“How is everything?” her mother asks when she calls, meaning not just the pregnancy, but the marriage.
“Fine, just fine.” Elinor tells her. While this is not the glossed-over-for-Mom answer, somehow fine doesn’t feel quite right.
Elinor recalls with astonishment how her co-workers seemed to power through their pregnancies, working long hours, traveling for business—all with astonishing capability. She can barely open a can of soup!
“That’s the second trimester,” Kat promises. “You’ll be energized.”
Elinor waits for this energy, wishing the hormones didn’t make her so emotional in the meantime. When the baby elephant at the Oakland Zoo dies, she feels inconsolable. She peers at the baby elephant’s photo in the paper, cupping her hand over her mouth. His bristly ears are too big for his head, flopping forward, waiting for him to grow into them. But he’ll never get the chance. Below him, there’s a shot of the mother elephant in her pen looking forlorn.
“Elephant!” Elinor wails to Kat on the phone.
“What?”
“He died!”
“Who?” Kat sounds ready to hang up and run across their lawns to Elinor’s house.
“At the zoo. The elephant died. Look in the paper!”
“Oh.” Rustling in the background. “Poor thing. But it’s okay,” Kat promises.
Elinor can’t stop crying.
“Oh, honey,” Kat says sympathetically. “An elephant shot you in your pajamas this morning.”
“Gunk.” Elinor chokes out a sob.
“It’s supposed to be a twist on that joke . . .” Kat assumes a Groucho Marx voice. “I shot an elephant in my pajamas—”
“I know.” Elinor has lost her sense of humor. It vanished with her energy. They’re holed up together in a motel somewhere, drinking caffeinated beverages without her.
“Hormones,” Kat says.
“I know,” Elinor repeats. The answer for everything. She should calm down. Hysteria will just freak out the baby. “I’m terrible at this,” she confesses.
“Oh, El. You’re going to be a wonderful mother. I promise you. Try not to worry.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t read the paper. The world is a mess.”
“Okay,” Elinor agrees. She’ll only read about pregnancy. She showers and dresses. On the top bathroom shelf, she finds the one pregnancy book she let herself buy while struggling to conceive: What to Expect When You’re Expecting.
At Starbucks, Elinor sips a low-fat steamed milk with a dash of cinnamon and scans What to Expect. For starters, she’s a derelict for eating a white-flour English muffin this morning instead of whole wheat toast. And what a loser for even thinking about caffeine—a dirty little habit akin to crack cocaine. That hot shower last night? It probably scorched her baby’s IQ. This book confirms what Elinor has known all along: She is incapable and unworthy of being a mother. “Screw you,” she whispers to the pages. She gets up, grabs her milk, which is creating a sour taste in her mouth, and pushes through the double glass doors out into the parking lot. Near her car, she spies a Dumpster. She hurries up to it and tosses What to Expect clunking in. “Screw you,” she repeats, tossing the tepid milk in after the book. As she starts her car, guilt gnaws at her gut. No wonder it took her so long to conceive. She can’t even read a pregnancy book. There must be others out there—nicer ones. She will ask Kat. Without Kat, Elinor would be lost.
She ditches Starbucks and heads for the In-N-Out for a cheeseburger and french fries, lusting after the iced tea on the menu, but choosing the low-fat milk. She misses caffeine as though it’s a lost lover. She’d kill for tea, coffee, or Coke. Anything other than her cinnamon orange herbal brew, which smells like the potpourri at the wash.
As she sits in her car in a shady parking spot, shoveling french fries into her mouth and cursing the What to Expect book, Elinor thinks of Gina and her healthy recipes and her whole ground flax. In the past few days she has not been able to get Gina out of her mind. Staying home from work allows too much time to think—hundreds of solitary moments throughout the day to contemplate all the attributes that must have drawn Ted to Gina. Qualities Elinor will never possess: pep-squad cheerfulness, athleticism, a sexy, flowing litheness, like the birch trees in their neighbors’ yard.
That night, Ted is too exhausted to cook and he agrees to bring Elinor home a cheese pizza with pepperoni.
“This is good,” Elinor moans, cheese hanging from her chin as they sit at the coffee table in the living room in front of the TV.
Ted sips ginger ale. He’s declared solidarity by also giving up wine, beer, and coffee. He leans over to push a pillow between Elinor’s back and the sofa. Suddenly Elinor recognizes her husband’s kindness. It is the same compassion he has for his patients. After all, that’s what Elinor is now—a patient.
“Can I get you anything?” Ted polishes off his ginger ale, nods toward the kitchen.
“A new brain. I’m so emotional.” She balls up her napkin. “It can’t be good for the baby.”
“It’s normal.” He shrugs. “Hormones.”
Elinor looks down at the pizza box, stained with grease. She wonders if Ted longs for Gina’s healthy home-cooked meals.
“Do you miss her sometimes?” she asks.
“Who?” Ted asks.
“Gina.”
“Not really.” A good way of answering without lying. Ted is an honest man. Always tell the truth unless it’s cruel, Elinor’s mother would advise. But Ted’s expression betrays him. There’s woefulness about his eyebrows that says that he does in fact miss her. Elinor is sure of it. But he will give her up for this—to stay with his wife and have a baby.
“I only think about Noah a little bit,” Elinor says. In a horizontal way, she thinks.
“Great.” Jealousy flares in Ted’s voice.
“You’re the one who—”
“Are we going there tonight? Are we getting on the Rehash Bus?” Ted tosses his pizza crust into the box.
“No.” Elinor hugs her knees to her belly, which has just started to swell. But she goes there every day. Into the petty world of obsession. Talking about the affair, instead of pretending that it never happened, helps her escape these dark thoughts. When she talks to Ted, she isn’t as angry. She can keep an analytical, lawyer’s distance—just trying to figure out the whole mess.
“Sorry,” she murmurs. She moves closer to her husband, pushing away the coffee table so she can rest her head on his thigh. He strokes her hair. She has always liked the way his hands smell of antibacterial hospital soap—a smell that fills her with a sense of safety.
“Whew!” Dr. Weston sighs with relief. “There it is.” She points to the ultrasound screen. “Your baby.”
Elinor and Ted have made it through the next hoop: the second, eight-week ultrasound.
Baby. This is the first time Elinor has heard anyone at the infertility clinic use this word. Follicle, egg, zygote, embryo, heartbeat, baby. Instead of trying to see the screen, she lifts her head to find Ted’s face in the dark examining room.
His eyes are locked on the fuzzy gray picture. “Wow,” he says with wonder. “So many steps just to get to where most people start off.”
“You are outta here,” the doctor says, flipping on the bright overhead lights. “Don’t take it personally, but I love it when I don’t have to see a couple again.” Elinor is touched that Dr. Weston seems as nervous and hopeful as she and Ted are.
Ted helps Elinor sit up. His eyes are filled with tears, but they don’t spill over.
“Call your OB,” Dr. Weston says, “and make an appointment for your first prenatal exam.” She stands touching each of them on the arm. “You be sure to bring that baby back to see me.” She winks, then hurries out of the room for her next patient.
“Thank you,” Ted calls after her.
Elinor slides off the examining table and pulls on her underwear and pants. “Baby,” she says softly. A word she never thought would be hers.
r /> “Want to renew our vows?” Ted asks as they lie in bed that night. “Is that too corny?”
“No.” Elinor scoots backward to spoon him, comforted by the heat of his body.
“We could go to Hawaii,” he muses.
“I don’t think I’m supposed to fly.”
“After the baby’s born. About six months after. We’ll go to Maui. Get a condo.” He rolls toward her, lying on his side, his head propped in one hand. “Would you marry me again?”
“You know I would.”
“I mean, not go back and marry me again. But after everything that’s happened. Would you marry me right now?” Ted peers around to look at her. She smooths over his hair, stalling for time. She hears: Even though I was unfaithful, do you forgive me?
“Yes,” she answers. “I would.” But I would want to know more about why you cheated on your wife, she thinks. How you came to justify it. Whether you’d ever do it again.
Ted tightens his arms around her. She relaxes into him as he massages her breasts. She closes her eyes and sighs, feeling his erection against the small of her back. For once she feels shapely, sexy, instead of like The Vessel.
“Sex won’t hurt the baby,” she whispers.
Ted buries his face in her hair, kissing her neck.
As she stretches her legs and arches her back, her toes touch something soft and moist toward the bottom of the bed. She sits up and peels back the covers to find a handful of yellow rose petals from the garden strewn between the sheets. They’re moist and tacky between her fingers.
“How romantic.” She turns to Ted, closing her eyes and lifting a velvety petal to her nose to inhale the sweet smell.
Ted says, “Um, yeah.”
“How does Dublin at Christmas sound? Like something out of a James Joyce novel?” Elinor immediately recognizes the voice of her boss, Phil, on the line, even though he hasn’t identified himself or said hello. He often catapults into a phone conversation like this when he’s excited.
“Phil?” she asks. “Or is this the Irish Tourist Board?”
“How’d you like to be the lead on an acquisition team in Dublin?” Phil continues. “I’d love to send Ted with you for part of the time, if he can get away.”
“I’m fine, and how are you?” Elinor teases, cradling the phone against her shoulder as she continues making a shopping list of foods high in folic acid. No more greasy french fries!
“We’re acquiring a dynamic little networking company in Dublin—great engineering team—and you’re the best international employee relations person I’ve got. How’d you feel about working over there for six weeks? I thought it would speak to your inner English major.”
Elinor has always liked international work—learning about foreign labor laws and unions, putting together decent benefits and exit packages for overseas employees. But now she’s grounded.
“I’d love to, but I’m going to have to pass. I’m . . .” Elinor hadn’t planned on telling anyone at the office about the pregnancy until she started to show in the second trimester. But she’s been up front with Phil about the in-vitro treatments. There was no other way to explain her disappearances for doctor’s appointments. Otherwise he might have suspected she’d developed a drug habit. “I’m pregnant.”
“Oh.” Elinor hears disappointment in his voice. “Great. Wow. Congratulations!”
“Don’t worry,” she assures him. “I’m going stir crazy at home. I’m coming back to work November first, as planned.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
That’s what they always like to hear.
It’s not necessary to hold the hose while deep watering the ginkgo tree. Noah said to turn on the water to a trickle and go back inside for twenty minutes. But Elinor likes feeling the sun warm her back and watching the water seep into the mulch, making a dark brown circle that smells like a redwood forest. Suddenly the image of Noah’s green eyes, thick mustache and two dimples flashes in her mind. She recalls his easy laugh. A drunken lightness passes over her as she imagines the roughness of his mustache against her lips and breasts.
She shudders and reaches to touch one of the bright green leaves on the tree. Instead of Noah, she allows herself to think about the baby’s nursery. At first she worried this might jinx the pregnancy, but it’s comforting to imagine how she’ll arrange the sunny room. She’ll put a sofa against one wall where she’ll breast-feed and perhaps rest in the afternoons while the baby sleeps. She pictures a built-in bookshelf lined with children’s classics: Stuart Little and Blueberries for Sal. One of the things Elinor loves about being pregnant is that now she can imagine the future. A future with a real job—a safe haven to create.
Yet she has the odd fear that she’ll love this child too fiercely. Once, when she and Ted were at the hospital clinic for an in-vitro appointment, she spotted a row of tiny wheelchairs in a hallway. Wheelchairs for children. Of course. The realization hit her like a punch to the gut. You could have a child and then something could happen to him. Elinor knew this was a form of heartbreak she couldn’t endure.
She jumps and gasps when Ted taps her on the shoulder.
“Personally,” Ted says, knocking the tree with his fist as though kicking the tires on a car, “I wouldn’t have chosen a deciduous shade tree for the street. Anybody who parks under this thing in the fall is going to have leaves caked to their car.”
Elinor is amused by the disdain in Ted’s voice. “Have you noticed those?” She points down the street to a row of brilliant green ginkgos in the distance. “They’re gorgeous.”
Ted shrugs. “If you say so.”
Elinor laughs. “I say so.”
“Mrs. Mackey?” a small voice asks when Elinor answers the phone.
“This is she.” Elinor smooths over the duvet cover, satisfied at having made the bed, a task she’s lacked the energy for until recently.
“Um, I was calling to see if I could babysit. You know . . . sometime.”
“Who is—”
“We had this class at school today? Family Ties? I know, stupid name. But we learned how to take care of babies. We each got our own doll and they showed us how to hold the baby. You have to hold her head in the back, like make a cup out of your hand, because when they’re really little they can’t hold up their heads . . .”
“Toby?” Elinor recognizes the breathlessness of Gina’s kid. His frantic asthmatic way of talking, as though he’s running out of air. She sits on the bed.
“Oh, right! I forgot to say, this is Toby.”
“Would you like to speak to Dr. Mackey?” Elinor tries to contain her irritation.
“Actually? Um, I wanted to talk to you.” His voice brightens. “To ask you if I could babysit.”
“Honey, we don’t even have a baby yet.” She tries to keep her cool. She certainly doesn’t want Toby telling his mother, That lady’s mean!
“I always wanted to have a brother, but you know my mom won’t have one, because you know, she can’t even get a husband. She’s such a loser.”
“Well, I . . .” This kid is a piece of work. Gina isn’t a loser, exactly, Elinor thinks. Whore. Adulterer. But not a loser.
“I would totally help around the house and stop playing my Game Boy so much and babysit and help you in the yard, like plant your bulbs and stuff. My mom got mad because I wouldn’t help her. She wants us to do things together. She thinks of the most boring stuff, though. But if I lived at your house—”
“Live?” Elinor’s pregnancy furnace clicks on, heat and nausea rushing up her body. She stands, pulls off her sweater, and tosses it on the floor.
Toby gasps, finally taking in some air.
“Toby, I’m going to get Dr. Mackey.”
“But—”
“Toby, I think I have to vomit now.” She drops the phone on the bed and lunges toward the bathroom. “Ted!” The watery bile burns its way up the back of her throat.
“What?”
“Phone!” She hears Ted clamber for the phon
e as she leans her head into the toilet and throws up her breakfast of soft-boiled eggs, one more food she’s going to have to cross off the list. She wants to eavesdrop, but it’s difficult to barf and listen in at the same time. If it weren’t for the damn progesterone, which is supposed to help her uterine lining, she’s sure she’d be done with this morning sickness. She flushes the toilet and reaches for her toothbrush.
Standing in the hallway brushing her teeth, she listens to Ted listen to Toby.
“I know,” he says soothingly. “I know. Failed? Oh, well, but you have to study, Toby. You can do it, champ, I know you can. No, Toby, I’m sorry. I know your mom put up lots of signs at the community college. I’m sure you’ll get a smart new tutor soon. You mustn’t call here, okay? Mrs. Mackey isn’t feeling well and it might upset her. I know. I know. I have to go. Toby? I don’t want to hang up until you say good-bye. Okay? Good-bye.”
Elinor drops her hands at her sides. Suddenly she’s as sad for this boy as she was for the baby elephant at the zoo.
Roger is remarkably thorough and meticulous when it comes to cleaning, especially for a guy in his twenties. He doesn’t balk when Elinor asks him to do the picture window looking from the kitchen into the backyard. She watches from the sink as he stands on a stool working away streaks with Windex and paper towels. His plaid pants look like they once belonged to a men’s suit circa 1975. His T-shirt says SQUIRREL NUT ZIPPERS. Although he’s thin, his shoulders and arms are muscular. He’s a nice-looking guy, Elinor concludes, loading the dishwasher and turning it on. Any young woman would be attracted to him, wouldn’t she? The blue eyes and lean build and sweet demeanor? The hip goatee? Gina would be attracted to him, wouldn’t she? Toby would like him. This thought comes to Elinor suddenly, just as the waves of nausea have for weeks. Only now she feels a wave of energy. She welcomes the familiar feeling of an idea spinning in her head, albeit a maniacal one. Roger would make a nice boyfriend for Gina, a fun companion for Toby. There might be a seven- or eight-year age difference between Roger and Gina, but Roger is rather mature and he seems to like older women. How old is Gina, anyway? Elinor bristles, not wanting to consider this question too thoroughly.