What Came First (29 page)

Samantha says something, but, miraculously, Sydney is so loud that I can’t make out the words. Sydney’s scream has always been unusually shrill, but today she is in rare form. Samantha checks her watch. I know what she’s thinking.
She can’t keep this scream up forever.

Ha! Sydney’s scream endurance in unmatched by any child I’ve ever encountered. True, even she will eventually wear out, but there are a mere twenty minutes left to the lesson. She is just getting started.

Harrison swims a lap underwater—then two, three, four, five before popping up for a quick sip of air and going back down.

I’ve just poured myself a glass of iced tea when the doorbell rings. I leave the drink on the counter, retighten the scarf around my waist, and pick my way through the LEGOs. When I see Lane Plant looming, shirtless, in the doorway, I reflexively take a step back.

Lane Plant is a big, dark, hairy man, with heavy eyebrows, a perpetual five o’clock shadow, and a virtual rug on his chest and back that the whole neighborhood gets to see on a regular basis since he walks around shirtless from May through October. Today he’s wearing shiny blue gym shorts, leather flip-flops, and the sandalwood cologne that he’s worn for as long as I’ve known him and that I’ve always liked in spite of myself.

“Sorry to, um . . .” He clears his throat. “I was doing some work in the backyard, and I heard, you know—someone was screaming. Just wanted to make sure that, you know. Everything okay?”

No one has ever accused Lane of being articulate.

“Everything’s fine.” I make myself smile. “The kids, um—swim lessons. Sydney, she’s doesn’t like—she’s afraid to go underwater. So the swim ’structor—I mean instructor—threw . . . pushed . . . she threw her in.”

So maybe I shouldn’t make fun of Lane’s inarticulateness.

“That might work,” Lane says.

“But it probably won’t.”

He doesn’t smile. Lane never got my jokes. (Was that even a joke?) Even in the old days, when Sherry and Lane and Darren and I used to sit around drinking margaritas, Lane never laughed at a single thing I said.

“Otherwise, how are things?” he asks, still standing in the doorway. Do I have to invite him in? No, I don’t think so.

“Good,” I say. “Same.”

“Good.” He nods.

“Thanks for stopping by. For checking.”

“No problem.” He smiles, and it changes his whole face, makes him almost handsome. He should smile more often.

I smile back, and we hold each other’s eyes for about two seconds more than is comfortable. Finally, he holds up a hand in a wave. “Catch you later.”

“Sure thing.”

He heads back to his house.

When I close the door, my heart is racing and I’m sweaty again. I wish, for the ten-thousandth time, that Darren would get another job and we could move far, far away from Sherry and Lane Plant.

Back in the pool, nothing much has changed. Sydney’s siren scream continues unabated. Harrison shoots back and forth underwater like a tadpole. It may be my imagination, but it seems like Samantha’s resolve has been dented. Her hands have left her hips and hang helpless at her sides. She slumps, just a little bit.

After a couple of minutes, Samantha blows her whistle, long and hard. Shocked, Sydney stops screaming for several heartbeats before covering her ears and wailing with renewed fury.

Harrison swims a couple more laps along the bottom before hauling himself out of the pool. Dripping, he crosses the concrete, ignoring Samantha as she shouts, “DUDE! WHERE YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING? DUDE! WE GOT TEN MINUTES LEFT!”

Harrison and I face each other through the glass slider. I grab a towel and pass it to him. He wraps it around his shoulders and sloshes into the kitchen.

“I gotta pee.”

A minute later, the toilet flushes. Harrison tramps back out, still trailing pool water.

“There’s water on the floor,” I say.

“Dodie did it.”

He hauls the slider open. If Samantha was weakening before, she has renewed her resolve.

“YOU CAN SCREAM ALL YOU WANT, SYDNEY. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? YOU’RE GONNA LEARN TO GO UNDERWATER! I’M GONNA HELP YOU! AND THEN YOU’LL REALLY LEARN TO SWIM.”

Harrison pauses. He half turns to me. “Samantha needs to use her indoor voice.”

I throw my head back and laugh. Harrison giggles. I open my arms, and he steps back into the house, right into my embrace. I kiss the top of his wet, dark head.

“I love you so much. You know that?”

“I know,” he says.

Sofie Sanchez sits on the floor behind my desk, stacking the little paper cups that Melva and Pammy use for mouthwash. Sofie is supercute, even though her pink T-shirt has a big orange-juice stain on the front and her thick, dark hair needs a trim.

“Look, Nessa!”

I turn around just in time to see the paper-cup tower tumble. Sofie smacks the ground.

“You want to make the bottom bigger,” I say.

The waiting room is empty. I join Sofie on the floor, where I help build a better paper-cup base. Then we start in on the second layer, slightly smaller than the first.

When we get to the third layer, she says, “It’s a wedding cake!”

Ugh. It does look like a wedding cake. Just when we were having such a good time.

My left hand is still bare. In a moment of complete stupidity, I told Eric I didn’t need a diamond. A plain wedding band would be fine. Of course, that was back when I thought that engagement led to marriage—and before I realized that even saying the word “wedding” would make Eric go, “I’m just getting used to the idea of being engaged.”

I point to the stack of paper cups. “I think it looks more like a sand castle.”

“Hello?”

Someone has come into the office. I scramble off the floor and smile at Kristin Minahan, who is ten minutes early for her eleven o’clock appointment. Kristin is about my age, pretty and preppy, with a gold band and big-ass diamond on her left hand.

“Sorry, Kristin. I didn’t hear you come in.”

“That’s okay. Looks like you’re busy.” Kristin smiles and wiggles her fingers at Sofie. Sofie plants her face in the carpet.

“Shy,” I mouth.

“She one of Dr. Sanchez’s?”

“The youngest. The other two are at camp this week, and their nanny is in Mexico for the month.”

I don’t tell Kristin that Dr. Sanchez offered to pay me extra to watch Sofie at work. I said no even though I could use the money. It made me think of Eric’s nanny comment and made me feel weirdly offended. But then, everything to do with Eric feels weird these days.

I pull out Kristin’s file. “Your information still the same? Address, phone, insurance?”

“Yes, except . . .” She touches her belly.

“Yeah?”

“I’m pregnant.” She smiles, and her face turns pink. “We haven’t told many people. It’s only two and a half months, so until I hit the third-month mark . . .”

“Right.” My face feels tight, tense.

“But I figured I should let you know. I can’t have X-rays, of course. I’m not sure if it makes any difference with the cleanings.”

“I’ll tell Pammy.”

“Thanks.” She exhales and her smile grows bigger.

I know I’m supposed to say something, ask her how she’s feeling or tell her she looks amazing. But all I can think is:
She got pregnant right when Laura Cahill did
. If Laura Cahill did.

“Were you trying for long?” I blurt, though it’s none of my business.

Kristin isn’t offended. She shakes her head. “First try.”

“Good for you,” I say. “Congratulations.”

There is a 12 percent chance that Laura Cahill got pregnant that day that Eric did his . . . thing. And if that didn’t work, she still had two more shots at a 6 percent chance each. So that means she has a, what? Twenty-four percent chance of being pregnant? That can’t be right. Because if the first time didn’t work, she’d go back to zero, and . . .

Crud. All those times when my high school math teachers said, “Pay attention because you’ll need to know this someday.” Turns out they were right.

“How are you feeling?” I ask Kristin as she sorts through magazines on a wall rack.

“Little nauseous,” she says. “But not too bad. I’m just so tired. No matter how much I sleep, it’s never enough. Good thing it’s summer vacation, or I’d be napping on my desk.” Kristin teaches second grade.

I spend the rest of the morning playing with Sofie and obsessing over whether or not Laura Cahill got knocked up. With Eric’s child. Finally, I decide it’s stupid to torture myself. When I get home, I’ll call her and find out.

That night, I’m about to hang up when Laura Cahill answers her cell phone on the fourth ring.
“Eric?”

She sounds way too excited to be getting a call from our home number. I almost hang up, but then she’ll just call back, maybe even try Eric on his cell, and I don’t want him to know I called. He’s on his way home from work now—I just talked to him. I’ve got at least twenty minutes before he walks through the door.

“Um, no. It’s Vanessa. Eric’s . . . fiancée.” I’m sitting on the couch, clutching a pillow.

“Oh. Hello.” She no longer sounds way too excited. There’s a lot of static in the background.

“Hi. I . . . um . . . Are we on speakerphone?”

“Bluetooth. I’m in my car.”

“Oh. Good. I wanted to be sure you weren’t in your office with anyone listening . . .”
Just say it.
“Are you pregnant?”

It takes her forever to answer. I know she hasn’t hung up because the static is still really loud.

“I don’t know,” she says finally.

“. . . When will you?” Without meaning to, I hold my breath.

“A couple of days.”

I exhale. I hope she can’t hear me.

“So I guess that means . . . that first time. In April. It didn’t . . .” I have a flashback to that awful day on the beach, waiting for Eric to come out of the restaurant.

“No,” she says. “It didn’t.”

“So you, um, tried again?”

“Yes.”

“Once?”

“Twice.”

That means it’s all gone. If this time didn’t work, it’s all over.

“How long till you know?” I squeeze the pillow.

She takes so long to answer, I think she’s going to ignore the question. Finally she goes, “I don’t know. A few days. Maybe a week.”

“Can you call me when you know?” I ask. “On my cell. I just—I need to know. It’s not that I don’t want . . . I just need to know.”

Again, she is quiet for a long, long time. When she speaks, it sounds like she is even farther away or deeper underwater. “If it’s positive, I’ll call you. Otherwise, you can assume it didn’t take.”

“Thanks.” I would’ve liked a call either way, but this is better than nothing. “I’ll give you my cell number?”

“Sure.”

“And you’ll call me? If it’s positive, I mean?”

“Yes.”

I rattle off my phone digits, realizing as I do so that she’s driving and can’t possibly be writing them down.

It’s stupid to cry. Worse, it’s dangerous, given that I’m in the thick of rush-hour traffic, stuck behind a shiny cream Lexus SUV with an irritating habit of speeding up and then jamming on the brakes.

I lied to the girlfriend. The fiancée. I do not need to wait a few days or a week to learn whether or not I am not pregnant. I already know that I’m not.

I don’t normally put much stock in intuition, but from the time I drove home from my last clinic visit until yesterday morning, when enough time had passed to take a home pregnancy test, I felt certain that it had been unsuccessful. Two more tests wait in my bathroom cabinet. For another week, I’ll continue to lay off alcohol, ibuprofen, and sushi until the second pee stick confirms what I already know.

My tears dry up several exits before I get off the freeway. By the time I pull into my garage, my face, as reflected in the rearview mirror, just looks tired. I am tired.