Something Blue (26 page)

For the rest of the day, except for a five-minute shower interrupted by Ethan who kept knocking on the bathroom door and yelling at me to hurry up, I stayed horizontal. I napped, read my
Twins
book, and flipped through my accumulation of
Hello
magazines. Mostly, though, I just thought about Ethan, imagining what it would be like to share a slow, passionate kiss with him. To make love to him. To hear him introduce me as his girlfriend, and then his fiancee. I briefly questioned whether this wasn’t just one of my challenges, if it wasn’t about my needing to have every man love me.

But I knew, deep down, that it had nothing to do with any of that. For the first time in my life, I was truly in love. It wasn’t about what Ethan could give me or how we would look together as we walked into a room. It was just about Ethan. Good, quirky, adorable, passionate, smart, witty Ethan. I was crazy about him, and so revved up with emotion that I had to resist calling him back to the bedroom as he had insisted I could do anytime. Instead, I patiently waited for him to take breaks from his writing and poke his sweet towhead into the room to check on me. Sometimes he’d just say a quick hello or get me a water refill. Other times he’d bring me plates of wholesome snacks: cheese and crackers, sliced pears, olives, homemade pasta salad, and peanut butter sandwiches cut in quarters. He’d always talk to me while I ate. And once, in the late afternoon, when it was raining really hard outside, he climbed under the covers and took a short nap with me. He fell asleep first, which gave me the chance to study his face. I loved everything about it. His curly, full lips, his long, sandy eyelashes that grew straight down, his regal nose. As I admired his features, his mouth twitched in his sleep, his lone dimple making a flash appearance. In that second, I knew what I really wanted for my boys. I wanted them to have Ethan as their father.

thirty

Over the next week, I relished my cozy existence with Ethan while tolerating the seemingly incessant interruptions from Geoffrey. He phoned every few hours and visited daily on his way home from work. Sometimes he’d bring dinner, and I’d be forced to spend the evening with him instead of Ethan (who would promptly depart for Sondrine’s). Other times I’d pretend to be sleeping, and he’d simply leave me a note on his personal stationery, which, incidentally, was adorned with an engraving of his family coat of arms. It was the sort of touch that would have been right up my alley in the Alistair-fantasizing days. But now I preferred Ethan’s no-nonsense, ruled yellow notepads. Now I preferred everything about Ethan.

One afternoon during my thirty-first week, Geoffrey paid me a surprise visit during his lunch break. I had fallen asleep reading an
Us Weekly
that Annalise had so thoughtfully sent me from home along with a tin of her famous oatmeal raisin cookies and a bottle of antistretch-mark body oil. When I awoke, there was Geoffrey perched oddly in a straight-backed dining chair pulled up next to the bed. I could tell by his expression that he felt the way I did whenever I watched Ethan sleep, and I knew that it was time to end things.

“Hello, darling,” he said as I stretched and sat up. His voice was low and nurturing. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine. Just tired and generally uncomfortable,” I said.

“Did Mr. Smith stop by this afternoon?”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling. “Love the house calls doctors make in this country.”

“And?” Geoffrey asked. “What did he say?”

“He said everything still looks good.”

He nodded. “Good. Any cramping or spotting or contractions since then?”

I shook my head.

“Good girl.” He reached out and smoothed my hair back from my forehead. Then he gave me a tiny, mysterious smile and said, “I’ve got something for you.” He handed me three real estate flyers featuring wondrous, spacious flats in posh neighborhoods. The stuff of my dreams upon my move to London. My eyes lingered on the descriptions: five bedrooms, terrace, park view, working fireplace. I forced myself to hand them back to him. I couldn’t wait another moment, couldn’t risk letting those brochures reel the old Darcy back in.

“You’re not in the mood to have a look?” Geoffrey asked.

“I don’t think it would be a good idea,” I said.

“Is something wrong?”

He knew there was. People always know. I searched for the right words, compassionate words. But it is very hard to sugarcoat a breakup when you’re in another man’s bed wearing his plaid pajamas.

So I just blurted it out, the verbal equivalent of ripping off a Band-Aid: “Geoffrey, I’m really sorry, but I think we need to break up.”

He shuffled the flyers and glanced down at the one on top, showcasing a flat in Belgravia that looked exactly like the block where Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin resided. I felt a pang thinking that if I stayed with Geoffrey, I could be one of Gwyneth’s gal-pals. I pictured sharing her clothes, her linking arms with mine and saying, “What’s mine is yours.” We’d be photographed together in
Hello.
As a huge Coldplay fan, Ethan would benefit too. I saw my boys in a playgroup with young Apple. Maybe one of them would someday marry her. I’d plan the rehearsal dinner, Gwynnie would do the wedding. We’d phone each other daily, discussing flower arrangements, cake tastings, wine selections. I snapped back to reality. Not even the lure of Gwyneth was enough to change my mind about Geoffrey.

He finally spoke. “Is it Ethan?”

I felt caught off guard and nervous hearing Ethan’s name. I wasn’t sure how to answer, but I finally said, “I just don’t have the right feelings for you. I thought I did… but… I’m not in love with you. I’m sorry.”

The straightforward, dressed-down words sounded familiar, and I realized how close they were to Dexter’s breakup speech with me. It suddenly occurred to me that no matter when his affair with Rachel had begun, she hadn’t been the cause of our breakup. Dex and I had split because we weren’t right for each other, and because of that fact, he had been able to fall in love with her. Had we been on solid ground, Dex wouldn’t have cheated on me. The realization was somehow freeing, and it enabled me to let go of another sliver of resentment toward both of them. I’d think about it more later, but for now, I refocused on Geoffrey, waiting for him to respond.

“That’s okay,” he finally said with an elegant wave of his hand.

I must have looked confused by his nonchalance because he clarified. “You’re just in a very difficult situation right now. Being in bed like this is bound to confuse you. We can sort it out later—after the babies arrive. And in the meantime, I really want to take care of you. Just let me do it, darling.”

Coming from most men the words would have sounded either condescending or pathetic—a last, desperate attempt to hold a relationship together at its seams. But from Geoffrey it was just a dignified, pragmatic, and sincere declaration. For one beat, I was sold. After all, he was my ticket to staying in London for the long term. But even more important, Geoffrey was my emotional security blanket. It is impossible to overstate the unique brand of vulnerability that comes with pregnancy, particularly the circumstances of my pregnancy—and Geoffrey assuaged much of my anxiety. He was a good person who took excellent care of me, and implicit in his every touch was the promise that he always would.

But I wasn’t in love with him. It was that simple. The concept of being with a man strictly for love used to seem naive and high-minded, the kind of thing I used to scoff at Rachel for saying, but now I subscribed to the notion too. So I forced myself to stay on track.

“That is really very sweet,” I said, reaching out to take his hand. “And I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your kindness, everything you have done for me. But we have to break up. It just isn’t right to stay together when my feelings aren’t there…”

Then to reinforce the point, I told him that I would miss him, although I knew I’d miss the fringe benefits that came along with him a bit more than I’d actually miss him. I let go of his hand.

Geoffrey squinted. His eyes were sad but dry. He said, without a trace of bitterness, that he was very sorry to lose me, but that he understood. He swung his briefcase onto his lap, snapped it open, and tossed the glossy brochures inside. Then he stood and headed for the door.

“Can we still be friends?” I called after him, feeling slightly frantic after his easy surrender. I worried that the question emanated from the old Darcy, the needing-to-be-worshipped-at-any-cost Darcy. Maybe I just wanted to retain control over Geoffrey. But as he turned to look at me over his shoulder, saying that he would like that very much, I knew that my intentions were pure. I wanted to remain friends with Geoffrey because I liked him as a person. Not because I wanted a single thing from him.

Later that night as Ethan lay next to me reading an article in
National Geographic
on global warming, I told him that Geoffrey and I had broken up that afternoon. I told him everything except Geoffrey’s question about him.

Ethan listened, eyebrows raised. “Wow. I didn’t even know you two were on shaky ground,” he said, but his tone gave him away. Like Geoffrey, he wasn’t all that surprised.

I nodded. “Yeah. I just wasn’t feeling it.”

“Was he okay?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“And you?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel guilty after all he’s done for me. And I guess a tiny bit sad too… But mostly I think it’s a good thing, even though it means I’ll have to move back to New York sooner than I’d like.”

Ethan blinked. “What?”

“I said I feel guilty—”

“No. The part about moving back?”

“I don’t have a job, Ethan. I’ll probably have to go back to my old one after the babies are born. I just don’t have the money to stay here.”

“You can stay here for as long as you want,” Ethan said.

“I can’t do that. I’ve been enough of a burden… And it’s not like you’re rolling in it.” I smiled.

“I
love
having you here, Darcy. I can’t wait for those babies to get here. I’m unbelievably pumped. Don’t let money constraints force your hand. We’ll work it out. I have money saved.”

I looked at his earnest face and had to swallow back the urge to confide my feelings. It wasn’t that I was afraid of rejection. It was more that for once, my feelings were selfless, and I didn’t think it was fair to Ethan to unload everything on him. He was already in a relationship. He didn’t need the pressure of worrying about me and how hurting my feelings might impact my pregnancy.

So I just smiled and said, “Thank you, Ethan. We’ll see what happens.”

In my mind, though, I knew that my time in London, as well as my time with Ethan, was running out.

thirty-one

The next day I hit the thirty-two-week benchmark, significant according to my
Twins
book in that my children would be “unlikely to suffer long-term health consequences as a result of their premature births.” This felt like an enormous hurdle, which seemed ironic considering that I had achieved the goal by doing absolutely nothing but hanging out in bed, reading magazines and snacking.

To celebrate the milestone, Ethan surprised me with a homemade chocolate cake, bringing it back to the bedroom on his wooden tray. The cake was decorated with thirty-two blue candles, one for each week of my pregnancy, which he lit while singing, off-key, “Happy birthday, Baby A and B!”

I laughed, made a wish, and blew out the candles in two tries (which he said counted as I was having two babies). Then he cut the cake and served us each a big slice. I had seconds and then thirds, praising his baking efforts, especially the icing. When we finished eating, he cleared our plates and the tray and returned with a big box wrapped in mint-green and white polka-dotted paper.

“You shouldn’t have,” I said, hoping that he hadn’t spent too much on the baby gift.

He ceremoniously rested the box on my lap. “I didn’t… It’s from Rachel.”

I stared down at the package. Sure enough, the present-wrapping was unmistakably Rachel: perfect and pretty, but restrained enough not to look professionally wrapped. I observed her neat corners, the short strips of tape all parallel to the edges of the box, and her full, symmetrical bow. For some reason, that package unearthed all kinds of good memories, moments shared with Rachel over the years.

Ethan shot me a furtive glance. “Are you upset? Should I not have given it to you? I debated it for some time…”

“No. It’s fine,” I said, my hand running across the wrapping paper. Rachel’s hand had touched this box, I thought, and I was overcome with the most absurd sensation that I was connecting with someone from the dead.

“Are you going to open it?” he asked.

I nodded.

“She sent it a few weeks ago, but she wanted me to wait until closer to your due date. I thought today was good… because I’m not worried anymore. Your babies are going to be fine.”

My heart pounded as I carefully untied the white bow, peeled back the paper, and opened the box to find two white receiving blankets trimmed with light blue silk. They were the softest, most sumptuous things I had ever touched. I remembered that Rachel had given An-

nalise a similar blanket at her baby shower, but mine were even nicer. After a long moment, I removed the card from the envelope. It was letter-pressed with two baby carriages. I opened the card slowly and saw her familiar, neat cursive. I could hear her voice as I read silently:

Dear Darcy,

First, I want to tell you how sorry I am for everything that has happened between us. I miss our friendship, and I regret that I cannot share in this very special time in your life. But despite the distance between us, I want you to know that I think of you often. Many times a day. I am so pleased to learn from Ethan that you are happy and well. And twins! It is so
you
to turn an already wonderful event into something doubly exciting! And, finally, I just want to wish you heartfelt congratulations as you embark upon motherhood. I hope someday to meet your sons. I know they will be beautiful, amazing little boys, just like their mother.

Best wishes and much love always, Rachel

Still clutching the card, I leaned my head back on my pillow. For months now, I had been waiting to hear something from Rachel, but I didn’t realize how
much
I wanted to hear from her until I read her card. I looked up at Ethan. His face was placid, patient.

“Huh. Imagine that,” I said, filling the silence.

“What’d she say?” Ethan asked.

I downplayed my emotion by rolling my eyes. Then I twisted my hair up in a knot, secured it with an elastic band, and said nonchalantly, “Let’s just say, she is trying to make a comeback.” My words were cavalier, but the catch in my voice gave me away. And against my best efforts, I could feel myself softening. I tried to mask my feelings by flinging the card his way, Frisbee-style. “Here you go. Read it for yourself,” I said.

His lips moved as he read silently. When he got to the end, he looked up at me and said, “It’s really nice.”

“Yeah. These blankets are pretty nice too,” I said, stroking the silk border with my thumb. “I guess I no longer want her to go hell.” I laughed. “Just a dingy place in heaven.”

Ethan smiled.

“Does this mean I have to call her?” I asked him.

Part of me wanted his response to be, “Yes, you must call her now,” because I wanted an excuse to swallow my pride and give in. But Ethan just said, “You don’t have to call. Just send her a thank-you note.” He handed the card back to me.

I couldn’t resist rereading it aloud, parsing every sentence for its meaning.

“She said she’s ‘sorry for what happened between us.’ Not
what she did.”

“I think that’s implied.”

“So what does that mean exactly? That she’d take back what she did with Dex if she could?” I asked, redoing my bun.

“She probably just wishes she had handled things differently,” Ethan said.

“Like how?” I asked.

“I don’t know… like waiting until after you and Dex broke up to start seeing him?”

“Did she tell you that? Do you know that for a fact?”

“Not for a fact. No.”

“Okay,” I said, my eyes scanning the rest of the card. “Moving on here… ‘Despite the distance between us,’” I read aloud. “Do you think she means emotional distance or geographic distance?”

“Probably both,” Ethan said.

“She thinks of me
every
day? Do you think she’s exaggerating?”

“No. I don’t, actually,” Ethan said. “Don’t you think of her every day?”

The answer was yes, but I pretended not to hear the question as I rattled on. ” ‘Pleased to learn from Ethan?’” I said, remembering the bits of the conversation I had overheard on Christmas. “What exactly did you tell her?”

“Well, obviously I told her you were having twin boys. You said I could… and I just told her that you’re doing well here. That you’ve made some friends. And I told her about Geoffrey too.”

“Have you talked to her since Geoffrey and I broke up?” No.

I briefly considered asking him about Rachel’s engagement, but I decided that I still wasn’t ready to have it confirmed. I closed the card and tucked it back into the envelope.

“She can’t honestly think that we could really be close friends again?” I asked, my voice trailing off.

“She knows you pretty well, Darce. I don’t think she expects you to fold,” he murmured. His tone was matter-of-fact, but his expression said, “I think you will fold.” Or maybe, “I think you already have folded.”

I put off writing Rachel’s thank-you note for nearly two weeks because I couldn’t decide on the content or tone. Should I forgive her outright? Tell her that I missed her, too, and that although I would never fully accept her relationship with Dex, I wanted to repair our friendship? Was that even the case?

One evening, on the Saturday night of my thirty-fourth week, something compelled me to get out of bed and retrieve a small leather album in the closet nursery, stuck down in a side pocket of one of my suitcases. I had put together the album several summers before and had packed it at the last moment. I brought it back to bed and flipped through it, skipping past the photos of Claire and Dex and various other friends, and finding one of Rachel and me taken in the Hamptons right after she and Dex had graduated from law school. I studied our carefree poses, our broad smiles, our arms draped casually around each other as we stood by the water’s edge in our bikinis. I could practically smell the salty air, feel the ocean breeze and the sand shifting under my feet. I could even hear her laughter. I wondered why beach photos taken of lost loved ones always seemed so much more poignant than other photos.

As I looked at that picture of us, I thought about everything that had happened between Dex and Rachel and me, deciding again that the cracks in our relationships had been a breeding ground for deceit. Dex and I had cheated on each other because we weren’t right together in the first place. Rachel betrayed me because our friendship was a flawed one. I lied to her about Marcus because of the same negative undercurrent—the unspoken competition that can corrupt even the best of friendships. That had ruined ours.

As much as I wanted to hold them responsible, I knew that I was not blameless. We were all accountable. We had all lied and cheated. But despite everything, I knew we were still good people. We all deserved a second chance, a chance to be happy. I considered the expression “Once a cheater, always a cheater,” and I dismissed it as a fallacy. People generally didn’t cheat in good relationships, and I couldn’t imagine Dex and Rachel cheating on each other. I also knew that if I were ever with Ethan, I would never cheat on him. I would be true to him, no matter what, always.

And at that moment, there on the doorstep of forgiveness, I went into labor. It started out as an intense cramping in my lower abdomen, and when I got up to pee, fluid ran down my leg. My water had broken. I felt a strange sense of calm as I phoned Mr. Smith and reported my symptoms. He confirmed that I, indeed, was in labor, and he instructed me to come to the hospital as soon as possible. He said he would meet me there.

Ethan was at a sports bar in Piccadilly watching Stanford play in the NCAA basketball tournament. I hated to interrupt the game—he took March Madness very seriously—but he had made me promise to call for “the smallest of reasons,” and I figured that my water breaking qualified. He answered on the first ring, shouting into the phone with bar noise in the background. “Darcy? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine… Is Stanford winning?”

“They haven’t tipped off yet,” he said. “I’m watching Wake Forest now. They’re looking pretty solid—which is good because I have them going to the Final Four in my pool.” I pictured him perched on a barstool gripping the yellow highlighter he used to mark up his brackets torn from
USA Today.

“When does your game start?” I asked, debating whether I should wait until the game was over to have him meet me at the hospital.

“Soon. Why? Are you okay?”

I hesitated and then said, “I’m really sorry, Ethan. I know how much you look forward to this tournament and Stanford playing and everything… but my water broke. Do you think you could come home and take me to the hospital?”

“Oh, Christ! Don’t move!” he shouted into the phone. “I’ll be right there!”

Ten minutes later he burst through the door and streaked down the hall toward the bedroom, yelling, “Cab’s waiting outside! Cab’s waiting outside!”

“I’m right here,” I called out to him from the living room. My small duffel, which I had packed weeks earlier, was resting at my feet.

He ran into the living room, kissed my cheek, and breathlessly asked how I was.

“I’m fine,” I said, feeling relieved to see him. “Would you mind tying my shoes? I can’t reach.”

“Oh, God. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here,” he said as he stooped down to tie my Nikes. His hands were shaking.

“Where’s your jacket?” I asked, noticing that he had come home wearing only his lucky Stanford T-shirt. “It has to be freezing outside.”

“I left it at the bar.”

“Oh, Ethan, I’m sorry,” I said. “And I’m really sorry about interrupting your game too.”

He told me not to be silly, he’d get the jacket later, and the game wasn’t important. As he bent down to pick up my bag, I noticed a clear patch adhered to his arm, peeking out from under his T-shirt.

“You’ve quit smoking?” I asked, realizing that I hadn’t seen him with a cigarette in ages or, for that matter, detected any telltale tobacco odor on his clothing.

“Yeah. Can’t have smoke around you or the babies.” He nervously rubbed his patch as if to give himself a needed boost of nicotine.

I thanked him, feeling moved by his effort.

“Don’t mention it. I needed to quit anyway. Now let’s go!” He pulled me to my feet and shouted, “Schnell! Schnell!” which I figured meant “hurry” in another language, maybe German. He helped me to the door, where he grabbed his only other jacket, a bright yellow raincoat. Then he inhaled sharply, rubbed his hands together, and said, “Well. This is it.”

During our cab ride to the hospital, Ethan helped me with my breathing exercises, which was amusing because he seemed to need more help breathing than I did. We determined that my contractions were six minutes apart and lasting about thirty seconds each.

“How bad does it hurt?” Ethan asked every time I winced. “On a scale of one to ten?”

My pain threshold was normally quite low, and I’d been known to bawl even during the removal of a splinter, so the pain actually felt like an eleven. But I told him a four because I wanted him to be proud of my strength. I also told him I wasn’t scared—which is really saying something coming from a former pessimistic drama queen. But it was the truth—I
wasn’t
scared. I just knew everything was going to be all right with my babies. I had made it to thirty-four and a half weeks. And I had Ethan with me. What more could I ask for? I felt like the luckiest woman in the world. I was ready to meet my sons.

We checked in at the hospital, and Ethan pushed my wheelchair to our assigned birthing room. He then helped me undress and change into my hospital gown. He blushed as I stood naked in front of him, and for a second I was embarrassed too.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” I said to ease the awkwardness. I laughed. “There is no modesty from here on out… And I sure hope you’re not squeamish.”

He smiled, held my hand, and said he could handle it. Then he helped me recline in bed. I felt relieved to stretch out—and overcome with a profound sense of fatigue. All I wanted to do was sleep, but the pain was too intense for napping. About five minutes later, Mr. Smith and his midwife arrived. She started my IV while he checked my cervix and informed me that I was nearly five centimeters dilated.