Authors: Kerry Reichs
“Like where American Gothic sleeps?”
“I doubt many Iowa farmers slept in Wesley Allen beds. They were pretty high end. I had one my dad got cheap because of a ding. My bedroom was so small, it was all bed. I didn’t realize until college how incongruous all the heavy iron curves and curlicues were in our blue-collar home. I still have it, ding and all.”
“I’d like to see that.”
It wasn’t only me flushing when his words sank in. When was the last time I’d blushed? It didn’t look normal for Julian either.
“How did he get into beds?”
“One foot at a time.”
“Bumper sticker,” he accused.
“My dad was twelve when the Soviets invaded the Baltics in World War II. His family was lucky enough to get out. They got to an Allied displaced people’s camp in Germany. When the war ended, independent Latvia didn’t exist. It was absorbed into the Soviet Republic.”
“So they came here.”
“It took them eight years.”
“
Eight
years?
”
“You needed a sponsor to get to the United States. Those were the worst times, after the war. The camps pulled up stakes, and refugees were left scrabbling to draw food from the dirt. My dad helped my grandmother turn a patch into a scrawny garden. That’s when he started to love dill. It transformed a dusty potato or saltless broth, but it’s sensitive, and hard to grow. I think he loved the challenge.”
“How did they get to the States?”
“A man from the camp remembered them. He worked at Wesley Allen and convinced the company grateful Latvian labor was honest and cheap, so they sponsored a number of families. By that point my dad had met my mom, so she came too.”
“Do you speak Latvian?”
“
Protams!
I was raised this schizophrenic hybrid of Latvian pride and American dream.”
“Let me guess, Latvians don’t rush to emergency rooms.”
“Latvians don’t complain, and don’t talk about their feelings, but they work hard and love hard. My parents worked factory jobs, sometimes two each, to get me a good education. And a good bed.”
“And you’re grateful, but . . .”
I looked at my plate. “Growing up the daughter of hardscrabble immigrants means that nothing that happens to you really counts as ‘bad.’ If I was devastated because David dumped me, that grief was compounded by guilt for presuming that my woes counted for anything compared to victims of famine or oppression. Like I wasn’t grateful enough.”
“Grief and gratitude are not mutually exclusive.”
“True. And it’s not a bad quality to keep your head down and work hard. My dad was never bitter. When a riveter punctured his hand, it was nothing compared to when my grandmother was stitched up without anesthesia after gallbladder surgery. When his wound developed an infection, he praised the medical treatment a poor immigrant could get. When his sepsis became fatal, he was grateful he’d saved his family from Soviet gulags and left us safely in America. He died without rancor. I took my mourning in equal parts loss and shame for focusing on my grief.”
Julian was pensive. “I never thought about the kids of survivors. Hollywood focuses on Holocaust victims, but of course the bite marks would pass forward.”
I rushed to correct him. “My folks weren’t in concentration camps. Displaced-persons camps are different, for refugees. They could leave these places.”
“Ah yes, the decadent refugee camps. I’ve seen them in Darfur and Burma. Regular Club Meds, all silken pillows and ambrosia.”
“People assume concentration camp, and when you explain, they act like you’ve exaggerated for attention. It’s embarrassing.”
“So you spent your days navigating the Guess jeans–clad hallways of entitled American high school, and your nights in guilty gratitude at the immigrant table.”
“Was there ever a point when you didn’t see the world in cinematic clichés?”
“Not in years.” He grinned. “My life has had narrative elements since I started writing. Can you experience things without thinking how you’d act them?”
“She said she didn’t know, turning her head slightly to conceal her true feelings,” I answered.
“Born to be in front of a camera.”
“When a Nikon comes out, my grandmother summons every sorrow of her ninety-three years. Smiling for the camera is not part of the Latvian identity. It must be my American side.”
“I like it,” Julian said.
“I like this wine,” I said. “Is there any more?”
We walked back to the car, pleasantly tipsy, under a leafy canopy offering slivered glimpses of the moon.
“Can I coax you back to my place for a drink?” he said.
“Are we going to hatch a plot to take over the world, Pinkie?” I’d seen a spread on his house in
Architectural Digest
. It looked like a flying saucer embedded in the hillside.
“What’ve you got against my place?”
“Nothing.” I couldn’t tell if he was wounded. I’d had a lot of wine. “I love the thrill of jutting precariously over the ocean.”
“Come explore the archeological potential. I can show you my Japanese etchings.” He slid his arm around my waist. Alarm bells sounded.
“I don’t think this is a good idea.”
I think it’s a very good idea
, purred LaMimi.
“What are you worried about?”
I wasn’t telling him that. “Worrying works. Ninety percent of the things I worry about never happen.”
He brushed back my hair. “Please trust me, Dimple.”
“Directors and actresses should not get involved.”
“This isn’t about Julian the director and Dimple the actress. This is about Julian the man and Dimple the woman, and the incredible attraction between them.” He moved closer. My focus was dissolving.
“Sex creates problems.” Breathless.
“You’re right,” Julian said. “Sex is not the answer.”
I was disappointed even though it was my argument.
He showed his teeth. “Sex is the question. Yes is the answer.” This time I didn’t object.
T
he first time it happened, Maryn was sitting in her office when an odor spread itself like fecal cloth across her desk. She waited for the decay to pass with the air that blew it in, but it didn’t. She rooted in her trash can to find the offending tuna sandwich or apple core. Nothing. She couldn’t concentrate on work. She checked her shoes in case she’d tracked in manure. She ransacked every drawer for a forgotten hard-boiled egg. She searched the pockets of all her jackets.
“Oh my god! Are you okay?”
Her secretary Kay caught her facedown, sniffing the carpet.
“Do you smell that?” Maryn demanded.
“Smell what?”
The stink was stronger with the door open. Maryn charged into the outer office, following her nose to the coatrack.
“What’s this?” She seized a handful of purple wool.
“My sweater.” Kay looked puzzled.
“It reeks!” The smell of wet dog was overpowering.
“I don’t smell anything. Maybe it caught some rain.” It was drizzling.
Maryn tried to go back to work, but she couldn’t shake the smell. Kay finally had to remove the cardigan to her car, but not without giving Maryn the side-eye.
The second time, she was at home, propped against the arm of the sofa, David Sedaris’s latest on her knees. She smelled a garbage truck. It parked in the living room. Her nose led her to the cushion beneath her bare feet. Putrid. She’d sat in her reading pose, feet on these cushions, for countless odorless nights, but in an instant, the absorbed foot cheese shot the hedonic tone to rancid. She spent the rest of the night washing sofa cushions. When she straightened from zipping the last of the laundered covers back around the cushions, she staggered, light headed.
Conviction seized her. This was it.
She couldn’t wait until morning. She threw a trench over her pajamas and dashed out. At the drugstore, she dithered. There were so many pregnancy tests. She picked a pink one that boasted
RESULTS IN WORDS
, so she wouldn’t have to scrutinize whether something was a line or a cross. It also said
RESULTS 5 DAYS SOONER
. It had only been ten days since the implantation procedure.
The test said to wait until morning for best results, but she couldn’t. She read the directions, held the stick pointing downward, and counted to five while she peed. She washed her hands and left the stick on the back of the toilet. She went into the kitchen to occupy herself with a snack, then panicked that the test might fall into the toilet. She brought the stick to the kitchen. She made tea, as if she was the sort of person who drank tea when she was home by herself. She wasn’t, but she liked to think she could be. Those people seemed mature in a diversified stock and NPR sort of way. As she prepared the tea, Maryn peeped at the test, as if it might catch her looking and pull its skirt down over the results. After a hundred hours, five minutes passed. She examined the stick. The little clock was still flashing.
She stirred tea she had no interest in. After three more minutes, a question mark symbol appeared.
“No shit, Sherlock.” The stupid stick was supposed to
answer
the question, not ask it. She reread the instruction sheet.
A ? symbol indicates an error has occurred during testing. You should retest with another digital pregnancy test, carefully following all directions.
She wanted to use the other test immediately but restrained herself. It worked best in the morning. She’d wait. She dumped out the tea and drank a glass of water. Then another. She finished a third before taking the fourth to bed. She wondered if this was what waterboarding felt like.
“I’m pregnant with a water baby,” she told the clean stick as she put it in the bathroom for the morning’s use.
Despite herself, she fantasized about what it would feel like to read the ‘
Yes.’
Sounding a barbaric YAWP over the rooftops. Telling Kay she was pregnant. Blossoming round and large. Feeling the baby kick. It took a long time to fall asleep.
She woke at six with an urgent need to urinate. She’d never been so excited to pee. This time, she used a cup and immersed the absorbent tip for five seconds. She studied the packaging while she waited. It was rather maddening. A “-No” result meant
You may not be pregnant, or it may be too early to tell.
A “+YES” result instructed
You may be pregnant. You must see your doctor to confirm.
It was like a lawyer.
After three minutes, a “
?”
appeared in the window.
“Are you kidding me?” she shouted at it. “Stupid, crappy, worthless piece of false marketing. What are you, Windows ’98?? ”
Maryn was torn between writing an angry letter to the FTC about false advertising in pregnancy tests, and running out and buying more. She restrained herself on both fronts. She dressed and went to work. At lunch, she bought another test, steering wide of the pink ones, and selecting a blue box that displayed “
Easy
” in large, reassuring letters. That night she was so tired that sleep came immediately even though she went to bed so full of water she could have floated.
She woke at six desperate to expel the gallon of liquid she’d funneled before bed. She peed on the stick meticulously. She hovered over the stick, afraid to jostle it. Three minutes later the hourglass changed to NOT PREGNANT
.
“Well, that’s just wrong,” said Maryn. She must not have sufficient levels of the HCG pregnancy hormone yet. She’d try again in five days.
It didn’t occur to her to be disappointed, unless you counted deferred pleasure. She refused to not be pregnant. A person didn’t grow super-smelling powers overnight.
The five days weren’t unlike any other five days of her life, despite her conviction that she was pregnant. She was frantic at work, moving fifteen thoroughbreds through LAX for the Pacific Classic in Del Mar. On Thursday, she sipped a glass of wine with a client, feeling like she was cheating. Technically, there was no reason not to drink. But Maryn knew she was cheating. And she was exhausted. So very, very tired. Kay thought it was all those damn Pacific Classic horses. Wyatt thought maybe she was coming down with a cold. Maryn knew she was coming down with a case of the babies. She was only surprised by how fast the symptoms hit her.
The second time, Maryn went through the routine like it was nothing special. Just like brushing your teeth. She woke at five, peed on the stick. She transported it to the bedside table as if it was an armed nuclear weapon coated in powdered anthrax, coddling its sensitive inner workings. She snuggled into the covers and dozed while she waited. When she roused, she stretched her neck to look at the digital window without touching the sensitive oracle. She had her answer.
She lay back on the pillows. She didn’t do anything for a moment. Didn’t feel anything. Didn’t yawp. Her hand rested on her flat abdomen, waiting for emotion. Then a slow smile crept over her face.
“Welcome to the world, nugget,” she whispered.
Maryn may have been more active after her insemination than she’d predicted, but she seriously spent the next weeks on the couch with her legs crossed. It wasn’t just her fear that something would go wrong.
“Women have been doing this for thousands of years,” said Dr. Singh. “Relax. It’s out of your hands. Absent extremes, nothing you do or don’t do will cause you to lose this parasite.”
“Parasite” was Dr. Singh’s brand of humor, but sometimes Maryn thought she meant it. “Remember to eat well and take your vitamins,” she would say. “The baby will take what it wants, so you must take care of yourself.”
Maryn was doing her best, but the fatigue was killing her. It was pregnancy’s dirty little secret. Everyone bitched about morning sickness and cankles, but no one told her she’d be drained to the bone. Maryn hadn’t been sick once, but she was dying of tired. It didn’t help that she went cold turkey on caffeine.
Each day, Maryn relaxed a little. It was like snatching gold coins one at a time. Four weeks felt good. Six weeks felt better. Eight was stupendous.
“I’m pregnant.” Maryn kept it simple when she called Andy.
Silence. “What’s the right thing to say?” Andy asked. They’d dismissed their case, though you’d never know it. No one reported it, and the furor over Proposition 11 raged on.
“Congratulations, and what did you just say because I’ve already forgotten,” Maryn answered.
“Congratulations,” said Andy. “I’m sorry—what did you just tell me? I’ve already forgotten.”
Despite his newfound accommodation, Maryn knew she wouldn’t fully relax until after the baby was born and he signed the last legal paper giving her uncontested custody of the child.
At eleven weeks, she raced to the doctor for a chorionic villus sampling test. It was the earliest opportunity to rule out chromosomal abnormalities like Down syndrome.
“How’s everything been so far?” the doctor asked. It wasn’t Dr. Singh, it was a specialist.
“I’m good, just tired.”
“Your energy will bounce back,” he said. “When you hit the second trimester, you should feel an almost instantaneous resurgence of vigor.”
Maryn didn’t see an end to feeling saggy, but she nodded.
“How long has that been bothering you?” He indicated the sore on her lip.
“It’s just a cold sore.” She edged back.
“You have a history of breast cancer, correct?”
Maryn was disappointed that this doctor knew her medical history. She wanted the focus on her pregnancy.
“I’ve been in full remission for years.”
“Anything else bothering you?”
“Nope. I feel great.” She hid her exhaustion behind a perky smile.
He studied her lip a moment, then said, “Pregnancy throws the body into chaos. Canker sores are a common side effect of the additional hormones. But if the fatigue doesn’t ease soon, have Dr. Singh run a basic blood panel and look at your white cell count. Merely a precaution.” He smiled. “Today’s procedure will only take a second. I’m going to take cells from the fingerlike projections on the placenta called the chorionic villis, and send them to a lab for genetic analysis, and hopefully rule out Down syndrome.”
“And know the gender?”
“If you like. Do you want to wait any longer for your husband?”
She hadn’t realized they’d been waiting. “Begin,” was all she said. Otherwise, they’d be waiting a long time.
When the doctor called a week later, it was good news.
“Everything looks perfect. You have a healthy baby.”
Maryn exhaled breath she’d been holding for twelve weeks.
“Would you like to know the gender?” he asked.
“Absolutely.”
“What do you think it is?”
“A miracle,” she said.
“And a girl,” he said.
It wasn’t physical changes that were hard on Maryn, though there were those too. For the most part her body took to pregnancy beautifully. She had no nausea or food aversions, her hair thickened, her appetite didn’t change. Intellectually, it was surreal. Maryn the planner, the controller, couldn’t get her head around it. She was growing a human brain from scratch, but there was no indication if you looked at her body in the mirror. Yet an infinitesimal body-snatching shift had occurred. She was a slave host to an alien.
The hard part was the emotional wilderness. Pregnancy was an unpredictable mare on an unfamiliar course, a thrilling and terrifying jump over a blind box hedge, bodies united but the horse in control.
Maryn didn’t have confidantes. Because of her illness, her divorce, and her work, she’d become unmoored from her social life. It would be artificial to reconnect with friends long drifted, but she was desperate to talk.
She thought of Wyatt. She felt bonded to the quiet man, and couldn’t wait to share with him. They were each pogo sticks on the verge of becoming two-legged stools. Together they could make a sturdy table. Maryn needed the support. The baby registry terrified her. What if she registered for the wrong bottle nipple and the child never went to college? That was the tip of the iceberg. She had a million questions. She’d read all the books, but she wanted someone to talk to, a compatriot with whom to be mutually mystified assembling baby toys, to consult over rashes, or to talk about poop without sarcasm.
Wyatt would understand the soup of joy, terror, shock, and awe she was feeling. They would gossip about scandals among the Ocean Park playground parents, but also about secret fears their children might be autistic. Their daughters could be best friends. Maryn wanted a best friend too. Wyatt had a head start in the wilderness, and even if it was the blind leading the blind, she trusted that he could guide her through it.