The next few days are just as hard. I go to Stop & Shop and run into a mom of a girl in Amy’s class. She looks at my belly and then at my face, uncertainty flashing across hers, and then she keeps walking.
We’re not friends, so I don’t need to feel offended, but before all this I would have expected a hello, maybe a few minutes of chitchat. Not now, obviously. Now no one knows what to say to me, and so they choose to pretend I’m invisible.
And it continues with just about everyone I meet – the mailman, the lady across the street, Lucy’s preschool teacher. The news has filtered out just as I knew it would, and I can’t avoid the stares, the whispers.
‘People aren’t judging you,’ one of my friends, Annie, says when I work up the courage to ask her what people are saying. ‘Not exactly.’
‘Oh, great.’
‘It’s just no one knows what to say. To think.’
Even you? I want to ask, but I don’t. Annie gave birth to her son Jaden a year after I had Emma, and when they were little we were a lot closer. We’d hang out at each other’s houses, with Teletubbies blaring in the background and plenty of coffee to get us through those endless days and sleepless nights. But then the kids started school, and Jaden turned out to be a rough boy’s boy and Emma was a dreamy girl, and it was obvious they were never going to be anything close to friends. Annie and I drifted apart, although I still see her around, and I usually make the guest list if she’s having a girls’ night out or something like that, even if I don’t go because of work or not having the money or just plain tiredness.
But right now, as I stand in Annie’s kitchen, my hands cradled around a cup of coffee, I don’t know what she thinks, and I’m not brave enough to ask. I don’t want to hear the truth, and I can’t stand the thought of seeing through her lies.
‘I guess it’s too much to ask people to mind their own business,’ I say, and Annie shrugs.
‘Probably.’
‘Do you think they will get used to it?’
‘They’ll have to, won’t they?’ Annie smiles. ‘And after all, you won’t be pregnant forever.’
I nod slowly. Yes, people will forget once I’m not pregnant any more, or at least not remember quite so much. But will I?
As my belly grows and this baby kicks I am confronted by that question every day, every moment – by my round reflection in the mirror when I step out of the shower; by my hand on my belly as I lie in bed and feel her squirm. When I walk past the baby aisle in Stop & Shop, and then go back and stand in front of the packs of newborn diapers, simply staring. The stack of baby albums in the hall closet, photos peeling at the corners. One afternoon I take them all out and look at them, torturing myself with images of Emma’s drooly smile, Amy’s frizzy hair, wondering about this little one, trying not to, unable to keep myself from it.
One rainy afternoon in March, I’m waiting outside St Timothy’s for Amy to come out of her first communion class and a woman I only sort of recognize from school comes over. She doesn’t say anything, just grabs my hand and squeezes hard. Her eyes are full of compassion, and suddenly my chest feels tight. I don’t know who she is, but I know she realizes my situation and understands.
We stare at each other for a few heartrending seconds and then with
a final squeeze and smile she moves on. I feel energized by the strange, silent exchange, like someone injected me with hope, with courage. In that moment I believe I can do this. I can get through it, because I am not alone.
Ten
GRACE
The invitation from Heather in early April surprises me. Dinner? At her house? I feel an uncertain wariness, a flicker of curiosity and even pleasure. I want to meet her family, and yet at the same time I don’t.
‘Sure,’ I say brightly when she calls my cell while I’m at work. I forgot I gave her my number. ‘That’s so kind of you. When were you thinking?’
‘Friday?’ Heather suggests hesitantly. ‘At six?’
‘Great.’ I’ll have to leave work hours early to make that, but I don’t feel I can suggest an alternative. I haven’t seen or talked to Heather in six weeks, which feels like a long time, especially after the fun we had shopping, but Tina has kept me updated and I suppose a little distance might be a good thing.
But it’s getting close now, and I’ve gone ahead with my plans: decorating the nursery, hiring the nanny, a Jamaican woman named Dorothy who has had six grown-up kids herself and seems so wonderfully relaxed and self-assured compared to my own high-octane brand of crazy that after I hired her, I wanted to hug her.
I’ve booked two weeks off at the end of May, and am praying that the baby comes on time. I’ve bought clothes, white and mint-green and some pink, fuzzy sleepsuits and tiny onesies and booties.
Most of all, I’m getting excited; it’s a freight train of feeling that makes me want to jump out of its way, because it’s so intense and I’m not used to feeling this much. Wanting this much. It leaves you vulnerable, open to disappointment and pain. And I know that one of the reasons I’ve been avoiding Heather is because the more we’ve come to know each other, the more complicated our relationship has felt.
And this already feels like a pretty complicated situation, never mind delicate.
I drive to Heather’s house bearing gifts; I’ve put some thought into what to bring – a bottle of wine, although I don’t know if Heather or Kevin drink it, and some Godiva chocolates in their shiny gold box. Then presents for her three girls, because I want them to feel included.
I asked Tina about them, because Heather hasn’t said much about her daughters, and she told me their names are Emma, Amy, and Lucy. They are eleven, eight, and four. I buy sparkly lip balm for Emma, a glittery hairband for Amy, and a plush toy for Lucy. Nothing too outrageous or overwhelming, just a gesture of my goodwill and gratitude.
Heather lives in a tiny box-like ranch house on a semi-suburban street of similar houses, all of them weathered, shabby, and small, plenty with weed-filled yards and broken-down cars in their driveways, but others with neatly tended yards, flowers in the window boxes, flags on the front stoop. Somehow those houses make me feel sadder.