The Smart One (32 page)

WHEN SHE WAS FOUR MONTHS ALONG,
Max started telling people. “We can’t just wait until your stomach starts to get huge,” he said. He told his friend Mickey first, and then his friend Ben, and then more and more people. And those people told other people and Cleo figured that a few days after Max first told Mickey, the whole school knew. She didn’t tell anyone. Who would she tell? Her old roommates that seemed to be thriving without her? Could she really call up Monica and tell her that she was pregnant, that she’d fucked up? She could just imagine Laura and Mary when they found out, sitting on the futon and saying to each other, “I knew it was a mistake for her to move in with him. I knew it. She’s getting what she deserves. It’s only fair.”

Cleo felt like people stared at her wherever she went on campus. She felt like as soon as she passed, people whispered to each other, or pointed her out to the friend they were walking with.
There she is, that’s the pregnant girl, can’t you tell, her butt looks huge
.

“You sound paranoid,” Max said.

“Well, I’m not,” she told him.

CLEO AND HER MOTHER WERE ON
e-mail terms. That’s how she put it to Max. They had tried to talk on the phone once more, and Cleo had ended up screaming while her mom said, “This is not the kind of conversation I want to have,” over and over. E-mail was better for both of them, they agreed. Maybe they’d just stay on these terms forever. Maybe Cleo could just e-mail pictures of the baby to her when it was born and then when the baby was old enough, it could start e-mailing with Elizabeth, have its own online relationship with its grandmother. It would be like they were all virtual people, like they were bodyless and floating in cyberspace.

MAX WENT WITH HER FOR
the first ultrasound, even though she kept telling him that he didn’t have to. It was so weird, that before she was pregnant, the thought of having Max in the room while she went to the gynecologist would have been disgusting, silly really, and so strange that no one would ever allow it. But now that she was pregnant, it
wasn’t just common but it was expected? Max was supposed to be there while she put her feet in the stirrups.

“Well, we can see the baby here,” the doctor said. “And it is just one baby.” The thought of its being more than one baby had never even occurred to Cleo.

“That’s it right there?” Max asked. He pointed to the screen.

“It looks like a little doll,” Cleo said. “Or a peanut.”

The ultrasound technician froze the screen and told them that she’d print out some pictures for them.

“Can we get an extra copy?” Max asked the technician. “I want to send one to my mom.”

“Really?” Cleo asked.

“Yeah, I think she’d like to see it. She’ll probably hang it on the refrigerator or something.” The thought of a picture of the inside of her uterus hanging in the Coffeys’ kitchen made Cleo feel strange. But Max seemed excited, so she let it go.

They hung the ultrasound on their own refrigerator, and whenever Cleo went into the kitchen, her eyes went first to the picture, and then to the calendar that hung on the wall. And each time she glanced back and forth, between the calendar and the grainy ultrasound picture, she thought about how they were that much closer to that little baby’s actually being a baby and coming into the world. As if she needed reminding.

CHAPTER
15

Weezy had a high horse. And she could get on it whenever she wanted. Maureen used to always tease her, when she’d go off on other people’s behavior. “Uh-oh,” she’d say. “Giddyup! Here comes the horse.”

Even when she was younger, her parents used to act like Weezy thought she was too good for people. “Don’t get too big for your britches,” her father would say.

It was silly, really. It’s not like Weezy believed herself to be so morally superior to everyone. It was just that sometimes she simply couldn’t believe the way that people acted. (Like Cleo’s mother, for instance.)

Because what kind of mother would abandon her child at this moment? No matter how disappointed or upset a person was, to sever contact while your only daughter was pregnant? Well, it was disgusting. That’s what it was. There was no other word for it, really. Except maybe
despicable
. And
selfish
.

“You know,” she told Maureen, “I’m not thrilled with this either. I’m not jumping up and down that my son that’s still in college is going to be a father. But I’m helping. I’m still talking to him.”

“I know,” Maureen said. “But you never know the details of other people’s lives.”

“I know enough. I know enough to know it’s wrong. I have half a mind to call her up myself and talk to her.” She’d said as much to Max, but he’d begged her not to.

“Don’t, Mom. Please don’t. They’re figuring it out, and Cleo would kill me if you did that.”

“Fine,” she’d said with a sniff. “I’ll give it a few more months. But then she’s going to have to be involved.”

Right after Max told her the news, she’d been floored. This wasn’t what she expected. Not that anyone expects this news, but still. She had to admit that this hadn’t even crossed her mind. She’d thought about what would happen if one of the girls got pregnant, but not this.

“It’s easier, probably, that it’s your son and not your daughter,” Maureen said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Weezy asked.

“It just is. I don’t know.”

Weezy did know what Maureen meant, but she wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of admitting it. At least not without faking some sort of innocence. She had always made a point of being more open-minded than Maureen. When Cathy came out, Maureen admitted (when she was about three bottles of Chardonnay deep) that she was sad about the whole thing.

“I don’t love her differently, I don’t. I just wish … I just wish it wasn’t the case,” she’d said.

“Well, there’s no use thinking that now,” Weezy had said. She’d secretly been thrilled that Maureen had admitted such a thing to her.

“I know that,” Maureen had said. She sounded annoyed. “I just mean, I had a picture in my head of how it was going to be. And now it’s not. It could have been so much simpler.”

They’d never spoken about it again, or at least not really. Weezy had found an article about how parents need to mourn for their straight children when they find out that they’re gay. She’d been excited to give it to her, since it made so much sense. It said that you needed to mourn and fully understand that your child was going to lead a different life than you had imagined. And once you did that, you could fully accept who they were.

“Thanks,” Maureen had said. She took it and folded the paper, and put it right in her purse.

Weezy knew why she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. There was nothing worse than wishing that your children were something other than what they were. She’d had those moments, where she wondered what it would be like if Martha could function on her own, what it would be like if she were able to have normal relationships with people.

And of course, she wished that things had gone differently for Claire. It’s not that she thought marriage and children were the answer to everything. Certainly not. She just wished that things had worked out between them, that Claire was settled now instead of lost.

When Max first told her about Cleo, she’d thought his life was ruined. So there it was, all three of her children in a mess, and yes, she wished things were different. She was ashamed at these thoughts, and she would never admit it to anyone. Maureen probably regretted even speaking the words out loud, and so Weezy swore she would never do the same.

WEEZY HAD BEEN PARALYZED FOR
the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. She’d managed to call Max, to tell him that they would be there for him, of course. But then she’d felt like she couldn’t move. Christmas was a struggle. She’d do one thing, like get a box of decorations out of the attic, and then she’d have to lie down. Little by little, everything got done, but not before Weezy was convinced that she was anemic or possibly had some kind of cancer, because it just wasn’t normal to have so little energy.

Max called her at least three times a day. He called to report on doctor’s appointments and to ask her questions and to tell her what was happening. She knew that he was looking for reassurance. He’d been the same way as a little boy, needing to talk about things, needing to hear someone say that things were going to work out.

She talked to him whenever he called. She was happy to. At least this wouldn’t tear their family apart, right? She felt righteous and good when they talked. She suggested that he and Cleo start taking walks for exercise, because it was never too early to start thinking about keeping in shape for the baby. Yes, she was happy to talk to him. But she did wonder if possibly that was what was taking all of her energy.

When she woke up in the mornings, her limbs felt heavy. She tried to explain this to Will, who suggested that it was just a reaction to Max’s news. (That’s what he was calling the whole thing. He hadn’t said the words
pregnant
and
baby
at all.)

“I think I should see a doctor,” she told him. She was still lying in bed when she said this.

Will turned to look at her. “Maybe,” he said. “Or you could just give yourself some time to get used to this.”

“Maybe there’s a gas leak in the house,” she said. There had to be something, some reason why her body felt like this.

“If there was a leak, wouldn’t we all feel sick?” Will asked. Weezy had sighed and rolled over on her side. It was the kind of comment that could make you really hate Will.

Maureen brought soup over after Weezy told her on the phone that she was coming down with something. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s bad. A virus of some kind.”

When Maureen arrived, she found Weezy sitting on the couch in her pajamas and robe. She arranged the soup without saying a word, and then the two of them sat and watched some talk shows.

One morning a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving, Weezy walked down the stairs and surveyed the house. She decided that she’d do one thing every day to get ready for Christmas. How hard could it be to do one thing? She stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked all around. Dozens of little turkeys smiled at her from all around the house, sending her right back upstairs to bed. They all had such creepy gobbles, and she couldn’t face that today. She could start tomorrow.

One day, she managed to arrange all the Santas that she’d collected over the years on the mantel, and then she’d gone over to the couch and lay there, staring at them. She’d cried a little bit, because her heart was breaking for her Max and she really didn’t know what would happen.

Will brought the tree up from the basement and put on the lights, and the girls hung the ornaments. (They’d gone to a fake tree a few years ago, when getting a real tree seemed like too much of a hassle. Claire and Max had both protested, saying that it was pointless to put up a piece of plastic. Weezy tried to tell them that the pine-scented candles would make it seem like the real thing without all the needles on the floor that couldn’t be vacuumed up no matter what. Even in April, she’d still be finding them hidden behind furniture and under rugs. This year she was even more grateful that the tree was in their basement, or they might not have had one at all.)

She didn’t know how she was going to manage to buy presents and she put it off, until it was the week before Christmas and she had no more time to waste. She got in the car and drove to the mall. It was cold, but there was no snow on the ground, so she could be grateful for that.

For the first time in her life that she could remember, Weezy had no Christmas list with her when she shopped. She walked into department stores and bought generic gifts, scarves and mittens. She shopped in groups. When she found something she liked for one of the girls, she bought three of them. Will and Max got the same sweater in different colors, the same gloves, the same socks.

She was surprised at how quickly it went, buying piles of books at the bookstore, not caring who got what, just knowing that there’d be something to wrap. She had to buy for Cleo this year, who was coming for Christmas, but that just meant buying more duplicates. All of the shopping was done in one day, with Weezy making a few trips to the car in between.

When she pulled into the driveway after her shopping trip, she left all the bags in the car, poured herself a glass of wine, and got into her bed in her pajamas. It was five thirty. When Will found her, she was watching TV and had the comforter pulled up to her chin.

“I’m not feeling well,” she said. Will looked at the glass of wine and nodded, then let her rest for the night.

Weezy spent her time in bed on the laptop, looking up information on weddings where the bride was pregnant. There were many tips. Ruching seemed to be a popular way to hide the stomach, although it didn’t really look like it worked that well. There were some brides that decided to wait until after the baby was born, some that waited years and then had the child as a ring bearer or flower girl. (Which just seemed downright trashy.) She wondered what it would take to convince Max and Cleo that they should get married. She scoured the sites for tips and tricks, and thought at least they weren’t the first couple to get themselves into this mess.

SHE HAD NO IDEA HOW
she was going to manage to have everyone home for three days. That was all it was going to be, but it seemed
impossible. She could fake sick, she thought, if things got really bad. It would be like the year that she had gotten the stomach flu and could barely make it downstairs for twenty minutes to watch the kids open their presents. They’d all eaten breakfast without her, gone to mass without her, and she’d stayed upstairs in bed, watching old movies.

Weezy felt safer that she had a backup plan. No one could argue with a sick person, and it wouldn’t even be like she was lying. She was sick. She just didn’t know what she had.

Somehow she managed to make it through. Will and the girls had helped with the cooking and while she had imagined that this year, the days would go on forever, it was like any other year and Christmas seemed to be over in a flash.