Until the Real Thing Comes Along

  My mother needs a vacation. She couldn’t even remember my brother’s phone number the other night. Of course, she was probably still upset with me. She was upset and my father was quiet. Just … quiet.

  The phone rings, startling me. When I answer it, Ethan says, “How was the doctor?”

  “Where have you been?” I say angrily. And then, hearing loud music and voices in the background, “Where are you?”

  I had not meant to say that. I had not meant to feel that. He does not live here. We are not married.

  “Can you come over?” I say, in a revised tone of voice. “I want to show you what they gave me at the doctor’s office.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I was going to. I just wanted to check first. It’s … a little late.”

  I look at my watch. Eleven. “I’m up.”

  Actually, I wasn’t going to ask him to come over, either. But now I want him to see everything, to read it cover to cover, to memorize it. I want him to take a pink vitamin so large there is a breathless moment after you swallow it, when you wonder if it’s going to make it down or if it’s going to lie like a hammock in your esophagus. I want him to think about how he would feel if some dark line suddenly appeared on his belly, if his nipples spread out like flying saucers.

  Later, lying in bed with me, Ethan says, “I can’t stay here at night all the time, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay, so … Good night.”

  “Good night, Ethan.”

  “Patty? I hope you’re not offended, that I … that we … ”

  “No. I’m not. It’s just nice to have you here. I’m not used to all of this yet, it’s nice to have you to share in it.”

  “I do want to share in it.”

  “Yes.”

  “But … I still … you know.”

  “I’m not asking you to marry me, Ethan.”

  “I know.”

  “Or … anything.”

  Neither of us bothers to point to the obvious falsehood of that remark.

  “Have you started getting sick yet?” Ethan asks.

  “What, are you looking forward to it?”

  “No.”

  “Not everybody gets sick.”

  “I know.”

  “Maybe I won’t get sick.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Although, I’ll tell you one thing. Coffee smells pretty bad to me. Also green pepper.”

  “Well, that’s no problem. You can’t drink coffee anyway.”

  “No.”

  “Okay, so … ” He turns onto his side.

  “Ethan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you have a date tonight?”

  “I … Well, I met someone for a drink.”

  “Oh.”

  “It was just, you know, casual—someone wanted me to meet someone—Steven, his name was.”

  “Uh-huh. Did you like him?” My right hand is squeezing my left pointer to death.

  “It was okay. You know. No lightning bolts.”

  “Do you think you’ll see him again?”

  “Yeah. I thought I might.”

  “Are you going to tell him about … us?”

  “No, I don’t think that’s going to be necessary.”

  “No lightning bolts.”

  “Right.” He sighs. “There hardly ever are.”

  “I know.”

  He turns toward me. “Could I feel your stomach?”

  “There’s nothing to feel yet.”

  “Well, maybe not. But I want to feel when it starts, when there is something there. I need … a baseline.”

  “Sure.” I turn on my back, lift my pajama top, feel his warm palm over my stomach. I close my eyes, hold my breath, frame the moment.

  “Thanks,” he says, and turns back onto his side.

  “You’re welcome.”

  A few minutes later, I say, “Ethan? The only change so far is that my breasts are tender. And bigger, I think.”

  Silence.

  “Ethan?” I whisper.

  He’s sleeping. Or pretending to. I move close enough to feel the heat from his body, but I am careful not to touch. You don’t get everything all at once. You wait.

  16

  “Curly always said he’d take me to Italy,” my mother says. We are standing at the window in my parents’ living room, watching my father load suitcases into my car. I’m going to drive them to the airport.

  “Who’s Curly?”

  She looks at me. “You know. James Wilkinson. We called him ‘Curly’ because of his beautiful blond hair. He was one of my boyfriends in high school.”

  “You never told me.”

  “Well, I’m sure I did, Patty!”

  “Well, I forgot,” I say, but I didn’t. She never told me.

  “I always thought I’d see Curly again … some high school reunion, something. I used to think about how I’d run into him and he’d still be so handsome. And maybe he would still … you know, carry a torch, just a little.” She comes away from the window, sits on the sofa. “I figured it would be just once, sometime. We’d be old, but …” She sighs.

  “Is he dead?”

  She looks up. “Curly? Oh no. My friend Betty Hall, you remember her?”

  I nod, relieved that I do.

  “She lives near him in Arizona. Sees him all the time, runs into him different places. He still asks for me every now and then, can you imagine?”

  “So … you could see him again.”

  She picks at the hem of her skirt. “I don’t think so.”

  “Dad wouldn’t care.”

  “No.”

  “So …?”

  She looks at her watch. “We should go. Not much time.”

  “We have plenty of time.”

  She smiles at me, sadly, as though I’ve told a joke that isn’t so funny after all.

  “How are you feeling?” she asks, suddenly.

  “Fine. Just a little tired.”

  “When we come back, you’ll be almost four months. You’ll have a little belly!”

  “I know.”

  “So maybe we’ll … I don’t know, have a little party.”

  “Okay.”

  “You want to miss the plane, Marilyn?” my father yells in the door. “Is that what you want? Because if you don’t get out here, we’re going to miss the plane! What are you doing?”

  My mother looks at me. “I wouldn’t mind missing the plane,” she says.

  She is a mystery so often, now.

  • • •

  At the airport, I drop my parents off, then go to park the car. My father told me there was no need to come in, but I want to. I am aware of the fact that there are some times in life that point toward the possibility of danger more than others, and as far as I’m concerned, flying is one of them. How could I just drop my parents off and then be telephoned later and told of their fiery crash? Of course, the downside of my well-intentioned hanging around is that it’s boring as hell for everyone. Looking at clocks becomes everyone’s temporary obsession—though for me, of course, there’s nothing temporary about it. In fact perhaps the real reason I like to wait for people’s flights to be called is that it’s a comfort to be in a big place with people who look at their watches almost as often as I do.

  I find my parents by the Dunkin’ Donuts cart. “Want a coffee, Patty?”my father asks, handing one to my mother, then collecting his own.

  “I can’t have any.”

  “Why not?”

  I look at him, exasperated.

  “What?” he asks. Then, stepping closer to me and lowering his voice, “You don’t like Dunkin’ Donuts? You want another kind?”

  “I can’t drink it because of the baby.”

  He looks around. “What baby?”

  I look at my mother for help, but she acts as puzzled as my father.

  “You can’t have coffee when you’re pregnant,” I tell them.

  “Who says?” my mother asks.

  My father’s
posture becomes erect. “Your mother had coffee with all four of you kids. I don’t see any problems with any of you. You see any problems, Marilyn?”

  My mother waves her hand. “Oh, who can keep up? Coffee’s bad for you; coffee’s all right. Beef is poison; beef is okay.”

  “Beef is okay?” my father asks.

  “Never mind,” my mother says.

  “Sir?” the woman at the coffee cart says. “Is that all, two coffees?”

  “Oh, sorry.” He hands her a five-dollar bill. Then he asks, “Is this coffee … organic?”

  The woman hands him back his change. “Pardon me?”

  “Is this coffee organic. You know. Is it safe?”

  She stares at him. “Yes sir, it’s safe.”

  So it’s organic.

  “Well, that … I have no idea.” She looks with relief at the sight of another customer approaching.

  We walk over to a seating area, sit down, me opposite them. I look at my watch, feel my leg start to jiggle, stop it.

  “I swear,” my mother says, “you listen to all they say about everything and you’ll lose your mind. You just have to use some common sense. Half the time they don’t really know what they’re talking about, they’re just guessing.”

  “Well,” I say, “you also have to try to be careful when you’re pregnant. You want to give the baby the best possible start, right? And if you hear that something’s possibly dangerous, and you don’t need it, then why take a chance?”

  My mother stares past me. I see the wide angle of the plateglass window reflected in her blue eyes. An airplane bisects the angle, heading practically straight up. I turn around to watch it with her.

  “We’re going to wake up in Rome,” she says, with a kind of sad wonder.

  “Roma!” my father says. “We’ll eat pasta for breakfast.”

  “All I want to do is relax,” my mother says, and, as though in ironic counterpoint, her hands tighten on her purse.

  “I need to pee,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

  My mother stands. “I’ll come, too.”

  “I’ll be right here,” my father says, unnecessarily.

  “What’s that, Robert?”

  “I’ll be here,” he says again. “By the doughnut cart.”

  “Right.”

  I smile conspiratorially at my mother as we walk away. But she doesn’t smile back.

  After I get home, I lie down. I’m sleepy, and feeling a little ragged around the edges. There’s something about airports that always makes me feel bad. The weeping at the leave-takings. The joy at the reunions. These are painful things for someone like me, who returns home nightly to no one, who bids good-bye every morning to a blank kitchen wall.

  In the airport bathroom, as my mother and I stood washing our hands, our eyes met in the mirror. “I’ll miss you,” she said, in a way that was almost shy.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Water that ficus carefully. It acts like it wants a lot, but it doesn’t.”

  “Right.” I had no idea what she was talking about. For as long as I can remember, my mother has had relationships with plants far too complicated for me to understand. She uses eggshell water to nourish certain plants; Chopin études to stop the yellowing of leaves on others.

  “And the African violets, you know how they are, you just keep that gravel at the bottom of their pots damp.”

  “I will.”

  When we were walking out, my mother saw a sign for a Nursing Room. “Look at that,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “I’ve never seen that before! Have you?”

  Again, I nodded.

  “You want to go in?”

  I smiled.

  She pushed open the door. I expected to see a mother whose countenance resembled the Madonna, and who, upon learning I was pregnant, would offer invaluable advice. But the room was empty. My mother sat on the little leatherette sofa, patted the space beside her.

  “I didn’t nurse you,” she said, after I sat down.

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right. In those days, they probably told you the bottle was better.”

  “No, it was …” She looked away. “Well, I had inverted nipples.”

  I so much did not want to hear anything about that. My mother’s body needs to be permanently clothed in my mind. Preferably in a housedress and an apron. I was blushing as furiously as she. “Oh, well,” I said, finally, “what are you going to do?”

  “But I think you should nurse your baby. I know it’s not really my place to tell you, but from everything I’ve read—”

  “I’m going to.”

  “All right.”

  My mother leaned back, crossed her arms, stared busily straight ahead.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you think we should go?”

  She stared blankly at me for a moment, then said, “Well, I thought a little rest from your father would be nice, that’s all. He’s going to start quoting from the phrasebook any minute, I just know it.”

  “He’s excited.”

  She sighed. “Yes.”

  “Don’t you want to go, Mom?”

  She stood, pulled her purse up over her shoulder. “Well, of course I do. It’s just that … I’ve worked very hard trying to make a life I love.”

  “I know you have.”

  “So why would I want to leave it?”

  “Well, you’re not leaving it.”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Mom, you’re going on vacation. To Italy. Which is beautiful.”

  “I know that, Patty. It’s just that I can’t imagine liking anyplace better than where I live.”

  “Oh, stop,” I said, standing. “You’re turning into such a curmudgeon!” I held open the door for her. “You said yourself you really want to relax.”

  “Well, that’s true. That’s absolutely true. God knows I need that.” She went out the door at the same time that a mother carrying a baby and a huge diaper bag came in. They smiled at each other.

  “Dang,” I said quietly, once we were both outside the room. “I wanted to watch.”

  “Do you really think she wouldn’t mind?” my mother asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Everything’s different now. It used to be that having a baby was so routine. Now so often it’s … a triumph.”

  I should know, I don’t need to add. I still haven’t let myself take in my own gratefulness, my wonder at my pregnant self. I’m too afraid to admit it wholly, I suppose. Because there is always the possibility I could not have a baby after all—I could miscarry; I could deliver a stillborn. I read about these horrors nightly, though Ethan has warned me against it. But I can’t help it. Once I called him at work and said, “What if I have an incompetent cervix?” First he said, “Who’s calling?” Ha, ha. Then he said, “If you have an incompetent cervix, they’ll suture it closed.” He thinks he knows everything. He probably does. He keeps a virtual library on pregnancy and childbirth on his bedside table. “Do you hide this when you have … guests?” I once asked. “I suppose I would,” he said, thus answering both my questions.

  As my mother and I walked slowly down the airport hall, I said, “I think a lot of people are so happy to have babies now they relish the opportunity to share everything. I’ll tell you one thing. I really wanted to see what was in that diaper bag.”

  “Well, diapers of course,” my mother began, then stopped, exasperated, and waved back at my father. He had left his chair to gesture hugely at us, as though he were directing in one of the jumbo jets outside.

  “We see you, Robert!” she said.

  “You see me?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, fine.” He sat back down, looked into his cup of coffee, then threw it away.

  When I hugged him good-bye, he said quietly into my ear, “She’ll be much better when she gets back.”

  “Oh, I know,” I said, as though I su
ddenly understood everything.

  Now I get up, stand at the window, and look across the street. The children who live there have decorated all the windows with red construction-paper hearts in honor of Valentine’s Day. When my parents came over last week, my mother said, “Well, look at that. That house has the measles.”

  There was some humor in it. Some poetry. And something else that was not funny or poetic, but chilling. Her seriousness in saying it. Something that suggested she might really believe it.

  17

  Ethan and I are the only guests sitting at our table at Elaine’s reception. We may, in fact, be the only guests sitting at all—the band is great. But I am a terrible dancer, and Ethan is keeping me company. The tablecloth is a heavy ivory linen; the flowers in the centerpiece exquisite. I want them when I leave, and I keep watching them, in case someone else has the same idea.

  The service was beautiful: simple and sincere. Elaine looked lovely, needless to say; Mark looked very, very handsome; and my heart lurched a bit at the sight of him putting the ring on her finger. I expected it might—I swallowed and smiled and felt as if a line of pain was being pulled continuously out of my middle. I am amazed at how quickly this all happened—only a few months ago, she was telling me she might get married.

  The reception is populated by smiling and beautifully dressed guests, all of whom seem ecstatic at this sudden union. “Do you think maybe she’s pregnant?” one matronly and fairly well-lubricated guest asked me. “No, she’s not,” I said, and was greatly disappointed that there was no follow-up question that would let me reveal happy news of my own. I watched the matron walk away, thinking of how we could have had an exciting chat about me. “It’s Elaine’s wedding,” Ethan said quietly into my ear at that point, as though he were reading my mind. “I am aware of that,” I said back, and then added, “Why don’t you go find some little friends to play with?”

  “Do you see any little friends for me?” he asked. I had to admit I did not.

  Now I look at the fashionable styles going by, and at the small, tidy waists. My bridesmaid dress is cut quite a bit differently from the others, allowing for the bulge that is unmistakably there, but not quite unmistakably pregnancy. I look like someone who has been romancing potato chips a little too often—and, if the truth be told, I have been. If I have to endure four to five servings of vegetables a day, I get a compensatory bag of chips every now and then. Dr. Carlson said I could, though Ethan took exception to that advice. Everything else about Dr. Carlson Ethan loves. After he met him, he said on the way home, “Did you see his shoes? Ferragamos.” And then, casually, “He doesn’t wear a wedding ring, did you notice?” “He has two children,” I answered. And then, before Ethan could say, “Well …” I added, “And a beautiful female wife.”