over an ultrasound machine. Alex stayed in the corner, arms crossed tightly across his chest, as Dr. Hudson fitted Figgy's feet into the stirrups and ducked between her knees, a concert harpist approaching her instrument. She was simultaneously elegant and professional, Alex thought, the sort of doctor who'd never even think of interrupting a pelvic exam to, say, chat about a Comedy Central roast.

“I see some blood—it looks dark,” she said.

Dark blood? A chill rolled through Alex's chest. The baby was dead inside her. And it was his fault—he'd tried to prevent the pregnancy, then betrayed her in more ways than he could even
process right now. If he'd just been more supportive, kept Figgy home, forced her to rest. He flashed on the dewy face of Helen Bamper, that night in Hawaii:
“I just want things to be easy for him.”
He hadn't made
anything
easy.

Dr. Hudson pulled off her gloves and adjusted a knob. “Dark is good—means the bleeding's not ongoing. You're not passing any tissue, and your cervix looks great. Really,
gorgeous
. But there's still the possibility of something sub-chorionic. Let's check the sonogram.”

Figgy pulled up her shirt and Dr. Hudson flipped off the lights, then squirted her stomach with a strand of clear jelly and pressed down with a plastic knobbed wand. Alex kept his eyes locked on the monitor as the ghostly image wobbled with static. After a moment, the blur of white formed into something Alex was sure was a head, bobbing over the rounded curve of a spine. One second it was just pixelated fuzz and the next it was something entirely different: an unmistakable shape. A body. A little life. A baby.

Time seemed to slow, then stop. “Well hello there,” he heard himself say.

“Strong heartbeat,” the doctor said. “Looks like there may be a small clot here, but nothing to worry about.”

Alex unballed his fists as the doctor clicked the lights back on and pulled off a glove. “My guess is this is just some attachment bleeding.”

“Attachment bleeding?”

“Common in early pregnancy,” she said. “Happens when the embryo attaches to the placenta. It's no longer just a mass of dividing cells—it's latching on, getting comfy. Which doesn't guarantee this can't still proceed to miscarriage, so I want you to take it easy for at least a few days. Pelvic rest—no sex, no douching. Take your time getting dressed—and I'll see you for your regular exam in two weeks. Okay?”

And with that, Dr. Hudson winked at Alex and headed out the door. Alex left his place in the corner and pushed a strand of Figgy's hair away from her face. At his touch, her eyes went glassy and her brow screwed up into hard knot. “Oh my God,” she said, her voice froggy with emotion. “Oh my fucking God.”

“Didn't you hear? You're fine. The baby's fine!”

Figgy sat upright and began sobbing. “It's
attached
,” she cried. “I don't know what I thought—maybe I thought it was coming out today? Then I wouldn't have to go through all this. How am I going to have a baby, with two shows and the kids and
you
coming apart?”

“Oh, honey,” Alex said, conviction clicking into place. “Of
course
it's a good thing. You saw the ultrasound, right? I know it's early, but I'm pretty sure I saw a little something between the legs. A little brother for Sam and Sylvie—you'll finally get your Abe!”

She looked up at him and blinked, a fat tear trailing down her cheek.

He went on: “The vasectomy, I never should've done that without telling you. I'm sorry.”

She sniffed. “Well, I guess I'm sorry for getting knocked up without really talking it over.”

Alex shook his head and laughed. Her eyes were bright and moist behind her glasses, her cheeks slick with tears. “You really thought I was filing papers on you?”

“I did, yeah.”

“Stupid man. You're stuck with me. Get that through your skull, will you?” A droplet trailed down her cheek.

Here they were again, she collapsing just as he came together—their same old dance. Their insanities moved in tandem, magnetic poles held together by some invisible force. He flashed on a memory from two summers ago—they'd taken a family trip to the mountains near Arrowhead, renting a cabin with wood-paneled walls. On their first night he and Figgy had made
love in the narrow bed, the firelight and the thin, pine-scented air giving their usual dance a hot, dreamy urgency. In one particularly intense moment, Alex grunting, Figgy moaning, and the headboard thumping against the wall, a voice called out from the adjoining room: “Daaad? Mooom? Are you okay?”

Alex froze. How was Sam still awake? “We're fine honey,” he called. “Go back to sleep.”

He and Figgy giggled and held each other close, whispering worries about what sort of mutual torture their eight-year-old son had imagined. The next morning over oatmeal, Alex decided he better have a little father-son talk. Maybe this was a teachable moment. “So I guess you heard some noise from our room last night?”

“Mm hmm,” he said, spooning a mound of oatmeal.

“Do you want to talk about it at all?”

Sam rolled his eyes.

“Are you sure? It's okay. I mean, do you know what was going on?”

Sam swallowed and looked into his lap. “You were struggling,” he declared. “But not bad. It was the good struggle.”

Alex had left the conversation there, happily reporting back to Figgy that Sam was fine. The boy had gotten it exactly right. Alex thought of those words now—struggling, but not bad: the good struggle—and looked at Figgy collecting herself on the exam stable, his chest swelling, her pregnancy in this moment becoming real and even inevitable. Of course they would have a third child. That had always been the plan. They'd have a big life, a big family—it would be impossible, and they'd make mistakes, but they'd struggle through.