PREGNANT. The letters were bright red. It didn’t feel like a red-letter day. It felt like… She didn’t know what it felt like. The end of the world as we know it. She heard the bouncy song in her head. She didn’t feel fine, though. She felt-sleepy, dammit.
No one else had come in while she sat on the pot waiting out the test. No one was in there when she chucked the Clearblue box and the test strip. She covered them with paper towels even so. Afterwards, she scrubbed her hands like Lady Macbeth. Germs wouldn’t trouble her. Like exes, other things were harder to wash away.
“You better now?” Mr. Nobashi asked her in his telegraphic English as she tried to settle herself at her desk.
“I think so,” she lied. The rabbit might have died laughing. What would Teo say? She didn’t suppose he’d be so amused. She didn’t think things were very funny herself, for that matter. What am I going to do? she wondered. Have it? Get rid of it? Both prospects seemed equally appalling.
She checked some inventories for Mr. Nobashi. He waed to figure out why shrimp ramen was selling better in Seattle than anywhere else in the USA. They hated beef ramen there, but it outsold shrimp two-to-one in Chattanooga. Again, he wanted to know why. Louise couldn’t have cared less, but she could scare up numbers for him to plug into his spreadsheets.
Her cell rang. She fished it out of her purse. “Hello?”
Colin growled in her ear: “Hi, Louise.”
“ What is it?” she snapped. Of all the people in the world she wanted to hear from right this minute, he couldn’t have rated higher than next to last.
He paused for a moment, then said, “Thought for a second there I called Vanessa by mistake.”
“Sorry.” Again, Louise lied. “Look, whatever it is, make it snappy, will you? I’m pretty busy here.” One more fib.
“Well”-he breathed out hard, a sure sign she’d pissed him off-“all I wanted to tell you was that I asked Kelly to marry me, and she said yes. If you don’t care about that, I’ll go off and eat worms, I guess.”
“Sorry.” This time, Louise sounded more like someone who meant it. “Congratulations! Or do I say good luck to the groom? I never remember.”
“You congratulate me and wish her luck. Sounds about right.” Colin still sounded very much like Colin. He went on, “How are things with you?”
Not bad. I’m going to have a baby. Louise didn’t say it. The only thing she was sure of was that Colin hadn’t had thing one to do with it. Sooner or later, if she decided to keep it, she’d have to let him know. Later. Not sooner. “I’m tired,” she answered: a tiny fragment of the truth, with none of the reason behind it.
“You sound like it,” he said. Was that a dig, something on the order of You sound like an old lady? Louise wouldn’t have been surprised. You always had to look twice-sometimes three times-at things that came out of Colin’s mouth. You’d be sorry if you didn’t.
Well, he could dig and jab as much as he pleased. She wasn’t an old lady by the most fundamental way to judge that. Her biological clock wasn’t just ticking. The alarm on the damn thing had gone off. She was alarmed, all right.
“You there, Louise?” Colin asked when she didn’t say anything right away.
“I’m here,” she replied.
“Are you okay? Is Teo treating you the way he ought to? Anything like that, you let me know, you hear? I’ll take care of it.”
“Teo is treating me fine. Don’t do anything dumb because you’ve got a case of the imaginaries-do you hear me?” she said sharply. He treats me better than you ever did. Louise didn’t come out with it. Vanessa would have. She knew that. But living most of her adult life with Colin left her convinced he’d done his best, at least when he thought of it. Trouble was, his best didn’t come close to being good enough.
“Okay,” he said. “So long, Louise. Take care.” He hung up.
Teo was treating her so fine, he’d gone and knocked her up. And what would he say when she told him that? Whatever it was, she expected she could take it at face value. Unlike Colin, he didn’t think sarcasm was a spectator sport.
At about half past three, Mr. Nobashi came over to her and said, “You want to go home early? Not much going on, and you maybe could use some rest, neh? ” He was, she supposed, doing his best to be tactful in a language not his own. What could that mean but You look like something the cat dragged in?
“It’s okay, Mr. Nobashi. I’ll make it till quitting time. Thank you, though.” Louise got paid by the hour. She didn’t want her check docked-and it wasn’t as if she were actually sick. She managed a smile, adding “Arigato” so he’d know she was picking things up on the job.
He grinned in surprise and bobbed his head in what was almost a bow. “You go,” he said. “We not worry about clock, okay?”
The thanks in Japanese must have done it. That wasn’t a corporate thing for him to say, but maybe a nice guy lurked under the salaryman after all. Louise wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. “Thank you very much, Mr. Nobashi!” she said, and then “Arigato!” one more time.
She was out of there before he had the chance to change his mind. When she got back to the condo, she lay down on the couch for a little while and closed her eyes. Just to rest them, she told herself. Next thing she knew, Teo was unlocking the door.
He laughed when he saw her confusion. “Hello, sleepyhead!” he said, hurrying over to kiss her. “You must have had a tough day if you sacked out as soon as you came in.”
“Mr. Nobashi let me off a couple of hours early,” she said. “On the company’s dime, if you can believe it.”
The way he blinked said it wasn’t easy. “Why’d he do that?” he asked. Louise explained about arigato. Teo was still puzzled when she finished, wondering, “Okay, but why did he want to let you off early to begin with?”
“I was all tired, and I guess I looked kind of green around the gills, too,” Louise said. She hoped the morning sickness wouldn’t be too awful this time around. Colin had dubbed her the Duchess of York for the way she kept tossing her cookies when she was pregnant with Rob. She’d hardly been sick at all with Vanessa, and kind of in-between carrying Marshall.
“You look fine now,” Teo said. “You always look good to me, love.”
That made her smile. Teo had a knack for making her smile. She wasn’t surprised to hear she looked all right now. She’d been asleep for-what? — close to two and a half hours. She wondered if she’d be able to sleep later on tonight. From what she remembered, she wouldn’t have any trouble at all.
Teo went on, “But what made you so out of it at work? It must’ve been bad, or he wouldn’t’ve turned you loose like that. You need to go to the doc or something?”
She would need to see her gynecologist soon. Frank Russell, who’d delivered her babies, had long since retired. Last she’d heard, he was living in Palm Springs, painting watercolors of the desert, and selling some of them for pretty good money. She didn’t like Dr. Suzuki so much, but she thought he knew his business.
“I think I know what’s cooking with me,” she said.
“Yeah? Tell, love, tell.”
You couldn’t be a little bit pregnant. You couldn’t break the news by easy stages, either. Louise wished you could. Her life was about to get more complicated. No. Her life had already got more complicated. Now she had to announce the fact. She wanted a drink-but that wouldn’t be good for her passenger. She took a deep breath instead: as inadequate a substitute as you could find. “I’m going to have a baby, Teo.”
He giggled. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in I don’t know when! I didn’t know you could do a straight face like that, either. Oh, my God!” He was practically holding his sides.
“I’m not kidding,” Louise said. “I’m pregnant. I’m sleepy like you wouldn’t believe, my coffee tastes weird-tastes lousy-”
“That stuff doesn’t mean squat,” Teo broke in. He didn’t want to believe it. Well, how could she blame him when she didn’t want to believe it herself?
“I wasn’t done,” she said. “My period’s late. I know it’s getting erratic”- I know I’m getting old lay behind that-“but still. And today at lunch I got a pregnancy test at the drugstore, and I peed on it in the head at work. I’m pregnant, all right.”