Hooked (16 page)

“So it’s nice here, right?” I asked Vanessa, afraid to look at Mom. “It’s a great deal. We’re paying her rent, and she’s on rent control. It was perfect for her because she didn’t want to sublet to anyone she didn’t know and she didn’t have any takers in the two months she’s been away. We lucked out.”

“I love it,” Vanessa said quickly. “It has a cool, Village-y artist vibe. Is she an artist? I love the windows.”

“She’s a sculptor,” I said. “And she makes jewelry. And now she’s teaching in Africa.”

“Where the hell is it going to sleep?” Mom asked, shaking her head in dismay. “The closet?”

“The baby doesn’t need anything at first,” I said, lifting the wrapped box Vanessa had brought out of the bag. “Anyway, we can’t afford anything else.”

“Please,” said Mom. “No poor-unwed-teenager thing. Please. We’re avoiding that like the bubonic plague. Remember.”

Vanessa chuckled, which eked a hint of a smile out of Mom. I watched Mom as she cut one of the croissants in half, and I was grateful that she’d at least made an effort to bury her disappointment in me and come over.

“Vanessa, when do you leave for school?” Mom asked.

“End of August.” Vanessa sighed. “We’re going to Maine for two weeks after Nickelodeon ends, then we’re back for, like, a night, and then I go.” She made a sad face at me.

My phone flashed. I reached for it on the side table and saw a text from Will. “Sry I wuz a jrk last nite. I luv u.”

I shook Vanessa’s box, relieved and happy about Will’s apology. “Clothes,” I said.

She rocked mischievously back and forth on the couch. “Open it.”

It was a stuffed dog with calico patches all over it and lopsided men’s ties for ears.

“Isn’t he cool?” she asked, hopping in her seat. “I thought it was the cutest thing.”

I smiled, thinking about all of the stuff we still needed—a crib, a baby tub, those onesie suits that covered their feet. All of a sudden it seemed totally pathetic, my shower—Mom shifting around on the couch as though it had nits on it, my teenage best friend who didn’t know any better than to buy me an ugly stuffed dog.

“It’s very sweet,” I said. “He or she will love it.”

“When are you going to find out the gender, for God’s sake?” Mom asked. “It’s so creepy–new agey not to find out right away these days.”

“We want it to be a surprise,” I said.

“It’s a surprise no matter when you find out,” Mom said impatiently.

“Well, I should go. It’s ten-thirty.” Vanessa stood up, hiking her wrinkled linen pants over her hips.

“You’re skinny,” I said.

“Are you kidding?” she said. “Anyone looks skinny to you right now.” She patted my belly and kissed my mother on each cheek. “Bye, Fiona.”

“Call me later,” I said.

She nodded and slung her big fake white-leopard-skin bag over her shoulder. “It’s great, Thee, really. I wish I were living here.”

The door banged loudly, the metal of the old locks jangling with it. Mom pressed her finger on the plate, retrieving fallen croissant flakes. For the first time in my life with her, there was a heavy and awkward silence.

I looked at my blinking phone again. Another message from Will. I hadn’t answered the first one. “Helu? You forgive me, yes?” I quickly texted him back. “Y. I luv u.” I tossed the phone where Vanessa had been sitting, feeling grown up and proud of us for maneuvering through our fight so gracefully.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Mom said slowly. “About that stuff with Dad. That night, when he came over.”

“Oh.” I shrugged. I wondered why she was bringing it up out of nowhere.

“It must seem like we’ve always hated each other, he and I.”

“I know you don’t hate him,” I said.

“That’s not what I was going to say.” She recrossed her legs and I watched her small, round knees move underneath her black pants and wondered how it was that I had such big knees, such big bones. “He’s waiting for this to blow up too,” she said. “It’s all we can do. It’s hard. For both of us, in our different ways, it’s hard.”

“It might not, you know,” I said. “Blow up.”

She looked at me as though she were considering something. Music from a car radio drifted in. I had a weird urge to tell her that her life with Dad had not been a waste. That she hadn’t wasted her life, that she’d been living a full life then, with its long, loud red nights at Fiona’s and its siren voices and
everyone’s love problems and drama. That her having me and raising me hadn’t been a waste of time either.

“Thanks for coming,” I said. The visit was sliding away from me, but I felt unready for her to leave. I wondered how sometimes my mother could feel so familiar—the smell of her room, the way she tapped her brush against the sink before she turned on the hair dryer—and yet how I could still have such an unclear picture of her. How I could not know whether she was happy, or what made her happy, what she thought about when she shut her eyes at night. I thought of her unbuttoning her shirt and throwing it onto the silk chair in her room, and the pull of skin across her cheeks after she washed her face, but it was like looking at her through a window from across the street.

“And thank you for the money, and the pump, and everything else,” I said. “Have some faith in me, Ma.” I tried to say it jokingly, but the words spilled out of me in an awkward rush. “The details might not be all there, but the feelings make sense. It feels real. That’s important, you know.”

“It feels real,” she repeated, looking to me. “What does that mean?”

“It feels like what we’re doing is right. Can you just believe me that it does? Even if it doesn’t seem right to you? We’re going to make it work. I love him. We’re going to make it.”

“I’d like to believe you.” She pulled a tissue out of a pack in her bag and brushed any loose crumbs off her lipsticked mouth. “I would.”

The morning I went into labor, I crocheted and watched the Movie Channel, thinking it would teach me something about life. I’d finally found the ring, and as I did more of them, I was able to recognize what the ring looked like (it looked like a hole!) and how it changed shape a little after each stitch. After a few hours I finished a yellow, slightly lopsided version of the bikini bottom that didn’t look half bad. It was a far cry from the multicolored zigzags I’d pictured, but it was a step.

I decided to walk downtown and across the Brooklyn Bridge because I was a week past my due date and my doctor had told me to walk. My water broke just as I reached the high, arched midpoint. I stopped short and doubled over, and a guy running behind me crashed into me.

“Jesus, watch out,” he said. We were both sprawled on the wooden walkway, bikers and cars whizzing past. He was practically on top of me, his flimsy blue nylon shorts draping my leg. Then he saw my huge belly and my wet, streaked jeans.

“Shit, are you okay?” He stood up and held out his arm. “Can you stand up?”

“I need to get to the hospital,” I said, dusting myself off.

“I don’t have a phone!” He waved his arms frantically around his skimpy shorts.

“I do,” I said. I dialed Will at school.

“It’s happening,” I said. “My water broke. Meet me at NYU.”

“Where are you?”

“On the Brooklyn Bridge. I’m going to try and find a cab.” I started walking back to Manhattan, the guy in shorts following me.

“I’m okay,” I said, wanting him to go away. Nothing hurt yet. “Thanks.”

“You sure?” he asked tentatively, looking relieved.

I nodded and started walking faster. My flats made awful squishy sounds as I got to the end of the bridge and then to Chambers Street. I passed a discount store where a guy in the window was blowing up soccer balls and throwing them into a big bin. There were people moving everywhere, stepping on and off the filthy curb to get past each other. I had a stolen, surreal moment, thinking of my high school just a few blocks west on Chambers as the banners in front of the discount store waved at me in the wind. A cab stopped in front of an ice cream store a few feet away and someone got out.

I stood in front of the driver’s window so he could see me, wanting a little drama. “Can you take me to NYU Hospital?” I yelled.

He nodded offhandedly, as though he were just another cabbie carting another pregnant woman to her hospital cot.

“You gonna be okay?” he asked when we got there.

“You bet,” I said, hauling myself out.

A rush of people crowded around me at reception, and a nurse got me into a room and helped me into a gown. Will showed up just as some masochist attendant came in to do something called “strip the membranes,” which shocked me into submission and started me on a runaway train of screaming pain. I got an epidural, but all it did was numb my left leg. The hours crawled and flew, the door to my room swinging endlessly open and shut, Will holding my hand, sitting, leaning by the window, texting, yawning, looking freaked.

At one point toward the end I started to panic.

“I feel like I could die,” I said to him. He was standing next to me, holding my foot in the air.

“I know you do,” he said, “but you’re not going to.”

“You’re going to be fine,” said the Irish nurse holding my other foot. “You’re doing great—just stay with us and push when the doctor says to push.”

I wiped my sweaty forehead and the weirdest thought flashed through my head—Mrs. Weston in the Columbia reception lounge with her serious, urgent, expression:
“Be positive.”

As the head came out, I stared at the ceiling and imagined karate-chopping my way through it. I felt like I was on fire, along with the rest of the world. “It’s a boy!” the doctor shouted, and I looked down and they flopped the baby onto my bare chest, slippery and bewildered, looking right at me with wide-open, alien eyes.

“Oh my God,” I cried. I said it over and over and over again.

They helped me into bed and I rolled gently onto my stomach, which was like sinking into a forgotten, beloved pillow. The nurse left and I remember Will watching me from the chair next to me and shaking his head and smiling.

“Wow,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“All that blood. It was like a slasher movie.” He held my hand and I drifted off to sleep, wondering where he was, the baby, but I was too tired.

Someone turned on a fluorescent light over my head.

“He’s over eight pounds, which means you should try and
feed him every three hours,” the nurse whispered, wheeling the baby in, his face slightly magnified from inside the plastic rolling cot. His eyes were open and his mouth was shaped like a Cheerio. The nurse lifted him out, a clump of warm, white flannel with pink and turquoise piping, and aimed him at my boob.

“You want his chin to jut out a little,” she said. “That’s how you know he’s properly on.” But his chin never jutted out. We tried, but he kept closing his eyes and drifting off and then waking up and squirming around. The nurse manhandled his head, nudging his mouth to where it needed to be.

“How about you leave us for a while and we’ll see if we can figure it out?” I finally asked.

“Fine,” she said, picking up a blood-smeared towel at the edge of the bed.

After that it was just me and moon-face, high above town, some lit-up bridge outside our window, and Will, asleep in the bed next to us.

“Hello, little man,” I said. “Are you hungry?” He gazed into the space between us, his cheek pressed against my chest. There was something incredible about speaking to him for the first time, even though he didn’t understand me. It felt almost as though I were speaking to a part of myself who had just been born and who was in the room with us too.

I spent the rest of the night nudging him onto my nipple. He eventually latched on, squeaking a little as he sucked, and at some point I fell asleep with him splayed across my chest. I woke to the sound of heels clomping down the hallway.

Mom arrived with daisies and a bag filled with Pellegrino, pretzels and Milano cookies.

“All the stuff I would want,” she said, looking at Will, who was still asleep. They had not been in a room together since
she’d found out I was still pregnant. “I’m only staying a few minutes.”

“Can you wash your hands?” I asked. She paused to take off her coat and put it behind the chair, then headed for the sink in the corner.

“I couldn’t believe it, what she went through,” Will said, sitting up as if he’d just dozed off in the middle of a conversation. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. She pushed for, like, three hours. I thought her eyes were going to explode out of their sockets.”

“Lovely,” said Mom, drying her hands. “When he came out, did he look angry or did he look worried?” she asked.

“Neither, I don’t think.” I thought of his eyes, blank and searching, when they put him on me.

“He didn’t scream bloody murder? You screamed your head off, but then after a while you got it together.”

“I think
I
was screaming,” I said.

She peered into the cart, where I’d deposited him at some point when the sky was still dark, and looked at me and Will. “So?”

“We like Ian,” Will said. “Ian Galehouse Weston.”

“Ian,” she said, jiggling the cart lightly with her hand. “You don’t think it sounds too much like Theeeeeaaaaa?”

“That’s part of why I like it,” I said. “Can you like it too?”

“Wasn’t Ian the name of that daft road manager in
Spi
al Tap
?” She sat down in the chair next to my bed. “How do you feel?”