EVE MOVED IN the following afternoon. From what she brought with her, I concluded Willy was probably right about her not being all that well fixed financially. She had three cartons of clothing, four garment bags, two suitcases, a carton of books, and a box of her personal toiletries. Everything fit easily in the back of her SUV. It took us less than five minutes to carry it all into the casita, which wasn’t big enough to take much more anyway.
She couldn’t stop thanking us for our generosity, and made promise after promise to be a loyal, efficient employee.
“And you know,” she added after she was settled in, “I don’t mind helping out with the baby.”
“Pardon?” I said.
“For a while I took care of my brother’s baby.”
“Your brother’s baby?” I looked at Willy. Something told me she knew all this. “Why couldn’t his wife take care of the baby?”
“She died in childbirth. It’s so unusual these days, I know,” Eve said quickly.
“Dr. Aaron wasn’t her doctor, was she?” I asked.
“Oh no. My brother and his wife lived in New York. Not in the city. A small town upstate.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Two years ago,” she said. “It was very, very sad.”
Something else occurred to me.
“Was your sister-in-law inseminated?”
She looked at Willy. The expressions on their faces provided the answer.
“She was? By Genitor?”
“No, it was a company on the East coast, but…”
“Who is helping your brother now?” I asked.
“Oh, he remarried. I hung around for a while, but I didn’t want to get in the way and I had to get back to my own work and career. That was when I came out to California.”
I nodded. Willy was just staring at me, making me feel bad for asking so many personal questions. I didn’t want to know anymore anyway.
“Okay,” I said. “If there is anything else you need, let me or Willy know.”
“I’m fine. Thanks again, you two,” she said. “I’m heading over to the plant. I want to get as familiar with everything as quickly as possible.”
“Good idea,” I said. “I’ll be there soon myself. I have some work to complete on the books.”
I walked out and returned to the main house, leaving her and Willy behind. The casita was just off to the right of the pool. We had intended to use it as a guest house, but had not yet invited anyone.
Once again, I found myself feeling strange, even trembling a little inside, and not knowing why exactly. I poured myself a glass of energy water and stood in the kitchen leaning against the counter and thinking.
“Well, how about that?” Willy asked, entering and going to the refrigerator. “We might have a built-in babysitter, too.”
“I’m beginning to think we did win the lottery.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Willy said, pouring herself a glass of orange juice. “What’s that expression? Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth?”
“You knew none of this? You didn’t know her sister-in-law went through an insemination process and died in childbirth?”
“How would I know any of that? I met her when you did and spent the same time with her you did.”
“Dr. Matthews didn’t mention it to you?” I asked suspiciously. “She didn’t describe Eve’s experience taking care of an infant?”
I wondered if she was already thinking of ways for us to pawn off our child with some nanny.
“No. Why should she? How could she volunteer her cousin for anything like that anyway?”
I was silent.
“Kate?”
“Just curious. I never won anything in my life, especially not a lottery.”
Willy laughed.
“Sometimes,” she said, stepping closer, “you’re so like a child, a beautiful child.” She touched my cheek and then kissed me softly. “Good things are coming our way. Get used to it,” she whispered.
“Okay,” I said, wishing I had her confidence in our destiny.
“I have to pick up some things at the market. I’ll meet you at the plant,” she said.
“Right.”
She left and I looked at the telephone. There was a call I had been putting off, but suddenly, I wanted to hear my mother’s voice even if that voice would, I know, be full of shock and surprise. It would also be comforting just to hear her.
“You and Willy are having a child?” she repeated as would someone who had to confirm she was hearing correctly after I had told her.
“Yes, Mom.”
She was silent.
“You’re adopting a child?”
“No, Mom. I’m having a baby. We’re having a baby.”
I could envision the way her face moved: her lips rotated counterclockwise, her eyes went up and then down, and then she pulled her mouth back and deepened all the wrinkles around them and into her chin. My father wasn’t home or else she would be repeating it all for him. For some reason they never liked to pick up two phones so they could listen in and talk simultaneously. The concept of a conference call was beyond them. Even though they were not terribly old people, they shook their heads at every technological advancement as if it were part of some black magic. Unlike most of their senior citizen friends who circulated jokes on e-mails, often sending the same ones twice, they did not have a computer and still thought of the Internet the way some primitive African tribe thought of the telephone or electricity.
“And how are you having this baby? Willy didn’t have some sort of sex change, did she?”
“No, Mom,” I said, finally feeling light enough to laugh. “I’m undergoing home insemination.”
“It’s an injection?”
“Sort of,” I said.
“Into…you know where?”
“That’s it, Mom. In a nutshell.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No, of course not. It’s not guaranteed to work the first time and maybe not the second or even the third, but I’m starting in a few days. Willy and I have discussed it and decided we’d like to have a child, be more of a family.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to tell people,” she said. It was more of one of her thoughts she hadn’t kept contained.
“You’ll tell them you have another grandchild and it will be the truth.”
“I don’t know anything about this insemination.”
“I’m learning about it myself as I go along,” I said. “It’s not important for you to learn, Mom. I just didn’t want you to be surprised if I called you next month and told you I was pregnant.”
“I would have been surprised. That’s for sure.”
“That’s why I’m calling you and Dad now.”
“I don’t know how to explain it to him.”
“Just tell it to him the way I told it to you. If he wants to call me later, tell him to call. I’ll be home after work.”
“Home insemination. I’m living too long,” she said. It was one of her favorite expressions because it drew sympathy from whomever heard it. “This world has gone nuts.”
“Maybe, but it’s the only one we have at the moment. I’ll keep you up on things,” I added. “I have to go now.”
“Yes, keep me up,” she said. She didn’t say goodbye. She just hung up and, I was sure, stood there shaking her head to see if what she had just heard would fall out of an ear.
I couldn’t help wondering how my brother would react to the news. I knew my mother would be on the phone with him within the hour. It would do nothing to bring us back together. In fact, it might even drive us further apart, if that were possible. Maybe I was desperate to develop a new family to replace that part of my own I had lost.
I left for work.
There was a great deal of excitement at the plant when I returned. The entire crew was around Willy, jabbering away, and from the laughter and smiles, I knew it was something very good.
“Don’t tell me someone really did win the lottery,” I said soon after I entered.
“We did win a lottery,” Willy replied. “We were just informed that we got the White Party at the convention center. They’re anticipating 35,000 people.”
“Are you serious?”
“She is,” Eve said. “What a way to start a new job!”
Everyone laughed.
“How did we win that? I wasn’t aware you even bid on it,” I said.
“I didn’t.”
“Didn’t? Then…”
“You know that Glen Isler has been doing that party for the last five years.”
“Right. So?”
“He had a heart attack yesterday while he was driving and crashed into an oncoming beer delivery truck. He was the heart and soul of his company. They’re in total disarray.”
“How horrid!”
“Someone’s bad luck is someone else’s good luck, Kate. It’s how the world works.”
“But can we do it?”
“We will even if we can’t,” Willy said.
“I forgot when the White Party is.”
“Six weeks. Plenty of time to work up a menu and get what we need to get done. And, it will keep your mind off you know what.”
She followed me into the office.
“A job like this is quite a bonus for the year, Kate.”
“I know. I just can’t help wishing we got it a different way. What a terrible way for Isler to go!”
“You want me to turn it down?”
“No, no. Of course not, but thirty-five thousand people?”
“And climbing. We’ve got a lot of planning to do.”
“How can we do it? Even contemplate doing it?”
“We will work it out. There are many ways. Eve worked a few big venues and has some good suggestions. I’ve already made some calls for temporary servers, and Eve and I are looking into the assembly line, what needs to be upgraded, etc. From her previous employment, Eve has some good connections concerning machinery. We’ll have a meeting later,” she said, and went out to talk equipment and process with Eve and the others.
I watched them through the window and saw how their excitement lit their faces and animated them. Eve, although new to our plant and to these people, appeared to be right in the thick of it. She wasn’t shy, but that was probably because she knew what she was doing and saying, I thought. That’s good. It would give the others confidence. We were generous with our employees and they all knew that with such a big job would come well-earned bonuses. That would bring extra tender loving care to all we produced.
They moved like one animal already, going from stoves to tables to dishware. Willy and Eve were holding court, their excitement so vivid that I thought the machinery would start to dance around them. I couldn’t help but smile. I loved her for her energy and the power with which she seemed able to address anything and anyone in our lives.
All this good fortune didn’t overwhelm me, however. I certainly hadn’t come up from a difficult and misfortunate background. My family had always been well-off. My father had been a very successful business attorney and through his work had invested in a number of projects that made him wealthy quickly. My brother followed in his footsteps and was moving even faster up the economic ladder. My frustrations and disappointments were minor in contrast with most people’s. There wasn’t anything I wanted that we couldn’t afford.
But when you join your life with someone else, it no longer mattered how fortunate you had been or even who you were. You were now a different person, part of a combination that created a new you. The old expression been there, done that didn’t apply. Everything was new because everything was now done as a couple. Willy’s pleasures and disappointments were mine as well. It was truly like being reborn.
Preparing for this huge undertaking did take our mind off the impending home insemination. Our days and nights were one continuous planning session. Willy and Eve were everywhere acquiring people, machinery, serving equipment. They made frequent trips to the convention center to plan out our logistics and they met with the White party committee twice within the week to seek some direction and get approval for all the suggested hors d’oeuvres and entrees, as well as drinks, for we learned they had also given us the bar concession. This was huge in terms of potential profits.
“If I were really a superstitious person,” I told Willy, “I would conclude we’re getting all this good luck because we decided we would have the baby, be bigger and better together, and give of ourselves.”
“Okay,” she replied smiling. “I’ll sign on to that theory.”
It was practically the only time we even mentioned the baby during the week. Just about every night, she was at the plant until after I had given up waiting and had gone to bed. By the time she arrived, she was exhausted and I didn’t want to bother her with talk or even making love. She was the first up, too, and out of the house before I had even finished dressing.
The work for me increased considerably as well. All the ordering and money we were committing made me nervous, but Willy continually came into the office to reassure me we were going to be fine.
“It’s all going smoothly,” she said. “We’re a hit, and they just love Eve. Every time there’s a small or even a big glitch, she seems to have the answer based on previous experience.”
“When did she have all this experience?” I asked. “She was tied up caring for her brother’s baby so long she couldn’t have worked that many years before she came here.”
“It wasn’t the length of the time; it was the quality of the jobs, the experiences, Kate. I don’t care how long she’s been at it. She’s coming up with solutions almost as fast as the problems arise. She’s something to behold.”
I nodded and stopped questioning about her. I didn’t want Willy to see just how jealous I was. I knew how much she admired hands-on, take-control people, people with a strong sense of themselves, people with confidence and even a bit of arrogance when it was necessary. It made me wonder sometimes if she didn’t see me as she would some kind of pet, the dependent one she needed around her to reinforce her own sense of control and power over destiny.
Finally, the day before the home insemination, Dr. Matthews called and my getting pregnant moved back to the forefront of our thinking.
“How are you?” she asked immediately. She called me at home just after I had arrived from work and was about to prepare some dinner for Willy, Eve, and myself. Despite Eve’s culinary skills, I didn’t shy away from making the things Willy and I loved and that she loved me to make for her. I was not going to be intimidated, and didn’t care whether she was just being gracious to me or not when she complimented my food.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Excited and nervous.”
“Yes, I’m sure. I heard how busy you two have become. That’s good as long as you take care of yourself,” she said adding the warning. “Your body has to be receptive to what we’re about to do.” She laughed. “I like to compare my prospective mothers to well-fertilized and nurtured fields, prime for planting the seeds.”
“I understand,” I said.
“Is our plan for the insemination to occur at 8 P.M. still okay?”
“It’s okay with me,” I said. “I’ll tell Willy when she gets here. I’m expecting her any moment with Dr. Aaron’s receptionist’s sister, who I understand is your cousin?”
“Oh, yes, Eve Stoner. I was told she was staying with you.”
“Not with us exactly. She’s living in our casita for a while.”
“I met her only a few times, but when I recalled what she did for a living, I thought she might be of some help to you and Willy in your business. She seemed to be a very nice young lady.”
“She told us about her brother’s wife dying in childbirth.”
“A horrible thing. Yes, I know, but I don’t know much more about her brother. My extended family is just that, extended. I’m afraid I’ve been too dedicated to my work and have lost touch with many of my relatives. Isn’t that true for you?”
“Yes, but not for the same reasons.”
She laughed.
“Well, a baby has a way of bringing people together.”
“That’s not my purpose, but I suppose it’s not something I would reject.”
“Exactly. Anyway, it appears then that Eve is working out for you at a perfect time, is she not?”
“She is,” I said, and with some reluctance added, “She’s terrific.”
“I’m glad. Like anyone else, I’m always shy about making recommendations. If they don’t work out, people blame you and not the person you recommended.”
“I can’t see her not working out,” I admitted. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Good. It’s wise to reduce your burdens during this period of time.”
“Apparently, she can help afterward as well,” I said. “She’s even had experience caring for a newborn, but I suppose you knew about that?”
“Oh, yes, that’s right. I had forgotten she was there for her brother. Well, considering how busy you two are, it’s nice to have some additional options.”
“Yes,” I said. I heard Willy and Eve enter the house. “Willy’s back. I’ll remind her of the time.”
“If it’s all right, I’ll be there at seven. There’s preparation.”
“Sure. Why don’t you come for dinner?” I asked as Willy entered the kitchen. She stopped and waited, a puzzled smile on her face. Eve was right beside her.
“Oh, I don’t…”
“It’s not problem. As you know, I have an assistant cook at home, too,” I said, eyeing Eve. “See you at seven.”
“At seven,” she said and I hung up.
“Dr. Matthews?” Willy asked, remembering.
“Herself. Tomorrow at eight. D-day. She’ll be here at seven for preparations so I invited her to dinner.”
“Oh, this is so exciting,” Eve said.
“It could be,” Willy said, winking at me.
At dinner the conversation centered entirely around the White party at the convention center. I tried to be interested, to ask questions and listen, but my mind continually wandered. Every once in a while, Willy glanced at me and smiled.
“Let’s let our little mother relax,” she said after we had eaten. “Eve and I will take care of the cleanup. You go outside and rest, Kate.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“And that’s how we want you to be tomorrow night, too. Go on before we shove you out,” she said.
“I’m not going to be one of those pampered pregnant women,” I insisted.
They both laughed.
“I’m not!”
“Fine. You’re not. For now, pamper and humor me. Go relax,” Willy said. Eve started to clear the table.
I stood there a few moments and then I turned and went out to the lounge at the pool. The moon was almost full and was sliding toward the west. It was just over the house now, casting the mountains in an amber tint and capturing the incredible turns, twists, and dives of bats in and around the wash, a huge canal built by the army engineers to prevent flash flooding. A long thin wisp of clouds spread wider as the wind carried it east, thinning out the ghostlike blanket even more. Stars flickered and threatened to go out like dying embers. They brought to mind dozens of candle wicks lit but endangered in a breeze.
I could hear the music and Eve and Willy’s laughter behind me. Everything seemed to be making me melancholy tonight, sad and alone. I wanted Willy out here with me, holding my hand or cuddled up beside me, speaking softly, watching the night perform. I wanted to fall asleep in her arms, to feel comforted and safe, unafraid of our decision, my decision.
Suddenly, I resented our good financial fortune. Why couldn’t the big job and the bonuses come afterward? I didn’t want to be distracted. I didn’t want to put anything in the back of my mind. I didn’t want to think of it as something to fear or make me nervous. It bothered me that it would be considered in that light.
We should be talking about it all night. It should have been the main topic at dinner.
I heard another peal of laughter and then a door close. Moments later, there were footsteps and I relaxed. Finally, I thought, Willy was coming out to me.
But it wasn’t Willy. It was Eve. She stopped at my side.
“What a beautiful night,” she said.
“Yes, it is.”
“You’re not worrying about tomorrow, are you?”
“No, why should I be?”
“Exactly,” she said.
“What do you know about it?” I asked, a little more petulantly than I intended.
“Oh, not really very much, but what could it be? There’s no pain involved, I’m sure. Well, I didn’t realize how tired I was,” she added. “It just hit me that we’ve been going ever since six this morning and nonstop, too.”
“Hmm,” I said, not showing any interest or sympathy.
“I’m going to sleep. Have a good night,” she added, and walked toward the casita.
Just as the wispy blanket of clouds touched the face of the moon, Eve crossed to the opposite side of the pool. She was silhouetted in the filtered glow.
I sat up quickly.
“What’s wrong?” I heard Willy ask. I hadn’t heard her come up behind me.
I swallowed hard and shook my head.
I wouldn’t dare say it.
No telling how she would react to such a thought.
How could I say it?
How could I tell her Eve reminded me of the figure sitting beside Dr. Matthews in her car that first night?