Positively Mine (18 page)

“Where are you?”

“South Beach.”

“I was hoping you’d be in the city next week. When do you get back?”

“I’m here for two weeks. Why don’t you fly down? My grandmother would love to see you.”

“The airlines won’t let me fly anymore, and I can’t afford the ticket anyway.”

“How’s it going?”

Prof. Stoker drops me off in front of Dr. Adler’s office and tells me she’ll be back within the hour. She has to run her son to practice, swing by the grocery store, and pick up her dry cleaning.

“It’s no rush,” I tell her. And it isn’t. Riding around with her and her three kids provides a completely different window into her life. As organized and professional as she is in the classroom, in this world of kids, car pools and after-school activities, she is scattered.

I relish the quiet of the doctor’s office after the thirty-minute minivan ride. I need to see him every two weeks now since I’m getting close to the final stretch. The receptionist still does not ask me for payment when I check in. I’m waved along while everyone else is asked to take out their insurance cards and co-pays.

When I came back, I could tell Dr. Adler was relieved to see me. But he didn’t ask any personal questions and kept strictly to the exam – perhaps for fear of losing me again. When we finally listened to the baby’s heartbeat, I had to remind myself to breathe. It had been months, and even though she’s been moving like crazy lately, the sound and strength of that beating heart is what reassures me. When I hear it, I know everything is okay.

Just as I’m settling in with a magazine, my phone rings. It’s a local number I don’t recognize. “Hello?”

“Laurel, it’s Bill. Audrey’s husband.”

“Hi.”

“Listen, I’m sorry to bother you, but I could use your help.”

I toss the magazine on the coffee table. “What’s up?”

“It’s Audrey. She’s been in this – state – for the past month. She’s crying all the time, depressed, not eating. She’s due in two weeks, and I’m worried about her. She even lost a pound at her last doctor appointment.”

I can’t imagine Audrey depressed. “What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know. She won’t talk to me. She doesn’t talk to her friends because she thinks they can’t relate to the pregnancy, and the only girls left in the support group are too young now that you and Kyle are gone.” I forgot that Kyle was due back in February. I’ve been so out of touch.

Bill continues, “I thought maybe you could try.”

“I, um, okay. But are you sure I’m the person to do this?”

“Audrey cares about you. I can tell she misses you. I could come and pick you up today.”

The immediacy in his voice is alarming. “You want me to come over? Oh, I thought you meant call her.”

“I can be there in an hour.” He’s really sounding anxious.

“Wait. No, I’m not even in Milton. I’m at the doctor in Canandaigua. You can pick me up here, though.”

“Even better.”

By the time Bill gets me and we battle rush hour traffic, it‘s dark when we pull up to their new apartment complex on the edge of the city. The entire ride he clenched the steering wheel – hands at ten and two o’clock – so tightly it turned his knuckles white. He talked a mile a minute, too.

“I don’t know what happened. Everything was fine; her doctor appointments have all been good, we got the nursery set up last month, her sister and a friend from high school threw her a shower back in Buffalo. But now she won’t stop crying. She hasn’t put away any of the baby gifts she got, they’re just sitting in boxes, and every time I come home she’s on the couch staring at the wall – no TV on – nothing. I don’t even recognize her.”

We park the car, and Bill has me wait in the courtyard while he goes inside. There are no lights on, and it’s so quiet I wonder if Audrey is even home. But I hear Bill talking softly to someone down the hall, and soon he is gesturing for me to join him.

As I come around the corner to their living room, I am unprepared for what is before me. Bill’s right. Audrey is beyond recognition. Her normally beautiful red hair hangs like it hasn’t been washed in weeks; her face is tear-stained and swollen. She’s wearing a dirty Eastman T-shirt that is too small for her pregnant middle, which is protruding out all veiny, with belly button bulging.

“Audrey,” I whisper and sit down next to her, “oh my god.”

She doesn’t look at me or say anything, although she does attempt to pull down the T-shirt to cover herself. It slides right back up when she lets go.

I have no idea what to say, so I reach over and hug her. To my surprise, she hugs me back – tightly – and we embrace like this for a long time. Her warm tears roll down my shoulder as she buries her head deeper, sobbing. I am very aware of Bill nervously fidgeting nearby. I wave my hand for him to leave us alone, and after he’s turned on a couple lamps, he disappears.

When we finally release each other, I locate a box of tissues in the bathroom and offer them to her. She wipes her nose, which is as red as Rudolph’s. The apartment is a mess…tissues on the floor, laundry everywhere, baby gear that hasn’t been taken out of boxes piled up against the wall, dirty dishes in the sink.

I push a bunch of newspapers off a chair and sit down facing her. I’m not sure how to break the ice, so I just say the first thing that pops into my head. “Looks like things are going well!”

This is all it takes for Audrey to start laughing, a big belly laugh. And I start laughing, too. Soon, we are both laughing so hard, if anyone were to witness this and the crying five minutes earlier, they would think we are utterly and totally insane. Maybe we are.

“Tell me what’s going on,” I finally say, once we’ve drained our systems.

Audrey doesn’t speak right away. Her forehead crinkles up, and it seems like she’s trying to formulate her feelings into words. She shakes her head. “I don’t know. It’s like all of a sudden I’m having second thoughts about this.”

“About having a baby?”

“Besides that…rushing to marry Bill, dropping out of college. It’s like I never even gave myself the chance to try and handle this on my own. I took the 1950s’ housewife approach, and now all I do is sit around this apartment while everyone else is out living their lives.”

“But you love Bill,” I say. “And you’re going to go back to school.”

“Eventually…if we can afford it.” She stands up and walks into the kitchen. I follow her.

“I do love Bill and have since I met him. But did I have to marry him just because I got pregnant? We could have waited and gotten married later. I was too concerned with how things looked, making my parents happy, Bill’s parents happy. I never even thought about what would make me happy.” She fills a glass with water from the sink and takes a sip. “In a way, I’m jealous of you.”

“Jealous of me?” I splutter. “Trust me, Audrey. There is nothing to be jealous about here.”

“That’s not true. Look at you. You’re handling your pregnancy on your own terms. You are totally and completely relying on yourself to get through this. I’ve put my whole destiny into the hands of my husband. Going forward, my whole life is entirely based on how he does. I was valedictorian of my high school class, and now I’m just a knocked-up college dropout. I feel like a wimp next to you.”

“Audrey…” I had no idea she felt this way.

“You don’t know how hard it is,” she continues. “Everyone thinks they know what is best for me. My mother, my sister, my father. Bill even. I would love to be in your shoes. You don’t take anyone else’s opinion into consideration. You make all your own choices.”

“But I’ve made some pretty bad ones. I wish I had a mother to annoy me. I wish I had a father who paid attention. I’m jealous of you.”

Audrey opens up the cupboards and looks in the fridge. There doesn’t seem to be much of anything in either. “Do you want to go out? I haven’t been out in ages.”

An hour and a much-needed shower for Audrey later, we are sitting at a crowded TGI Fridays. Happy hour is in full swing, and there is a thirty-minute wait for a table. The hostess begins to tell us to go to the bar, but when we take our coats off and she sees how very pregnant we are, she points to the bench next to her instead. “We’ll get you seated as soon as possible.”

When we’re finally settled into a booth, Audrey catches me up on what I’ve missed at pregnancy support. “Kyle had a boy on February 2
^nd
. He was almost ten pounds.”

“Wow.”

“She went back home to live with her parents. She’s going to try to come back to Rochester. But she doesn’t know yet.”

“What about Janet?”

“I got an email from her. She’s nine days overdue and counting. The doctors told her if she doesn’t go into labor by Sunday, they’ll induce her Monday morning.”

The waitress comes over to take our order.

“Anything else new?” I ask when she’s gone.

“There are two new girls in the group. One of them is thirteen.”

“Ugh! Thirteen? I mean, I know we’re young, but that is too young.”

“I know. She’s in eighth grade!”

“Oh my god!”

“It’s bad. The other girl is fifteen. With you and Kyle gone, I don’t have anyone there I can relate to anymore. Other than Alison. She keeps asking about you, by the way.”

“She’s left me messages.”

Audrey grabs my hand. “I’m so sorry I haven’t called you.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t called you, either.”

“Let’s not do this again.”

“I promise.”

Audrey gazes around the crowded room. Her eyes brighter.

“What are you and Bill doing for spring break?” I ask.

“Nothing. I can’t go anywhere with my due date so close. Bill has a bunch of job interviews lined up. So he’s going to be gone for most of next week. My mother offered to stay with me in case I go into labor, but she’s going to drive me nuts. What are you doing?”

“I have no idea. There’s no point in going to New York, considering my dad isn’t there. I guess I could try to get a ride over to my grandparents’ house and stay there for the week. Without a car, though, it’s so isolating. I need to be out of the dorm on Sunday.”

“Stay with me!”

“Really?”

“It will be fun. Plus, then I’ll have a good reason to keep my mom from coming.”

“You wouldn’t mind me here all week?”

“Not at all!”

The waitress places a basket of bread between us. Audrey dives for it.

“Okay. I’ll stay, on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You have GOT to clean that apartment. It’s disgusting!”

Bill picks me up promptly at noon on Sunday, which is the last moment I could be in the dorm. Most students left Saturday, though, and there are only a handful of people loading up cars on the hill.

Audrey stayed back home because she’s been having contractions, and Bill didn’t want to take the chance of her being too far away from the hospital if they happen to turn into the real thing.

As we motor along, he and I discuss our plan, should Audrey end up in labor while he’s gone.

He hands me a typed itinerary. “This is where I’ll be all week. Every hotel and phone number, the names of who I’m meeting with and the times I’ll be there plus their office numbers. And my cell phone will be on at all times.”

I look over the paper. He has his whereabouts documented practically down to the second. “Impressive.” I smile. “But you left off the locations of the bathrooms. How do I get in touch with you if you’re in the men’s room?”

“Very funny.”

He’s traveling to Westchester, Albany, then Syracuse. But he’s mostly worried about the two days he’ll be in Westchester because it’s a long drive and Audrey could potentially be on her own in labor for several hours. “They said in the birthing class that the typical first-time labor is about thirteen hours. So even if I’m in White Plains, I should be able to make it back by the time the real hard stuff starts. You might have to help her with the breathing until I get there.”

“Okay, and how do I do that?”

“Just do the breathing exercises you learned in your birthing class. Be her coach.”

“I haven’t taken a birthing class.”

“Of course you haven’t.” He sighs. “Just do your best to keep her calm, then, okay? Until I get there.”

It’s very cute how concerned he is about her. I know Audrey may question her decision to marry so young, but I think it’s safe to say she picked the right guy.

When we arrive at their apartment complex and Bill turns the car off, he stops me before I climb out. “Hey, thanks for the other night. I don’t know what you said to her, but she seems to be back to her old self.”

“I didn’t really say anything.” And I didn’t. But I guess sometimes all it takes is venting about a problem to make you realize it’s not as bad as you thought it was.

Bill carries my bag inside and lays it on the dining room table. The place looks completely different now that you can actually see the floor. As promised, Audrey cleaned. It’s a nice apartment – much nicer than where they were living before. Sliding doors lead to a little yard with a patio, and the afternoon sun shines through the glass. The rooms are cozy, and there are no holes in the walls.

The boxes that were piled high in the living room have been relocated. When Audrey hears us, she calls, “Laurel, do you want to see the baby’s room? Come here.”

I follow her voice down the hall to a bright yellow nursery. Audrey is kneeling on the floor, folding baby clothes and putting them into a dresser. The theme is “rainbow” with a rainbow mural painted on one wall, a rainbow mobile hanging over the crib and a rainbow pillow on an oversized denim rocking chair in the corner. Here is where the baby gear has been moved, now out of boxes and taking up a huge chunk of the room. It includes a brand new stroller, a bouncy chair, high chair, swing, changing table, extra changing pads and a car seat. There’s also a breast pump, boxes of bottles, diapers and wipes.

“Wow. You are set.”

“What do you think of the rainbow theme?”

“I like it.”

“I figured it was safe since we decided not to find out the sex of the baby. It took some negotiating with the landlord for him to let me paint it. I think it works for both a boy or a girl, don’t you?”