Pregnant Pause (3 page)

What the hell? I didn't know. "I'd talk to her," I said.

"Oh, would you?" she said back to me in this witch-like voice.

"Yes, I would." I glared right at her.

"And what would you say? How would you talk her out of her homesickness?"

Was this a trick question? You can't talk someone out of being homesick. Believe me; I know. I was homesick for America for years and nobody ever talked me out of it, not even for a second.

"I wouldn't talk her out of it," I said. "You can't do that. It doesn't work." I tried to think of what I would have wanted someone to do for me in Kenya, what would have made it better. "I would just let the camper know that I was her friend and that if she wanted to talk about being homesick for eight weeks straight that I'd be willing to listen to her. And if she wanted to talk about something else, I'd listen to that, too."

My answer must have been okay, 'cause the old bat got this twinkle in her eye and nodded, and that was that. She let Mr. Lothrop do the rest of the interview while she conked out and snored and blew air out of the corner of her mouth throughout the rest of my interview. It was only later, when I told Lam about the old bat, that I found out she was Lam's grandmother and Mrs. Lothrop's mother, which explained a lot!

So now Lam stands in the doorway of our cabin, and when I catch up to him, he asks, "Want me to carry you over the threshold?" I look at his face. He looks worried. I can tell when he's worried because this deep line forms down the center of his forehead, and that's what I see.

"How about we just hold hands and go inside together."

He smiles, and the line disappears. "Yeah, perfect."

We hold hands, and he has to step inside before me a bit because no way can wide ol' me fit alongside his big self through the door at the exact same time.

Once inside, he shouts, "Yow! I'm through with school forever. Forever!" Then he reaches around me and grabs me from under my ass and lifts me. I hold on to his neck for dear life, not thrilled that he had no oomph to lift me when it was about us being married but suddenly he's feeling like Superman 'cause he remembers he's a high school graduate. I'm jealous of him, too, because I still have another year to go before I graduate
—if
I'm able to go back to school in the fall. Lam's eighteen, and I think the truth of how I got myself pregnant is that I was so flattered that a guy two years older liked me, and I was so scared that I'd lose him, that I finally broke down and said yes to having sex with him, even though I had had a bad feeling about it. It was the first time I ever had sex, and he wore a condom, and still I got pregnant, which is just my luck. Of course my parents, his parents, my sister, and everyone in school think I'm a whore now. Like just because I did drugs and crap, they think I must have been going around having sex with everyone, too, so I was bound to get pregnant sometime. No need trying to tell anyone the truth. Who cares, anyway?

"So, which party first?" Lam asks. "Matt's or Rolly's? I vote Matt's."

"Come on, Lam," I say. "It's our wedding day. Here we are alone together, and we have this cabin, and we're in the woods. Wouldn't it be nice to just be cozy together and forget about the rest of the world for a while?"

A bunch of kids yell, "Lake!" and there's a stampede outside our door as they run down the hill, past our cabin, and toward the lake.

I make my way over to the couch that sits in the middle of the cabin and start backing myself down into it. I am so looking forward to getting off my feet. I've been real good about eating well and keeping my weight up because I read that teens that don't gain enough weight can have low-weight babies with birth defects. But now I'm too big and I get tired too easily.

"If I stay, are we gonna have sex?" Lam asks.

I stop in mid-sit and push myself back off the couch. I spread my arms out and glare down at my orange belly. "Do you think I could possibly want to make love? Give me a break." We haven't had sex in over two weeks, and I could see Lam was getting desperate about it, but I just can't do it anymore. I'm just too pregnant.

Lam puts on his camo hunting cap with the moose emblem on the front, salutes me, and clicks the heels of his hunting boots together. "Well, then, I'm going to Matt's. He's got the party of the century going on, and I don't want to miss it. You're not coming?"

"No, and I can't believe you'd just leave me here on our honeymoon night surrounded by a bunch of whiny kids and your parents and all those counselors. And, look around. We don't even have a TV or a refrigerator, so what am I supposed to do while you party?"

Instead of easing myself onto the couch as I had started to do earlier, I just let myself go and fall back onto the sofa cushions. The two cushions on either side of me puff up with a gasp, then settle back down. Lam's parents had given us the couch, and Lam acts like they were just so generous, but all it is is a shredded, cat-clawed, brown and tan plaid box that scratches your skin if you have any exposed. I put my feet up on the coffee table, which is really the trunk I used for my years in Kenya. I've covered it over with a pretty flowered scarf, but Lam has already burned a cigarette hole in it—the butthead. I feel tears starting to well up, and I blink several times to hold them back.

"Don't start acting like my ball and chain on our first day, El. Come on, I just graduated. No more school forever! Anyway, you love a good party. It'll do you good to get out and see the guys."

I sniff and wipe a stupid tear away. "They've always been more your friends than mine, and anyway, what am I gonna do while everyone gets stoned? Just stand there and watch? I can't do anything, Lam. I can't do anything ever again. We're going to have a baby—a kid, a responsibility."

"But not forever, right? You said we might give it to my parents, right? Or maybe your sister, right?" Lam edges toward the door. It's an old-fashioned latch-kind of door with no locks and so poorly sized for the opening that you can see the great outdoors through all the gaps. The cabin was built for summers, for young campers, not for pregnant girls, and not for year-round living.

I swat at a fly, then let my arms flop onto my belly. "Yeah, well, we haven't exactly made our final decision on that, have we?" Then I look at Lam, already standing with the door open and his hand on the screen door, hot to get going. He looks so good, even with his doofus-looking, too-big-for-his-head hunting hat on. I think that's what I fell for, his looks. He's got big round blue eyes the color of chicory, which is the stuff that grows all around here along the roadside, and he's got a flush to his cheeks, and he's tall with a cute butt, and sandy blond hair with bangs that slant down into his eyes. I know girls will be all over him at the party, even if he does kind of have big ears. Shit, he'll probably screw one of them—on our wedding night.

"Have you even thought about this baby?" I ask. "I mean, it's part yours. It's going to look like you and maybe talk like youand—"

"Yeah, I've thought about it." He huffs and pushes open the screen door. It groans. He stands halfway in and halfway out and scratches his chest through his very faded, deer-skull T-shirt. He glances outside, then inside at me. "So, you comin' or what?"

"I said no, already!" I pound the arm of the couch. "It's our wedding night, Lam. Don't you even love me? Why did you marry me?"

Okay, never mind that I don't know how I feel about him. I need him to tell me he loves me. I need this really badly.

"Yeah, I love you," he says. His voice softens. "You're pretty, Elly. Even seven months pregnant, you're so pretty. I mean, come on, half the guys in school were always after you. You're like this guy magnet."

"Yeah," I say, still wanting to feel sorry for myself. "But all the girls hate me—and for no good reason."

"Like I said, you're pretty—and you have this, I don't know, this cute way about you that guys like and girls are jealous of." Lam steps back into the cabin and tries again. "And—and—you look smart-pretty, too. Not like dumb-pretty—all boobs and bubbly-blonde pretty, but sexy-lawyer pretty. You know? 'Cause you're really smart. And, I—I like how your eyes have those golden flecks in the brown part and, uh, I like your hair in that ponytail thing you've always got, and I like how you pull the thingy out and shake out your hair and it's perfect, like you just brushed it. I like—I like your hair."

I feel embarrassed now because I've let him go on so long with his compliments. I try to flick them off. "So you married me for my mousy brown lawyer-lady hair?"

He rolls his eyes and shakes his head like he's just too fed up with me. "Come on, Elly, you know why I married you. You told your parents that I asked you to marry me. And anyway, we're pregnant. It's my duty. My parents made real sure I understood that." He raises his fist and sets it on the doorsill as though he needed it to prop him up. "A Lothrop always does his duty. A Lothrop always fixes his mistakes, and he
always
does the honorable thing."

I frown. "Yeah, uh-huh, so the honorable thing is to leave me here alone on our wedding night? Great! You know what Matt said? Matt said our marriage would only last six months, and he's our best friend!" I rest my head on the back of the couch and slouch down a little more. I'm so tired all of a sudden. I hate that about being pregnant—being tired.

"Oh, yeah?" Lam says. "Matt told
me
that he gave us two months, just long enough to have the baby, give it away, and split up." He studies his boots, picking one foot up to examine the sole and then the other, as if he's inspecting them for dog doo-doo.

"So, is that all this is?"

Lam shrugs. "I don't know, Elly. I don't know what it is. Shit, I'm just doing what I'm supposed to do—what everybody's telling me to do. You go off and tell everybody you want to keep the baby, so okay, we're keeping the baby—
maybe.
Then you tell everybody I asked you to marry me and then our parents say we
have
to get married, but Mom and Dad want me to graduate before we get married 'cause they figured I'd never graduate if I got married first, so okay, I graduate—just barely, but I do it. Then
your
parents want to be there for the wedding, so we do it today before they leave for Africa,
same
day as graduation. And tomorrow I start working here at the camp—like always. So, see? I'm doing my part." Lam slams his fist on the door. "I'm doing my part! And I don't know anymore how I feel about anything." He checks out how I'm taking what he's saying, and I'm not taking it too well because it sounds like it's all about doing his duty and nothing about loving me. More tears spill down my face. Mom and Dad are gone, and now Lam's mad at me and leaving me alone in this boring cabin, and he doesn't even love me anymore.

I don't say this out loud, but he reads my mind, which he can do sometimes. "Come on, El," he says. "You're just being weepy and cranky 'cause you're so pregnant. You know I love you. That hasn't changed." He leaves his position by the door and walks toward me. While he's walking he reaches into his pants pocket. He's wearing baggy camo pants. Everything is about hunting to Lam. If he isn't getting stoned, he's hunting—or, as one of his many bumper stickers proclaims, he'd rather be hunting.

"Okay," he says. "I was going to give you this tomorrow as a first-day-of-marriage kind of thing, but here, I got something for you." He pulls out a purple cloth pouch and hands it to me. It says Albert's Jewelers on the front. That's where my wedding ring came from. My ring is gold with a small pink tourmaline stone in it. Tourmaline is Maine's state mineral, so it's cool. I like it better than plain old diamonds any day.

"Lam! What's this?"

Lam gets this too-cute bashful look on his face—all blushing and staring down at his feet.

I pull open the pouch and empty the contents into my hand. "What ... a bracelet! With another tourmaline—Lam!"

It's a gold chain with a gold heart dangling from it, and in the center is a tiny pink tourmaline. I get to my feet and reach over the coffee table/trunk for him and kiss him. "I love it! I can't believe you got me this. When did you...?"

Lam's giggling like a girl, he's so proud of himself. "It matches your ring. See?" he says, coming around the table to me. "Let me put it on for you."

I hold out my arm while he places it on my wrist and messes with the clasp.

"How could you afford this? It must have cost more than the ring."

"Yeah, I used all my savings." The clasp locks, and he steps back. "I couldn't resist getting it for my girl—my wife," he says.

I lift my arm up and look at the bracelet. "Yeah, well it's beautiful." I smile at him. "Lam, you're so sweet. I love it." I say all this, even though my first thought is that maybe we could have used that money for us and the baby, but then my second thought is, I love how romantic he is sometimes. I love him so much. He's always surprising me with some sudden thoughtfulness. Always. And for a second or two, I'm really glad we got married.

I KNOW LAM is proud of himself about the bracelet. We stare at it together and we're standing so close that our heads touch and the moment feels so good, but it's only a moment because then Lam pats my arm and backs up. "Okay," he says. "Gotta party. I swear, I'm gonna go out and get piss-ass drunk. You comin'?"

"No! I already said, but hey, don't let me keep you. You gave me this bracelet—what more could I want? Go on, have a good time." I say this sarcastically, of course, but Lam has never been good at sarcasm. I've always loved that about him, but now it only irritates me.

"Yeah, great! So, I'll see you." He kisses me, his lips barely grazing mine, then he heads for the exit.

I watch Lam push open the wooden screen door, listen to it slam behind him, and then through the screen I see him jog down the hill toward his Jeep. I stand in the middle of the cabin, turning the bracelet around and around on my wrist, and look about me. I see the full-size four-poster bed in one corner of the room that I made up with a cotton blue bedspread and a gray wool camp blanket folded at the bottom. There's a bookshelf next to it that's supposed to hold all our crap, but we've got too much crap. It all sits in a heap on the other side of the room. There's my clothes and shoes and books, and all the baby stuff my parents bought me—the car seat and crib and baby carrier and stroller—and then there's Lam's clothes and our computers and even a real stuffed moose head. The giant head sits lopsided, resting on the left side of its antlers, a souvenir of the first moose Lam ever shot. There's a card table with an old record player on top, and in the center of the room is the scratchy couch and trunk/coffee table. The room looks so depressing that I can't help it, a fresh batch of tears rolls down my face. I flop down on the couch and have myself a good long cry. While I'm crying I rub my belly and talk to my baby, which is something I've kind of gotten into the habit of doing—when nobody else is around.