Christmas Bliss (7 page)

“You know how it goes out here. Always something. First the electrician’s helper got put in jail for DUI. Then the Sheetrock guy’s truck got repossessed, so we had to start all over with a new guy, but then the new guy’s wife kicked him out and sold all his tools on Craigslist, so now Harry’s been staying up all hours of the night trying to get it done. In the meantime, all the new windows are on back order, and my new Viking stove is sitting in a warehouse somewhere in Jacksonville, but my appliance guy can’t find the paperwork to prove we paid for it.”

I let out a long, exasperated sigh. “And, oh yeah. I just found out I might still be married to Richard Hodges.”

“Sorry I asked,” Weezie said. “But look on the bright side. You’ve still got six weeks until your due date. You and I have done our job. We bought the crib and the changing table; the drapes and slipcovers are done. Your rugs were delivered this week. The house is going to be amazing. Especially the nursery. I can’t wait to paint Squirt’s nursery.”

“Really? It’ll all get done? I won’t have to bring my baby home to sleep in a dresser drawer in an eight-hundred-square-foot apartment?”

“Really. I promise. Totally ah-freakin’-may-zing.”

“And we’ll figure out how to make sure I’m divorced?”

“James will.”

I gave her a hug and held up my pinkie. “Swear?”

She laughed and wrapped her pinkie around mine. “Pinkie swear.”

Chapter 7

BeBe

When we pulled up in front of the Ruckers’ sprawling Colonial Revival mansion in Ardsley Park I spotted a huge bouquet of bright pink balloons tied to the mailbox and waving in the breeze. I leaned forward in my seat to get a better look. “Are those what I think they are?”

“Babies. Yes. You are correct. Those are giant pink naked baby-shaped balloons.” Weezie glared at me. “Cute, right? No more Ms. Cranky-pants. If I know Merijoy she’s gone to a lot of trouble to put together a fun and tasteful baby shower in your honor. You’ll get a ton of useful loot for the baby. This was a very sweet and thoughtful gesture on her part. So you need to put on your best party manners and be a gracious and grateful honoree. Right?”

“Right,” I mumbled. “Gracious. Grateful.”

A hideous thought occurred to me. “What if somebody knows? About Richard?”

“Who would know?” she scoffed. “Hardly anybody even remembers you were married to him.”

“It’s Savannah,” I said darkly. “Nobody here forgets anything. Especially the bad stuff. There are people in this town who still remember the day Sherman and his Union troops rolled into town back in 1864.”

It was still daylight, but I could see the glowing icicle lights dripping from the eaves of the house. The enormous cast-iron urns on either side of the front door held large topiary boxwoods crisscrossed with more lit Christmas lights, and large pots of white poinsettias lined either side of the steps leading up to the covered porch. Wreaths hung from every window of the house, and the wreath on the front door was decked out with pink and blue pacifiers, miniature baby bottles, and plastic rattles.

Merijoy herself opened the front door just as I went to ring the doorbell. She was dressed in a form-fitting dark green sheath. Of course my eyes went directly to her abdomen. No noticeable bump. Well, maybe a small I-just-ate-a-cheeseburger one.

“BeBe!” She folded me into a hug, which was awkward, because my enormous baby bump looked like it could totally beat up her nonexistent one. “Don’t you look precious!”

“Thanks,” I said, graciously and gratefully. “You look wonderful. You’re seven months along? How is that possible?”

“Oh, honey,” she drawled, slapping her backside. “That’s just how I’m built. I always carry my babies high and tight up front. You should see the rear view. I look like a water buffalo!” She turned around and wriggled her very tiny hiney, to prove it to us.

“As if,” I said under my breath, earning myself a jab in the ribs from Weezie.

“And here’s our bride too,” Merijoy said, ushering us into her house. She beamed at Weezie. “Are you getting nervous yet?”

“Not at all,” Weezie assured her.

While Merijoy gushed about weddings, Christmas, and the imminent birth of her sixth child—a boy, she confided—I glanced around the living room. A towering fir seemed to fill one corner of the room, its angel tree-topper touching the two-story-high cathedral ceiling. The thing was plastered with hundreds and hundreds of gilded and glittered angels, all of them lit by miles and miles of tiny white lights.

“Wow, what a tree. Is it real?”

“Oh yes,” Merijoy said. “Randy Rucker won’t allow a fake tree in his house. So we actually have six trees—the others are in the dining room, the kitchen, the great room, his office, and the children’s playroom. All of them have different themes. And I spend most of my waking hours vacuuming up pine needles.”

Merijoy plucked a cellophane box from a console table behind a green velvet sofa, opened it, and took out the largest orchid I have ever seen. “This is for you,” she said.

It was approximately the size of a dinner plate.

“Oh, wow, thanks,” I said feebly. “A corsage. I don’t think I’ve had a corsage since I went to the KA pledge party at Ole Miss.”

The doorbell rang just then, and she left me to fasten my own corsage. Pinned atop my now D-cup boob and trailing pink and blue ribbons, I felt as though I were wearing a potted plant on my chest. I glanced over at Weezie. “How’m I doing?”

Before she could answer, I was suddenly engulfed in a tidal wave of female relatives; my grandmother, my great-aunt Helen from Beaufort, Aunt Bizzy from Charleston, and the clot of cousins I’ve always referred to as “the Marys”—Mary Margaret, Jeanne Marie, and Mary Elizabeth.

With affectionate squeals and shrieks and pats and hugs and kisses, they circled around me, exclaiming over their joy at seeing me, their approval of my dress—Aunt Bizzy referred to me as “cute as a bug,” something nobody has said of me since I was eight—and questions. Endless questions.

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

“Don’t know,” I said breezily.

“But which would you prefer?” somebody asked.

“A healthy baby,” I responded.

“Have you picked out names yet?”

“Not really. We want to wait to see who the baby is before we commit to something as important—and permanent—as a name.”

“I always think family names are the most suitable,” Aunt Bizzy opined. “And you know, none of the cousins has ever named a child after your grandparents. Wouldn’t that be a lovely tribute to them?” She gave me a meaningful wink.

I adore my grandparents—whose names are Spencer and Lorena. Nice enough names, I suppose, but not ones I would ever choose for my own child. I was about to remind Aunt Bizzy that
she
hadn’t bothered to name any of
her
five children after her own parents, but thank God, Grandmama overheard.

“Good heavens! I’ve always hated the name Lorena, and I’m not keen on Spencer either, which is why we didn’t foist them off on any of our own children.”

She gave me a stern look. “BeBe, I absolutely forbid you to name a child after either of us.”

“If you insist,” I said gratefully.

“Don’t ask her about when she’s getting married,” Grandmama said when there was finally a temporary lull in the conversation. She was seated in a leather armchair in front of the fireplace, her silver-knobbed cane resting against her legs, which were clad in her customary dark orange surgical stockings.

Five sets of eyes stared at me. I smiled sweetly. And said absolutely nothing.

Fortunately, more waves of women soon landed in the room, another two dozen or so—and they barely made a dent in the Ruckers’ expansive living room, with its jewel-toned Oriental rugs, velvet sofas, and paisley armchairs and leather wing chairs.

I circled the room and made polite conversation.

“Do you have a birth plan yet?” asked Stephanie Gardner. Stephanie was a Georgia Tech–educated engineer, and she and her husband, Jeff, also an engineer, lived two doors down from my town house downtown. I liked Stephanie, but her brilliance and efficiency always made me feel inadequate. In fact, she was so efficient, she’d managed to have twins three years ago and six weeks later ran a marathon.

“Do I need a birth plan? Nobody told me.”

“Of course! When I had Addison and James, I had a whole spreadsheet printed out and packed in my hospital bag. Jeff had a copy, and my mom and mother-in-law had theirs, and I made sure to e-mail copies to my obstetrician and his partners.”

“I don’t think I have one of those,” I admitted. “I sort of just thought when the time came I’d go to the hospital and, you know, have a baby.”

“Oh, BeBe, you’re so cute and funny,” she said, rapping my arm playfully.

I turned away slightly and bumped into Karen Turner, a former classmate from Savannah Country Day.

“Oh, a Christmas baby,” she cooed, placing both hands on my belly. I backed away a little. Baby or no, I’ve never gotten used to people, even well-meaning semi-friends, randomly fondling my abdomen.

“Uh, actually, no. I’m not due for another six weeks.”

Her eyes widened. “Really? Ugh. Another six weeks? I remember when I was pregnant with Creighton, those last six weeks were torture. I couldn’t sleep, because he kicked nonstop, plus I had to get up every ten minutes to pee. The back pain was agony! And then I got gestational diabetes, which meant blood testing and insulin injections. Plus, I had this really heinous constant heartburn, and then my hands were so swollen Wendell had to take me to the emergency room and get my wedding ring sawed off.”

She gazed meaningfully down at my ringless left hand.

What do you say to something like that? I blanked, which Karen took as a signal to overshare with one last tidbit of her maternity miseries.

She leaned in and lowered her voice. “I guess Merijoy probably told you about my episiotomy disaster, right?”

Episiotomy disaster?
If ever there were two words no pregnant woman ever wants to hear uttered together, it was those words. I looked around for Weezie, frantically searching the room, hoping she would rescue me. But she was clear across the room, laughing and chatting with our hostess, without a care in the world.

“I’m still not right,” Karen was saying.

I felt dizzy. I put both hands on the back of a nearby chair to steady myself, but the room seemed to suddenly go a little fuzzy around the edges. I took a couple of deep cleansing breaths, the kind I’d read about on somebody’s mommy blog.

“Are you all right?” Karen asked.

“Could you excuse me?” I managed. “I have to go powder my nose.”

I ran-walked to the powder room, making it just in the nick of time. Afterward, I ran cold water on one of Merijoy’s monogrammed linen hand towels and dabbed my face and neck with it. I leaned against the locked bathroom door and checked the time on my cell phone. Only twenty minutes had passed since I’d arrived. Twenty minutes!

More deep breaths.

Finally, after ten minutes of stalling, I sidled back into the living room and concentrated on making myself invisible—no easy task when you’re the size of a Winnebago and the party is in your honor.

Thankfully, nobody else had the nerve to inquire about my plans—birth or marriage. And I managed to steer well away from Karen Turner for the rest of the afternoon.

Finally, mercifully, Merijoy herded us all into the dining room, where we exclaimed over her snowman-themed Christmas tree and loaded our hand-painted luncheon plates with the obligatory Southern lady party food; tiny, delicious little crustless sandwiches made with shrimp paste or egg salad or pimento cheese, deviled eggs, a pecan-speckled cheese ball surrounded by strawberry preserves, and of course cheese straws. In Savannah, there’s a law that says you cannot get engaged, married, christened, or buried without a nicely polished silver tray of cheese straws.

When I’d eaten my fill of cheese-related products, plus four or five Christmas cookies, I allowed myself to be steered back to the living room, where I sank gratefully into one of the armchairs by the sofa, hoping nobody would notice as I removed my shoes.

“How’re you doing?” Weezie asked, grabbing the chair beside mine. “I saw Karen Turner bending your ear earlier. And then I noticed you mysteriously disappeared. For a minute there, I was afraid you’d left. And then I remembered I drove. So, is everything okay?”

“Everything is just peachy. Stephanie Gardner pointed out that I don’t have a birth plan. And then Karen attempted to regale me with a hilarious account of her botched episiotomy, after which I had to race to the bathroom to barf. Good times!”

Weezie winced. “Sorry. But cheer up. All you have to do now is open some presents and look gracious and grateful. Twenty, thirty more minutes tops, we’ll be out of here.”

Unfortunately, our hostess hadn’t gotten the memo about Weezie’s timetable. Merijoy stood in front of the fireplace and clapped her hands to silence the chattering crowd.

“Okay, y’all,” she announced. “You know what time it is, right?”

“Game time?” squealed one of the Marys. “Ooh, I love silly shower games.”

I didn’t dare look over at Weezie.

*   *   *

We scooted our chairs into a semicircle. Merijoy’s eyes gleamed with excitement as she brought out a large cardboard box. She reached in and brought out what looked suspiciously like a stack of disposable diapers.

“Now, girls, everybody take a diaper, but don’t unfold it yet. No peeking!”

I stared dumbly down at the diaper in my lap.

“When I say ‘Go!’ everybody open your diaper. There’s a little surprise in there. You can touch it and smell it—but you can’t taste it. Write down what you think it is on your little notepad, and then pass it along to the next person. Keep it moving! When I say stop, the first person who has all the correct answers wins a prize. No cheating, now!”

“Yay!” chirped Mary Elizabeth, at twenty-three the youngest of the Marys. “I love the doody in the diaper game!”

Seeing my expression, Weezie leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Don’t worry. It’s just some melted candy. You know, like a Butterfinger or a Tootsie Roll.”