A New Lu (27 page)

I start to push her back the way we came. “Now say to yourself between contractions, ‘I'm having a healthy, happy baby. I'm having a healthy, happy baby—'”

“Boy.”

“You know it's a boy?”

Jolie nods, but grabs my hand. “I don't think I can go through with this. I can't!”

I stop and move to stand before her. “I know. I felt the same way the first time.”

“It's not the pain.” She blinks back tears from eyes that are dark with dread. “I know millions of women deliver babies every year. It's not the pain.”

I take her face in my hands and say, with the absolute conviction of my own situation, “You're scared because you don't know what to expect. But you do know your life is not going to be quite like it was before. And you'd just as soon stay where you are awhile longer while you try to figure it all out.”

She's blinking really fast. “I wish my mother were here.”

My heart breaks on those words. “That's how it is. Once you're a mother, someone always wants you. This
is your chance to love and protect and be for your child the mom you need.”

I must sound hokey as anything but, amazingly, Jolie smiles at me. “I can see why Dad likes you.”

“He's had a lot of practice with the irrational, has he?”

There's a bit of a flurry once we return to the maternity wing. Then I'm left sitting in the waiting room while William plays doctor. I skim through piles of useful issues of
Baby, Modern Mother,
and
Child.
Then I skim through adult fare like
Gourmet
and
Architectural Digest.
After that I read whatever comes to hand. After a bottle of water and a package of peanut butter crackers, I realize my work is really done. If I wait on William I could be here until dawn. I should just take a cab to Aunt Marvelle's.

As I reach for my bag I see a young man enter the waiting room. Ordinarily I don't stare at strange young men, but he's something to look at. He's one of those sun-streaked blondes, with a darker sketch of beard that hollows out his cheeks and accentuates the jut of his jaw. His turtleneck sweater hugs a lean torso. His jeans hang on the rim of hips and cup a decent butt. Finally, he realizes I'm staring, and gives me that sort of half smile of recognition for a woman charmed.

I rise, lifted by an impulse too strong to be denied. I approach with a half smile of my own.

He digs his hands into his pockets as I near, head leaning to one side, the whimsy of self-deprecation in his expression, signaling that he's had this happen before, and often. He is about to handle an overture from a smitten woman.

“Jon?” I say in a breathy voice.

His smile widens at my use of his name. “You know me?”

“I know Jolie.” I whip back a hand and slap him as hard as I can.

As he yelps and reels away, I sail through the doors that
swish
open at my approach.

“I'm going to need ice for this,” I murmur, holding my throbbing palm as I head for one of the cabs parked out front.

41

It's a boy! A perfectly healthy six-pound, eleven-ounce boy.

“Jolie wants to name him William Cuffey Katz!” William's joy sails across wireless space into my ear. “He urinated all over the delivery nurse. Plumbing works. That's excellent!”

“I'm so glad, William. How's Jolie?”

“She was a real trouper. She surprised the doctors and nurses, all of us. I don't know what you said to her, but it worked. When the pains got rough she even refused anesthesia, in case, she said, the baby would need help after delivery. But he didn't. Can you believe it? A first-birthing time of five hours and ten minutes.”

“I remember eighteen hours and forty-seven minutes with Dallas. But, who's counting? I knew she could do it.”

“There's a few other people I need to call, and then I'm getting out of here. Is it too late to drop by?”

I look at my watch. “No, of course not. I'll be up.”

Though it's midnight, Aunt Marvelle and I celebrate
the news by toasting with cups of cocoa. Yes, hers had a dash of Baileys, for medicinal purposes.

“That young man's serious about you,” Aunt Marvelle says as we sit listening to the late September wind.

“I like him, too.”

“You more than like him, Tallulah. You need to decide, and quickly, what you are going to do about that.” She stands up. “Now I'm going to act like an old lady whose bedtime is long past due. Lock up after he leaves. If he stays, lock up, anyway.”

Aunt Marvelle is right. It's time I told my feelings to William.

And just like that my joy nosedives.

I overplayed my hand by coming out here uninvited. So what if I did a good job with Jolie? I stepped over that vague but distinct line of noncommittal friendship. Until today, I was simply William's ladyfriend. We were each the person in the other person's private life. The attachment was companionable, simple, easy.

Until today, I had not made it obvious.

I'm in love.

I wince as the weight of my cup hurts my hand.

I love William so much that I'm willing to picks fights in the Maternity waiting room in the name of somebody he loves.

It's so easy to mess up easy.

William's hug lifts me off the floor, baby and all. The kiss is the kind that in the middle of it I think I can't bear for it to end. Only, this time, there has to be retreat. For one thing, I've entered my seventh month. And even I feel funny about sex with an unmarried man under my aunt's roof. Besides, I seem to vaguely recall an earlier resolution to cool off this hot time.

William is over the moon. I sit and listen as he elaborates about the perfection of his newborn grandson,
how brave his daughter was, and how happy and relieved he is.

“The obstetrician says Will is small but well formed, and scored nine on his Apgar. He'll grow quickly. I'll bet he walks early.”

“He's only a few hours old and you're ready to buy him shoes. Can he just lie there and coo for a few days?”

William laughs. “He can to anything he wants. He's perfect, Lu. Perfect.” With him, there's no impossible expectation baggage that usually accompanies that word. This is the ten-toes, ten-fingers garden-variety kind of miracle.

“Now, about you.” He stretches his arm along the back of the sofa and smiles at me in a way that makes me want to slide into him. “I don't have the words to thank you for what you did for Jolie. You should have stayed to see Will.”

“A good fairy knows when to make an exit.”

“You made one hell of an impression on Jon, too!”

I gasp. “How do you know about that?”

“It was pretty obvious something had happened when he walked in with a handprint blazing on his face.”

I flex my still-swollen hand and feel again the thrill of my reckless act. I hope he remembers it the next time a woman smiles provocatively at him. “What did Jolie say?”

“Not a word. But you know how it looked. Then Jon started explaining how a pregnant woman in the waiting room attacked him. It was so pathetic that I was ready to put both hands around his neck and squeeze, until Jolie started to laugh. That's when it occurred to me that he'd described you. I went out to look for you. Why did you leave?”

“Righteous retribution doesn't work if the messenger hangs around.”

William wags his head. “He's going to have that mark for at least twenty-four hours.”

“Sometimes you have to communicate with people on
the level they understand best. Even so, I was tactful. If Jon were
my
son-in-law, I've have used my knee.”

“Remind me to never get on your bad side.” William reaches for me again. “Right now I want all your good sides showing.”

I find myself kissing him back, but we finally pause with mutual understanding that now is not the time for more. When I'm tucked under the protection of his arm he says, “I'll be a wonderful grandfather, don't you think?”

“I think William is the luckiest kid in the world.”

“I make a pretty good Dad, too.” His expression changes in a way that lets me know he's thinking now about me and only about me.

Antsy about that, I turn out of his arms and reach for my cocoa. “So then, how did Jon behave when he saw his son?”

“He looked stunned and stupefied, as if he didn't know Jolie was pregnant.”

“Some men can't make the leap until it's a done deal.”

“I hope you're right. There he was when I left, cuddled up with Jolie and Will as if nothing had ever happened between them.”

I arch my back, straining to relieve tension in tired muscles. “I'm glad, for all three of them.”

William grunts. “We'll see. Just before I left, I pulled him aside and told him if he planned to stay with Jolie and the baby in the hospital, then he better be prepared to take on that responsibility for good. He's a father. It's time he acted like a man.”

“And he said?”

“He said if Jolie can forgive him, I ought to.” William starts a slow rubbing of my back, low down where I need it most. “Looks like my life and my house are my own again.”

It's too good. I move a little away, as though I've had
enough of his magic massage. “I hope you'll enjoy your well-deserved solitude.”

“I don't have to be alone to be happy.” As his arms slide around my belly from behind, I feel every inch of me respond. It's not sexual, exactly. It's more intimate, as if I know I'm being touched by something fundamentally good and right. The urge to merge is more amoeba-like, cell into cell, asexual mating. That's probably bad biology, but I swear it feels as if our skins dissolve a little one into the other each time we touch.

He leans close to press his lips against my ear. “I'm thinking it's a good time for us to get a few things straight.”

“William, it's not really—”

“Lu, marry me.”

Whoa! Wait a minute! He skipped steps two, three, and four; mutual declarations of love, living together perhaps, at least one breakup and reconciliation. One of us has to be practical. But I have to leave his persuasive embrace before I can think even halfway straight. I stand and move a few feet away. “William, that's just euphoria talking.”

“Okay.” He grins at me and stands up. “Maybe I'm jumping ahead. But we know where this is going. I love you, Lu.”

“Me, too.” I can't help smiling. “I love you.” But as he advances I hold up a hand to fend him off. “But that's beside the point.”

“That is the point.” He smiles so tenderly I want to smack him. “We're good together. We've known it from that first night in May.”

“That was just sex. Very good—okay, incredible sex. And it's all been good ever since.” I wish he would stop grinning as if he'd like to prove to me again right now. “But that's just sex, William.”

“I like you even when you don't sleep with me.”

Because I can't think of a good defense for that, I begin
to pace. “You're forgetting I have a weird life. I'm doing a tell-all in a magazine. And I have Dwarves.”

“They'll back off once they see I'm in charge of the Care for Lu department.”

“What about our families? Dallas and Davin haven't completely accepted the divorce. Now there's a new family member on the way. If I announce I'm remarrying, they may just revoke my mother license.”

“They're adults. Eventually they will accept that you're entitled to a life, like any other person. After what you did for her, Jolie already thinks of you as family.”

He's so reasonable. I pace harder, hoping active leg muscles will squeeze the blood back up into my brain instead of letting it seep down into more treacherous regions. “I've been divorced less than a year. What makes you think I want to marry again?”

He spread his arms. “Maybe it's the way you look at me. Or the way you back up against me in bed in the middle of the night and then pat my thigh when you find me. Or the way you smile in your dreams.”

“How do you know I do that?”

“I watch you sometimes.” He reaches out to hold me in place. “I feel like an ass telling you that. But I don't know how to be careful around you. With you it's as if I've woken up from a bad dream that's consumed a lot of my life.”

“Maybe what you feel is just rebound.” The blood is going both to my head and loins so fast that I feel woozy. “We've both had a couple of tough years. We could simply be having a mutual gratitude affair. And then in a few months, we'll look at each other and go
yeech!”

“Never going to happen.” He touches me “that way” again, placing his finger on that spot just below my breastbone just like he did that first night. “There's nothing to keep us from being very happy together, Lu.”

Just as I'm about to say
You're absolutely right! Screw the
world!
Sweet Tum sneezes, or hiccups. And I remember the best reason of all for not giving in.

“I'm having another man's child.”

“Yes, I noticed.” He looks down at my belly and says, “I'll adopt your child.”

I wrest free of his hands. “See, that's what I mean. You don't even know what you're saying.” I fold my arms atop my bulge and say, “You've been surrounded by pregnant women for months. No wonder you think you're in love. It's a reaction to all that maternal nesting, hormonal fallout. You've got estrogen poisoning.”

He laughs. “And you just stopped making sense.”

“Aha!” I'm grabbing at straws and I don't even know why. “One of the things I like best about being divorced is that at the end of the day, I can be totally irrational without apology under my own roof.”

At last he looks a bit doubtful. “Maybe it wasn't a good idea to discuss this tonight. It's just that you came out here without me even asking to help my daughter through the most difficult day of her life. Then, slapping Jon around—” I watch him try to make sense of it all, but he just ends up smiling again. “I thought we had something that didn't need rules or schedules or logic or any of that crap that makes life miserable.”

I want to fly into his arms and sob that I love him so much it makes me stupid, and how I don't want to be irrational all alone. That I pat his thigh in the middle of the night because then I know he's solidly there, not just a wish in my head. That I need him desperately, and will probably die lonely, unloved and pathetic if he's not with me.

But I'm scared.

I know from hard experience how even with the best intentions the day-to-day slog through modern life can pervert feelings. I'm scared of becoming another mistake that we will have to live with. The new Lu is too new. She's gelatin. If I'm not careful she will melt away.

My anxiety crystallizes into one complete thought. “What if you are the one I chose just because you were there at the time?”

For a moment he looks stunned. And I know this is a thought he's not had before, but one he's too smart not to consider now that it's on the table.

But he doesn't ask. He just rubs his forehead as though he's wearier than dirt. “I guess I got carried away with the moment. I should go. You need to be in bed.” He kisses my cheek quickly. “Good night, Lu.”

I hope he didn't see me tearing up before he walked out because I'm in overflow as the door slams. Too tired and miserable to take it all to the privacy of my bed, I sit on Aunt Marvelle's sofa and sob out loud like a six-year-old.

What kind of woman throws away a declaration of love from the right man? A deranged pregnant one.

But I'm so very tired of being there, and being what other people need. I'm good at it. I'm just tired.

After a few minutes I hear footsteps, and look up to see Aunt Marvelle crossing the room to the front door.

“I'm not saying a thing about that. Not one thing. But I could.” She flips the dead bolt and turns back the way she came.