Something Blue

inside is that Dex picked Rachel. He picked her over you.'

I tried to speak but he kept going, his words cruel, stark, and loud. 'Dex wanted to be with her and not you. Never mind that you didn't want to be with him either. Never mind that you cheated on him too. Never mind that clearly you and he weren't at all right for each other and you both saved yourselves a divorce by calling it quits. You can only focus on one thing: the fact that Rachel somehow beat you. And it kills you, Darce. I'm telling you, as your friend, that you need to let it go and move on,' he finished in his debate-team tone.

I shook my head. I told him that he was wrong. I told him that nobody, nobody in my position, could be happy for Rachel. I felt myself getting shrill, desperate to make him see things my way, just as I had tried to do with Marcus.

'It's like this, Ethan… even if they hadn't done a thing behind my back, even if this relationship had begun after we broke up, it would still be… just wrong. You just don't go there with a friend's ex. Period. How is it that men have trouble seeing that? It's a basic life principle.'

'She loves him, Darce. That is a basic life principle.'

'Would you stop rubbing it in! I don't want to hear the word love again. Whether they love each other is totally beside the point… You don't understand anything about friendship.'

'Darcy. No offense-and I'm not saying this to be mean, because I care about you, which is why you're here right now for this purported visit,' he said, making quotation marks in the air as he said the word visit. 'But-'

'But what?' I asked pitifully, afraid of what he would say next.

'But I think you're the one who doesn't understand friendship,' he said, speaking fast and furiously. 'Not at all. Which is why you're sitting here essentially friendless. At war with Rachel. At war with Claire. At war with the father of your child. At war with your own mother, who, as far as you know, has no clue where you are! And now you're mad at me too.'

'It's not my fault that you all betrayed me.'

'You need to take a long, hard look in the mirror, Darce. You need to realize that there are consequences to your basically shallow existence.'

'I'm not shallow,' I said, only half-believing it.

'You are shallow. You're utterly selfish and misguided, with totally screwed-up values.'

He had gone too far. I might be a bit on the shallow side, but the rest of his accusations were ridiculous. 'What the hell is that supposed to mean? Misguided?'

'It means that you're, what, five months pregnant now? And as far as I can tell, you're doing nothing to prepare for this child. Nothing. You come to London for this so-called visit, but I see no signs of you returning to New York-and meanwhile, you have made no effort to seek any prenatal care here in London. On top of that, you don't eat particularly well, probably in an effort to stay thin at the expense of your baby's growth. You had two glasses of wine tonight. And instead of saving for the child you have to raise alone, you are throwing money to the wind on positively frivolous purchases. It's simply staggering to watch how utterly irresponsible and totally self- absorbed you're being.'

I sat there, completely speechless. I mean, what do you say when someone tells you, essentially, that you're a shit friend, a horrible, irresponsible mother-to-be, and an empty, self-absorbed woman? Unless I counted some of the accusations I'd received from scorned lovers (which don't have much credibility), this was an unprecedented attack. He had said so many mean things, come at me from so many angles, that I was unsure how to defend myself. 'I am taking prenatal vitamins,' I said meekly.

Ethan looked at me as if to say, If that's the best you can do here, I rest my case. Then he announced that he was going to bed. His expression told me not to follow him, that he did not want me in his room.

But just to be sure, after I sat in the living room for a long while, licking my wounds and replaying his speech, I decided to go down the hall and check his door. Not that I would have opened it on a bet-I had some pride-I just had to know whether he had boxed me out for real. Did he regret his harsh words? Had he softened his opinion of me as his beer-buzz dissipated? I put my hand around the glass doorknob and turned. It didn't budge. Ethan had shut me out. There was something about that door, cold and unyielding, that made me feel angry and sad and determined all at once.

twenty-one

The next morning I awoke on my air mattress and felt my baby kick for the first time. There had been other times when I thought I felt her-only to realize that it was likely just indigestion, hunger pangs, or nerves. But there was no confusing that odd, unmistakable sensation of tiny feet moving inside me, churning up against my organs and bones. I put my hand on the spot, right under my rib cage, waiting to feel her again. Sure enough, there was another small but distinct nudge and twitch. I know it sounds crazy, especially considering that my stomach was quickly becoming the size of a basketball, but I think it took that flutter of baby feet for my pregnancy to move beyond the theoretical and feel real. I had a baby inside me, a little person who was going to be born in a few short months. I was going to be a mother. In a way, I already was.

I curled up in a fetal position and squeezed my eyes shut as I was bombarded by a riot of emotions. First I felt a burst of pure joy. It was an indescribable happiness, a kind that I'd never experienced before, a kind that can't be found by purchasing a Gucci bag or a pair of Manolo Blahniks. A smile spread across my face, and I almost laughed out loud.

But my happiness quickly commingled with an unsettling melancholy as I realized that I had no one to share my huge milestone with. I couldn't call my baby's father or her grandmother. I wasn't in the mood to talk to Ethan after all the mean things he had said to me. And most important, I couldn't call Rachel. For the first time since I found Dex in her closet, I really missed her. I still had Annalise, but she just wasn't the same. I thought of all the times in the past when I'd had good news, bad news, in-between news. How I could barely digest it before I was running next door or speed-dialing Rachel's number. When we were kids in Indiana, Annalise was always the runner-up, always the afterthought, always the second to know. With Rachel out of the picture, you'd think that Annalise would just replace her. But I was beginning to see that it didn't work like that. Rachel wasn't replaceable. Claire hadn't replaced her. Annalise couldn't either. I wondered why that was. After all, I knew Annalise would say all the right things, be as nice as she could be. But she would never be able to quench that deep-seated need to share.

As I turned over on my mattress to face the window, I heard Ethan's words: the part about me being a bad friend, the part about me being selfish and self-centered and shallow. A warm shame spread over me as I acknowledged that there was a ring of truth to his accusations. I looked at the facts: I had no doctor, no income, no close girlfriends, no contact with my family. I was on the verge of depleting all my savings, and all I had to show for myself was a closet full of gorgeous clothing, most of which no longer fit. I had moved to London to find change, but I hadn't really changed at all. My life was stagnating. I needed to do more. For myself and for my baby.

I stared out my barred window into the dreary London morning, and vowed to make the day I first felt my baby kick a turning point in my life. I would prove to Ethan that I was not the person he had described the evening before. I got to my feet (which was becoming more difficult to do, particularly from a horizontal position on a soft air mattress) and found a pad of paper in the bottom of one of my suitcases. I ripped out a page and wrote: 'Steps to Becoming a Better Darcy.' I thought for a second, replaying Ethan's speech. Then I wrote:

1. Go to an ob-gyn in London and prepare for motherhood!

2. Be more healthy, i.e., eat better, no caffeine or alcohol

3. Find some new girlfriends (no competing with them!)

4. Let my family know that I'm in London and that I'm okay

5. Get a job (preferably a 'do-gooding' job)