Later in the week, Denise phones to say Helen would like to help with anything she can. “You’re not obliged to involve her at this point. It’s up to you.” Mannie glares, as if my phone call is messing with his concentration. I’m starting to think he’s two different people. When he’s on a roll, there’s no stopping him—you can see it in his hands, the way they clench and relax, clench and relax. He’s full of crazy plans, ready to try anything, ready to take our lives in those stronger-than-they-look fists. But when he crashes, he crashes. Since he stopped talking to me, he’s spent all his time getting high and pretending to race little pretend cars. He keeps the volume up and crashes so much, I can’t believe I ever got into a car with him.
“What kind of help?” I ask.
“Well, there’s a range of things,” Denise says. “Like your next OBGYN appointment is tomorrow, right? She could take you if you want.”
So the next morning, Helen picks me up in her silver hybrid. “Do you live on your own?” she asks.
I left Mannie snoring on the futon and waited downstairs at the curb. If Helen’s freaked out by the seedy downtown apartment, she doesn’t show it.
“No,” I say. “It’s my boyfriend’s place.”
She takes a breath, like she wishes she smoked so she could pause for a puff.
I roll down the window a bit. It really smells like a Winnipeg spring now, that mix of wet grit and snow mold and dog shit. Mannie’s cologne, scrambled eggs, nail polish—they all make me want to stop breathing these days, but the smell of April is okay, that messy, sweet stench of everything waking up.
At the doctor’s office, we wait more than half an hour in a jam-packed row of crappy chairs. When we’re finally called in, she grips her magazine like it’s a bible that will somehow tell her what to do.
“Aren’t you coming?” I ask.
I change into the hideous blue paper gown while she waits outside. As the nurse weighs me, Helen pretends to read a poster about hypnobirthing.
The nurse is obviously off the boat from somewhere like Poland. She has a gold tooth and is always yelling at people over the phone.
“One houndred fifty-fife,” she shouts at me. “Fife pounds seence last time.”
I wave Helen over and whisper, “They make the gowns this color so we look like whales.”
She laughs and seems to relax a little. “You look great.”
Dr. Kohut introduces himself to Helen in a way that makes me think Denise must’ve got to him first. He seems to know exactly why Helen’s here before we fill him in and eagerly pats the examining table, like he’s calling a dog. “Well, let’s get you up here, Bev, and see how that baby’s doing.”
He spreads the ice-cold jelly over my stomach and roams around with the wand until we hear the heartbeat. It’s loud and fast, a steady hip-hop rhythm that fills the room. At the first appointment, back when I still fit into regular jeans, he said, “Just think: that same heart will beat for the rest of your baby’s life.” I wonder how many times he’s said that in that same calm, confident way.
He leaves the wand there forever this time, and we’re surrounded by the thumpa-thumpa-thumpa-thump, a tiny rave for three, until finally he wipes the goo off and starts to poke around.
Helen wipes her eyes as he starts pressing around my groin. His fingers are bony and cold. “How’s the pain?”
He always asks this like he’s a waiter asking me about my dinner—How’s the steak, miss? “It comes and goes,” I say, “but if labor is worse than the shooting needles in my ass, you’re going to have to put me out.”
He makes a weird hiccup that I think is supposed to be a laugh. “Well, the baby’s still breech. The pain is coming from his feet around your pelvis and sciatic. We may very well be scheduling a C-section if he doesn’t start moving.”
He takes my blood pressure. Helen is looking a little dazed, but she smiles at me like we’re sharing a secret. I know, her smile seems to say. He’s a dink.
Dr. Calm and Confident makes a cartoon worry face, eyebrows stitched, mouth turned way down. “Your blood pressure is up.”
He pumps the cuff up again until it feels like my elbow is choking. He keeps frowning. “We’d really like to get you to at least thirty-six weeks, Bev. That’s our goal. But we’re going to have to get those numbers down. We’re probably looking at bed rest.”
I wonder what “we” he’s talking about. Helen folds her hands together in her lap and nods as if taking mental notes. He keeps talking, but I don’t hear much because I’m looking at Helen’s fingers. They’re thin and long, with short-clipped nails and perfect cuticles. I remember Jill always used red or burgundy when she gave me a manicure. “We have fat knuckles,” she said, “so we need bold colors as an offset.”
Back in the hybrid, Helen waits until we’re out of the parkade to debrief. I know exactly what she’s going to say.
“Bev, you know we’re here to help any way we can. You just have to tell us what we can do to help you through this.”
I roll down the window and stare out like I’m embarrassed just to be having this conversation. “I’m okay.”
“Please, Bev,” Helen says. “You need to let us know if you need help.”
I sigh. People always want to look after me. Even though Ray ignored her when Jill came to visit, even though Lara wished she would go away, Jill still wanted to look after me. When I was a snotty little kid, she was always making me banana-and-sugar sandwiches, straightening my hair, buying me crap from the dollar store. Then later, she’d send me clothes, expensive clothes, even though she didn’t know what size I was anymore. “My boyfriend, Mannie,” I say. “He quit his job.”
Helen brightens up like I just handed her a bouquet of roses. “Well, can we help with the groceries? I could go shopping, drop something by.”
She doesn’t give me a chance to answer. “But that’s presumptuous, isn’t it? I don’t know what you’d like.” She pulls four twenties out of her purse. “Your boyfriend— what’s his name?”
Denise has made it clear that Will and Helen are to cover legal costs but provide no “gifts” of any kind. “Mannie,” I say.
“Mannie. Will he go shopping for you?”
“Of course,” I say.
Upstairs, I turn on the light and see him still flat on his stomach in bed. I throw the money at him, and it floats down onto the mess of covers like dead leaves.
“Go buy some food,” I say. “I’m supposed to rest.”
He shields his eyes like I’m the sun. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, “I’m super. That’s why the doctor says I have to spend the next two months in bed.”
He throws off the covers, sends the money flying, starts fishing for some underwear under the bed. “Since when?”
“Since now,” I say.
He stands up, naked and still wobbly from sleep. He smells like armpits and weed. I let him take my hand, sit me on the bed, pull me against his smooth, hard chest, and the whole time I’m thinking, If he weren’t such a pussy, he would’ve kicked me out long ago.
That night I dream about Faye and my sister Jill again. Jill is giving Faye reddish highlights just like Helen’s. When Jill takes the towel off, Faye looks ridiculous, a tiger with orange and black stripes. Lara walks in and starts laughing, a mean, stupid laugh. I wake up sweating and remember something I didn’t even know I’d forgotten.
It’s the Saturday morning Lara found out that Ray was getting it on with his napkin supplier. The cutlery drawer is open, and she’s throwing forks at him. Faye and I make a beeline out of there before she gets to the butter knives—or worse. We try to ignore them by playing hairdresser and get carried away. Faye goes home with the worst bowl cut in history, and the next day, her mom rings the doorbell before Ray and Lara are out of bed. I’m on the floor behind the love seat, watching TV, hidden from sight. She pretends she doesn’t notice that Lara is in her bathrobe, tells her Faye won’t be coming over to the house again. Lara asks why and Faye’s mom says, “You better ask Bev that.” Lara says she will, but she doesn’t.
There are no more dreams after that, and the days start to blur together. Mannie brings me street-vendor-style pretzels, chocolate pudding packs, fruit punch, whatever I ask for. He moves the TV into our room and I watch shows about midget families and bitchy chefs. The Little Alien has its regular exercise routine: punching, kicking, elbowing, poking, but no somersaults. When it’s worn out, I pass out like I’m the one in training.
Every few days, the public health nurse appears like a nasty fairy godmother, chokes my arm with the blood-pressure cuff, frowns, tells me to stay put. Sometimes she brings little orange pills for the pain. Denise comes by with papers and tells me I need to be sure about what I’m signing. She says Mannie scrawled his signature without looking at her or the fine print, and she takes this as a sign that he’s a disinterested prick.
It turns out I have up to ten days after the birth of the Little Alien to change my mind. I could tell Will and Helen that the groceries were appreciated, but they’ll have to pursue their hopes and dreams elsewhere. I pretend to read every word carefully, then tell Denise I’m of sound mind and send her away.
She keeps coming back, though, with questions and files and legal dockets. Would you allow Will and Helen in the delivery room? Whatever. Would you like to send birthday presents? No. Would you like annual pictures? No. Have you notified the father of the impending adoption? Yes. Are you sure you don’t want him as part of the process? Yes.
I just want everyone to leave me alone with my wretchedness, like Lara when her weight had ballooned and she’d spend weeks in her room, blinds closed, mourning her former slim self. When I lived on the coast, whales would beach themselves all the time, and there’d always be the same cadre of do-gooders who would wring their hands and try to save the thing. I lost my virginity to a guy who put on headphones and listened to their calls in his spare time, and I swear he would’ve had sex with one if he could. I start to think that Mr. Creepy Whale Guy would regret having dumped me now, because as the days go by, I become more and more like one of those poor, dumb piles of blubber, waiting for something or someone to put me out of my misery.
At some point, Faye texts me. What’s up with Will and Helen? R U OK?
I don’t feel like dealing with Faye or anyone else. It’s enough with the Little Alien weighing on me, craving starch and fat, dancing around on my nerves until I have to scream bloody murder. Even Mannie starts to stay away, afraid I’ll scratch his face off with my ragged nails if he brings the wrong brand of juice.
Then one day, the nasty nurse chokes my arm, frowns, makes a call and the gang is suddenly all there, surrounding me. Denise. Helen. Will. Dr. Kohut.
“Your blood pressure still isn’t cooperating,” says the good doctor, like he’s ready to fail my arteries in preschool. “You did a good job, Bev. Nearly thirty-five weeks. But there’s an ambulance waiting, okay, Bev? We’re going to go check things out.”
I purposely did not think about this day, but I know this: This is not the way I would’ve imagined it if I’d imagined it.
Helen reaches over and takes my hand. “Should we call someone? Would you like us to call Faye?”
Faye? I realize how strange it must seem to them that I have no one.
“Right,” I say. “Yeah. I’ll text Faye.”
The hospital is just as dumpy as when I went for the ultrasound and some sniffer was puking near the front entrance. This time, the sliding doors to the triage unit are stuck shut and we have to take a detour.
I let Will and Helen hold my elbows like I might faint at any moment, because really, I’m having trouble focusing. Because baby brain is a scientific fact. Because I am not ready for this, not ready to let this wave take me, not yet.
“We need you to tell us what you’d prefer,” Helen says. “We can stay with you the whole time, or we can stay close by, in the waiting room. Or you can send us home and call us later.”
That’s too many choices, I want to say. One of Ray’s biggest ventures went belly-up because they tried to be everything to everyone. The menu was seven pages long, two of them listing nothing but mixed drinks.
“Whatever,” I say. “Stay, go. I don’t care.”
For the first time in my life, I’m happy to follow orders. I slip into a whale-blue gown, and a grumpy nurse with happy faces all over her uniform attaches little electrodes to the bump. Helen sits beside me, trying to look comfortable in the shit chair, and Will crouches beside her like a chimp. They look like they could be my parents, and I wonder if they know this or if they’re both too busy watching the little needle scratching out each heartbeat.
I have no idea how much time passes before Will gets up, his legs half-asleep, before he soldiers on, wobblykneed, helping me as best he can into a wheelchair, pretending not to notice my gown gaping, wheeling me down the hall, slow and steady, his loafers softly squeaking as we go. Helen’s hand is on my shoulder, as if I might escape. I look down at my slippers. They are so huge, I’d have to flop away, no longer a whale but an enormously pregnant blue penguin.
I am on the operating table, and someone, a nurse maybe, is telling me about the needle that will numb my bottom half, and I feel like laughing, because I have always been good with needles. I know when the hurt will begin and when it will end, and it suddenly hits me that there will be no labor pains, no hyperventilating, no pushing and sweating. No wonder all the celebrities do it like this.
I lie back, let the numbness take hold. For the first time in months, my back does not hurt. Will and Helen are somewhere, I don’t know where. I can hear them murmuring to each other, like lovebirds in class. The light is bright, and I close my eyes. In my mind, I see Will’s squeaky loafers, Helen’s deep-red patent-leather ankle boots, my stupid hospital slippers. That’s what I see at a time like this—shoes.
I keep my eyes closed. After Jill’s overdose, they ran a full-body shot, some year-old magazine cover. She was wearing a belted wool coat and giant fur hat and strappy silver heels. “That photo is ridiculous,” Lara had said. “She deserved better.”
Ray flew Jill’s body home and had her funeral at the St. Boniface basilica, even though he’s probably the worst Catholic in all of history. The impressive old church had burned down years earlier, leaving nothing of the original building but a massive stone edifice. They had rebuilt the new structure low and modern but left the edifice towering in front. As we followed the coffin out, Lara had pointed up at the stone. “See that big circle up there? There used to be a stained-glass rose window set inside. Christ, it must’ve been fabulous.”
I can feel the fall wind biting, I can see the big, round, fabulous hole framing nothing but cold blue sky.
Then there is tugging, lots of tugging, but no pain. Somewhere, someone is saying things calmly and confidently, but they’re almost completely drowned out by something quieter—someone sniffling, probably Helen. The harder the tugging, the harder I squeeze my eyes, until there is a huge sucking release, and I panic. I see it held up, gooey and mauve. It is not red, not purple, but mauve. It isn’t crying. It looks dead, but it can’t be because it is peeing, a wee arc coming from a wee mauve penis. I shut my eyes tight again.
Someone squeezes my shoulder. “You did fantastic, Bev.”
It’s Helen. At first, I think she smells awful, but then I realize it must be the whole room that stinks, from a flood of fluids—blood, pee, snot, other things I don’t want to talk about.
“We’ve got ourselves a boy, Bev. You did it. You did it.”
It’s Will. He’s the one who was sniffling.
Helen strokes my cheek. “He’s tiny, but so far, so good. They’ll be taking him to intensive care to be safe.”
“I’m tired,” I say.
“Of course,” she says. “You rest, sweetie. You stay still. They’re going to stitch you up now.”
Only Lara has ever called me “sweetie,” and I always hated it. But somehow it’s okay coming from Helen, maybe because she doesn’t say it like she wants something. She already has what she wants.
“You’re almost done,” Will says. “You shout if you need anything, okay?”
If they think I’m going to open my eyes, they are mistaken.
“You guys, go,” I say. “Please. I’m okay.”
Will’s shoes squish away as I’m tugged and stitched, and I don’t even know I’ve been asleep until Helen is brushing my cheek again.
“Bev. He’s still here, just for a moment. Do you want to see him?”
I can hear snuffling, like the inbred cat who lived next door to us in Vancouver. Its nose was so pushed in, you could open a can of tuna and it wouldn’t smell a thing.
I shake my head.
There is a long pause. Helen is probably wondering if she should ask again.
“Okay,” she says. “You rest. You rest, sweetie.”
When I wake up, a nurse is wheeling a tray to my bed. She has pink bunny rabbits on her uniform, but she is more of a gorilla. Her mustache makes Denise’s look like peach fuzz.
“Dinnertime,” she says, all friendly. “You must be hungry, no?”
It smells like gravy and Jell-O, and I realize I’m hungry enough to eat my own arm. I sit up a little, and the pain rips through me like someone with a voodoo doll has it in for me.
“Easy,” Gorilla says. “We’ll do this slow. Okay, sweetie? You’ve got stitches there, so we need to go slow.”
She uncovers a hot beef sandwich and a salad of iceberg lettuce and cucumbers. She scoops dressing out of the little packet with a fork. She opens my milk and sticks the straw in. She does everything but start chewing my food for me—the gorilla with a heart of gold.
I try the beef, but my tongue isn’t nearly as interested as my stomach was. The meat tastes bland and chewy. The lettuce is a little brown around the edges, and the cucumber is not even peeled. I take a bite of a tea biscuit, which is the exact same shape as a hockey puck.
I take a sip of milk and give the Gorilla the thumbs-up. Why do I care whether she thinks I like her shitty food?
She turns to go and I almost ask her to hold on, to stay for just another minute. But Faye appears in the doorway, holding up her palm like an Indian in a movie saying, “How.”
She’s wearing the same jeans she always wears, but her jacket is new, a red spring pea coat that makes her hair look blacker than black. She comes to the foot of the bed, then stops as if I might be contagious. “How are you?”
I poke at the salad, looking for something edible. “Sore.”
“I saw him for a sec through the door,” she says. “They called him Olivier.”
So much for small talk. I take another sip of milk and nod.
“You were sleeping,” she says. She keeps her hands in her pockets. They’re sewn on an angle and have yellow trim. “He’s in intensive care. Helen says he’s five pounds, but he’s breathing on his own. His lungs are good.”
I shove some beef into my mouth and chew, nodding the whole time.
“Have you?” she asks.
I swallow. “Have I what?”
“Have you seen him?”
I start drinking again as if dying of thirst. I shake my head.
I can tell Faye is picking her fingers in her pockets. “Will you?” she says.
I wipe my face with a napkin. “I think it’s best if I don’t.”
Faye nods, too long, like she’s already thinking of something else. “Why did you ask me to come?”
I straighten out the tin foil and cover up the sad excuse for beef. Let us pray for this dead, tasteless cow. “I don’t know. Everyone else had bailed.”
She takes an elastic out of her pocket and pulls her hair back into a ponytail. It makes her look about ten years old. “I had an exam,” she says. “That’s why it took so long.”
I lean back and remember the voodoo again. Maybe Mannie is going after my guts now that his precious son is safe and sound.
“You okay?” Faye asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s just the stitches.”
Her eyebrows make a little upside down V. She looks like a concerned ten-year-old. “I have another one tomorrow,” she says. “I haven’t even looked at my notes.”
This makes me laugh, which hurts like a bugger. “Good little Faye. You should go study.”
She looks slightly pissed off at this, but I start to shoo her away.
“Go,” I say. “Go. I don’t want you to fail because of me.”
“Let me know if you need anything,” she says.
I can’t tell if she’s being polite or if she really gives a shit. Maybe she doesn’t know either.
“You bet,” I say. “Go study. Give ’em hell.”
After she’s gone, the orderly comes in for the tray and I fake sleep. I’m tired of talking, of trying to stay one step ahead. The last thing I need is Helen hovering, asking me what I want.
With the tray gone, with nothing but me and the whale-blue gown, I notice my stomach for the first time. Just like that, I am no longer hard and round, but bloated and flabby. Just like that, I am alone. And it’s strange, but it’s like my hands feel lost without the bump. After all those weeks in bed, I got used to resting them there on my portable TV table. I got used to feeling the punches against my palms letting me know that it was still alive, asking for nothing but some sugary O’s.
I poke at my layer of flab even though it hurts—nothing but blubber. For a minute, I think of picking up the phone and calling Lara, but I decide it’s not worth it. She would only blab on about the kid being an Aries or a Gemini or whatever the hell sign the middle of May is, and I would hate myself for being such a suck.
Lara went through a phase when she thought every single dream she had must mean something important. I was eleven, held hostage because Ray was going through bankruptcy and not up for even a visit, and even then, I knew she was blowing smoke. Because I’m not stupid. I don’t believe in all that New Age shit, don’t believe in anything except my instincts.
Thirty-five weeks doesn’t seem like a long time, but it is. There were months of the Little Alien tossing around my cookies, then more months of him bearing down on my every move, of jabs that stole my sleep and kickstarted my dreams, that reminded me he was still there, that he still needed me.
Then just like that, he is gone and I’m light as air again, a helium balloon that some kid lost at a birthday party. I know this feeling well, which is good, because my instincts will know exactly what to do.
Denise will come. She will be motherly or businesslike, a buddy or a fellow screw-up, depending on her mood. I will not renege on my contract. I will ask not to see Helen and Will again. Because, unlike Mannie, I am not stupid. I will let the Little Alien take off to its home planet, that gingerbread house in Wildwood where flowers poke up through the snow and people call their kid Olivier without sounding like assholes. I will remember that even though school was a joke, I’ve learned a few things.
I will hail a cab, and it won’t matter as much that it smells like bad aftershave and stinky feet, because I am alone again.
Ray will pay the cabbie and say, Look who the cat dragged in.
He will talk a hard line, tell me I have to start in the kitchen, work my way up, just like he did. But he will let me waitress, give me the best tables even though it pisses off his staff, start grooming me because everyone else has bailed and I’m all he has.
I can already see him sitting there in his office, tilting back in the leather chair that looks like a first-class plane seat. He’ll look me over, take note of the flab around the belly.
So, it’s my girl, he’ll say. You look pretty good. Are you good?
He’ll say it loud and cheery, in a way that makes it seem like he cares.