THE DREAM DREW ME up from the depths of a sleep so deep I thought I had been in a coma.
My stomach felt as sore as the stomach of a woman who had just suffered severe labor contractions.
My feet actually were pulled in, my knees up, my legs spread.
“What the hell are you doing?” Willy asked me.
She looked back at me over her shoulder, her body on pause, waiting for my answer. She wore an expression of confusion and from the way she gripped the blanket and from the way her body was poised, I thought she might just jump out of the bed to get away from me. Her light-brown untrimmed eyebrows arched, the right side just a little higher as usual. Strands of her recently cut hair curled at the base of her skull.
Morning sunlight filtered through the curtains threw a sheet of gauze over our king-size four-poster oak bed and the café au lait walls of our bedroom. The ceiling fan set on low looked like it was struggling to push the air. I had kicked the blanket away from myself, and a small part of my portion bundled about the size of a baby beside me.
My dream was so vivid, I was still too stunned to speak. I didn’t move, didn’t lower my legs, didn’t lift my arms. Because of the way I was holding my head, I felt my neck muscles straining, the dull ache seeping into my shoulders.
“Huh?” Willy followed, starting to turn now.
“A dream,” I said.
“What the hell kind of dream is this?” she asked, nodding at my knees, which were still up, and my legs, which were still spread.
“I dreamed I gave birth. It was the baby’s cry that woke me,” I said.
She slapped my right leg sharply and I dropped both my legs to the bed.
“You’re driving me crazy,” she said, and turned over again, tightly wrapping the blanket around herself.
“I’m getting up,” I told her.
She grunted a “Whatever.”
I went to the bathroom and stood by the cream and brown granite counter covered with my beauty aids and stared at myself in the large oval mirror. My face looked sunburned, red blotches over my cheeks and my forehead. There were even some on my neck. I was cold from sweating. I pulled my nightshirt over my head, surprised at how damp it was from my perspiration. I dropped it into the hamper and then stepped into the shower stall.
The warm water streamed between my breasts, cascading down over my slightly bulging belly and then along the insides of my thighs. It felt so much like blood that I gazed at the drain expecting to see the red stained water spiraling down through the sewer pipes and into oblivion.
Leaning up into the flow of the shower, I enjoyed the pummeling over my face and my chest. My breasts ached. A quick review of dates told me it was too soon for a period, and I had always been clockwork regular. Willy was the erratic one. Her whole life, even her bodily functions, was characterized more by spontaneity than was mine. We were not two peas in a pod, but it was precisely the differences between us that brought us together. I believed we each harbored a secret desire to be more like the other, but neither of us would admit to it. There were times when anyone listening to us speak about each other would think we detested each other, not loved each other.
When I came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a large terry cloth towel with a smaller towel twisted around my hair like a Sikh turban, I found Willy sitting up in bed, her hands behind her head, leaning against the headboard, waiting. The blanket had fallen to her waist. Her perky firm breasts called to me the way they did most mornings. Her nipples were darker, slightly larger than mine, and seemingly always erect.
She dropped the corners of her mouth, drawing her full upper lip down and over her lower. The dimple in her chin deepened. Her eyes were soaking in suspicion.
“What are you going to tell me this dream means, Kate?” she asked before I could offer any explanation.
I shrugged. I didn’t have to say it; I had said it many times, more frequently over the last few months.
She looked away, took a deep breath and looked back at me.
“Everything about us, our lives, our style, our pleasures will change. It drives friends away, too. They don’t trust you anymore because you become totally different.”
“Oh, that’s silly, Willy. Why should our being a bigger family drive anyone away?”
“The whole country is twisted, hemorrhaging over questions like gay marriage, abortion, stem-cell research, and you want us to raise a child, bring a child into this…” She held her arms out and bounced them in the air as she panned our bedroom, “this mess?”
“I don’t think it’s such a mess, Willy. We make good money. We’re better equipped to raise a child than most heterosexual couples.”
“If there is anything you and I know, Kate, it’s that money doesn’t guarantee a good family life.”
“It’s one of the major things to consider. Besides, we’re more stable than most people we know, aren’t we?”
She looked away and then she lowered herself under the blanket again.
“It’s Sunday, Kate. Our day off. From everything, including obsessions,” she muttered, closed her eyes, slipped down under the cover and turned her back to me.
“Something bigger than us is telling us to do this,” I said.
“Not telling us. Telling you. You’re out of your mind. Go to the shrink your parents tried to arrange and pay for when you moved in with me.”
“Stop it, Willy.”
She was silent. We didn’t push arguments anywhere near the point of no return. One or the other would simply clam up and leave the room.
I went out to the kitchen and turned on the coffee maker. While it began perking, I stood there pouting. If I were willing to undergo a pregnancy, why wouldn’t she agree? Why shouldn’t we have something more than ourselves? It was not an admission of failure to want a child in our lives. On the contrary, it was a statement illustrating the strength of our relationship because we were willing to sacrifice and cooperate and work together for greater things. How could I make her see that?
Maybe I couldn’t.
Maybe Willy was too selfish to share anything. How could I go on living and loving someone like that?
On the other hand, I couldn’t envision living without her.
The conflict put me into a depression.
She sensed it, of course, and came out. We had ESP when it involved each other’s feelings and moods. She stood in the kitchen doorway, naked, her arms folded under her breasts, just glaring at me. Her neck muscles were taut, her jaw line distinct. Her whole body was clenched like a fist.
“What?”
“Just because you’re having such vivid dreams about it, doesn’t mean it’s right for us, Kate. It’s a decision not being made on rational grounds.”
“Who’s to say what’s rational and what’s not anymore?”
“Oh brother,” she said. She nodded at me. “You’re willing to go all the way, suffer through it, be a mother?”
“Hopefully, not alone,” I said.
“Thanks for the invitation.”
“It will make us stronger.”
She shook her head.
“You’re the one who believes in omens, in that sixth sense crap, but I’ll tell you this,” she said. “It frightens me on a primeval level.”
“Primeval? Why?”
“I don’t know why and I’ll never mention it again. Consider yourself forewarned and I’ll consider my responsibility to do that completed. Now you do what you want.”
“Do what I want? What does that mean, Willy? What are you telling me?”
“I spoke my piece and that’s all. Now go get pregnant,” she said, and returned to the bedroom.
“Go get pregnant?”
I stood there, excited and yet a little terrified.
Already like a pregnant woman, I thought the combination was wonderful.