The Big Bang (27 page)

Before the door slid open, a warning flashed across the top of the machine:
Pregnant and nursing mothers should avoid consumption of alcoholic beverages.

She kissed her doll and reached for the drink.

As she took a long but unsatisfying sip, the phone rang again.

Hope hurried over to a new hiding place behind a machine vending home-baked desserts before Jim, but not Jim, appeared in the hallway. He looked around and disappeared into another room filled with half-drawn plans for playgrounds and churches she was supposed to design but had forgotten, abandoned, or been distracted from finishing.

“I didn’t mean for things to go down this way,” he said.

“Me neither,” she whispered.

“I’m coming,” his voiced echoed. “I’m coming soon…”

The machine beside Hope began to churn and buzz.

Hope looked through the pink-tinted glass and into the machine. Amid the homemade cookies, lemon bars, apple pie slices, and brownies available for purchase, a Blondie caught her eye and an intoxicating aroma, like warm brown sugar, vanilla, and chocolate chips, wafted through the air.

She reached into her pocket, grabbed some change, slid around toward the coin slot, and listened to the quarter roll into the machine.

Her finger was on F9 when a hand covered hers.

“Gotcha.” Jim, but not Jim’s, golden wedding band glimmered in the neon of competing vending machines. He helped her press the buttons.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I know how badly you want this.”

“So badly.”

He reached in to retrieve the brownie. “I’m here for you.”

She turned to face him and looked deeply into his blue-brown eyes. “You don’t know what this means to me.”

He fed her a bite of brownie.

Took a bite himself.

They chewed and swallowed in perfect time with each other.

“So good,” she said.

“These are very special, you know?”

“I know,” she said.

“So are you.” He wrapped his arms around her. “And you deserve to have what you’ve wanted, needed for so long.”

Not Jim leaned toward her as she leaned toward him.

Tim?

They shared a long, slow, brownie-flavored kiss.

They were still kissing when the real Jim’s voice carried in from the other room. “It’s just I feel kind of overwhelmed by the pressure I’m under to do something amazing here and—”

“I don’t want, can’t, talk about this right now,” she said in the direction of his voice. “Trying to relax.”

Not Jim kissed her more deeply.

Pipes began to squeal and water flowed from showerheads affixed to the ceiling and walls of the giant industrial shower into which they’d somehow been transported.

Their clothing disappeared.

He, whoever he was, licked the water from her neck, her breasts, worked his way down toward her belly.

“Should we be—?”

“No worries.” He kissed just below her hipbone. “It’s all by design.”

“You mean?”

He stood and pulled her close. “I’m going to be a daddy.”

“Oh.” She pressed her hips against his. “Yes!”

The room filled with steam.

A door squealed open. She couldn’t see who’d entered, but his voice was unmistakable: “You shouldn’t be in here. You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be…”

“No!” Hope heard herself scream.

She opened her eyes.

Cold sweat dampened her chest, back, and the Restoration Hardware ticking-stripe sheets she’d just picked to complement her Italian Vintage Floral duvet and dark maple four-poster bed. Hers and Jim’s.

Her head pounded, her mouth was cottony. Her stomach more so.

Not in the rec center shower.

Not making love to a man other than Jim.

She was alone. At home. In her own room.

She tried to sit up in bed and instantly thought better of it.

“I hope the party was fun last night,” Jim’s amplified voice came through the answering machine. “Wish I could have been there.”

Hash brownies.

Had she really eaten those brownies?

“Please call me back when you’re up, honey.”

With the click of the phone, she sat upright.

Regretting the quick motion, she managed to lean over to Jim’s side of the bed and pressed play on the answering machine…

And realized she was naked.

With matted hair, and no memory of how she’d gotten there.

She had no memory of much of anything, beyond eating brownies with Tim Trautman.

How had she gotten home?

She slid back under her covers.

“You there, Hope?” Jim’s voice tumbled her halfway back into the dream. “I’m sure you’re still sacked out but I wish you’d pick up.” The answering machine picked up his sigh. “Listen, I didn’t mean for things to go down like they did yesterday.” He paused. “I’m sorry, it’s just I was feeling kind of overwhelmed by the pressure I’m under to do something amazing here. And, honestly, at home, too.”

The tightness began to ease in Hope’s chest.

“Thing is,” Jim, the real Jim, continued, “I know how badly you want this, have needed this, for so long. And I know you might not believe this after our conversation, but I do want and plan to be a dad.”

She’d had way too much to drink, ingested drugs, and was probably still not entirely sober when Jim’s apology message played while she slept.

“Thing is, I gotcha about at least shooting for the right timing.”

Played into her dream.

“I just want to try and be a little more relaxed about the whole process while we are trying. Call me when you get this and let’s try and work out a schedule where you’re here or I’m there at the right time until this job’s over. You deserve, we deserve, to at least give it a try.”

Relief flooded her head and then, her heart. Could what seemed to be a nightmare really be a dream coming true?

“I hope the party was fun last night.” The kindness and understanding in Jim’s voice flooded the room. “Wish I could have been there.”

All just a bad dream.

She needed to call him back and thank him for the apology. Apologize to him for ignoring his calls all day yesterday while she wallowed in her misery.

Her guts burbled.

And drank too much.

Before she called, a cup of coffee to totally sober up and some toast to settle her stomach were probably in order.

A trip to the bathroom was a necessity.

Careful to hold her head as still as possible, she slid out of bed. Bypassing her slippers in favor of the cool hardwood and the cooler tile beyond, she started toward the bathroom. On the way, she glanced through the open window at the gray, drizzly sky. An incongruous sliver of hot pink caught her eye. She stepped over to the southernmost window and peered through the sheers at matching pink storks planted in the corner edge of the Trautmans’ front yard.

Instead of the jealousy she’d already felt in anticipation of this moment, she smiled. Much as she couldn’t believe she’d eaten a hash brownie, there had to be something in Tim’s relaxation theory.

Hope padded across the room and entered the bathroom, focused only on the coolness of the tile radiating into her feet and up her legs. She opened the door to the water closet toilet and sat on the equally cool seat.

Peed.

All was well.

Wiped.

Reminded herself to get new, more padded cycling shorts to prevent the saddle soreness before the outdoor season got into full swing.

Flushed.

Jim was sorry. He was willing, wanted, to try and make sure they were together for ovulation in the coming months. What more could she ask for, besides the baby their argument had him that much more invested in trying to conceive?

She made it back across the bathroom to the double vanity and almost turned on the water before she saw the note in the basin propped against the spigot.

A wave of panic rumbled through her as she reached for the note and glanced at her name jotted across the front in unfamiliar handwriting. Her hand trembled as she unfolded the paper, torn from the pad on her bedside table.

***

It wasn’t like Eva expected him to instantly drop dead or anything. Not after Lauren, or her mother, or both of them, messed everything up anyway.

“It’s raining cats and dogs out there,” her dad announced.

But did he have to be so, so alive?

He thudded down the hallway like Bigfoot, passing the powder room where she’d ducked inside the second she heard the rumble of the garage door. The last thing she felt like dealing with was his party-hangover, pre-church funk she’d have done anything to sleep through.

So unfair she had to be a freaking minister’s daughter.

A pain shot across her uterus.

With freaking cramps.

“I can’t believe you’re already up and out in this rain.” Her mother’s voice floated down the hall and through the ridiculously thin door.

“Someone had to make sure the rec center was back in order,” he said in that totally irritating, pointed way. “The kitchen was covered in plates and rotting food.”

“I’ll go back after church.”

“Already taken care of.”

“Sorry.”

Eva could feel her mom cower. She could hear her sigh. At least they were only fighting. It was utterly revolting to have to cover her head with a pillow to drown out what she usually overheard. Being this close to the two of them while he rambled on about anything more than the potluck would be suicide worthy.

“I meant to finish things up, I really did. It’s just—”

“It’s just you let the kids go early.”

“They’d worked so hard, I wanted to let them have some fun, too.”

“I see,” he said.

“And Laney was supposed to help.”

“But got sick,” he said.

“And left me alone to do all the work,” she said.

Eva felt a twinge of guilt for her mom. They had to leave when they did or there would have been no spell—even one that didn’t seem to be working.

“So you just decided to give up and wander home?”

Not yet, anyway.

“I… the moon was so bright I just…”

“Very weird, Maryellen.”

For once, Eva actually agreed with her dad. Finding her mom standing in the kitchen gobbling candy was more than weird.

Like she’d had one of the missing brownies?

Her father exhaled dramatically. “I found your phone by the sink.”

“Oh, good. Can’t believe I—”

“Me neither.”

“I don’t know what happened. I just felt so… like I wasn’t sure what was happening.”

On the one hand, Eva felt totally weird about maybe getting her mom high.

“I told you never to drink on an empty stomach.”

“I ate,” she said. “Plenty.”

On the other, her mom normally ate so little, the munchies weren’t exactly a bad thing.

“I made sure I not only ate enough, but limited what I had to drink,” he said.

“I thought I saw you drinking beer.”

“I nursed one or two,” her dad said.

Eva doubled over against another wave of cramps.

“I need to look over my sermon before church,” her dad said.

“I’ll leave you to it,” her mom said.

With the sound of footsteps heading toward the kitchen, Eva stepped to the vanity and grabbed an Advil. Checking to make sure both of her parents were safely away from the path to the relative safety of her room, she slunk out of the bathroom. As she tiptoed across the tile and rushed up the stairs, the nasty bellow of her dad’s
I nursed one beer
farts echoed out into the front hall.

***

“I missed you in my sculpt class this morning,” Sarah said.

“Can barely get out of bed,” Laney said by way of answer, her head still ringing from the sound of the phone. “I feel like someone clobbered me with a brick.”

“Bet I know why,” Sarah said.

If she hadn’t been so pissed about Randall’s last-minute ribbon cutting bailout, she’d have clued Sarah in about her own brownie suspicions soon after sampling the dessert tray she found in the corner cabinet of the rec center kitchen. “Why’s that?”

“There was quite a rumor floating around eight
A.M.
stretch.”

An image of Hope, through the open blinds of the Jordan bedroom, leached from the recesses of her liquor and drug-addled brain. “Involving Hope?”

“Did she eat those brownies you were chowing last night?”

Could Will Pierce-Cohn have really been in Hope’s bedroom? “I’m thinking she must have.”

“Then she ought to be feeling much the same as you.”

“Because they had hash or something in them?”

“You knew?”

“Strongly suspected,” she said.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“You wouldn’t have eaten one anyway.” Laney paused. “But, oh my God!”

“Oh my God, what?”

“Maryellen.”

“Definitely ate them!”

“Probably all she ate.” Laney started to shake her head, but thought better of it when she felt what seemed to be her brain rattling inside. “She’s going to be horrified when she finds out.”

“Especially since she was like a pusher with those things,” Sarah said.

“Even worse.”

“Seriously, didn’t you see her give one to Roseanne, Jane Hunt—?”

“And fed one to Frank.”

“The Rev. did seem otherwise enlightened.”

With their shared gallows laugh, a day’s worth of anger and irritation began to dissipate.

“You know,” Sarah said, “I really am sorry about Randall and the ribbon cutting.”

“I just wish I’d known sooner,” she finally said.

“His agent made us swear to silence, or you know I would have told you.”

“Promise?”

“Swear.”

“I guess I should probably ask how his meeting went?”

“Good,” Sarah said. “For a minute I was worried we might be moving to somewhere awful like Pittsburgh or Cleveland.”