Positively Mine (12 page)

“Don’t lecture me.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I won’t. But I’m worried about you.”

“I’m worried about me too.”

Tara sighs in surrender. “Let’s change the subject.”

“Good idea.”

“I know what we can do today.” She’s gleaming now. “Let’s go shopping.”

“Why would I want to go shopping? I’m not going to fit into anything in another month.”

“I meant maternity shopping.”

“I can’t go maternity shopping around here. What if we see someone we know?”

“Not around here. I’ve got a great place to take you.”

“Where?”

“You’ll see. Eat your breakfast.”

I have no problem with that request and scoff every last morsel from my plate. Tara watches in amazement.

Once we’re in a cab, “36
^th
between 7
^th
and 8
^th
,” Tara tells the driver.

“The garment district?” I ask. She doesn’t answer.

We emerge on a street that’s densely populated with tacky stores displaying cheap formal gowns, fake furs and career-woman suits in their windows. And since they are all mostly wholesale, you need a tax ID to shop in them, which neither of us have.

“Why are we here?” I ask.

Tara points up, and on the second floor of a run-down six-story building, there’s a logo written in both Korean and English:
Designer Discount Maternity
. She presses a bell on a side door, and someone buzzes us in.

We climb the stairs and arrive in the vestibule of a huge room filled with racks of clothing. “What is this place?”

“Didn’t you read the sign? Designer Discount Maternity.” She chuckles. “It’s high-end samples and stuff. The prices are really good.”

“And you know about this because?”

She smiles. “My mom did a feature for her style blog on where to find the best deals on maternity and baby clothing in New York. I never thought it would come in handy. Who knew my best friend would get knocked up?”

I roll my eyes. “You’re funny.”

We scan the racks, and soon a salesgirl who doesn’t speak much English is filling up a fitting room. I don’t know when the next chance I’ll have to shop is – especially in upstate – so I try on anything that looks halfway appealing.

There are pillows attached to belts outside the fitting room so you can see how big you might be at six months, seven months, etc. I take the six-month pillow and wrap it around my waist and then put on a shirt that Tara hands me through the curtain. “This is cute.”

When I emerge from the fitting room, she gasps. “Wow. You’re going to be showing soon.”

I stare at my profile, “Yeah,” and start gnawing on my fingernail.

Tara doesn’t have any place she needs to be, so she plants herself on my couch and flicks on the TV when we get back to my apartment. I have to admit, it is kind of cool to not have to worry about steering clear of my father. If we were upstairs, we’d be hiding behind the locked door of my old bedroom. While she flips through channels, I call the radiology center at Rochester Hospital to schedule my twenty-week ultrasound.

“How much will this cost? I’ll be paying out of pocket,” I tell the receptionist. She places me on hold for a frustratingly long amount of time. When she finally gets back on the phone, she says, “$1200.”

“$1200? For an ultrasound?” I gasp. Tara looks up from the TV.

“You don’t have insurance?” the receptionist asks.

“No,” I lie.

“We can work out a payment plan with you if you can’t pay all at once.”

“That’s okay. I have the money. What days do you have available?”

After I schedule my appointment, I log onto my bank’s website to check my account balance. With the $300 shopping spree, all the money I’ve spent filling that guzzler of a truck the last few months, avoiding the cafeteria and ordering in instead of using my meal plan plus the prenatal blood testing I had to have done at a lab, I’m down below $5000. Another $1200? I still need to buy books next semester, probably close to $800. I swallow hard. I’m going to be down to nothing if I’m not careful.

“Why are you paying out of pocket for an ultrasound?” Tara asks.

“Because it’s my dad’s insurance. And he doesn’t know yet.”

After a subway ride from hell, and some awkward introductions, I’m soon sitting at a table in a crowded Italian restaurant in the West Village with my father and his bride-to-be. To say the atmosphere at our table is rigid is an understatement.

She asks enough questions. And as she does, she throws my father glances that seem to say, see honey, I will take an interest in your only daughter. I will personify the role of stepmother. How do I like Colman? What do I think I want to major in? How’s the social life there? Have I joined any interesting clubs?

I play along and bounce questions back at her. How long has she worked for Harris and Associates? Would she ever want to become a lawyer? Does she have any plans to run the marathon? I am tempted to ask what she sees in my father, other than his money, especially given that he is seventeen years older than her, but I hold back.

My dad has downed three martinis before our entrees arrive. She’s had two goblets of Chianti. They are clearly getting drunk, and I’m not sure if it’s because of me or in spite of me.

“So, tell me about the wedding,” I say as our conversation dwindles.

Her face lights up. With her green eyes and brown hair that’s been softened with highlights, we could be sisters. Maybe that’s what people looking at our table assume – a father taking his two daughters out for dinner.

“We booked a suite overlooking Times Square on December 30th. My family is from Michigan so I thought being in Times Square the night before New Year’s Eve would be so exciting for them. We tried for New Year’s Eve itself, but it was impossible. This was the next best thing. I hope you’ll come.”

I look at my father. “Why wouldn’t I come?”

He avoids my eyes and doesn’t answer. Sheryl takes his hand. “We didn’t know if you would want to.”

I know I should keep quiet, but suddenly I can’t control the anger I’ve been suppressing since I got home. “Why? Because in the three months that I’ve been away at college you’ve singlehandedly managed to move my things to another apartment, change the locks to what was once my home, and remove me from my life?”

Sheryl’s face goes pale.

“Laurel!” My father bristles. “You have no right to talk to her that way.”

“It’s true, though, isn’t it? You never even gave me a chance.”

“A chance to what?” he fumes. “To come home for the weekend and pout around with your sarcasm? A chance to be rude to the one person I’ve cared about since your mother died?”

“No, Dad. A chance to warm up to the idea. A chance to be a part of your life.”

His face is blank. He just doesn’t get it.

I continue, “So that’s what I am to you? Pouty and sarcastic?”

“Since your grandmother died, frankly, yes. Sheryl had nothing to do with me renting that apartment. I wanted some distance. I know you’ve had it tough. But how do you think it’s been for me all these years?”

It feels as though this entire section of the restaurant has just frozen over. I can’t feel my fingers or my toes. “I didn’t know I’ve been such a burden, Dad.”

Sheryl has withdrawn as far back into her chair as she can without actually melding into it and watches us, eyes unblinking, while my father pleads his case. “I lost my wife. Then I had to stand by a few years later and watch as my child dealt with the deaths of her grandparents.”

“And you were barely there! You’re always at work and even in the summer…do you realize the minute you couldn’t dump me off upstate anymore, you bought that house on Shelter Island? You sent me to live with a housekeeper! How many times did you even come out last summer, Dad? Like three weekends?”

“I have to work long hours. It’s my firm! And the city is no place for teenagers in the summer. They just end up getting into trouble.”

I shake my head. Apparently he doesn’t realize teenagers can get into trouble anywhere.

He continues, “You need to cut me some slack. I deserve some happiness.” He puts his hand on Sheryl’s leg. “She makes me happy.”

And I make him miserable, clearly. I push my chair back. “I’m glad things are going so well for you, Dad.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m leaving.”

“Sit back down.”

“I don’t want to ruin the atmosphere with my sarcasm.”

“Laurel,” he calls. But I’m already halfway to the door.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

A week and a day after that awful night, I find myself back in the dank church basement with my pregnancy support group, and we are all cooing over Jill’s new baby girl, now a month old. Audrey is glowing after her amazing wedding, and she doesn’t hesitate to lift the baby out of her car seat. She bounces and fusses, and the infant is content in her arms. She’s a natural. “Want to hold her?” she asks. I opt to pass. The baby’s head doesn’t seem to be on quite as tight as it should be, and I’d hate to be the one to cause it to fall off.

When we are finally in our circle, most of the conversation centers around what labor and delivery were like. Jill doesn’t hold back with her war story – twenty-four hours of labor and four hours of pushing only to end up needing a C-section.

Ugh. I grasp at my belly. You’re not going to do that to me, are you, baby?

Alison opens the floor to see if anyone else has anything to share. All eyes turn to me.

“Looks like I’m aiming for Christmas instead.” I try to smile.

It’s hard to ignore the expressions on both Audrey’s and Alison’s faces – a mixture of puzzlement and concern. I have a feeling I’m going to be called to the principal’s office afterwards.

Sure enough, as I put on my coat, Alison approaches first. “Is everything okay? Did something happen?”

I don’t feel like explaining the fight. How my dad called me the next morning to tell me I owed HIM an apology for the way I behaved. How I refused and ended up having Thanksgiving in Brooklyn at Tara’s Aunt Ethel’s house, squeezed on a couch between her massive cousins, watching football with a paper plate of turkey and stuffing on my lap. How I came back to school early only to find that no students were allowed on campus until Sunday so I had to spend the night in my grandparents’ empty house with no heat because no one remembered to have the oil tank filled.

The only redeeming part of the weekend was that I got to watch Audrey get married. But even that was bittersweet – another reminder of how much better off she is than me.

“It didn’t go as planned,” is all I say.

I like that Alison doesn’t push. She allows me to leave without any further inquiry.

Audrey, on the other hand, corners me in the parking lot. “How come you didn’t tell me on Saturday?”

“It was your wedding day.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t have much of a chance to talk.”

“It’s no big deal.”

“I’ve got all the time in the world now, though. So tell me.”

“Audrey,” I plead, “it’s not worth getting into.”

“But how much longer can you wait?”

The last three weeks of fall semester leave Colman looking like a ghost town, unless you are at the library, the hottest place on campus these days, which I avoid. Final papers, projects and tests loom in the not-so-distant future and the super-competitive student body is scared to death of falling behind, or worse. To fail is not an option in these parts.

My biology teacher, Professor Stoker, calls to me after lab one afternoon. She is a round woman with a double chin but a pretty face. If she’d let the polyester pants rest in peace in the previous century, she might even come across as attractive. “I’d like to have a meeting with you this week. Look up my office hours online and schedule yourself in at a mutually convenient time.”

“Okay.”

As I weave past the lab stations and microscopes, I see her looking at my stomach. I glance down at my ever-burgeoning belly, which I thought was well concealed by an oversized shirt.

Can she tell?

Two days later I am facing her in her small, crowded office, waiting for her to get off the phone. It feels more like a closet without any windows in here. Her walls are covered with pictures of her kids, diplomas for college, her master’s degree and finally a doctorate. She’s won faculty member of the year awards twice and been named as one of New York State’s best professors. No wonder I like her class so much.

“Don’t look so nervous.” She grins when she puts the phone down.

I try to relax my shoulders.

“I saw that you’ve signed up to take Plant Biology with me during J-term.”

“I thought it sounded interesting.”

“I’m glad. The problem is the J-term class I’m teaching is not supposed to be open to freshmen.”

“It’s not?” That was the only class that sounded appealing, and there is no way I can spend the month of January in the city – especially after my father’s wedding. My plan is to get in for Christmas and get out by New Year’s.

She interrupts my thoughts. “But I’m willing to make an exception after reviewing your class work this semester and looking at your high school transcript. You seem to excel in the sciences.”

“Thanks.”

“Being the only woman in the biology department, when I see a female student with the potential you have, I like to encourage it. We could use some more bright women in this field. Have you thought about a major yet?”

“I, um, haven’t yet. I don’t have to declare one until next year, though.”

“No, but the sooner you know what direction you want to go in, the more classes you can get under your belt. If you ever want to discuss it with me, my door is open.”

“Okay.”

“Keep up the good work. I’ll send the override form to the registrar’s office. I’m looking forward to J-term. It’s a nice opportunity to work with a small group of people. We accomplish a lot in three weeks. I think you’ll get a lot out of it.”