Now I'll Tell You Everything

  18

  THE BIG EVENT

  I’d been off birth control for the past six months, and we weren’t “working” at getting pregnant, just ready for a child if it happened. I was now three weeks late, and that had never happened before. Were my breasts more tender than usual? I wasn’t sure. I bought a pregnancy test one day after work and nervously took it home.

  It was as though I were carrying something alive in my bag, and I realized I was driving ten miles under the speed limit. I went straight up to our bedroom and sat staring at the kit, reading the instructions again and again, too nervous to absorb them at first. Finally, my heart beating double time, I got a cup, peed in it, and inserted the test strip. Then I sat on the toilet seat, hands folded in my lap, and watched the clock.

  One minute . . . two minutes . . . I’d heard that, years ago, a woman had to go to the doctor for a pregnancy test, and then her urine went to a lab where a rabbit was sacrificed or something after it was injected. It sounded almost superstitious. I don’t know if it was good news or bad when the rabbit died, but all the while the woman was wondering whether or not her life would change, and here I was, simply watching the minute hand on the clock.

  Three minutes. Stay calm, I told myself. I picked up the instructions and read them again. One line, no baby; two lines, pregnant. Like Paul Revere and his lanterns or something.

  I took a deep breath and lifted out the test strip. Two lines.

  I screamed with excitement. Then I walked around the bedroom, whispering, “I’m pregnant! I’m pregnant!” When I looked at myself in the mirror, I looked different somehow. My cheeks were flushed. I sat down on the bed, my hands on my abdomen, and couldn’t stop smiling.

  I was twenty-six, my third year as a counselor. Liz hadn’t conceived again—she and Moe were planning another trip, this time to South America. Neither Gwen nor Pamela was married, so it appeared that I’d be the first one of us to have a baby.

  Everything swirled around in my head at once. We needed to start saving every cent for the baby! What would we name it? Where would we put the crib? What about maternity clothes? Oh, God, clothes!

  It was late May, and I was probably three weeks pregnant, so the baby was due around February 1. I could probably get through the summer without showing too much, but by fall and especially winter . . .

  I leaped up and grabbed my pillow. Unzipping my black pants, I opened the top as wide as possible and stuffed the pillow in. Then I pulled my jersey top down over the pillow and stood sideways, looking in the full-length mirror. I looked like a woman with a pillow in her pants, and I was stretching my jersey top.

  Coats! What about a winter coat or jacket? These were expensive, and I wondered if my old one would do. I ran to the coat closet, holding my false abdomen, grabbed my down jacket, and ran back again. Standing in front of the mirror, I lifted the hood, with the white fake fur forming a wreath around my face.

  Omigod! I’m pregnant! I’m really, really pregnant! I kept thinking. There were two of us now snuggled all cozy inside my down jacket. But I had to struggle with the zipper and knew I’d never get it up even halfway.

  Suddenly I saw movement in the mirror and looked behind me to see Patrick standing in the doorway, staring at me, shirtsleeves rolled up, suit jacket over one arm.

  “Snow in the forecast?” he asked quizzically.

  I whirled about so fast that the pillow came halfway out and my pants began to slide. With Patrick staring at me bug-eyed, I yanked them up and waddled across the bedroom, then threw my arms around his neck.

  “Patrick, I’m pregnant!” I cried. “We’re parents!”

  He made some kind of noise, a little gasp or gurgle, and then, holding me out away from him so he could see my face, he cried, “Really? Really?”

  “Really,” I told him, and he let out a whoop of delight, lifting me off my feet and whooped again.

  “When?”

  “February, I think. I’m trying on coats,” I said, and we fell on the bed laughing, tossing our pillow baby around and reveling in our May delirium.

  It was one of the happiest evenings of my life—second only to getting engaged, I think. Suddenly there’s a whole new subject to talk about, plans to make. There would be another person in this house. We wouldn’t just be a couple, we’d be a family.

  We decided not to call anyone, though. Most miscarriages happen in the first three months, we knew, so it was better to keep the secret for twelve weeks or so, as Liz had tried to do until I’d heard her in the restroom on my wedding day. It was hard to keep the secret, but we did. And when the time was up, Patrick called his folks and I called Dad and Sylvia, and I think Dad yelled louder than I had, he was so happy.

  When I called Gwen, I said, “Maybe I shouldn’t tell Elizabeth. It will just make her sad.”

  “Alice, that’s life,” Gwen said. “She’d feel a lot worse if she knew she was out of the loop, being treated differently than everyone else.”

  So I called Liz, and Gwen was right. In characteristic Elizabeth fashion, she said, “Oh, Alice, I’m so happy for you!” and I’m sure she meant it.

  Dad was the one, though, who couldn’t stop smiling. Every time I saw him, there was a smile on his face. There were also lines on either side of his mouth that seemed to be getting deeper, reminding me that he, like everyone else, was getting older. But it didn’t seem to bother Sylvia. They were always holding hands, every chance they got.

  “Well, what are we going to name that baby?” he said one night when Les and Stacy were in town and we were all there at the house for dinner.

  “How about Myrtle?” said Lester. “Myrtle Louise or Henrietta? Clementine? There are dozens of good names out there.”

  “You’re just assuming it will be a girl?” said Patrick, laughing.

  “Oh, I’ve got boys’ names too,” said Lester. “What about Alonzo Homer? Horatio? Sylvester? No, wait. I’ve got it! The perfect name if it’s a boy.”

  I grinned. “What?”

  “Are you all with me now?” said Lester. “Are you listening? This is it: Lester.”

  Stacy laughed loudest of all.

  * * *

  What I’d always worried about most when I thought of being pregnant—other than the birth itself—was morning sickness. I hate feeling nauseated and disliked the thought of Patrick hearing me barf in the bathroom. Hated the thought of being afraid to go anywhere for fear I’d throw up. Just thinking about Liz gagging in her bridesmaid dress made me scared. Miraculously, though, I only felt queasy a couple of times during the whole nine months. Sometimes we worry about all the wrong things.

  For the most part, I liked being pregnant. I enjoyed just sitting quietly, one hand on my abdomen, feeling the baby move. I liked taking baths with Patrick, leaning back against him in the tub, his legs on either side of me.

  “There! Feel right there!” I would say, placing Patrick’s hand over a particular spot. “What’s that, do you think? A knee? An elbow?”

  Patrick would press and poke, and sometimes the bump would move or disappear. “Probably his rump,” he said once. “Going to be one of those pointy hind-end kids with big ears and a snotty nose.” And we laughed.

  What I didn’t like as the baby grew bigger was the pressure on my breastbone from inside. And especially the pressure on my bladder.

  One day in my eighth month, Valerie was in town and Liz had arranged a “lunch with the girls” at a favorite little restaurant in Chevy Chase. I had started carrying a small pillow with me for my back, and while the others sat at a booth, I was seated on a chair at the end of the table, where I could give my belly plenty of space.

  We all laughed about it, and it was no big deal. Val was still employed by the museum in Oklahoma City—was co-director now, in fact—and Claire had photos of her husband in the Coast Guard. We shared appetizers and tried a new dessert, and finally, when we collected our credit cards as the server returned, I started to scoot away from the table and felt myself pee right
there in my clothes.

  I froze, not daring to stand up, embarrassed to pieces. I wondered if the others could smell it. How could I explain this? I just plain-out peed!

  There was only one thing to do. I leaned forward to put my napkin back on the table and knocked my water glass over, gasping as a deluge of ice water poured over the edge of the table and right into my lap.

  “Oh! I’m so clumsy!” I cried, inching my thighs apart to make sure the water soaked all the way through, breaking out in goose bumps as it passed between my legs.

  Val shrieked in merriment, and everyone began grabbing napkins to soak up the water as a waiter hurried over with some extras.

  “No problem,” he said.

  Claire was on her cell phone taking pictures to send to Abby.

  “At least you waited till the end of the meal, Alice,” Liz joked. “We’ll go to the restroom and get some paper towels for you to sit on in the car. It’s okay.”

  “Happens all the time,” said the waiter reassuringly.

  “That’s good to know,” I said. Yeah, right.

  In her car Liz said, “Want to go to our place and watch a movie? You can use a hair dryer on your clothes. Luckily, it was only water.”

  “Pee,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I peed all over myself, and the water was a cover-up.”

  Liz burst into laughter. “Alice, do you realize that someone could do a comedy series on your life? The Situation Room with Alice or something.”

  “How about Saturday Night Schnook?”

  “Whatever. The ratings would be off the charts.”

  “Great. But right now I’m getting rancid,” I told her. “Dry pants never sounded so good.”

  * * *

  I worked up until the ninth month, then took a four-month maternity leave, which would expire at the start of summer vacation. That meant seven months off at home with my baby. And the first day I spent at home, I got a call from Elizabeth.

  “I’m pregnant!” she cried. “I’ve made the first trimester, and the doctor says I’m doing fine!”

  “Oh, Liz! That’s wonderful!”

  “They’ll grow up together!” she said. “They’ll only be five months apart. Maybe you’ll have a boy and I’ll have a girl, and they’ll marry and we’ll be parents-in-law!”

  That’s Elizabeth! But I just let her burble on, basking in her happiness. Every woman is entitled to go a little crazy when she’s pregnant.

  Patrick had asked his office that no trips be scheduled for him during the last month of my pregnancy, and everyone seemed in agreement with that. As it turned out, the baby came only a week and a half earlier than expected, but Patrick was out of town anyway. He had been asked to fly to Chicago when another man couldn’t make it and was told he could fly out and back on the same day.

  “Are you sure you’re all right with this?” Patrick had asked before he left.

  “I feel exactly the same as I felt yesterday,” I told him, not wanting him to worry. “I’ll be fine, Patrick. Les and Stacy are in town, so I’ve got the whole family here if I need them.”

  Lester and Stacy had driven in the day before to celebrate her mom’s birthday. Now they were spending their second day with Dad and Sylvia before they headed back to West Virginia. I’d be going over to Dad’s for dinner.

  But only an hour after Patrick left, I had my first pain—like a menstrual cramp. What’s a single cramp, I thought, and a mild one at that? Even if I was in labor, first-time mothers sometimes take thirty-six hours to deliver. Besides, I had spent the previous day cleaning out the refrigerator and felt sure the cramps had something to do with all that exertion. About twenty minutes later I felt another one, even milder, so I lay down and took a nap.

  I woke about one that afternoon feeling very different. This time there was no mistaking it. The pains were coming about twelve minutes apart, and my back ached. I phoned the doctor.

  “Well, well,” he said. “Looks as though one of us miscalculated, doesn’t it? Or else that baby has a mind of its own. It’s your first child, Mrs. Long, and they usually take their own sweet time, but when the contractions get to be about six minutes apart, I think you’d better get to the hospital. And please don’t eat or drink anything.”

  Patrick’s plane was due in at seven, and I wanted to wait for him. If I called him, he’d still be in the meeting, and for a while it seemed the contractions had slowed. Another false alarm. But around five, when the pains were seven minutes apart, I called Dad’s number. Les answered.

  “So how’s the mom-to-be?” he asked. He sounded a bit drowsy, and I imagined I’d interrupted a nap.

  “About to become a mother sooner than I thought,” I told him. “Patrick’s flying back from Chicago, Les, and I’m in labor. The doctor thinks I’d better get to the hospital. Could someone drive me over?”

  I heard him choke. I had purposely tried to stay calm, because I know how Lester reacts to anything remotely resembling childbirth.

  “It’s okay, Lester. We’ve got a while,” I told him, then paused and held my breath because I had a really strong contraction. “Uuuaah,” I groaned.

  “Oh, my God!” Lester yelped. “Dad’s at that new Wegmans store with Sylvia and Stacy, picking up dinner. Al, why do you do this to me?”

  “Just call him on his cell phone,” I said.

  “Our father doesn’t have a cell phone!” Lester said. “He is still in the Neanderthal Age. I’ll try Stacy, but they’re at least a half hour away.”

  “Want me to call a cab?” I asked, trying not to laugh. I don’t know what was keeping me so calm. The fact, I guess, that none of the pains were new to me—just like really strong menstrual cramps.

  “No, no, no, I’ll be right there. I’d better not take the beltway in case traffic gets tied up somehow. I’m coming by East-West Highway, Al,” he said. “Are you bringing the towels?”

  “Towels?” I asked.

  “In case it comes, Al! A sponge? A mop? What do I know?”

  “Les, just relax and get over here, will you?” I said. I threw a few things in a bag and figured Patrick could bring the rest. I left a voice mail for him for when he landed and was waiting outside our building when Les pulled up. He squealed to a stop, jumped from the car, and helped me down the steps.

  A neighboring couple saw us leave. “Good luck, Alice!” the woman called.

  “Make it twins!” yelled her husband.

  I started to get in the front seat, but Les said, “Not there, for Pete’s sake! Get in back so you can lie down.”

  “Lester, I’m not planning to deliver in your car,” I said. “It’s going to be hours yet!”

  That seemed to calm him down, and when he saw how easily I was breathing, he relaxed a little.

  “Have you called Patrick?” he asked.

  “I left a voice message. There’s really nothing he can do.”

  Les practically braked right there. “He could come home, Al! He could catch the first plane home!”

  “He’s already on a plane, Les. It gets in around seven.”

  “Did you tell him to go directly to the hospital? To take my place in the delivery room?”

  “I did, Lester. But I doubt very much I’ll be in—” I paused as another pain roiled my insides.

  “So this is it, huh?” Les asked, looking over at me when we came to a stoplight. “My little sis is going to be a parent before I am. What’s it like, kiddo? Not that I could ever understand.”

  “A cross between a menstrual cramp and a really bad bellyache.”

  “I don’t think I could ever be a woman.”

  “Well, that’s one thing you’ll never have to worry about,” I told him.

  At Sibley Hospital, Les pulled up to the entrance. He went inside and returned pushing a wheelchair. An aide was holding the emergency room door open, smiling at me. She reminded me of Gwen.

  “So today’s your lucky day,” she said cheerfully as Les helped me into the wheelchair
. “And here’s the proud papa.”

  Les opened his mouth to correct her, but I said quickly, “Yes, he’s just wonderful. He’s going to stay right by my side during the delivery, aren’t you, darling?”

  Les looked at me in terror.

  “You can bring your wife’s bag after you park,” the aide instructed. “We’ll meet you up in maternity.”

  “Good-bye, sweetheart!” I called over my shoulder as I was wheeled away.

  The truth is, I was more frightened than I looked. I’d always tried not to listen when I heard other women talk about their childbirth experiences, because they always managed to scare me. I remember Dad telling me that everything stretches down there, but what did he know? Not even Sylvia knew what it was like. If ever I needed my mother, it was now.

  I glanced at my watch. Patrick’s plane was due in a half hour, if it was on time. It would be another hour before he got here.

  After I registered, I was taken to a room and given a gown to put on, one of those white numbers with tiny blue squares on them. A nurse gave me a pelvic exam.

  “Your cervix is dilated four centimeters,” she said. “That baby’s on its way, all right.”

  I tried to remember all the things I’d learned in my childbirth class that Patrick and I had taken together. The relaxing, the breathing. It was easy to do between contractions, of course, but not so easy when a big one hit.

  Lester came warily into the room with my bag, and his face was pale. “I checked with the airline—at least his plane took off on time,” he said.

  I closed my eyes and gripped the bed as another contraction came. They were stronger now than any menstrual pain I’d ever had and were more typical of bellyaches. Big ones. My back ached and I felt I might throw up, but I didn’t.

  When it was over, I said, “If you were a proper husband, you’d offer to rub my back.”

  “Will you stop?” Les said, looking around. “I already set them straight about that.”