all right.
“You there, Louise?” Colin asked when she didn’t say anything right away.
“I’m here,” she replied.
“Are you okay? Is Teo treating you the way he ought to? Anything like that, you let me know, you hear? I’ll take care of it.”
“Teo is treating me fine. Don’t do anything dumb because you’ve got a case of the imaginaries-do you hear me?” she said sharply. He treats me better than you ever did. Louise didn’t come out with it. Vanessa would have. She knew that. But living most of her adult life with Colin left her convinced he’d done his best, at least when he thought of it. Trouble was, his best didn’t come close to being good enough.
“Okay,” he said. “So long, Louise. Take care.” He hung up.
Teo was treating her so fine, he’d gone and knocked her up. And what would he say when she told him that? Whatever it was, she expected she could take it at face value. Unlike Colin, he didn’t think sarcasm was a spectator sport.
At about half past three, Mr. Nobashi came over to her and said, “You want to go home early? Not much going on, and you maybe could use some rest, neh? ” He was, she supposed, doing his best to be tactful in a language not his own. What could that mean but You look like something the cat dragged in?
“It’s okay, Mr. Nobashi. I’ll make it till quitting time. Thank you, though.” Louise got paid by the hour. She didn’t want her check docked-and it wasn’t as if she were actually sick. She managed a smile, adding “Arigato” so he’d know she was picking things up on the job.
He grinned in surprise and bobbed his head in what was almost a bow. “You go,” he said. “We not worry about clock, okay?”
The thanks in Japanese must have done it. That wasn’t a corporate thing for him to say, but maybe a nice guy lurked under the salaryman after all. Louise wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. “Thank you very much, Mr. Nobashi!” she said, and then “Arigato!” one more time.
She was out of there before he had the chance to change his mind. When she got back to the condo, she lay down on the couch for a little while and closed her eyes. Just to rest them, she told herself. Next thing she knew, Teo was unlocking the door.
He laughed when he saw her confusion. “Hello, sleepyhead!” he said, hurrying over to kiss her. “You must have had a tough day if you sacked out as soon as you came in.”
“Mr. Nobashi let me off a couple of hours early,” she said. “On the company’s dime, if you can believe it.”
The way he blinked said it wasn’t easy. “Why’d he do that?” he asked. Louise explained about arigato. Teo was still puzzled when she finished, wondering, “Okay, but why did he want to let you off early to begin with?”
“I was all tired, and I guess I looked kind of green around the gills, too,” Louise said. She hoped the morning sickness wouldn’t be too awful this time around. Colin had dubbed her the Duchess of York for the way she kept tossing her cookies when she was pregnant with Rob. She’d hardly been sick at all with Vanessa, and kind of in- between carrying Marshall.
“You look fine now,” Teo said. “You always look good to me, love.”
That made her smile. Teo had a knack for making her smile. She wasn’t surprised to hear she looked all right now. She’d been asleep for-what? — close to two and a half hours. She wondered if she’d be able to sleep later on tonight. From what she remembered, she wouldn’t have any trouble at all.
Teo went on, “But what made you so out of it at work? It must’ve been bad, or he wouldn’t’ve turned you loose like that. You need to go to the doc or something?”
She would need to see her gynecologist soon. Frank Russell, who’d delivered her babies, had long since retired. Last she’d heard, he was living in Palm Springs, painting watercolors of the desert, and selling some of them for pretty good money. She didn’t like Dr. Suzuki so much, but she thought he knew his business.
“I think I know what’s cooking with me,” she said.
“Yeah? Tell, love, tell.”
You couldn’t be a little bit pregnant. You couldn’t break the news by easy stages, either. Louise wished you could. Her life was about to get more complicated. No. Her life had already got more complicated. Now she had to announce the fact. She wanted a drink-but that wouldn’t be good for her passenger. She took a deep breath instead: as inadequate a substitute as you could find. “I’m going to have a baby, Teo.”
He giggled. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in I don’t know when! I didn’t know you could do a straight face like that, either. Oh, my God!” He was practically holding his sides.
“I’m not kidding,” Louise said. “I’m pregnant. I’m sleepy like you wouldn’t believe, my coffee tastes weird- tastes lousy-”
“That stuff doesn’t mean squat,” Teo broke in. He didn’t want to believe it. Well, how could she blame him when she didn’t want to believe it herself?
“I wasn’t done,” she said. “My period’s late. I know it’s getting erratic”- I know I’m getting old lay behind that-“but still. And today at lunch I got a pregnancy test at the drugstore, and I peed on it in the head at work. I’m pregnant, all right.”
He stared at her. For the very first time since they’d been together, his dark eyes seemed opaque. She couldn’t tell what was going on behind them. “You mean it,” he said slowly, and his voice was as guarded as his expression.
“I sure do.” Louise nodded. “You’re going to be a daddy, Teo.”
“Well…” If he was pleased, he did a mighty good job of not showing it. He licked his lips. He’d never been a father before, and he hadn’t looked to be a father now. She’d already been through pregnancy three times. Not out of wedlock, though, she thought. Maybe this would make him do something about that. Louise hadn’t worried about a piece of paper, but it mattered when a child was involved. He pulled in a deep breath of his own, then expelled it in a sigh. “It’s still real early, right? You could, um, dispose of it, like?”
“Yes. I could.” Louise didn’t know why she was so disappointed. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had the same thought. But she hadn’t looked for it to be the first thing she heard from him. “I don’t know that I want to, though. It’s something we made together, after all, something wonderful.”
“It’s an oops. We didn’t intend to do it,” Teo said.
“No, we didn’t,” she agreed. And if that didn’t win next year’s Oscar for Best Understatement, whoever did take the statuette home was bound to have cheated. “But it happened, and we’ve got to deal with it.”
“Getting rid of it is dealing with it,” Teo said. “Then we don’t have to worry about it any more.”
“I’m not sure I want to do that,” Louise repeated. “You shouldn’t make up your mind right away, either. We don’t have to decide anything tonight. We’ve got some time to think about it.”
“What’s to think about? It just messes everything up. You ought to know that better than I do,” Teo said.
Kids did mess up your life. Louise sometimes thought that was their sole function in life. They didn’t stop when they got to be self-winding, either, the way you thought they would. Even so… “They give back more than they take away,” Louise said. “Ask your folks.”
“What do they know?” Teo said. His father was a carpenter, his mother a housewife. They weren’t educated people, but they were plenty nice enough. “They went crazy trying to keep us all fed and in shoes and like that. Who needs the hassle if you don’t have to put up with it?”
“Let’s talk about it later.” Louise had never seen Teo like this. Plainly, he needed some time to get used to the idea. He didn’t want to look at it yet, much less to like it. She could see him outside jogging with a little boy who looked just like him. She could see the little boy staring up proudly at the great big man who was his daddy. How sad Teo couldn’t picture it, too.
Later didn’t happen the rest of the evening. They slept together, the way they always did, but it didn’t feel as warm and loving as usual to Louise. Teo might have been on the far side of the country, or on the far side of the moon. Louise tried to tell herself she was having the vapors, but she had trouble convincing herself. She also didn’t have long to do the telling; she fell asleep as if someone had slipped a Mickey Finn into the water she drank after she brushed her teeth.
Next morning was no better. She staggered around like a zombie, awake but not alive. She made coffee, but she couldn’t get more than a third of the cup down. It tasted nasty, so nasty she wondered if she’d give it
