Expecting: A Novel (2 page)

“Congratulations,” says Dr. Liu. “You’re pregnant.” Laurie notices Dr. Liu has dimples on either side of his mouth, and she hopes her baby will have dimples. But not Dr. Liu’s early male pattern baldness. Thank God Alan’s father has a full set of hair. Or is it Laurie’s father? Laurie frowns. Damn, why did she sleep through most of high school biology? When she gets home, she’ll go on the Internet and research genetics. Unless the baby is born bald and
stays
bald. Does that ever happen? When will Dr. Liu tell her about all the things that can go wrong?

Dr. Liu taps her hand and gives her a reassuring doctor smile. “There’s nothing to worry about. Women have been giving birth for thousands of years.”

***

On her way home from the doctor’s office, Laurie stops at a Barnes and Noble and heads for the pregnancy/childbirth books. Just walking into the section makes her feel special, as if she’s got a secret. When she pulls out a pregnancy book, she considers showing it out to the first person she sees. “Yep,” she’ll say. “That’s me. Having a baby.” Instead, she flips through the book and glances at photos of pregnant women and infants. On one page, she sees a woman breast-feeding twins. Twins? She hasn’t considered the possibility of multiples.

One will be plenty the first time around. The starter baby. The second pregnancy, twins will be okay. Because by then she’ll be a pro. Unless maternal instinct kicks in the first time. Which it might; why wouldn’t it? Laurie has always wanted to have a baby.

Growing up in Reno as an only child, her cousins and other family members scattered in Florida and Chicago, she’d begged her parents for a sibling. When that didn’t happen, she invented a sibling of her own, an old G.I. Joe given to her by a friend who didn’t want any boy dolls. G.I. Joe became her confidante. She’d tell him everything. About fights with her mother over stupid things like her messy room or getting in trouble at school for talking too much. Worries about her father when he got sick with cancer that would eventually kill him when she was sixteen.

“I’m going to having a hundred babies, Joe,” she would tell him. “My house will be so filled with children I won’t be able to keep track of them all.”

Joe didn’t answer back, of course. He stared at her with his scarred G.I. Joe face and she wondered,
How did he get that scar? What happened to the man who gave it to him? G.I. Joe probably killed him with his bare hands.

***

In the bookstore she looks down at her still-flat belly. What is her baby doing right now?
Baby?
More like a clump of cells. Is he/she able to think yet? Of course not. What is the definition of life? Is it something only sustainable outside a womb? Does a SeaMonkey count as life? Laurie feels tears in her eyes. Is this what being pregnant is about—crying over SeaMonkeys?

The Barnes and Noble has a small music section, so Laurie looks at classical CDs. She pulls out Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor op. 64.

The first movement is Allegro molto appassionato. She doesn’t know what
allegro
or
molto
mean. Her musical knowledge is limited to five years of piano lessons and occasional trips to concerts or ballets.
Appassionato
might be about passion. Like sex. Is that what Mendelssohn was thinking when he was writing his violin concerto?

She takes out her iPhone and goes to her Dictionary.com app and searches for
allegro
. “Cheerful, or brisk.”
Molto
means “very.” Passionate, very cheerful, very brisk. A little like sex with Alan when he’s preoccupied with work. Sometimes she sees a look in his eye as if he’s wondering why he left his BlackBerry in the kitchen.

The last movement is Allegro non troppo–Allegro molto vivace. Laurie rolls the words around in her mouth. What a great word,
troppo
. A potential baby name?
Troppo
means “too much, excessively.” Okay, she’ll buy the Mendelssohn CD and play it later. It’s good for the baby’s growing brain.

Unless he/she can’t hear yet. It’s too confusing to refer to the baby as he/she. If she keeps doing that, the baby will be born with both male
and
female genitalia. She’ll think of the baby as he. Not that she’d prefer a boy. Either one will be fine, just not both.

***

Back at home, Laurie goes into the office/baby’s room and looks around. What color should they paint the walls? Is the room too small? Will it fit a crib, a changing table? Should they have bought a bigger house? She won’t worry about that now; instead, she opens one of her new books to a fertilization illustration. With her finger she tracks the journey of hearty sperm making their way through the tubes in search of a friendly egg.

The fertilized egg divides into two cells, then four, and continues dividing as it floats down the fallopian tube to the uterus, by which time there are roughly thirty cells. This cell bundle is called a morula—Latin for mulberry, which it resembles.

Laurie puts her hands on her stomach and imagines cells multiplying. Sees Troppo changing from zygote to morula to blastocyst, hundreds of cells creating an embryo.

“Yoo-hoo, Troppo. You can’t hear me yet,” she whispers to her baby-to-be. “But you will soon.”

***

When Alan comes home from work, Laurie surprises him with a bottle of champagne and a homemade chocolate cake—a “welcome baby” cake, she calls it. Alan kisses her and they eat cake before dinner and Laurie has one tiny (very tiny) sip of champagne to celebrate.

“Wow. Pretty overwhelming,” Alan says to Laurie.

Laurie nods. “I still can’t believe it. Do you think Dr. Liu was kidding? Maybe he’s not really a doctor; he’s just a guy who sneaks into an ob-gyn office and puts on a white lab coat.”

“And sees you naked?” Alan says. “I’ll have to kill him.”

Troppo will have a goofy sense of humor like Alan. He will be tall and handsome and blond and green-eyed like Alan, smart and kind and, except for too-light eyebrows, perfect genetic material.

“Why are you staring at me?” he asks.

“I’m hoping the baby looks like you.”

“Be as good-looking as me? There’s not enough room on the planet. I want him to look exactly like you. Only masculine. No offense. You know what I mean.”

She laughs, imagines Troppo split in half—half Alan, half Laurie, like someone in a circus sideshow. Will the baby be semineurotic and addicted to chocolate like Laurie? Set in his ways and almost OCD organized like Alan? Sometimes Alan refers to himself as “retro.” That explains why he still carries a BlackBerry and wears Brooks Brothers oxford shirts and deck shoes. Laurie can’t decide which decade Alan belongs in—the ’50s? A member of the establishment in the ’60s? On one of their early dates, he showed up wearing a light blue seersucker jacket.

“My grandfather had a jacket like that,” she told him, trying hard not to make a face.

“I’m fashionably unfashionable,” Alan said. And how could you not fall in love with a man crazy enough to own and
wear
a seersucker jacket? Even though after their wedding it mysteriously disappeared.

***

Alan finishes his champagne. “Pregnancy’s already made you prettier.”

“That pregnancy glow they talk about? Am I illuminating the room?” she says.

“I better get my sunglasses.” He pours himself another glass of champagne. “So now I guess we make a list.” Alan takes out his BlackBerry. “What do we do first?”

Laurie thinks. “Gather wood. Build a shelter. We’ve got that covered. Unless our house isn’t big enough.”

“Our house is fine. It’s a baby; they’re small. At least for a while.” Alan frowns. “I’m a newbie at this. I need instructions.”

“It’s like riding a bike,” Laurie says.

“You’re sure?”

“No, beats me. I’m a newbie too, remember?” She sits in his lap and leans her head against his shoulder. “But how hard can it be?”

***

They tell everyone. Laurie calls her mother in Reno, Alan calls his parents in Virginia. Grace takes Laurie out for lunch to celebrate. Laurie has been helping set up Grace’s new blog. Grace’s husband, Hal, works in commercial real estate, but he’s taking a sabbatical year to stay home with Emilie, their two-year-old daughter. Hal has given Grace workspace at his office in Van Nuys, a beautiful old building from the ’20s that was scheduled for demolition until a group of preservationists fought to save it. Grace worked in the print magazine business for years and is anxious to take a leap into cyberworld. Her blog will be a guide to finding unknown treasures (cheap day spas, unusual museums, etc.) in the San Fernando Valley. Grace wants to call it Valley Gems.

“Sounds like a jewelry store,” Laurie says. They are eating in a small Italian café on a busy street just off Van Nuys Boulevard near Hal’s office. The food is good, but Grace hasn’t decided if the restaurant will make it on the site. “Too much traffic,” Grace complains.

“But the pesto’s amazing,” Laurie says, winding linguine around her fork.

“Enjoy it now. Because once morning sickness kicks in, you’ll want to die. When I was pregnant with Emilie, I was sick for nine months.”

“I don’t believe you.” Laurie’s linguine is covered with olive oil, garlic, and basil. How could that ever taste bad?

“Remember your worst hangover in college? Sick like that. Puking, dry heaves. That ‘by the second trimester you’ll be fine’ thing? Total crap. Wait and see. Are you sure you don’t like Valley Gems?”

“Hate it.”

“You could work with me full time,” Grace says.

“Part time.” Since college, Laurie has worked in PR but was transitioned (about to be laid off) from her last job a year ago. Since then she’s done freelance travel writing, and she’s not ready for nine to five again, especially with a baby on the way.

“Hidden Valley,” Grace announces. “Better than Valley Gems?”

“Hidden Valley is a salad dressing.”

“I like Hidden Valley,” Grace says. “Because that’s what it’s about—places you might drive by every day, but you’ve never noticed them before. Like this restaurant. Which is great, except for the honking cars and exhaust fumes.”

Grace hands Laurie a gift bag wrapped with a gauzy ribbon. “It’s really more of a present for
after
the baby.” Laurie pulls out a pair of neon-colored margarita glasses.

“They’re cute, thanks,” Laurie says. “But how am I going to survive nine months without margaritas?”

“I’m not kidding about morning sickness. Even if it were medically safe to drink when you’re pregnant, you won’t want to. The
thought
of tequila will make you vomit.”

Laurie wipes the bottom of the bowl with her bread to get the last bits of pesto. She’s not worried. Grace exaggerates everything.

***

When morning sickness arrives, it’s not Grace’s violent vomiting dry heave scenario, but 24/7 nausea isn’t Laurie’s idea of a good time. One of her pregnancy books suggests eating saltine crackers as a possible solution.

At dinner, Alan presents her with crackers on a small plate. “Yum,” he says. Laurie wants to punch him. She had to leave the kitchen last night when he microwaved leftover pizza. The smell of sausage and cheese made her woozy, and she could hear the acid bubbling in her stomach.

She picks up a cracker. It looks gigantic, although not as gigantic as the torpedo-sized prenatal vitamins Dr. Liu wants her to take. “They’re not so bad,” Alan says.

“Then you try one.”

Alan shakes his head, as if taking a prenatal vitamin will make him grow breasts.

She is looking at the cracker in her palm.

“It smells,” she says to Alan.

“Crackers don’t smell.”

Troppo is starving. If she doesn’t eat this cracker, his brain won’t develop and he’ll never get into an Ivy League school.

She nibbles the corner. Her mouth feels full, as if it’s stuffed with paper.

“Maybe I could put a little margarine on it,” Alan says.

Laurie shakes her head. Margarine would push her over the edge. Half a cracker, she might be able to manage that. She’ll do it for Troppo.

She takes another bite, more aggressively this time. The cracker sits on her tongue like fingernail clippings. She takes a sip of water. Even water tastes funny these days. In her mouth, the water turns the cracker to the consistency of spackle. She wills the muscles in her throat to do their job and the soggy, disgusting mess doesn’t exactly slide down her esophagus, but it lurches as it begins the long journey to Laurie’s roiling stomach.

“Good girl, only two thirds of the cracker to go,” says Alan.

***

Weeks pass, and on mornings when she doesn’t feel like throwing up, Laurie goes into Grace’s office. Grace tacks a pregnancy calendar above Laurie’s desk. “So you can mark off the days,” she says. When Laurie stays home, Grace emails her pregnancy tips and things to watch out for. For example, if seafood is polluted with mercury, it can harm a baby’s brain and nervous system. The coating on nonstick cookware might flake off and release toxic gasses.

As they’re planning the Hidden Valley format (“Blog, Facebook, eventually print,” is Grace’s master plan), Laurie asks about Grace’s pregnancy. “Emilie is a whoops baby,” Grace says. “We thought we’d wait another year to start a family, but…whoops.”

“So were you scared?” Laurie wants to know.

“It was a surprise, but a bigger surprise at how happy we were. And now Hal wanting to take a year off to be home with her. Isn’t that outrageous? It’s so good for them, father/daughter bonding. Alan will make a great dad too.”

“Yeah.” Laurie came home from the office the other day to find Alan had gotten Thai takeout and a DVD of
Dumbo
. They watched
Dumbo
after dinner and both of them cried when Dumbo’s mother sings “Baby Mine” to her child while she’s locked up behind bars. Alan says he isn’t really crying—he has something in his eye. But Laurie doesn’t believe him.

“We planned Troppo, so it’s not a surprise,” Laurie says to Grace.

“And is it what you thought it would be?”

“I don’t love the nausea. But everything else…I don’t know. I expected joy, but this is a
ridiculous
amount of joy.” She laughs. “I sound insane.”