”
Sure
you were,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant and playful.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, motioning for me to move over and clear a space for him.
I lifted my legs long enough for him to sit and then rested my feet on his thighs. “It means, were you
really
writing or were you hanging out with Sondrine?” I asked the question in the singsongy way that kids say, “
Ethan and Sondrine sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G
!”
“I really was writing,” he said innocently. Then he tried to change the subject by asking what I did with my day.
“I looked for a job. Called some places. Surfed the Net.”
“And?”
“All to no avail,” I said. “Very frustrating… So what’s the deal with
Son-drine
?” I pronounced her name as un-Frenchy as possible, making the word sound clunky and unattractive.
“She’s cool. Fun to hang out with.”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Ethan.”
He gave me a quizzical look.
“Is she your girlfriend or what?”
He yawned and stretched. “No, she’s not my girlfriend.”
“But you’re her
petit chou
.” I grinned.
“What?”
“I heard her on the phone talking to you right before you showed up at the Muffin Man. She called you her
petit chou
.”
“You’re too much,” Ethan said, smiling.
“By the way, are you aware that a
chou
is a cabbage?” I asked, rolling my eyes. I had looked the word up on the Internet as soon as I had returned to the flat, and could not believe that she was using such a dumb pet name.
Ethan shrugged. “I had no idea. I took Spanish. Remember?”
“Too bad for you.”
“Why?”
“Because your girlfriend’s French, that’s why.”
“She’s not my girlfriend, Darce,” Ethan said unconvincingly. “We’ve just gone out a couple of times.”
“When was that?”
“Once last week… and then today.”
“Was last week a dinner date?” I asked, trying to remember which nights Ethan had stayed out late.
“No. We met for lunch.”
“Where?”
“At a bistro in Notting Hill.”
“Did you go dutch?”
“No. I paid… Is your inquisition almost over?”
“I guess so. I just don’t get why you didn’t tell me about her.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know why I didn’t mention her. It’s really not a big deal,” he said, as he kneaded my left heel and then my right. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had given me a foot massage. It felt better than an orgasm. I told Ethan this. He gave me a proud smile that I translated as: “You’ve never had an orgasm with me.” An image of Ethan and Sondrine, naked and sweaty, popped into my head. I pictured them postcoitus, sharing a cigarette. She had to be a smoker with that raspy voice.
“So tell me about her,” I probed.
“There’s not much to tell… I met her at the Tate Gallery. We were both there to see this exhibit,” he said as he made a fist and rolled it along my arches.
“So what, did you meet in front of a painting?” I asked, thinking of my own trip to the National Gallery with Ethan and wondering why he hadn’t invited me to the Tate.
“No. We met in the cafe at the museum. She was behind me in line. I got the last free table. She asked if she could join me,” he said. I could hear the story being retold later, whenever anyone asked how they had met. I could see Sondrine linking her arm through his, concluding the tale with a coy, “He got the last Caesar salad
and
the last table!”
“What a sweet story,” I said.
He ignored my sarcasm. “And then we walked around the museum together afterward.”
The whole thing was a little too close to my Alistair fantasy for comfort. I swallowed, trying to identify the knotted feeling in my chest. It felt like envy and worry and loneliness all blended together.
I formulated a dozen more questions but decided against asking any of them. I had heard enough. Instead we just listened to Norah Jones. Ethan’s eyes were closed, his hands still on my feet when he finally spoke. “You looked really pregnant in the Muffin Man today,” he said.
“You mean fat?” I asked, thinking of Sondrine’s delicate bird wrists. I was downright sturdy next to her.
“Not fat. Pregnant.”
“Pregnant and fat,” I said.
He shook his head, opened his eyes, and gave me a funny look. “No. Pregnant and
radiant
.”
I felt all tingly and knew that I was beaming. I thanked him, feeling shy.
Ethan kept looking at me with concentration, the way you study someone when you’re trying to place them, remember their name. He finally said, “You really do have that glow.”
“Thank you,” I said again. Our eyes locked for a second, and then we both looked away at the same time.
There was no more conversation for a long time after that. Then Ethan suddenly turned to me and said, “Darce, I was wondering… why did you go to the nursing home today?”
“I told you—to get a job,” I said.
“I know. But why a nursing home when you have a public relations background?”
“Because I want to help people. Be more compassionate and stuff.”
Ethan chuckled and shook his head. “You’re such a little extremist, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?
You’re
the one who said I needed to change. Be a less shallow person and all that,” I said, realizing how very much I wanted him to recognize the effort I was making.
“You don’t have to change
everything
about yourself, Darce. And you certainly don’t need to go working in a nursing home to be a good person.”
“Well, it’s a good thing. Because I didn’t get hired.” I smiled. “And to be perfectly honest, I don’t particularly want to work with old people.”
“Yeah. You don’t have to be a martyr. Just find an enjoyable job and make a little loot. If you can add some value to the world in the process, all the better. But you have to be yourself.”
“Be myself, huh?” I said with a smirk.
“Yeah,” he said, grinning as he stood and walked toward his bedroom. “It ain’t
all
bad.”
I stood to follow him and then hesitated. I knew nothing had changed overnight, but there was something about seeing Ethan with a girl that made sleeping in bed with him feel strange, somehow wrong. I reassured myself that despite an occasional, fleeting attraction on my part, we were strictly friends. And friends could share beds. I used to have sleepovers with Rachel all the time.
Still, just to be sure, I waited for Ethan to turn around and say, “Are you coming?” before bounding (as much as a pregnant girl can bound) down the hall after him.
I didn’t know how much longer I had before Sondrine would make her presence known in the flat, but I was going to savor every minute of it.
twenty-three
The next morning I called Mr. Moore, the doctor Meg and Charlotte had recommended. As it turned out, he had a cancellation in his morning schedule, so I took the Circle Line to Great Portland Street and followed my
A to Zed
to his office on Harley Street, a block of beautiful, old town houses, most of which appeared to have been converted to medical offices.
I opened the heavy red door to Mr. Moore’s practice and walked into a marble foyer, where a receptionist handed me a form to fill out and pointed to a waiting room with a fireplace. Moments later, a plump, grandmotherly woman who introduced herself as Beatrix, Mr. Moore’s midwife, collected me in the waiting room and led me up a winding, grand staircase to another room that looked as if it should have been roped off in a museum.
Beatrix introduced me to my doctor as he rose behind his mahogany desk, stepped around it, and gracefully extended his hand. I shook it and studied his face. With high cheekbones, wide-set blue eyes, and an interesting Roman nose, he was quite handsome. And he was elegantly dressed in a sharp navy suit and a green tie. He nodded toward a wing chair in front of his desk, inviting me to have a seat.
We both sat down, and for some reason I blurted out, “I expected a white coat.”
He gave me a hint of a smile and said, “White is not my color.” His refined accent seemed to transform the friendly quip into a line right out of a Shakespeare play.
Beatrix murmured that she’d be back shortly, and Mr. Moore asked me polite, getting-to-know-you questions: stuff about where I was from, when I had arrived in England, and when I was due. I answered his questions, telling him matter-of-factly that I had become pregnant unexpectedly, broken up with my boyfriend, and moved to London to start over. I also told him that I was due on May second, and that I had not been to the doctor in several weeks.
“Have you had an ultrasound?” he asked.
I was embarrassed to report no, remembering that I had blown off my ten-week ultrasound appointment in New York.
“Well, we’ll do an ultrasound today and check on everything,” Mr. Moore said, making a note on my chart.
“Will you be able to tell the gender?”
“I will… assuming your baby is cooperative.”
“Really? Today?”
“Hmmm,” he said, nodding.
My heart pounded with excitement and a dash of fear. I was about to see my daughter for the first time. I suddenly wished that Ethan were with me.
“Let’s get started then,” Mr. Moore said. “Shall we?”
I nodded.
“Just go right behind that screen, get undressed from the waist down, and pop onto the table. I’ll return with Beatrix in a moment.”
I nodded again and went to undress. As I slid off my skirt, I regretted not getting a bikini wax before my appointment. I was going to make a poor first impression on the impeccably groomed Mr. Moore. But as I got up on the table and tucked the paper cover neatly around me, I reassured myself that surely he had seen much worse. Minutes later, Mr. Moore returned with Beatrix, knocking on the partition that separated the examination room from his parlor.
“All set?” he asked.
“All set,” I said.
Mr. Moore smiled as he perched on a small stool beside me while Beatrix hovered primly in the background.
“All right then, Darcy,” Mr. Moore said. “Please slide down for me and place your feet in the stirrups. I am going to have a peek at your cervix. You’ll feel a little pressure.”
He put on latex gloves and checked my cervix with two fingers. I winced as he murmured, “Your cervix is closed and long. Wonderful.” Then he removed his gloves, deposited them into a small waste can, slid my paper covering down, and squeezed a blob of gel onto my stomach. “I apologize if this feels a bit cold.”
“No problem,” I said, grateful for his sensitivity.
He slid the ultrasound probe over my stomach as a murky black-and-white image appeared on the screen. At first it looked like nothing but an ink blot, the kind that a psychiatrist uses, but then I made out a head and a hand.
“Omigod!” I shouted. “She’s sucking her little thumb, isn’t she?”
“Hmmm,” Mr. Moore said, as Beatrix smiled.
I got all choked up as I told them that I had never seen anything so miraculous. “She’s perfect,” I said. “Isn’t she absolutely perfect?”
Mr. Moore agreed. “Beautiful. Beautiful,” he murmured. He then squinted at the screen and carefully inched the probe along my stomach. The image disappeared for a second, then reappeared.
“What?” I asked. “What do you see? She
is
a girl, right?”
“Just give me a moment… I need to have a closer look. Then I’ll take some measurements.”
“What do you need to measure?” I asked.
“The head, abdomen, and femur. Then we’ll look at the various structures. The brain, chambers of the heart, and so forth.”
It suddenly occurred to me that something
could
be wrong with my daughter. Why had I not considered this before? I regretted all of the wine I had sipped, the coffees that I wasn’t able to resist in the morning. What if I had done something to harm her? I anxiously watched the screen and Mr. Moore’s face for clues. He calmly examined different parts of my baby, reading out numbers as Beatrix took notes on my chart. “Is that normal?” I asked at every turn.
“Yes. Yes. It’s all terribly, beautifully normal.”
At that moment,
normal
was the most wonderful word in the English language. My daughter didn’t have to be a beauty like me. She didn’t have to be extraordinary in any way. I just wanted her to be healthy.
“So. Are you ready to hear the big news?” Mr. Moore asked me.
“Oh, I know it’s a girl,” I said. “I’ve never had a moment’s doubt, but I’m dying for confirmation so I can start buying pink things.”
Mr. Moore made a clucking sound, and said, “Ahhh. Well, now. I should warn you that pink might not be the best choice.”
“What?” I asked, straining to make out the image on the screen. “It’s
not a
. girl?”
“No. You are
not
having a girl,” he said, turning to me with the proud smile of a man who assumes that a boy is always the preferred gender.
“It’s a
boyi
Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure. You’re having a boy…” he said, pointing to the screen with his right index finger, the other hand still holding the probe against my stomach. “And
another
boy.”
He turned away from the screen and beamed down at me, waiting for a reaction.
My mind churned wildly, landing on a once common word now infused with a crazy, new meaning:
twin
. I managed to spit out a question. “Two babies?”
“Yes, Darcy. You’re pregnant with twin boys.” Mr. Moore’s smile grew wider. “Congratulations!”
“There must be some mistake. Look again,” I said. He had to be wrong. Twins didn’t run in my family. I hadn’t taken any fertility drugs. I didn’t
want
twins. And certainly not twin
boys!
Mr. Moore and Beatrix exchanged a knowing glance and then chuckled their restrained English chuckles. That’s when I thought maybe they were just pulling my chain. Playing some cruel little trick on me. Tell the unmarried Yank she’s having twins. Good one. Ethan had told me that the sense of humor is different in England.
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked, completely stunned.
“No,” Mr. Moore said. “I’m quite serious. You are having two boys. Congratulations, Darcy.”
I sat upright, my paper cover slipping off me and floating to the floor. “But I wanted a girl.
One
girl. Not
two boys
,” I said, not caring that I was completely exposed from the waist down.
“Well. These things can’t be ordered up like a mince pie,” Mr. Moore said wryly, as he stooped to retrieve my covering and handed it to me.
I glared at him. In no way did I appreciate his analogy or his apparent amusement.
“Are you ever wrong about these things?” I asked desperately. “I’ve heard of that happening. I mean, have you ever made a mistake?”
Mr. Moore said he was quite sure I was having twins. Then he explained that occasionally girls are mistaken for boys, but rarely does it happen the other way.
“So you’re
positive
?”
With the patience of Annie Sullivan teaching Helen Keller the alphabet, he pointed to the floating images on the screen. Two heartbeats. Two heads. And two penises.
I started to cry, as my visions of sugar and spice and all things pink and nice evaporated, replaced by horrid remembrances of my little brother, Jeremy. His lips vibrating together as he made endless, monotonous bulldozer sounds. I was about to have that times two. It was inconceivable.
Sensing my mounting despair, Mr. Moore switched into sympathetic mode, explaining that the news of twins is often met with something less than enthusiasm.
I fought back tears. “That is a gross understatement.”
“It will just take some getting used to,” he said.
”
Two boys
?” I asked again.
“Two boys,” he said. “Identical twins.”
“How in the world did this happen?”
Mr. Moore took the question literally because he gave me a quick biology lesson, pointing to the screen and explaining that my babies appeared to be sharing one placenta, but two sacs. “Or diamnionic monochorionic twins,” he said. “Which means your fertilized egg divided between four and seven days postconception.”
”
Shhhit
,” I whispered.
He pushed a button, explaining that he was taking an ultrasound picture for me. He then moved the probe, snapped again. He handed me the two photographs, one labeled Baby A and the other Baby B. I reluctantly took them from him. Mr. Moore asked if I would like to get dressed and share a soothing cup of mint tea with Beatrix, who inched her way toward the table and smiled down at me.
“No. No, thank you. I have to go,” I said, standing and dressing as quickly as I could.
Mr. Moore tried to coax me back on the table for further discussion, but I had to get out of there, irrationally believing that his office and its imposing Victorian formality had transformed my girl baby into a boy baby and then multiplied her by two. If I escaped, maybe it would all fix itself. I would go seek a second opinion. Surely there was a good American physician in London. One who had the title
doctor,
for heaven’s sake.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Moore,” I stammered. “But I have to go.”
Mr. Moore and Beatrix watched as I finished dressing, collected my purse, and said, as I headed out the door, that he should bill me for the visit, and thank you very much. Then I made my way back to Harley Street, where I felt numbed by Mr. Moore’s news and the biting London drizzle.
I walked all over town in a daze, the word
twins
drumming in my skull. I walked down to Bond Street, then over to Marble Arch, then across to Knightsbridge. I walked until my lower back ached and my hands and toes grew numb. I did not stop in a single store, no matter how tempting the window display. I didn’t stop at all except for a few minutes at a Starbucks during the worst of the rain. I thought the familiar burnt-orange-and-purple decor would offer me some sort of solace. It didn’t. Nor did the hot chocolate and bagel I hungrily swallowed. The thought of having one baby was intimidating. Now I was full-on scared. How would I be able to take care of twins—or even tell them apart? It felt surreal.
Around three o’clock, just as it was getting dark, I arrived home, frozen and exhausted.
“Darcy? Is that you?” I heard Ethan call from his bedroom.
“Yeah,” I yelled back as I took off my jacket and kicked off my boots.
“Come on back!”
I walked down the hall and opened Ethan’s door. He was stretched out on his bed with an open book resting on his chest. The lamp next to his bed cast a warm, soft glow on his blond hair, creating a halo effect.
“Can I sit down? I’m kind of wet,” I said.
“Of course you can.”
I sat cross-legged at the foot of his bed, rubbed the soles of my feet, and shivered.
“Did you get caught in the rain?” he asked.
“Yeah. Sort of. I’ve been walking in it all day,” I said pitifully. “I left my umbrella at home.”
“Not a good thing to leave behind in London.”
“So. You’ll never believe what happened to me today…”
“Were you mugged?” he asked, drumming his fingers on the spine of his book.
“No. Worse.”
Ethan snickered. “Worse than someone stealing your Gucci bag?”
“This isn’t funny, Ethan.” My voice trembled.
His smile disappeared as he closed his book and tossed it on the bed next to him. “What happened?”
“I went to the doctor this morning…”
He sat up, a concerned look on his face. “Is everything okay with the baby?”
I uncrossed my legs and brought them up to my chest, resting my chin on my knees. “Everything is fine… with the
ba-bies
.”
Ethan’s eyes widened. “Babies?”
I nodded. Twins?
“Yes. Twins. Identical twin
boys
.”
Ethan stared at me for a few seconds. “Are you kidding?”
“Do I look amused?”
The corners of his mouth twitched, as if he were trying not to laugh.
“It’s not funny, Ethan… And please don’t tell me that I deserve this either. Because, believe me, I’ve already considered that I’m being punished. Maybe I was engaging in some frivolous behavior in Manhattan. Maybe shopping too much,” I said. “Or railing on someone’s appearance. Or having sex with Marcus behind Dexter’s back… And God frowned down upon me and
wbazzam
split my embryo… giving me identical twin boys.” I started to cry. It was really sinking in. Twins. Twins.
Twins.
“Darcy. Chill, hon. I wasn’t going to say anything like that.”
“Then why are you smiling?”
“I’m smiling because… I’m happy.”
“Happy that I’m getting screwed?”
“No, Darce. I’m happy
for
you. If one baby is a blessing, then you have twice the good fortune. Two babies! It’s a small miracle. Not a punishment.” His words were convincing, his tone and expression even more so.