November Surprise (21 page)

“I’m talking long-term, Monty. These people aren’t going to
be happy if Obama is elected, and they could really cause problems.”

He gives me a sideways glance. “There are always going to be
problems. You know that. It’s what makes life interesting.”

“Then I’d prefer for life to be boring.” The baby kicks
inside me, and I rub that spot on top of my belly. I suppose I lost my chance
for boring several months ago.

Monty pulls up to the curb and turns off the ignition. “Here
we are,” he says. “Welcome home.”

He gets out and comes around to the passenger side. By the
time he’s there I’ve opened my door. He gives me his arm, and helps hoist me
up.

We walk under the vine-covered trellis, up the walkway, to
our evergreen-colored front door.

Monty holds out his keys. “You should do the honors.”

I shake my head. “It’s your house.”

“It’s our house.”

“It’s your name signed on the dotted line.”

“A technicality,” Monty says. “And only because you insisted
that we do it that way.”

I take his left hand in mine and give it a squeeze. “Just
open the door.”

He grins in answer, inserts his key into the lock, and turns
the doorknob.

We step inside. What’s left of the day’s sunshine is pouring
through every window, and the hardwood floors glisten.

Monty leads me towards the kitchen, where a platter of
bread, cheese, sausage, and mustard is sitting out. There is also a bowl of
fruit, a bottle of champagne and a chocolate cake.

“I thought we could have a picnic,” he says.

“Champagne?”

He wraps his arms around me. “One glass won’t hurt.” He
kisses me on the forehead. “We’re celebrating.”

“The new house?”

He brushes my hair away from my face, and leans down to kiss
my mouth. “Of course.”

It’s a nice evening, so we decide to sit outside, on the
patio steps, where at least I’ll get a little bit of back support. I gnaw on
some bread and cheese, and Monty pops grapes into his mouth.

“Have you found out about your travel schedule?” I ask.

“I shouldn’t have to go until March,” Monty replies. “And it
wouldn’t be for more than a couple of weeks.”

I think about this. It’s important to have him around for
the last few weeks of my pregnancy. But if he takes off for Ghana in March,
I’ll be by all myself with the baby while it’s just a few weeks old. Still, I
was ready to be a single mother if I had to be, and Monty’s very committed to
his work. I have no interest in holding him back. “That’s not bad, but what
about the anti-malarial policy? Don’t you need to go sooner so you can finish
it?”

Monty doesn’t answer. He just chews his grapes and swallows
roughly.

“Are you okay?”

He jolts himself a little, as if out of reverie. “Sorry.
Just thinking.”

“About?”

“Nothing.” He taps his fingers against his leg. “So you like
the house?”

“Of course. I love the house. I’ve told you that already.”

“I’m glad you love the house,” he says, and then he pauses
and clears his throat. He picks up a twig that was lying on the patio floor and
flicks it off into the distance, towards a grove of trees. Then he looks back
at me, and his eyes, wider than usual, stare into mine. “Do you love me?”

For a second, my heart stops. “You know I do.”

Monty and I began saying ‘I love you’ after our fight. Okay,
so I mostly say it when he says it first. Still, let’s consider the facts:
we’ve been together less than a year, he has a complicated romantic history,
we’re moving into a house together, and having a baby. I’ve attached myself to
him even though he travels to Africa for work several weeks out of the year,
and I’ll worry about his health every second that he’s away. That’s a lot of
leaps of faith to make all at once.

But I do love him. Even more than I want to.

Monty moves closer to me, and picks at a leaf that’s
attached to the sleeve of my maroon cardigan sweater.

“I hadn’t noticed that was there,” I say.

He examines the leaf, and I can tell he’s choosing his next
words carefully. Monty always thinks before speaking; sometimes I wonder how
much inner-dialogue he has going on that I’ll never be privy to.

“If things had been different eight years ago, when we were
in New York, we might have been together all this time.”

“Possibly,” I reply.

“Or at Jack’s wedding. What if we’d started something
serious then? We’d be going on fourteen years now. Our kids would be tweens.”

“I suppose, if you’d knocked me up that night, they would
be.” I playfully nudge his foot with mine, trying to keep the mood light.

But Monty’s serious. His shoulders tense as he speaks. “What
if I had known you in high school? I could have taken you to the prom.”

Before I can stop it, a cynical laugh escapes. Monty raises
his eyebrows in question.

“Sorry,” I say. “But that never would have happened.”

“It could have…”

“Monty.” I speak in my most focused of tones. “We had
Calculus together. We sat diagonally from each other. There’s a reason why you
never noticed me, and it’s not because you didn’t have the opportunity.”

His brow wrinkles in confusion. “Am I supposed to apologize?”

I shake my head. “It was a long time ago. Besides, I never
talked to you back then, either. Two-way street, right?”

“I guess.”

“And it’s fine.” I pat him on the leg to reassure him. “I
just think we should live in reality, rather than rewriting the past into some
fantasy version of what could have been.”

He covers my hand, still resting on his leg, with his.
“That’s not what I was trying to do.”

“But it is what you were doing.”

“No, it wasn’t.” He’s starting to sound tense again. “Can’t
I have regrets?”

I slide my hand out from under his. “Regrets? What, that you
didn’t notice me before? That when we were at that bonfire party and you told
Reggie Hanson to let go of me, you still struck up a conversation with him and
ignored my existence?”

“What?”

I pivot away from him, and look straight ahead, towards the
yard. There’s a squirrel climbing a tree. “Nothing. Never mind.”

“No. Look, I honestly don’t remember that.”

“Of course you don’t.” I sigh and try to relax. “You were a
little drunk, and it was one party of many for you. I never went to parties,
but I went to that one because Sharon begged me.”

“Maybe you should have gone to more parties. We probably
would have known each other if you had.”

I flush, and heat courses through my body. Is it anger or is
it hormones? “I doubt it,” I say in a tight voice.

“Lucy, I know people would have liked you if you’d given
them the chance. Or at least, I would have.”

“Can we please change the subject?”

Monty looks at me, and my face must betray my emotions. “Why
are you so upset?” He asks.

“Because you’re wrong. I did go to a party, to give people
the chance to like me. Do you want to know what happened?” Before he can
respond, I continue. “Reggie convinced me to talk to him upstairs.” My words
just tumble out. It makes no sense, but I’m angry at Monty for not knowing this
story that I never told him. “Then he got some friend of his to sneak up behind
me and hold me down, so he could spit in my face and tell me I’m ugly,
pathetic, and that no guy will ever want me. So don’t talk to me about what
could have been in high school. I’m well aware of how things could have been
different. They just weren’t, and there’s a reason for that.”

Monty’s mouth hangs open in shock. “Why didn’t you ever tell
me this before?”

I start to cry and I squeeze my eyes shut to keep the tears
from falling. Damn these pregnancy hormones; lately I’ll cry at Hallmark
commercials. “I never told anyone. It was a really long time ago and I was
stupid to trust him, even for a second. I knew he hated me, I guess because I
showed him up in class all the time.”

Monty presses his nails into palms. “Did he hurt you?”

“No. Not physically.”

“But he needed some friend of his to hold you down? Because
you’re so large and heavy, right? What a fucking coward.”

His face contorts into something I don’t recognize: eyes
flinty, jaw ready to snap.

I don’t know how to respond. He shakes his head vigorously
and continues to talk. “He’d better hope we never run into him again. I’ll kick
his ass.”

“Monty, he’s in a wheel chair now.”

His cheeks grow red. “I don’t care! He could be nothing more
than a torso with a head, I’ll still demolish him. You don’t treat people that
way.”

His anger shocks me, but the image of Reggie as nothing more
than a torso with a head is more powerful. I laugh despite myself.

“What?” Monty demands. “I’m serious.”

I grab his hand and kiss his palm. “You’re sweet. But
honestly, I’m fine now. And you’re missing my point.”

He sighs. “What’s your point?”

“My point is, that it’s our history that brought us to this
point, and it’s made us who we are. So maybe the hard times have been worth it,
because without them, we’d be somewhere different. And I’d rather be here.”

The sun is setting, and it’s creating an orangey glow over
everything. Monty’s white work shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, appears almost
peach. It looks like he’d radiate warmth if I touched him. I test the theory,
and press my arm and shoulder against his. Abruptly, he wraps himself around me
and gives me a fierce embrace.

With a heavy exhale, he says, “I still wish I had known. I
could have made things better for you back then.”

I hug him back, but after a moment I pull away, caress his
cheek, and then I kiss it. “You’ve made things better for me now, and I
wouldn’t have it any other way.”

He sniffs and smiles in answer.

“Why are you thinking so much about the past?” I ask.

He shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know. It is what it is, I
suppose.”

“So we’re okay now?”

Monty faces me, opens his mouth to speak, but closes it
again without saying anything. He looks down, and I stroke his cheek with my
hand.

Finally he talks. “I just really love you, Lucy. And I want you
to trust me, that everything will be okay.”

“I do,” I whisper. “I just need a little time.”

His face changes again. His eyebrows pull together, he
squints and he smiles. “Okay,” he says with his normal nonchalance, “what’s a
little more time, when we’ve already gone through twenty years?”

I
laugh and lean in for a kiss. The air between us returns to feeling light,
happy, and full of potential.

“You
know,” I tease, as I gently tug his earlobe, “if we’re going to dredge up the
past, we need to mention that earring you used to have. What ever happened to
it?”

“I
came to my senses a long time ago, and took it out.” He laughs
self-consciously. “Why do you ask?”

“What if I told you it was sexy, and I wanted you to put it
back in?”

He shakes his head no. “My ear was pink and crusty for
months. Not a chance.”

I rub his earlobe between my thumb and forefinger, gently,
as if I can erase that forgotten pain. If I could, I would tell him about all
the possibilities I see when I think of our future. But I’m afraid that if I
tried, it would sound like an empty promise, no different than a stump speech
from a losing candidate. And this time, I’m determined to win.

I’m later getting home from work than usual. It was a great
day. My morning lecture was on the effects of diversity on community, which is
my precursor for a series of lectures on the history and outcomes of
desegregation. It went really well, and many students stayed past class time
with questions. Then I met my friend Sally for lunch. She teaches in the
political science department too, but her focus is on law. She’s married to the
systems tech here at the university, and they have a two-year-old son. Monty
and I have already had two couple’s dates with them, but I like spending time
with her individually even better. We sat and talked over soup and breadsticks
for way too long.

When I got back to campus I had term papers to grade and
lectures to plan. Plus, my office hours are on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons,
and of course I had a line of students anxious to talk to me today, of all
days. Things were so busy that I barely thought about the election at all.

But now it’s on my mind. I rush inside, past all the boxes
we haven’t unpacked. Most of them are mine, and four of them are Monty’s. I
ignore them all and head straight for the shower. After I’m done, I dry my
hair, apply my makeup, and find my dress, still in its bag, hanging in my closet.

It’s blue, with a wrap-around front, and it’s from J Crew.
Probably a million other women will be wearing the same dress tonight, since a
week ago Michelle Obama was on Jay Leno wearing another outfit by J. Crew. But
I had to order this in advance, since it’s the maternity version, and
attractive maternity dresses are hard to find.

It’s what you might call serendipity.

I’m dressed and reapplying my makeup when Monty walks in.

“I’m ready!” I say, before he even has a chance to take off
his shoes.

He sees me, all done up, and smiles. “Give me fifteen
minutes. Then I’ll be ready too.”

I watch CNN while I wait.

We get to the party, and I try not to walk around with an
open jaw. It’s in an adobe style mansion, white stucco walls and arched
doorways everywhere. But it’s huge, with long corridors leading to large,
warmly lit rooms, each with tables of sushi, mini-quiches, assorted torts, and
towers of champagne. There’s also a live band, a fortuneteller, a henna tattoo
artist, and an instant photo booth. These are all eclipsed, however, by a room
that’s set up like a movie theater, with cushiony seats that face the biggest
flat-screen television I’ve ever seen, a full-service bar, and a popcorn
machine.