She looked so serious, so absorbed. She changed the position of the probe several times before looking at me and smiling.
“It’s not twins, is it?” My voice sounded rusty.
“No, just one healthy baby. Do you want to see?”
I nodded.
She turned the monitor toward me. The picture was grainy and shifting. As she moved the probe around on my belly, limbs and body parts appeared and morphed away into other body parts. She showed me the spine, the feet, the beating heart. The skull. I could see the shape of a face. A perfectly formed arm, hand moving toward the mouth.
“Is it—”
“Sucking its thumb, yes.” She smiled. “Do you want to know what it is?”
Of course! How else could I make a plan? “Yes, please.”
She pointed to a rather nebulous region on the monitor. “That is a little penis and testicles.”
Oh, yes! I saw it! “A
boy
,” I breathed.
“A boy,” she said. “Congratulations.”
“A boy.”
Dr. Goldstein smiled and patted my hand. “I have three of them.
You’ll be all right.”
She printed ultrasound snapshots for me. I left the imaging center and walked to a coffee shop. Ordered a decaf latte and spread the astonishing pictures out on the table.
A boy. In spite of the fifty percent odds, I actually hadn’t imagined the possibility. What on earth was I going to do with a son? It had always just been my mom and me. I had no idea what would be required of me, in terms of raising a male child. I didn’t know where to begin, to make a plan.
“So, okay,” I said to The Bump. “You’re a boy. I’m going to have to ask around. Do some reading. I mean, how different can it be? Yes, eventually you’re going to want to do boy things. Maybe. Or maybe you’ll like girl things? Sometimes people turn out to be sort of a mix of boy and girl. Which is totally cool. Oh God, I’m an idiot, trying to figure this all out now! You see what you’re in for? You will be the test child. I’m sorry. You’re just going to have to bear with me.”
That afternoon when I got back to work I asked Lavelle if I could speak to her privately in her office.
We sat on her couch together.
“Well, I don’t know if you may have noticed,” I said, “but I’m pregnant.”
“I was wondering.”
“And you know I’m not married.”
She nodded and shrugged.
“The father is someone I care about very much, and a good person, but he’s not around at the moment. I—I don’t know what’s going to happen, with that. For now, it’s just me.”
“Grace, I hope you’re not worried about what people here will think. You know none of us will judge you.”
“No, I know. I’m a little embarrassed . . . it’s kind of ironic because, well, this happened because of a lapse in contraceptive judgment.”
Lavelle smiled a little.
“We were in the moment, I guess, and got careless. It’s probably a good thing that I’m not teaching contraception to young women, I would feel like such a poor example.”
Now Lavelle was frowning. “Grace, I’m going to speak frankly.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know anyone who tries harder for perfection than you. You are so hard on yourself, and sometimes on others. Maybe this is a message for you to ease up a little. Sometimes we can’t completely control everything, much as we might like to try. There are always going to be surprises.”
“Tell me about it. I’m having a boy, Lavelle! And I know
nothing
about boys.”
She patted my knee. “See what I mean? Just throw away the rule book right now.”
On a bitterly cold February night, Peg and I ordered calzones and settled on the couch in front of the TV.
Every time the camera panned the Grammy audience we searched for Ty. Finally we caught a glimpse of him, wearing a stylish approximation of a black tuxedo. No tie. He looked so handsome, but also a little surprised to be there. And Jean was with him! I loved him for bringing his mother. She was all primped and made-up, and wearing an expensive-looking, sparkly peach-colored dress. With her Grace Kelly looks, she outshined most of the women I saw seated around her.
The show was long. People I had never heard of played, and I was not persuaded to add most of them to my iPod. I nodded off at least once, but Peg shook me every time they showed Ty in the audience.
He did not win the awards he was nominated for. They showed his face in those moments, on a split screen with all the other nominees. He looked a little disappointed and kind of relieved, I thought. But what did I know? Maybe he was completely crushed. Peg and I certainly were.
“Who are these voters?” I demanded to know. “Do they have water on the brain? Can they
hear
?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Peg said. “We know he’s the best.”
The next day she e-mailed me the link to a YouTube video of Ty in concert in Dallas. It was long, seven minutes or so, of him doing an old Otis Redding song, “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” He started at the piano and then got up with the microphone and walked into the audience. They enveloped him, touching his arms, his hair, his back. It was an incredible vocal and emotional performance. The people around him seemed ecstatic. Transported.
Look at this, Grace,
Peg’s e-mail said.
He’s entrancing those people. I just realized. Taking them out of themselves. Ty is sort of like a medicine man. A shaman.
P.S. have you called him?
A shaman. I sort of knew what that was. Like a witch doctor or something. I Googled it. Definition:
a person with special magical powers who can mediate between the visible and the spirit world
. Hmm. I didn’t know about the mediation part, but listening to him sing definitely could take you away from reality for a while.
Your father is a shaman
, I said internally to The Bump, who was by now becoming too large and rambunctious to conceal under baggy clothes.
But you’re still going to have to clean your room and take out the garbage one day.
Intellectually, I knew I needed to get myself together, finally, and tell him, but I just wasn’t quite ready. So the universe conspired to remind me of him constantly. As if my burgeoning belly wasn’t enough.
I was on my way to Ed and Boris’s for veggie sushi one evening and—oh, hey!—there was Ty. On posters advertising his CD. Plastered all over the construction wall surrounding the high-rise going up near their apartment in Chelsea. I had to stop and regroup before I went in the building; there is nothing like one hundred or so Tyler Wilkies brooding at you all the way down a city block to put you off your futomaki.
Then: Ty on the
JumboTron
. In freaking Times Square. Lip-synching one of his gut-wrenching songs. I just step out of the office for a minute, hoping for a bagel and maybe a glimpse of the Naked Cowboy. And I’m presented with
this
. At least I couldn’t hear the words.
In the next month or so, I suddenly became exponentially more pregnant. The small person borrowing space inside me started bouncing around, making his presence known. A morning came when I saw myself in the bathroom mirror, naked, swollen, and began to finally, truly understand that I was going to have to woman up and call Ty immediately. This was awful, what I had done. How could I have let myself become so paralyzed?
The very same day Peg came home after her Sunday matinee in a state of distress.
“Grace,” she said, “I have to show you something.”
She led me to the laptop in her bedroom and opened up one of those garish,
TMZ
-like sites that proliferate like mold on the Internet. She scrolled down to a photo. It was Ty, with Roberta, sitting in a booth at a club. He was smiling at the camera. She was cuddled up close to him, arms around his neck, lips pressed to his cheek.
The caption:
TYLER WILKIE ENGAGED
The blurb said that model and makeup artist Roberta Smilyak had been traveling with pop singer Tyler Wilkie on the Midwest leg of his concert tour. A longtime friend of the couple confirmed that they were “very serious” and “making wedding plans.”
Peg took my hand.
“How did you find this?” I asked.
“I get Google Alerts about Ty. I thought it would be fun, keeping up with him. Grace, I bet that website is lying,” she said. “Or exaggerating.” “Yes, probably. The part about marrying her, anyway.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to call him.”
“When?”
“Now.”
I sat cross-legged on my bed with my cell. Reminded myself to breathe. For strength and courage, I had the ultrasound photos spread out across my comforter.
I dialed Ty’s number. His voice mail picked up.
It wasn’t the smartest or bravest decision I ever made, but listening to his greeting, I rationalized that it would be perfectly fine for him to find out the basics this way, in a brief, easy message. When he called me back, I could go into more detail, answer his inevitable questions, apologize profusely, and we could start to figure everything out. Together. I would no longer be alone with this. God, why had I waited—
The beep.
“Um—hey. Hey, Ty! It’s Grace. I need to tell you something. I, um . . . remember that weekend we spent together, before you left? Back in September? Well, something happened. We, uh, we made a, uh, baby.”
I was starting to cry. Crap. Pull it together!
“A baby. We’re going to have a baby. A baby boy. You and me. I hope he’ll look like you . . . I hope so. Well, that’s all. You have my number. Talk to you soon, Ty. I hope you’re okay. I’ll talk to you soon. ’Bye.”
I threw the phone on the bed and lay down and hugged a pillow. My heart was pounding. I picked the phone up again and checked it, to make sure it wasn’t on mute or vibrate. I cranked it all the way up to eleven, as they say, and settled in for a sleepless night.
The first two days, I was certain I was going to hear from him any minute. He was, of course, traveling and very busy. Probably waiting for a quiet, private moment to call me back.
By the third day, I told myself that I must have really surprised him with my message, and he was just taking a little extra time to absorb the news and regain his equilibrium.
The fifth day, I stayed home from work, in bed.
On day six, I had the hopeful thought that something terrible must have befallen him, and Peg, though Google-Alerted about it, had decided not to tell me so as not to upset me and endanger the health of the baby.
That night I got up when I heard Peg come in from the show. She was standing at the kitchen sink, filling the teakettle. She turned off the water when she saw me. “What’s the matter?”
“I called Ty on Sunday. Right after you showed me the website.”
“Yes, I thought so! What did he say?”
“I left him a message. Told him everything.”
“Oh, honey, you did?”
I nodded. “He hasn’t called me back. Oh, Peg—”
Her arms were so strong, so immediate. She held both of us up, me and The Bump.
the chapter where, understandably, certain people get very upset with me
And just when I thought things were as bad as they could get—
Julia called. Insisting we meet for lunch. Tomorrow. She probably wanted to find out if I’d worked off that spare tire I’d been developing. The thought of what she was in for made me giggle. Kind of hysterically.
It was early for lunch at that Japanese place in Chelsea we liked. I peered around the dim, empty dining room. She wasn’t here yet. It was hard to savor under the circumstances, but for once I beat her!
A gracious Asian lady led me to a table along the back wall. The room was toasty warm, but I debated whether or not to leave my coat on. Like it was going to make a difference, at this point. I took it off and smoothed my stretchy black sweater. The lady brought me a glass of water, no ice, and I gulped it down.
The bells on the door jingled. Here she came, making her way toward me, sleek and chic. Smiling. Happy to see me.
I smiled as genuinely as I could and stood up.
She slowed to a stop ten feet away. Her mouth fell open.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Are you kidding me?” she said. “Are you
kidding
me?”
I clasped my hands over my belly in a futile effort to minimize the shocking visual. “So what do you want to be called?” My voice was cheerful, if a little tremulous. “Grandma? Grandmama?”
She didn’t move or respond, just stared. Julia Barnum, struck dumb.
To try to jar her loose, I went for a laugh. “Mammaw?”
“Who is the father?” Her voice was deep and scary, like when I was ten and wore her mother’s sapphire ring to school without permission and lost it.
“Could we sit down, please?”
She came over and tossed her four-hundred-dollar handbag under the table, jerked a chair out, and sat. Painful, bloody retribution brewing in her eyes.
“Grace, who is he?” she demanded.