Grace Grows (36 page)

It made total sense. Roberta was so much more his type, exciting and beautiful. Why would Ty want an interspecies relationship with me? He was still a lion and I was still a duck.

I imagined Dan asking me for five words right about now. Pregnant. Pregnant. Fat. Alone. Pregnant.

I couldn’t stop the negative loop I was in. I felt trapped. In this body. In this life. In this unchanging love for him. In how badly I wanted him . . .
needed
him.

Ty came home around one thirty. He took a shower. Brushed his teeth. Turned off the bathroom light.

Quiet.

I listened to the muffled traffic on Seventh Avenue for half an hour. Then I got out of bed and padded to the bedroom door. I skipped my robe and slippers. It was dark out there and he was, by now, asleep.

I went slowly, silently, stepping around the squeaky floorboard in the hall.

He was on the couch. Still. Peaceful. Lying on his stomach, one arm bent under his head. His beautiful, strong, naked back. I knew how smooth and warm it felt.

Was that a tattoo? I didn’t remember it. A spiky, dark smudge, across his shoulder blade. Maybe a bruise? I crept closer. Hard to tell in the dim illumination from the street.

I wanted him so badly it was making my skin itch. Or maybe I was just developing a fresh patch of stretch marks. Whatever. I retreated carefully to the hallway and looked at him again. Just looked at him. Lying there. Breathing quietly. I was trembling. Why did he have this insane power over me?

“You. Are. Evil.” I said it in the barest of whispers.

“So are you.”

I jumped sharply and whacked my funny bone on the wall.

He rose up from the couch like a shadowy incubus in boxer briefs and came to me. I was cradling my throbbing elbow.

“Did you hit it?” he asked quietly. He was standing very close. I couldn’t see his face. The light from the window behind him limned the edges of his hair like glowing filament.

“Uh-huh.”

He lifted my arm and leaned down and kissed the back of it. While he was down there he tugged down the spaghetti strap of my stretchy nightgown and sucked my nipple and half of my breast into his mouth.

“Oh my
God
.” My knees buckled. “
Oh!
”

He slid a steadying arm around me and drew me down the hall to my room. He shut the door firmly behind us and pulled my nightgown off over my head.

“Do you know what I’m going to do to you?” He ran a hot, liquid hand over my breasts and belly and cupped me between my legs.

I made some sort of unintelligible sound and sat on the bed.

He leaned down and told me, in my ear. Using appalling language.
Pussy
, and
lick
, and
suck
, and other rhyming, juicy, onomatopoeic words.

I came, the first time, before I ever lay down.

He was gentle, patient, and helpful when I needed to rearrange pillows or adjust my position, but also unremitting in moving us toward the objective. Clearly, not fucking was not going to be an option. I was so grateful.

Afterward he turned on the bedside lamp and uncovered me and stared at my body. I tried not to look away.

“Damn!” he said. “I had no idea.”

“About what?”

“That the sight of you pregnant could make me so fucking hard. I’ve had blue balls for two weeks now.”

It was apparently true. He was more than ready to go again. I was thrilled, having buried early-on any hope that he might still find me desirable.

I touched him, slid my hand underneath and cradled him in my palm. “Roberta would probably not be okay with me doing this.”

He looked genuinely perplexed. “Huh?”

I tried to smile, to sound light and casual. “Well, she
is
your fiancée. I’m just the mother of your child.”

He sat up. “Where do you get this shit? I don’t have a fiancée!”

“She was with you all through the Midwest! I read about it and saw a picture!”

“She just showed up at some of those gigs. One time she said she drove eleven hours and brought a carload of people. What am I gonna do, tell her to fuck off? I bought her a drink.”

“The article said you were engaged. And in the picture, you were all over each other.”

“The article was bullshit. And s
he
was all over
me
.”

The photo was seared in my memory, so I quickly reexamined it. It was true. His arm wasn’t even around her.

“Couldn’t you tell her to stop?”

He shrugged. “It wasn’t out of hand. Why embarrass her in front of her friends?”

Jeez, why did he have to be so freaking
nice
? “Well, I’m sure there were others,” I said sullenly.

“No. There weren’t.”

“Are we talking about the same thing?”

“I wasn’t with anyone. But myself. A
lot
.”

“When?”

“On the tour.”

I stared at him. “The whole time?”

He nodded.

This just did not compute. “Wha? Were you sick?”

He gave me a very, very dry look.

“Well, then,” I said slowly, lying back down. Trying to grasp the implications. “Well.”

He was still looking at me.

“Then I guess you probably don’t have any other babies gestating out there.”

He lay down beside me and slid an arm around my belly. “As it happens, only this one.”

The Bump did a flip. Ty raised his head.

“Did you feel that?” I held his hand in the right place and watched it rise over the shoving pressure of a little knee or elbow.

He laughed. “Damn, he’s strong!”

“Tell me about it!”

His hand and eyes moved over me and his face changed. “I’m going to go down on you again.”

“Okay!” Anything to be agreeable.

I piled up the pillows and shifted slightly to one hip to ease the pressure on my spine. And so I could breathe more easily. And so I could watch what he did to me. He was an artist at this, too.

By the way, it
was
a tattoo, on his shoulder blade. He got it in New Mexico. A little Kokopelli, playing his magical flute. In the middle of an orgasm I surged forward and touched it. I swear, I heard music.

family matters

Ty moved into my bedroom. We didn’t talk about it.

My sleep improved drastically. I got tired early and went to bed knowing that Ty would eventually join me. Less than thirty seconds after my head hit the pillow I was out. Until he got in bed later and put his hands on me. Not that we had wild sex, or even all the time, and when we did it was very slow and easy. A strong, post-orgasm Braxton Hicks contraction had freaked us both out sufficiently to put heavy brakes on our lust.

He invited me to come with him to a movie premiere and a performance he was doing at a charity benefit. I declined, just too presently pregnant and historically camera-shy, but they were fun to hear about.

I got an e-mail at work from Boris with the title
You Are Outed!
He included a link to
Eye on the Apple
, a prominent New York celebrity gossip blog. I clicked on it and there we were, the top story, including that photographer’s stealth photo of us. Me in my unglamorous sweater and sundress and leggings, the April wind flattening the yellow dotted-Swiss fabric tight over my big, round belly. Blowing my nose. Ty leaning over me urgently, saying something.

I read that sources had confirmed that the long-observed friendship between Grammy-nominated recording artist Tyler Wilkie and Grace Barnum, the low-profile daughter of Pop Art painter Dan Barnum, had blossomed into impending coparenthood. That Tyler had cut his tour short and had been back in the city for several weeks now, according to his watchers.

His watchers.
I shuddered.

When I got home I sat on the couch next to Ty with the laptop and showed him the blog. He read it and looked at the picture tight-lipped.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess it could be worse. Like Princess Diana or something.”

“It’s not your fault. I just thought you’d want to know.”

“So show me that message board.”

Was he kidding? “You’ve never seen it?”

He shrugged. “You know I don’t spend a lot of time on the computer.” It was true. He didn’t spend any, that I knew of.

I showed him the fan forum, which had grown. The gallery had page after page of pictures people had posted of themselves with Ty.

“You’ve met a lot of people,” I said, as he scrolled through them.

“Yeah. I remember some of them.”

“Like who?”

“This chick asked me to sign her boob with a Sharpie.”

“A Sharpie! Indelible ink, seeping into her breast tissue?”

“Yeah,” he said dryly. “That’s what I was thinking.”

“Did you do it?”

“Of course.”

I scowled. He smiled.

I clicked on the message board. The top threads read

He’s Having a BABY

Grace Barnum

Ty missing various clothing

New Album?

“Hold it right there.” I tried to take the laptop from him. He held on. “Give me the computer! I want to see what they’re saying about me.”

“So do I.” He clicked on the
Grace Barnum
thread.

TysGal85:
i know her from when he played a lot downtown. she always came with this hippie looking woman and sat off to the side or in the back. she always looked stuck up and a little board. the one time i saw her laugh was when he said something to her from the stage. some kind of joke. if she was there he usually went to her table between sets.

“Stuck-up!” I said. “Do I look stuck-up?”

Ty smiled in a way that made me want to pinch him, hard.

“And I wasn’t bored! I was
very
interested!”

Ty scrolled down and we read the next post.

ShowMeSomeLove:
I read about her dad on wikipedia . . . man, having your dad bail on you that young, that’s got to fuck you up!

I could feel Ty not looking at me.

MrsWilkie:
Yeah my dad did that, and I’m a real case. [not]

ShowMeSomeLove:
She’d better be pretty, at least! I can’t tell in that pregnant picture. She’s covering her face. I google-imaged her and nothing else came up.

TysGal85:
not suprised you didn’t find anything I think she’s kind of a hermet. is she pretty. yeah kind of. i think she could try harder.

“Okay, let’s shut it down,” Ty said.

“I am calm.” I was impressed with myself; I only wanted to destroy TysGal85 a little. Perhaps because her embarrassing inability to spell
bored
,
surprised
, and
hermit
, or to correctly capitalize and punctuate a sentence were going to hobble her in life almost as effectively as if I found where she lived and kneecapped her with a croquet mallet.

I had just finished reading
The Shining
. I don’t recommend it in your third trimester.

Ty clicked on the
Ty missing various clothing
link. There were pictures of him onstage at gigs barefoot. With no shirt. There was one backstage shot of him semi-mooning the camera.

“That’s dignified,” I said.

“You get hot, under the lights. And I guess I might have had a coupla beers.”

“You think?”

I went to fix us supper and peeked in occasionally to watch him reading the message board. He turned pink a time or two. Laughed. Scowled. “That’s fucking bullshit,” he muttered.

I called him to come eat.

He got up and put the laptop away. “Life just gets weirder and weirder, Gracie.”

It was after supper, and we were watching
Andy Griffith
. One of the best. The one about Aunt Bee wanting to enter her terrible homemade pickles in the county fair. Andy and Barney call them “kerosene cucumbers.”

I love Aunt Bee. One time after particularly great sex with Ty I rapturously quoted her: “I haven’t had an experience like that since I was baptized!”

He liked that.

Anyway. We were watching.

“Can you take the afternoon off a week from Thursday?” Ty asked, at the commercial.

“Maybe. Why?”

“I’m making us an appointment at City Hall. Maybe you’d better take the whole day, in case there’s blood work first. I’ll call and find out.”

Blood work.
It shocked and hurt me, that he could even think it. “Ty! You’re the father!”