Someone Like You (3 page)

Annabelle sighed and shifted position. Her right foot poked free from the duvet, and Joely leaned forward to cover her. Asleep she was the image of William. The fey quality that was so apparent when she was awake vanished, and she looked like a tiny scholar with a furrowed brow. She pressed a kiss to the top of the child’s head, and her irritation with William disappeared.

She hated the thought of telling Annabelle her father wouldn’t be with them tonight. William was the one who was breaking his promise. Wouldn’t it follow that he should be the one to break the news?

Child rearing, however, was a right-brain activity. You couldn’t plot it on a graph or turn it into a PowerPoint presentation. Family life was an exercise in random chaos. You coped with things as well as you could and hoped for the best. Parents shared both the joys and the burdens of bringing up children, and they didn’t keep score.

But there was one small problem with Joely’s theory: she wasn’t Annabelle’s mother and, God help her, she had started keeping score.

 

“LOOK AT THEM,” Catherine Doyle whispered to the man sitting next to her. “I’m old enough to be their mother.”

Michael Yanovsky’s gaze traveled the waiting room. “Older sister maybe, not their mother.”

“You’re a lousy liar.” She leaned closer. “See the way they’re looking at me? They probably think I’m here for hormone replacement therapy.”

He laughed out loud, and a sunburst of lines crinkled the outer corners of his eyes. Lines like that would send most women running for Botox, but they brought his face to life. Men had all the luck.

“Now might be a good time for a little insincere flattery,” she said, not entirely kidding. “I’m still trying to recover from being called an ‘elderly primigravida’ by that high school cheerleader at the reception desk.”

“I already tried flattery.” He reached for her hand and laced his fingers with hers. “You told me I was a lousy liar. Remember?”

She stifled a groan. “Karen warned me about pregnancy brain, but I didn’t think it would show up for a few more months.”

He didn’t laugh this time, just gave her one of those looks that made her think he knew her thoughts better than she did. Her voice sounded high and pinched, like a parrot’s idea of human speech. And that laugh—who was she trying to kid? That laugh wouldn’t fool anybody. She sounded scared out of her elderly primigravida mind.

“Your hand’s cold,” he said.

“It’s the air-conditioning.”

He sandwiched her hands between his and rubbed briskly. The gesture managed to be matter-of-fact and intimate simultaneously. She wasn’t the kind of woman who knew how to accept comforting gestures. She fought the urge to pull her hand away and make some smart-mouthed comment designed to deflect any unseemly displays of emotion. She was emotional enough these days for both of them.

“You’re good at this,” she said, aware that six pairs of eyes were lasered to them. “If the writing doesn’t work out, you can always get work in a day spa.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

He was the only man in Dr. Colfax’s waiting room, and if it bothered him, he didn’t let it show. She had expected to see men sprouting everywhere like toadstools. Didn’t couples share everything these days? Where were all the happy expectant fathers with their empathy bellies and camcorders?

And, come to think of it, where were all the other elderly primigravidas she was always reading about in the women’s magazines? She had at least ten years on the oldest mother-to-be in the room, and that was giving herself the benefit of the doubt. Here she thought she was joining a great parade of older mothers who were out to change the world, and instead she was a one-woman band.

“You really don’t have to stay around,” she said. “Why don’t you grab some breakfast at the deli around the corner, and I’ll meet you there when I’m finished.”

He squeezed her hand. “How about we grab some breakfast together when you’re finished?”

“And I have the best idea of all,” she said, wishing the other women weren’t watching them like they were the last episode of
Sex and the City
. “How about you see the doctor, and I make a break for it.”

He laughed again, and she was struck for maybe the hundredth time by what a great laugh he had. Warm. Mellow. The kind of laugh a woman wanted to hear from the father of her child.

“We’re in this together, Cat,” he said so only she could hear him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

And he believed every word. She didn’t doubt it. He was the kind of man who invited you to hand over your problems so he could give them back to you all nice and solved. But Cat knew life had a nasty habit of changing the rules on you when you weren’t looking, and she believed in being prepared. Sure, Michael seemed like one of the good guys, but then so had her father, and that hadn’t stopped him from walking out on his wife and kids.

Still, there had to be something different about him, or she wouldn’t have made the crazy life-changing decision to have a child with him. They weren’t married or even thinking about it, but what they had found together was still more than either one had ever expected to find.

They had met almost two years ago when she came down to Manhattan to deliver some hand-knits to the costume designer of the latest HBO hit,
Pink Slip
. Michael was leaving a meeting as she was going in. They smiled at each other, murmured a few words, and when she came back out an hour later, he was waiting for her by the bank of elevators just as she’d known he would be.

Neither one believed in magic, but when two average-looking people managed to find each other in a crowd of eight million supermodels, it was worth taking note.

He kept a loft in SoHo and rarely left the island of Manhattan, while she lived in Idle Point, a little town on Maine’s central coast. She came down to the city every three or four weeks to deliver finished knitwear, take meetings, oversee fittings, be wined and dined by the producers, and sleep with her lover.

Next to her pregnancy, their relationship was her best-kept secret, the one thing that belonged to her and her alone. She loved climbing behind the wheel of her Jeep and heading south on the Maine Turnpike, Billy Joel and Madonna blaring from her radio as Idle Point disappeared in her rearview mirror. Responsibilities, expectations, her mother—she left them all behind. For a few days every month she didn’t have to answer to anyone.

He knew about her design work. He knew it had something to do with yarn and knitting needles and the occasional sewing machine. She had told him a bit about the group of talented spinners and needlewomen who gathered daily at her house to create the costumes that were building her reputation in the industry. But he knew very little about Mimi and Joely and nothing at all about her father.

She hadn’t invited him up to visit her in Maine, and he hadn’t asked. He didn’t press her for more, and she never volunteered. So far the arrangement was working well for them, but it was anybody’s guess what the next seven months would bring.

She tilted her head in the direction of a small refectory table to their left. “I think I saw a rogue copy of
Sports Illustrated
under that stack of
Lactation Today
.”

Public displays of affection had always made her uncomfortable, especially when they were aimed in her direction. Michael didn’t think twice about holding hands, a quick kiss, walking down the street with his arm draped across her shoulders, while she had to fight the urge to hide her face under her jacket like she was making the perp walk.

She leaned forward and rummaged through her tote bag for the project she was working on, a pair of sparkly black-and-silver leg warmers. She felt antsy and unsettled, and knitting calmed her mind and soothed her soul. Some women turned to yoga; others disappeared into the pages of a romance novel. She found her bliss with sticks and string. It also didn’t hurt a bit that knitting paid the bills and had put her name on the cover of
In Style
last month.

“Excuse me.” A ripely pregnant young red-haired woman leaned forward and said, “I love that sweater you’re wearing. It reminds me of the sweaters Allison wears on
Pink Slip
. Where did you find it?”

She caught Michael’s grin in her peripheral vision. “It’s a hand-knit.”

The young mother-to-be rolled her eyes. “I know it’s a hand-knit. That’s why it’s so cool. Where did you find it?”

“Actually, I made it.”

Three other pregnant women looked up from their copies of
Modern Baby
. Their expressions ranged from disbelieving to awestruck.

“I tried to knit once,” the woman nearest the door volunteered. “It was such a disaster I ended up in Barney’s, maxing out my Visa.”

“Don’t get me started.” The tiny blond next to her seemed transfixed by the motion of Cat’s hands. “My mother taught my youngest last year. I still can’t figure out how to cast on.”

“Cat could help you.” Ten pairs of eyes turned in Michael’s direction. “She designs the sweaters for
Pink Slip
.”

By the time the nurse called Cat’s name, she had given minilessons in the long tail cast-on and attempted to unravel the secret of double points.

“Want me to come in with you?” Michael asked as she dropped her work into her tote bag and stood up.

“And have you find out how much I weigh? Not on your life.” He could join her in the doctor’s office after the exam was over.

The nurse, a no-nonsense type who looked more Queens than Upper East Side, eyed her with open curiosity as they walked down the corridor to room three. “The last time I saw such a commotion we had a soap star in the waiting room.”

Cat laughed, but her heart wasn’t in it. Reality was finally beginning to settle in with a vengeance. Getting pregnant had seemed like the smartest decision she had ever made. Being pregnant, however, was starting to scare her.

“Do you always travel with knitting needles?” The nurse motioned for Cat to step onto the big ugly scale in the corner.

“Occupational hazard.”

“Hate to be behind you on line at the airport check-in.”

She kicked off her shoes and debated the wisdom of taking off her watch, her earrings, and her sweater. She settled for exhaling, then climbed aboard.

“You might as well breathe,” the nurse said as she slid the weights left then right. “Air’s not going to make any difference.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t take off my sweater.”

“You wouldn’t be the first.” The nurse scribbled a number on Cat’s chart. “Don’t worry. You don’t look it.”

Cat tried to think of something suitably witty to say—this was Manhattan after all, and wit was the coin of the realm—but her mind went blank. Hard as it was to believe, in a few months she would think of that number with fond nostalgia.

“You can hang your clothes in the closet behind the screen,” the nurse said. “You’ll find disposable slippers and a robe on the chair.”

“And a mint on my pillow?”

The nurse flashed a sympathetic smile. “The first visit is the hardest,” she said. “Once you get past this, it’s clear sailing until delivery.”

“Can I have that notarized?”

Another sympathetic smile. “The doctor will be with you in a few minutes,” she said, then vanished.

Everything about the room was designed for the physical comfort and emotional well-being of the patient. Soft peach walls. An ivory privacy screen. Pleasant watercolors of nameless beaches placed at eye level. The requisite diplomas and certificates and awards meant to reassure a woman who was lying flat on her back with her feet in stirrups while she waited for a total stranger to snap on the latex gloves and go to work.

This wasn’t her first visit to the gynecologist. She was thirty-eight years old. You would think she would be used to it by now. She had a history of annual pelvic exams, birth control checkups, occasional visits for problems that always turned out to be blessedly minor. Her health was good. She was there because she wanted to be there, because after much thought and consideration, she had decided to have a baby with a man who very much wanted to be a father.

Her hands shook as she folded her sweater and slid it onto the shelf in the closet. How odd. She couldn’t remember ever seeing her hands shake like that. What was it her friend Karen was always telling her to do? Breathe deeply. That was it. Talk about basic information. Empty your mind of everything, and draw in the deepest, longest breath you possibly could without thinking about anything at all.

She tried, but it didn’t work. Her hands still trembled as she slipped on the pale peach cotton gown. This wasn’t an annual Pap smear, something she would forget as soon as she left the office. Her old life stopped right here. After today, nothing would ever be the same again.

She thought about that as she hopped up onto the examining table. Wasn’t that the point? If she had wanted her life to stay the same, she and Michael wouldn’t have made a baby. You didn’t decide to have a child because you wanted your life to stay the same forever. You decided to have a child because you wanted your life to be better, to have more meaning, because you were so filled with longing for a family of your own, a child to lavish with all the love that had been building all these years, that you decided to close your eyes and take a leap into the future, even if you weren’t exactly sure what that future would hold.