He stared at her. For the very first time since they’d been together, his dark eyes seemed opaque. She couldn’t tell what was going on behind them. “You mean it,” he said slowly, and his voice was as guarded as his expression.
“I sure do.” Louise nodded. “You’re going to be a daddy, Teo.”
“Well…” If he was pleased, he did a mighty good job of not showing it. He licked his lips. He’d never been a father before, and he hadn’t looked to be a father now. She’d already been through pregnancy three times. Not out of wedlock, though, she thought. Maybe this would make him do something about that. Louise hadn’t worried about a piece of paper, but it mattered when a child was involved. He pulled in a deep breath of his own, then expelled it in a sigh. “It’s still real early, right? You could, um, dispose of it, like?”
“Yes. I could.” Louise didn’t know why she was so disappointed. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had the same thought. But she hadn’t looked for it to be the first thing she heard from him. “I don’t know that I want to, though. It’s something we made together, after all, something wonderful.”
“It’s an oops. We didn’t intend to do it,” Teo said.
“No, we didn’t,” she agreed. And if that didn’t win next year’s Oscar for Best Understatement, whoever did take the statuette home was bound to have cheated. “But it happened, and we’ve got to deal with it.”
“Getting rid of it is dealing with it,” Teo said. “Then we don’t have to worry about it any more.”
“I’m not sure I want to do that,” Louise repeated. “You shouldn’t make up your mind right away, either. We don’t have to decide anything tonight. We’ve got some time to think about it.”
“What’s to think about? It just messes everything up. You ought to know that better than I do,” Teo said.
Kids did mess up your life. Louise sometimes thought that was their sole function in life. They didn’t stop when they got to be self-winding, either, the way you thought they would. Even so… “They give back more than they take away,” Louise said. “Ask your folks.”
“What do they know?” Teo said. His father was a carpenter, his mother a housewife. They weren’t educated people, but they were plenty nice enough. “They went crazy trying to keep us all fed and in shoes and like that. Who needs the hassle if you don’t have to put up with it?”
“Let’s talk about it later.” Louise had never seen Teo like this. Plainly, he needed some time to get used to the idea. He didn’t want to look at it yet, much less to like it. She could see him outside jogging with a little boy who looked just like him. She could see the little boy staring up proudly at the great big man who was his daddy. How sad Teo couldn’t picture it, too.
Later didn’t happen the rest of the evening. They slept together, the way they always did, but it didn’t feel as warm and loving as usual to Louise. Teo might have been on the far side of the country, or on the far side of the moon. Louise tried to tell herself she was having the vapors, but she had trouble convincing herself. She also didn’t have long to do the telling; she fell asleep as if someone had slipped a Mickey Finn into the water she drank after she brushed her teeth.
Next morning was no better. She staggered around like a zombie, awake but not alive. She made coffee, but she couldn’t get more than a third of the cup down. It tasted nasty, so nasty she wondered if she’d give it back.
And Teo was out the door in nothing flat. He did remember to kiss her good-bye. She didn’t think he’d missed a day since they got together. But if ever anyone was going through the motions, he was then. Again, Louise tried to think she was seeing things that weren’t there, or it was nothing but her hormones running wild (which they were, and would be), or-anything. Again, she had trouble believing it.
Mr. Nobashi greeted her at Ramen Central with, “You better today?”
“I sure hope so,” Louise answered. “Thanks again for giving me some time off yesterday. It helped a lot.”
“Good,” he said gruffly, and went back into his inner office. Which was a good thing, because not thirty seconds later Louise yawned almost wide enough to make the top of her head fall off.
Wondering how she’d ever make it till half past five, she sat down and started messing around with the inventory spreadsheets. She wondered what would happen if she just entered numbers at random. Would ramen-scarfers all over the country start pining for their favorite flavors, or else find themselves swamped with them? Would she get fired and find herself unemployed as well as knocked up? Or would nobody notice or care?
Mr. Nobashi bawled for coffee. Then he bawled for sweet rolls. Then he hollered for sweet rolls and coffee. Hopping up to bring him goodies every so often kept Louise from sacking out at her desk. Nice to think Mr. Nobashi was good for something.
When she carried in the sweet rolls and coffee, he was just getting off the phone after a conversation with headquarters in Hiroshima. “Weather very bad in Japan,” he said. “Very cold. Hiroshima is warm. Like Los Angeles warm, only sticky. They have snow there, thirty centimeters snow.” He paused. “A foot, you say.”
“Wow! That’s a lot of snow,” she said. It hadn’t snowed here, but it was the rainiest winter she remembered.
“Only get worse, too. Supervolcano number-one bad,” Mr. Nobashi said. She couldn’t very well argue with that.
Patty came by her desk to yak for a bit. After a little while, she asked, “You feelin’ okay, sweetie?”
“I’ll live,” Louise said, as dryly as if she were Colin.
“Well, okay. You seem a little peaked, that’s all.” Patty was gossip-hungry. She’d have something to gab about when Louise’s belly started swelling. For now, though, Louise didn’t feel like sharing the news. Patty eventuay went away.
Somehow, Louise staggered through the day. She was fixing dinner when Teo came in. He was bright and cheerful-in a superficial way. He talked about how his day at the exercise studio had gone. He told a dumb joke he’d heard. He didn’t say word one about the elephant in the room.
After dinner, Louise tried to bring it up. Teo changed the subject. He hardly even seemed to have heard her. If he kept on doing that, Louise knew she would get mad at him. If she’d had a little more energy, she might have got mad then and there. Or she might not have. He’d built up a lot of capital with her. A couple of days of acting like a jerk-even if it was about something important-didn’t come close to burning through it.
She wondered if making love would help. But, even though she did everything except send up a flare, he didn’t take the hint. He just went to sleep, earlier than usual. Disappointed, so did she. Disappointed or not, she zoned out as if knocked over the head. She’d always thought you slept a lot while you were pregnant because you sure as hell wouldn’t afterwards.
He was gone the next morning before she got up. That was funny; they usually woke up together. Maybe he’d told her why the night before, but she was too sleepy to recall. The condo felt strange with her fixing breakfast alone.
Another day at the ramen mill. She survived it. She didn’t doze off or do anything to give Patty more ideas than she had already. It was raining again when she went out at half past five. On the way home, somebody rear-ended the VW in the lane next to hers. No one got hurt, but neither car would be going anywhere without making a body shop happy.
When she walked into the condo, her first thought was that a burglar had hit it. Then she realized the only stuff missing was Teo’s. Favorite chair. Clothes. DVDs. CDs. Computer. TV. Gone.
A note lay on the bed. I am sorry, Louise read, but I am not made to be a father. If you can make the payments, keep the place. I won’t give you no trouble about it. It was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it? But nothing lasts forever.