A New Lu (30 page)

“Practically everyone, since my name will be underneath.”

For a second he's speechless.

I heave belly forward onto my feet, with Andrea's unobtrusive aid. Anger requires a standing position. “If you expected me to remain like that hysterical clingy woman you met in your office back in May, you better cut your losses and run. I'm changing, and I'm going to keep on changing until I can't remember where I left my false teeth.”

“You'll get implants,” he answers. Then as if he's just remembered there are other people in the room, he turns to Curran and points. “Get out.” His gaze moves farther to Andrea. “You, too.”

We all hear footsteps and the noise of happy children on the hunt for candy and gum just before the doorbell rings.

Andrea grabs the candy bowl I filled in preparation for trick-or-treaters. “I'll just take this with us. Okay, Lu?”

“Out!” I guess William is in charge because they flee for their lives out the front door.

When he turns back to me, he looks as if he's trying to decide how to tell me to go to hell. He rubs his brow. “I don't know what's going on with you. And I don't care. But if you think you can run me off by acting crazy, you don't know beans about me, either.”

He begins to pace. I guess a certain kind of energy moves us all about. “I'm not happy you're pregnant by another
man. I'm not thrilled you've been writing about it for the world to read in ways that, frankly, make me squirm.”

“You read my column?”

“Don't interrupt. I hate that I haven't been able to have a private moment with you for weeks. I'm jealous as hell that you spend more of your time with Cy and Curran than you ever did with me. I want to beat that little knot-headed kid into a bloody pulp for taking those pictures of you.” He pauses to catch his breath. “They are damned sexy, by the way. Which must make me some kind of pervert, or truly in love with you.”

He swings around at the sound of the doorbell. “And I swear I'll flatten the next person who tries to come between us.”

But he's started this and I'm stoked up for Round Two.

“First of all, I don't have to answer to you. We aren't a couple. Secondly, you're having sex with other people!”

“That was your bright idea.”

“Yes, well, these days the blood supply to my brain isn't always what it should be.”

“No argument from me on that.” He's smiling again. “But why do you care who I'm having sex with?”

“I don't.” I feel another Braxton Hicks coming on, and this one's a doozy.

“Really?” He looks quite pleased with himself. “Then why did you bring it up?”

“B-because…b-b-because….” I'm sputtering like Porky Pig. I look like Porky Pig! “Because I suspect I'd be in love with you—dammit!—even if I wasn't pregnant.”

“Good, because I've got issues, too.” He crosses his arms. “And I'm not moving from this spot until you say it plainly. You love me.”

I flinch, but not from offense. I take a deep breath. “Can I get a rain check on this argument. I have a rather more pressing need that's just come up.”

I look down quickly. When I look up again I see that William's gaze had followed mine down to where a puddle is forming on the floor between my feet. My water just broke.

47

I think there's some discussion of who my Lamaze partner is when I arrive at the hospital. Andrea and William have an argument I vaguely take in outside my door. I'm pretty sure I told the doctor to go screw herself when she asked me to decide. It's true that birth pains don't stay in the memory. But they do fully occupy one's mind at the time.

“I'm too old for this,” I tell my doctor after a while, and after I've apologized half a dozen times for my outburst.

“Do you want an epidural?”

“No, thank you. I've earned this. I'm not going to be numb through the miracle part. But a vodka gimlet wouldn't go amiss about now.”

She pats my hand and offers me ice shards.

After that things get kind of rough.

They don't call it labor for nothing. And I'm out of practice with pain. But I also have my little village to keep me company. It feels more like a royal birth, where you have to prove you actually delivered the heir apparent.

The troops are arrayed around my private room in
gowns and masks: Cy, Curran, Andrea and William. Dallas has called. She's on her way. Meanwhile, William talks about his grandson, Will. Shows pictures all around. Brags about how he's become proficient at disposable diapering, instant-formula feedings, and baby-sling carrying. Generally they have a tête-à-tête, while I lie groaning and moaning and sweating and thinking evil thoughts about all of them.

We're wheeling down the hallway toward the delivery room when William leans down low and says, “There was no sex, Lu.”

I blink sweat out of my eyes. “You don't have to say that.”

He nods. “I know.”

“Are you lying?”

He smiles. “Does it matter? I love you, Lu.”

I look up at him, through the sweat and tears and blinding overhead lights, and say, “What about Fiji?”

“Screw Fiji!”

That's when I grip his hand and hold tight for the rest of the night.

“It's a girl!”

“Her name's Hermione,” I say with a big fat grin as she's placed in my arms.

William leans in. “Like in
Harry Potter?
”

“No. Of course not! As in Gingold.”

September

Not all of us want to lead the charge in life.
For some that early bird's worm comes way too soon.
Yet we emerge later in the day, still full of promise.
The night may come too soon for some.
But for most, the sun will burn late into our evening.
We're okay with that. Call us what we are, Late Bloomers.

—
Late Bloomers
by Tallulah Nichols

Epilogue

It's William's grandson's first birthday. The perfect day for it, too. The sky is bright blue with summer clouds in a September sky. The breeze off Sag Harbor bay is the kind that carries white sails briskly along at a distance without knocking over the umbrellas of the lawn tables ashore. Jolie looks radiant in a simple print voile dress that swirls about her ankles. Jon, too, who seems to have eyes only for her. I know because I sent Andrea over to flirt with him. Either her brand of sex on stilettos is showing its age or he has developed a healthy leeriness of the forward approach by a strange, however lovely, woman.

William's buying a house near the water, with all the privileges that that implies. Today he's borrowed a fellow physician's home on the water's edge for this gathering.

I watch as he lifts his giggling grandson aloft and admire his tireless enthusiasm for “ah'p'n, BopPa, ah'p'n” as Will spread his arms like wings and his grandfather swings him around in circles as if he's an airplane on a string. It doesn't bother him that his hair is ruffled or that his coat
is creased. He's never more happy than when surrounded by family.

There's laughter and toasting on the patio, where there are far too many balloons and grown-ups present for a baby's first birthday. In fact, there are enough guests for a wedding, which is exactly what we decided should take place between the magician's act and the cutting of the birthday cake. The wedding cake, by the way, is a choo-choo train with one big fat candle in the middle and a tiny bride and groom on the caboose.

I smile at Dallas as she hands me my bouquet. It's a bunch of Hampton hydrangeas, so deep a blue it seems that you should be able to squeeze the color out of them.

“Are you happy, Mom?”

“The only thing in the dark.” It's become our shorthand for “deliriously pleased with life.”

Flanking me for the journey to the arbor where the ceremony will take place are Davin and Dallas. Just as the music begins, my youngster starts to fret in Andrea's arms. She twists and fusses until she locates me, a few feet away, and then her two fat little hands make grabby gestures for me.

“I'll hold her, Mom,” Dallas offers.

“Oh, no, you won't.” I hand her my bouquet. “It should be clear to one and all by now that we do things a little differently in this family.”

I gather up my ten-month-old daughter, Hermione, and hold her before me. Dressed in a pink satin and tulle dress, she looks exactly like a live bouquet.

We're not quite sure where the red hair came from. The pink makes it shine as if gold thread was spun into the bodacious color. I think it was all the love she received during the nine months of her journey to us.

Or maybe it was all the good sex.

I wink at William as I start down the short makeshift aisle. His grandson is his best man.

I think we're going to be very happy together.

Tai is there, with Curran, who is up for a prestigious award for his photography, thanks to his boss's encouragement and connections. Those pictures of me hang in a gallery where, believe it or not, they sell.

Even Jacob came. With him is Midge. She's no Sandra but, at a settled forty-five, she does look like wife material. Aunt Marvelle is here, and the Marvelous Matrons, along with many of William's patients. And, of course, my parents and William's dad.

Only Cy declined. He's in Israel with his son and daughter-in-law. He said he's an old man. Weddings are not good for his heart.

Now that my book,
Late Bloomers,
is about to be published, I'm scheduled to begin doing a monthly tie-in with Oprah on late-life parenting.

Will I be the next Dr. Phil or Iyanla? Only time will tell.

What is certain, the new Lu has never been happier or more alive!