Hooked (15 page)

“That’s it, I promise,” I remembered her whispering. I stared at the roses on her nightgown, which grew more and more detailed as light crept into the room. My eyes skipped from one rose to the next, and the white spaces in between them became the spaces between me and Mom and Dad, and I thought about how she wasn’t scared of him, and it seemed stark, that fact. Something to be afraid of, maybe, in and of itself.

As I crossed the street, I caught a woman in a trench coat and heels glancing at my belly and then at my face. If she thought I was too young to be a baby mama, she didn’t let on. I nudged the bikini photo into the chest pocket of my jean jacket, where it would be safe, as it started to rain.

part three

I packed CDs, no shrieking ballads by women with angry, suffering voices. This was my new life; I was done with those. I took the salad spinner Mom didn’t use. She used to pull the string too hard, making the top fly off, then gasp like someone had snuck up on her. I took a rusty peeler instead of the good one with the thick plastic grip, an old nail kit Mom didn’t use anymore and washed-out gray bath towels with strings hanging off that she wouldn’t miss. I packed and thought about how being with Will might be like chess, how you can play at that first level, a level that’s hard but not too hard, and how getting to the next level would require the kind of concentration and willpower that you might not have, but that you wouldn’t know whether you had it or not unless you tried.

I jammed my makeup into Dad’s old Virgin Airlines travel case made of spongy fake leather. I took five to seven of each thing, underwear, short- and long-sleeved shirts, things I could wear pregnant and not pregnant. I left my turtlenecks—they reminded me too much of school.

Mom was in her room as I dragged my big duffel down the hall.

“So goodbye.” She sighed, tossing a catalog to the side of her bed. “This is so utterly bizarre, this situation, I’m honestly at a loss.”

“I love you,” I said, which sounded weird; we never said I love you to each other. I looked at the white brick wall I’d gazed at from Mom’s bed my entire life, and thought, This
is
utterly bizarre: I’m moving out. “I’ll call you later.”

*   *   *

Will opened the door to Florence’s apartment. “Welcome to the pleasure dome,” he said, walking backward with his arms extended. I followed him down the long hallway lined with posters by the cartoonist who hid the
Ninas
, into an airy, white room with high ceilings. There were two tall windows on one wall with multiple lead-pane squares, and a wood-paneled kitchen along the opposite wall. A sagging mohair sofa bed lined the window, and a leather armchair that looked as though a cat had had its way with it for decades sat across from it. A black upright piano with yellowing keys sat in front of the far window, and a narrow, thin-legged coffee table stood in the middle of the room. A very beat-up Oriental carpet covered almost the entire floor, bathing everything in a faded-pink glow. I loved it.

“How was the first night?” I asked, dropping my bag.

“The cars sound angry because of the cobblestone, but you get used to it,” he said. “You sleep like the dead anyway.”

It was hot. There was an air conditioner hanging out the corner window.

“Does that work?” I asked.

“I’ve spent the last two hours getting it out of the closet and screwing it into the window,” Will said. “She had it wedged into the lower shelf of the bedroom closet. It was a nightmare. We need to go out for some of that insulation tape stuff that goes between the window and the unit.”

“Unit?” I asked, smirking at his wonky word choice. I took his waist and pulled him down to the prickly, mohair sofa bed with me, and we had slow, side-by-side afternoon sex, throwing the cushions off to make room for my huge body.

At four o’clock I unzipped my duffel.

“Let’s go for a walk,” he said. He lay naked on the couch, combing through the wisps of hair under his arm.

“I want to unpack.”

“Let’s do it later. I have to make room first.” He waved at the lone tall maple dresser with brass handles. All the drawers were open, his stuff hanging out.

We went out into the breezy June heat. There was no hiding my stomach anymore. I let it just hang out, feeling the ache in the small of my back. Will took my hand and we walked that way for a couple of blocks, but before long we were too sweaty and dropped hands.

We spotted a hardware store on West Twelfth and went in. The entryway was so narrow we had to turn sideways to get past the line at the register. I almost caught my belly on a rack of plastic key rings as Will chuckled from behind me. “Choo choo,” he said. I shot him a dirty look. “What?” he asked, trying not to smile.

Will got into an involved discussion with an older hardware guy about how to properly seal in the air conditioner while I studied the back wall of seed packs, somehow comforted by the fact that there were so many of them, so many different kinds of things people would consider growing. I looked at Will and the guy, facing each other, their arms folded in manly collaboration. I picked up a roll of thick white rope wrapped in an orange sleeve and tried to imagine crocheting with it. The rope reminded me of the bumper ties on Dad’s boat. Being in the hardware store felt like a whole new life. Will bought a thing of thick rubber siding and we stepped outside into the heat, which was visibly rising from the street, even at five o’clock. When we crossed the street, there was a guy outside selling ices from a sidewalk freezer. Will got two
scoops of chocolate and I got a scoop of rainbow. I looked at the incredibly familiar Gino’s sign that I felt like I’d seen in the window of every pizza store since I was born. Will handed me my ice and dropped a bit of cherry onto my stomach. He pushed a napkin into my T-shirt and looked up at me.

“I know everyone in the world was once inside someone else’s belly,” he said, licking. “I realize that and everything, but it still doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s just the weirdest concept imaginable.”

“I know,” I said.

We walked into a mattress store just as we finished sucking the last juicy bits from the soggy paper.

“We could ditch the couch and get a real bed,” he said. “Florence wouldn’t mind.”

“What, you’re just going to plop her old one out onto the street?” I asked. He hopped on a bed in the back and did all the stupid things people do on a mattress in public. Then he rolled onto his hip and whispered, “Come,” caressing the mattress seductively. I lay down.

“Can my princess feel the pea?” He pushed my head back on the plastic pillow and kissed me as I heard a salesman clear his throat.

We went home and ordered Chinese, eating it on Florence’s flowered plastic plates. There was no dishwasher, so we stood next to each other, me washing, him drying and doing the bump with me. After that we opened the sofa bed, throwing the stiff cushions into the crack in the corner.

I took the bikini pattern and the skein of lemon-yellow practice yarn I’d bought at Carmen’s out of the paper bag as Will turned on the TV. Everything felt weird and new, but having a project helped. I studied the pattern for a while, then realized that before I started, I had to wind the yarn into a ball.
The skein was basically a big circle of yarn that would get too unraveled and messy if I just pulled from it. It had to be wound into a ball first. Carmen had a contraption clamped to a table in her store that wound skeins of yarn into balls, and she’d asked me if I’d wanted her to wind it for me. As I started to wind the skein around two fingers, I wished I’d taken her up on it. The yarn kept sticking to the rest of the skein whenever I tugged at it. Then I had an idea. I got up and went to the foot of the bed.

“Outta my way.” Will craned his neck to see the TV. He was sprawled across the bed, licking the melted remains of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup off his fingers.

“I need to borrow your feet,” I said, looping the circle of yarn around his bare, outstretched feet. “Keep them flexed, okay?” I stood to the side of the TV and started winding. It went much faster with his feet.

“This is a huge help,” I said, interrupting his
Law & Order
stupor.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m winding this yarn into a ball so I can crochet a bikini.”

“A bikini?” he asked, not looking away from the TV.

“A bikini,” I said. “I had a crocheted bikini when I was little that I’m trying to remake, sort of.”

“What, so you can run around like G-House Rock, pregnant bikini-monster?”

“No, jerk,” I said. “I’m not going to wear it now, don’t worry. But thanks a lot.”

After a while he let his left foot go slack. I pushed it against my leg to flex it again. A commercial came on and Will watched the yarn as it came up from each end of the loop. “Why are you spending money on stuff that you’re not going to wear?” he asked.

“It didn’t cost much,” I said, guiltily remembering the thirty-buck receipt. “Who made you money cop?”

“I’m not money cop,” he said. “But we’ve got to watch it. You don’t even have a job.”

“I’m eight months pregnant. We’ve already talked about this. I’ll get a job when the baby’s old enough to go to day care.” I yanked the yarn, accidentally catching it on his toe.

“Ow!” he said. He pulled his foot out from under the loop. “This is stupid. I’m not doing it. Let’s just go to bed. You’re tired and I have to get up early.”

“Fine,” I said. I took the remaining loop off Will’s foot and shoved it back into the bag along with the ball I’d started. He turned off the TV and reached over to the floor lamp next to the bed.

“Thanks for your help, by the way.” I lay on my side in Florence’s old sofa bed, feeling as though my head were lower than the rest of my body. Will didn’t answer. Our first night together, I thought miserably. The lights from outside made shapes on the ceiling that, put together, looked a little like the mean queen from Dad’s house, the evil, frowning stepmother queen, who followed me wherever I went.

Will left the next morning for his job at the law firm—the same job he’d had the summer before—without speaking to me after the stupid fight. I pulled out the bikini pattern and the ball of yellow yarn and started in, ready to apply myself. “Chain four,
join into a ring with a slip stitch.” Easy. But then it told me to single crochet three times into the center of the ring and there was a problem: I couldn’t find the ring. Carmen said it would be obvious, where the ring was, because it would look like a hole. But I poked at it and separated the stitches and I could not find it. I crocheted three times into the center of what I thought was the ring, only to realize it wasn’t. A few rounds of that and I realized I was screwed, unable to start the bikini I was dying to start.

“Damn it!” I yelled. I hurled the yarn, furious at it, wanting it away from me. It landed on the rug by the coffee table as the buzzer rang. Mom and Vanessa were coming over for a makeshift shower-breakfast, which was really just an excuse to see our new place.

They arrived together, not on purpose, throwing their coats on Florence’s accordion rack in the hallway. Mom plunked a Babies “R” Us shopping bag onto the coffee table and pulled what looked like a stereo receiver out of a box inside it.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s a pump,” she said. Vanessa and I looked dumbly at her.

“Tell me you know what a breast pump is.” The black box was connected by clear thin tubes to a pair of baby bottles with suction cups on top. She plugged it into the wall, but nothing happened.

“I don’t think that outlet works,” I said.

“Of course it doesn’t,” she grumbled as I glanced nervously at Vanessa, whose brilliant idea it had been to get together that morning. “Is there one that does?”

“The other side of the couch,” I said.

Mom lifted the black box and plopped it onto the far end of the coffee table so that the cord could reach the outlet. A whining whirr came and went in waves. She held up the suction cups with the tubes dangling to the floor.

“Annie had one of these,” she said. Annie was one of the managers at Fiona’s. She’d had her daughter, Tamsin, when she was forty-six. “You attach these little cups to your nips and it leaves your hands free to drink coffee and open your mail. Come here.”

She reached over to the armchair where I was sitting and lifted up my shirt.

“Don’t!” Vanessa cried. “You’ll make her go into labor! I read that in her book. Nipple stimulation can bring on contractions.”

“Why are
you
reading
her
pregnancy book?” Mom glared at Vanessa. “You don’t have anything better to do?”

“What, it’s fun.” Vanessa crossed her legs, embarrassed, and pushed the plate of chocolate croissants she’d brought toward Mom.

“Anyway, after the first month Annie stopped nursing altogether and just pumped.” She took a sip from the latte in her paper cup and looked at me pointedly. “She said it saved her booby dolls.”

“I’ll remember that, Mom,” I said. “But I’m not as obsessed with my booby dolls as you are.” If my mother weighed 130 pounds or under, she liked to wear her Steven Sprouse polyester button-downs from the seventies that she’d bought at a flea market in London. She said she couldn’t wear them if she went over 130 because the fabric would stretch across her chest and stomach in between the buttons and she hated the way that looked. I knew what she meant, but I thought it
looked trampy in a good way. When she wore the shirts, her boobs were her booby dolls, her friends, as in, “My booby dolls and I are going to Healthy Bagel.” But when she felt fat, she’d lie in bed and watch them fall off to either side, her chin burrowed into her collarbone, scrutinizing. Then they were her “craven globes.” “Fie on thee, craven globes,” she’d say. When I was little, I thought she’d said, “Pie on thee.” I thought it meant Dad had made his chocolate-chip pecan pie, which he did sometimes when he was hungover.