“Are you going to tell Bruce?” she finally asked.
“I don’t know. We aren’t exactly talking right now. And I think… well, I’m sure that if I told him, he’d try to talk me out of it, and I don’t want to be talked out of it.” I paused, thinking it over. “And it just seems… I mean, if I were him, if I were in his position… it’s a lot to burden somebody with. That they’ve got a child out in the world”
“Do you want him in your life?” my mother asked me.
“That’s not really the issue. He’s made it pretty clear that he doesn’t want to be in my life. Now, whether he wants to be in…” I stumbled, trying to say it for the first time, “in our child’s life…”
“Well, it’s not completely up to him. He’ll have to pay child support.”
“Ugh,” I said, imagining having to take Bruce to court and justify my behavior in front of a judge and jury.
She kept talking: about mutual funds and compound interest and some television show she’d seen where working mothers set up hidden videocameras and found their nannies neglecting their babies while they (the nannies, not the babies, I presumed) watched soap operas and made long-distance phone calls to Honduras. It reminded me of Maxi, prattling on about my financial future.
“Okay,” I told my mother. My muscles felt pleasantly heavy from the swimming, and my eyelids were starting to droop. “No Honduran nannies. I promise.”
“Maybe Lucy could help out some,” she said, and glanced at me when we were stopped at a red light. “You’ve been to your ob/gyn, right?”
“Not yet,” I said, and yawned again.
“Cannie!” She proceeded to lecture me on nutrition, exercise during pregnancy, and how she’d heard that vitamin E in capsule form could prevent stretch marks. I let my eyes close, lulled by the sound of her voice and the turning wheels, and I was almost asleep when we pulled into the driveway. She had to shake me awake, saying my name gently, telling me that we were home.
It was a wonder she let me go back to Philadelphia that night. And as it was, I drove home with my trunk stuffed with about ten pounds of Tupperware’d turkey and stuffing and pie, and only after giving her my solemn promise that I’d make an appointment with a doctor first thing in the morning, and that she could come visit soon.
“Wear your seat belt,” she said, as I loaded a protesting Nifkin into his carrier.
“I always wear my seat belt,” I said.
“Call me as soon as you know the due date.”
“I’ll call! I promise!”
“Okay,” she said. She reached over and brushed her fingertips against my cheek. “I’m proud of you,” she said. I wanted to ask her why. What had I done that anyone could be proud of? Getting knocked up by a guy who wanted nothing else to do with you wasn’t exactly the stuff she could brag to her book-club friends about, or that I could send in to the Princeton Alumni Weekly. Single motherhood might be getting more acceptable among the movie-star set, but from what I’d seen from my divorced colleagues, it was nothing but a hardship for real-life women, and it certainly wasn’t a cause for celebration, or pride.
But I didn’t ask. I just started the car and drove down the driveway, waving back at her until she disappeared.
Back in Philadelphia, everything looked different. Or maybe it was just that I was seeing it differently. I noticed the overflow of Budweiser cans in the recycling bin in front of the second- floor apartment as I made my way upstairs, and heard the shrill laugh track of a sitcom seeping beneath the door. Out on the street, somebody’s car alarm went off, and I could hear glass breaking somewhere nearby. Just background noise, stuff I’d barely notice most of the time, but I’d have to start noticing now… now that I was responsible for somebody else.
Up on the third floor, my apartment had grown a thin layer of dust in the five days I’d been away, and it smelled stale. No place to raise a child, I thought, opening windows, lighting a vanilla-scented candle, and finding the broom.
I gave Nifkin fresh food and water. I swept the floors. I sorted my laundry to wash the next day, emptied the dishwasher, put the leftovers in the freezer, then rinsed and hung my bathing suit to dry. I was halfway through making a grocery list, full of skim milk and fresh apples and good things to eat, before I realized I hadn’t even checked my voice mail to see if anyone… well, to see if Bruce… had called me. A long shot, I knew, but I figured I’d at least give him the benefit of the doubt.
And when I found that he hadn’t called, I felt sad, but nothing like the sharp, jittery, anxious-sick sadness I’d had before, nothing like the overwhelming certainty that I would die if he didn’t love me that I’d felt that night in New York with Maxi.
“He loved me,” I whispered to the neatly swept room. “He loved me, but he doesn’t love me anymore, and it’s not the end of the world.”
Nifkin raised his head from the couch, looked at me curiously, then fell back asleep. I picked up my list. “Eggs,” I wrote. “Spinach. Plums.”
TWELVE
“You’re what?!?”
I bowed my head over my decaffeinated skim-milk latte an d toasted bagel. “Pregnant. With child. Expecting. In a delicate condition. Bun in the oven. PG.”
“Okay, okay, I’ve got it.” Samantha stared at me, full lips parted, brown eyes shocked and wide-awake, even though it was only 7:30 in the morning. How?
“The usual way,” I said lightly. We were in Xando, the neighborhood coffee shop that turned into a bar after six at night. Businessmen perused their Examiners, harried moms with strollers gulped coffee. A good place, clean and bright. Not a place for making scenes.
“With Bruce?”
“Okay, maybe it wasn’t the usual way. It was right after his father died”
Samantha gave a great exasperated sigh. “Oh, God, Cannie… what did I tell you about sex with the bereaved?”
“I know,” I said. “It just happened.”
She allowed herself another sigh, then reached for her DayTimer, all brisk efficiency, even though she was still wearing black leggings and a T-shirt from Wally’s Wings advising “We Choke Our Own Chickens.” “Okay,” she said. “Did you call the clinic?”
“No, actually,” I said. “I’m going to keep it.”
Her eyes got very wide. “What? How? Why?”
“Why not? I’m twenty-eight years old, I’ve got enough money…”
Samantha was shaking her head. “You’re going to ruin your life.”
“I know my life’s going to change”
“No. You didn’t hear me. You’re going to ruin your life.”
I set down my coffee cup. “What do you mean?”
“Cannie…” She looked at me, her eyes beseeching. “A single mother… I mean, it’s hard enough to meet decent men as it is… do you know what this is going to do to your social life?”
Truthfully, I hadn’t given it much thought. Now that I’d gotten my mind around losing Bruce irrevocably, I hadn’t even started thinking about who I might wind up with, or whether there’d ever be anybody else.
