A Promise for the Baby

He averted his eyes when Vivian started to scoot her butt to the edge of the exam table and put her feet in the stirruplike things. The doctor had a wand-ish instrument covered with a condom and lubricant. The woman who had just been patting his knee was now telling Vivian how the ultrasound would feel compared to a vaginal exam and he nearly leapt out of his chair and headed for the door.

His presence here was a mistake. Whatever was involved in an internal ultrasound was far, far too private for him to witness. They were strangers. He’d planned on having babies with Jessica, who would’ve known better than to ask him to come to the doctor’s office to witness this. Jessica had wanted two children—preferably one boy and one girl. They were going to buy a house in Andersonville and he was going to have the beautiful wife, two perfectly behaved children and a meaningful job. And when his thirty-ninth birthday hit, he was going to compare his life to his father’s and see that he’d lived up to all the man’s expectations.

“Dad.” The doctor’s voice broke through the existential crisis he wouldn’t admit he was having, even in confession, should the priest ask. “If you look on the monitor you can see the embryo. And your date for conception looks pretty spot-on with the embryo’s growth.”

The last, lingering nugget of doubt he’d had about Vivian’s pregnancy burst when Karl looked up. On the screen was some pulsing gray matter and, in a flash of emptiness, a little thing that looked like a mouse standing up and dancing. Only it wasn’t a mouse. It wasn’t anywhere near the size of a mouse. It was his baby and the doctor was saying it was a quarter of an inch in size.

From somewhere in the room came the sound of a horse clopping. Vivian’s wide smile made her cheeks pop like a chipmunk’s, but he didn’t know the source of the sound until the doctor said, “And this is your baby’s heartbeat.”

The blood pulsing in his ears took on the same rhythm of the horse galloping, the sound that the doctor was claiming was his baby. The baby he made with the beautiful woman lying back calmly on the exam table, looking at him as if she expected him to say something.

“Holy shit.” His life was never going to be the same.

* * *

KARL WAS SILENT as he pushed the cart through the aisles of the grocery store. Normally, his quiet didn’t bother Vivian, but there was quiet and then there was the silence that buzzed between them.

“Are you okay?” she asked for probably the tenth time since they’d left the doctor’s office.

“Fine.” He held the plastic bag full of apples high in the air, twisted it and tied the bag in a knot.

Already in the cart were bananas, oranges, clementines, grapefruit, grapes and strawberries that looked pretty but would probably be tasteless since it was only March. And that was just the fruit. They also had sweet potatoes, kale, Swiss chard, carrots, cabbage and a rainbow of peppers. If a doctor sitting on Oprah’s couch had ever called a plant a “superfood,” Karl had put it in their cart. His previously empty fridge was likely to expire with the pressure of the extra work. At least she’d be able to make every recipe on the planet without having to go to the store again.

She weighed the bleak look that had been on Karl’s face when their baby’s heartbeat had filled the exam room and the fact that they were strangers and she was dependent on him. The bleak look won. She put a hand on his before he could bag some rocks masquerading as peaches.

“You are not fine. You nearly fainted at the doctor’s.” A muscle pulsed where his ear rounded into his jaw, but Vivian ignored the warning. “And your silence has a deathlike quality about it. We’re partners in this. Friends, right?”

At the word death the twitch had stopped. Karl left the peaches on the display and moved on to the pears. When he’d bagged five pears, he turned his attention to her. “This is not how I expected to have a child.”

He pushed the cart away from the produce, leaving her wishing she had a bag of potatoes she could bean him over the head with. She caught up to him in the bread aisle as he was reading nutritional information.

“This wasn’t how I expected to have a child, either.” All through adulthood, she’d held on to her dream of a perfect nuclear family, raising children in a house they would own into retirement, the memories made in the home impossible to distinguish from the stuff cluttering the shelves. When she’d decided she couldn’t abort the baby, no matter how desperate her situation seemed, she’d surrendered that dream. Karl hadn’t been offered the same choices she had, and he probably had completely different dreams.

She grabbed one of the loaves and added cinnamon-raisin bread to the cart, as well. “I suspect there’s more to your reaction.”

As they passed the fancy cheeses, Vivian added Gruyère to the cart.

“No cheese.” Karl put it back in the cooler.

“No soft cheese.” She put it back into the cart.

“Huh.” He added a couple more cheeses to the pile, then crossed his arms on the cart handle and pushed his way along the aisle. She’d never seen a man look so uncomfortable while trying to look so relaxed, and again she had to hurry after him.

“Is the cheese for you?”

“No. You seem to like cheese.”

“I can’t eat all that. It’ll go bad.”

“You’re supposed to eat more, and a variety of foods.”

She put her hand on the front of the cart and turned it before he could knock down a display of potato chips with his manic forward progress. “After the second trimester, I should eat an extra three hundred calories a day. That does not mean I get to gorge myself on cheese.”

He sighed. “I’ll help eat the cheese.”

“And the fruit? And the bread? And whatever else you plan to buy me and Jelly Bean while we’re in the store?”

“Jelly Bean?” Finally, she had his attention. “You call our baby Jelly Bean?”

“You call our baby the fetus.”

“Apparently I should be calling it an embryo for another three or four weeks.”

She sighed. “Can we talk about this possessed shopping trip and what happened in the doctor’s office?”

“Not here.”

“Fine.” She navigated the cart past the dairy and around several displays until she’d dragged Karl and his cornucopia in front of the shoe polish and laces. “This is as empty as a grocery store gets. Spill.”

He looked over his shoulder. She wanted to smack him, but she also needed him. No one could call her actions patient, but she was waiting. “Hearing the heartbeat was the first time this became real. Until then I expected to wake up. But it’s not a dream and we’re in this together. I want to make sure you have all you need.”

The warmth in his voice glided above the soft hits that were playing over the loudspeakers. For the first time since she’d sat on her bathroom floor in Vegas looking at the third positive pregnancy test in a row, Vivian felt like something other than a problem. She’d come to Karl because he was the father and he was a fixer. But now...she and Jelly Bean might be something more than a speed bump in his perfectly ordered and sterile life.

His hand didn’t feel cool to the touch when she grabbed on to it—a phantom warmth she attributed to the hope rising in her own chest. “We won’t be left communicating with each other through notes about Jelly Bean’s progress in school.”

“What?” Karl hid his emotions most of the time, but puzzlement was clear on his face.

“I had visions of us as divorced parents exchanging notes through Jelly Bean’s backpack.”

“Oh.” And then he laughed. “What a ridiculous thing to think. That’s what text messages are for.”

She laughed along with him, ignoring the looks they got from passing shoppers.

“Vivian.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I may not have imagined this as how I was going to have children, but I’m finding I could do much worse.”

“It’s not much of a compliment, but I’ll take it.” She lifted up onto her toes and kissed him once on the lips. Then she headed for the cereal aisle before he could read anything other than humor in her expression.

CHAPTER SIX

DINNER EATEN AND the dishes done, Vivian followed Karl around the bar and into the living room. She sat at one end of the couch and picked up her knitting. He sat on the other end of the couch and picked up his book. It was progress. Only a week ago, he’d never been home while she was still awake. Only a couple of days ago, he was sitting in the armchair rather than sharing the couch. They were getting to know each other and, slowly, coming to trust each other.

Sometime in the near future, Karl might even tell her about his day as they sat down to dinner. She might talk about the jobs she was applying for. They might have a relationship outside of the shared parentage of their child.

The rich green wool slid through her fingers. The hat’s shape was slowly emerging out of the yarn and she could begin to picture it on Karl’s head. He needed something more than the righteous fire burning within him to keep his ears warm.

With a child on the way, she should probably be knitting baby blankets and little sweaters, but she wanted to give Karl something that didn’t originate in his own largesse. The yarn was one of the few possessions she’d brought to Chicago that wasn’t a necessity. The wool was soft, and she had needed something comforting with her.

The metal of her needles clicked. The pages of Karl’s book rustled. If, on the other side of the city, someone with a telescope was scanning windows, they would see what appeared to be an old married couple so comfortable with each other they didn’t need to talk—not two strangers with no idea what to say to each other.

“What book are you reading?” Vivian was struck by the sudden and silly fear that a stranger looking in the windows with a telescope knew what Karl was reading while she, sitting next to him, had no idea.

“Hmm?” Karl looked up and it took a moment for his eyes to focus on her across the cushions. “It’s a collection of Herman Melville’s short works. He wrote Moby Dick.”

“I know who Melville is. I may not have graduated, but I’ve taken some college classes. I’m not stupid.”

He turned his head back to the pages, giving her snippy comment all the attention it deserved.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ve never said or even implied I was stupid. I don’t know why I reacted so poorly.”

Only she did. The uncertainty of her existence and unwanted helplessness wore on her, coming out in bile when she was least prepared to stop it. Feeling close to, yet so distant from, the man on whom her life currently depended on was unsettling.

Which was no reason to be a bitch when all he’d done was answer her question.

He lifted his head and turned to her again, his face as expressionless as desert sand. “Not knowing who Melville is would only imply a deficit of education. It wouldn’t say anything about your innate intelligence.” Then, though there was no discernible change in his expression, his eyes softened. “I didn’t know you went to college. What did you study?”

“Nothing.” His expression hardened and he was turning his attention back to his book when she started talking again. “I didn’t mean that to be snippy. Working full time meant I didn’t have much time for school, and so I took what I wanted when it was available. It didn’t amount to much of anything in particular.”

She didn’t tell him that the thought of finally graduating from college and facing job applications was terrifying. What if she’d spent all that time and money getting a degree and then still couldn’t get a job other than dealing in casinos? So long as she never graduated, she never had to face losing the security of a job that offered health insurance and paid enough for her to keep an apartment and a car. She never had to leave the comfort of walking through the same doors for sixteen years and the security of knowing exactly who she was and what she was doing, even if she didn’t like it.

It hadn’t escaped Vivian that her father had been responsible for both destroying her chance at college after high school and destroying the life she’d built for herself once she’d realized “college student” wasn’t something she could make work and still hope to eat. She could’ve handled the pregnancy on her own if she’d still had that job security.

“When did you learn to knit?” He was focused completely on her, the book on his lap closed, without even his finger to mark where he’d stopped.

Vivian admired Karl’s ability to focus, although she was afraid she might come to crave it. When his hazel eyes fixed on her, her heart raced and her entire body warmed by ten degrees. Between pregnancy and being in the same room with Karl, she didn’t need a winter coat.

“About ten years ago—when it seemed like everyone was learning how to knit. I’ve always liked activities that used my hands.” Mostly she’d made dishcloths, which she’d had to donate to the thrift store before driving to Chicago because she couldn’t justify taking them with her.

“Like card dealing?”

“The casino had automatic shufflers and the fancy shuffling techniques my father taught me would have been forbidden anyhow.” Some of which made counting cards really easy and had been designed to facilitate cheating. But she’d always preferred the ones that looked fancy without being deceitful.

“Can you show me?”

“Card shuffling tricks or knitting?”

He appeared to take her question seriously, even though she’d meant it as a bit of a joke. “Card shuffling tricks.”

“Really?” Karl had tried to hide his opinion of her previous career, but he hadn’t been as successful as he probably thought.

“We’re trying to be friends, right?”

Friendship had been a great idea in the doctor’s office when she’d been lying back on the examination table feeling about as sexy as an ottoman. Now, sitting on the couch with him scooching closer to her, those intense eyes burning into her, friendship seemed a sure path to sex, and sex was a bad idea. They’d had sex as strangers and look where it had gotten them.

What’s stopping you? The horse is already out; no use shutting the barn door now. Think of how his hazel eyes will burn when he explodes into you.

That was just the pregnancy talking. The books had warned her that pregnancy made some women horny. It had to be the pregnancy. It couldn’t be seeing the fine hairs on his strong, bare forearms and being reminded of why she’d broken her own rules and slept with a resort guest to begin with.

“Um, sure.” She stood up quickly—to find a deck of cards, not to escape Karl and her own lustful thoughts.

When she returned, she had a new deck of cards and a plan. She sat in the chair Karl normally used and faced him across the coffee table. He gave her a knowing smile, as though what was bothering her was bothering him, too, but he didn’t argue or ask her to sit next to him.

Friendship was a good idea. This wanting she was feeling would only lead to bad things. He had bought her two winter coats, was paying for her health insurance and providing her with a place to live because they were married, but they weren’t married because they were in love. The child growing inside her wasn’t an expression of their love. She’d been feeling vulnerable and he’d been talking about how important family was to him and she’d succumbed to a dream that didn’t exist. They’d had hot, dirty, wonderful, random stranger sex, and now they couldn’t stay strangers.

Sex would change the bargain. Sex would put them uncomfortably close to an exchange of pleasure for material goods, and that wasn’t a bargain she was willing to make. In that moment she made a promise to herself. They would be partners when she was finally able to put her lips against one of his chiseled cheeks and lick her way to his collarbone and down his chest until she made his heartbeat pound and echo through her body. She would have a job and contribute something other than dinner to his day. She wouldn’t be helpless anymore.

“What do you want to see?”

He shrugged. “Impress me.”

She held the deck of cards in her left hand and gripped two corners with her right. Both thumb and ring finger two-thirds on the corner, one-third off, just as her dad had taught her. Then she lifted the deck of cards with her right hand nearly two feet from her left, angled her thumb and let the cards fall.

* * *

THE CARDS BARELY made a whisper as they cascaded into her left hand. When Karl had been in high school, there was a kid in his class who’d liked to show off his card tricks. The kid had bragged about his mastery of the cards, but when he’d done that trick, the cards had sounded like someone was rustling through a trash can and he’d had to brace his arm against his body in such a way that the cards shot into his gut, rather than flowing through the air.

“Wanna see it again?” she asked.

“Yes.” At the bar that fateful night, he’d watched her long fingers wrap around her drink and wondered if he could let go of himself long enough to enjoy the company of a beautiful woman. She had smiled, a little shy and a little sad, and suddenly making her laugh had become more important than his own problems.

He paid attention to those hands again, now, watching exactly where she placed her fingers and how she bent the cards before releasing them. He wasn’t any less impressed seeing her card trick the second time.

You were so focused on what her lips would feel like on your body that you didn’t stop to think what effect those dexterous fingers could have. Her eyes were twinkling and the way her pink lips curved into a half smile when he looked from her fingers up to her face confirmed that he’d been right to focus on the power of those lips. The nimble fingers were an added bonus.

“You weren’t expecting to be impressed,” she said.

“No. I’ve never seen cards shuffled that way so well.” He realized that compliment sounded hollow when Vivian’s eyes narrowed. “I couldn’t do it and I’m not foolish enough not to credit expertise when I see it, even if I don’t fully understand it.”

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