“You’re happy with him.”
“Yes, I’m happy with him. What a question, Marsha, for God’s sake.”
“Well, I mean he is older than you are. I don’t want to pry. But something looks not right. I’m sorry. You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
Natasha crossed the street. Her pace was that of someone walking alone. She turned and headed down to the next block, so they could come back to the house. Her friend walked along at her side, without saying more.
“I have a doctor’s appointment,” Natasha told her.
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She stopped. “How about you, Marsha. How is your love life?” Marsha had been seeing a pharmacy student at the university, someone she’d spoken about in rather cold terms as being good looking but not very interesting.
“Oh, let me tell you,” she said, looking down. Natasha saw something uncertain in her eyes. “That’s over. I sent him packing. I’m free. And loving it.”
Natasha touched her shoulder. “You said he was a bit boring.”
“Deadly. But he was pretty. I guess he thought that was all he needed. You should’ve seen the look on his face when I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore. Like a kid being told there’s no Santa Claus and for a few seconds refusing to accept the knowledge. I swear his lower lip stuck out. It about broke my heart. I almost told him I was kidding.”
“Poor guy.”
“Look, I really didn’t mean to upset you.”
They walked on. “It’s okay. Really.”
“Just trying to help. I mean I know depression when I see it.”
“And you think you see it.”
Marsha frowned. “Well, yes.”
“I’m not depressed.”
“Constance told me what she saw that night in Jamaica.”
They had reached Iris’s street. Natasha halted again and looked at her. “I should’ve known.”
“I told her it doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“When did she tell you?”
“That night before the wedding.”
“Oh, God. My friend Constance.”
“She’s just worried about you.”
“Yes, the same way she was worried when she told you about Mackenzie and me.”
“She really didn’t know what to do. She told me about — it was about messing things up that day. How she wanted to let you know she believed you about it, and she got it all wrong. She was worried.”
“And she told you about it.”
“Please don’t be angry with her, Natasha. She was really worried, and it was about what she might have done to hurt you. Really. And then Michael seemed to know something.”
“Michael doesn’t know anything unless she told him something. And there’s nothing to know. It was a kiss. One fucking kiss. And I was drunk and I thought Michael was dead and he was needy and crying and I gave him a goddamn kiss.”
“Okay,” Marsha said. “Okay.”
They went on to the end of the street, past Iris’s, and turned up Swan Ridge. Neither of them spoke as they approached the house.
“Don’t be mad at me, too,” Marsha said. “I don’t have any interest in this except worrying about you, like Constance. And Michael. All of us. Everyone who loves you.”
At the entrance to the house, Natasha faced her. “Don’t worry about me.”
The other waited.
“Don’t worry, okay? I can handle myself. Iris doesn’t worry about me the way you and Constance have. So stop it.”
“How do you stop that? How do you stop worrying about someone you love who’s in trouble?”
“But we’re all in trouble,” Natasha said. “Aren’t we.”
“You know how I mean that,” said Marsha, plainly annoyed now.
“I love my husband,” Natasha told her, and as she said the words, the truth in them startled her. “I love my husband,” she repeated. “And we are still in shock from what happened — like everyone else in this country. And Constance can take her imaginings and go straight to hell with them.”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. Please.”
“Now I’m going in and have a cup of green tea. You’re welcome to join me if you promise to stay off the subject of my mental state and my marriage.”
“I have to go,” Marsha said in a small voice. She reached for a hug, and Natasha accepted it, without speaking.
4
She drove to Germantown, to the doctor’s office, which was in a tall white building on Poplar Avenue. At the first-floor elevator she waited with a heavy, elderly black woman in a blue scarf, tank top, and jeans. There were darker places on the woman’s large dark arms. The elevator doors opened, and she stepped in with a lumbering slowness and turned. “Where you goin’, young lady?”
“Second floor,” Natasha said.
The old woman pushed the button. “Baby doctor.”
“Yes.”
“I know her. Good doctor.”
Natasha heard herself say, “This might be my first.”
The door opened. “Yeah, I remember that. Coulda been earlier this mawnin’, way it feels. Time goes so fas’.”
“Take care,” Natasha told her.
“It goes fas’, honey. Make sure you ’preciate it.”
The doors closed. She made her way into the waiting area of the doctor’s office feeling as though the world had sent her this message through the kindly old woman. There were messages from the world around you if you paid attention. She signed the sheet at the window and thought about learning to appreciate things more.
The doctor was a short, blocky, red-haired woman with straight shoulders and an erect carriage as if she were trying to look taller than she was. Her name was Bass. She came in with the nurse, who looked no older than a high school student and had blond bangs that came down to her eyebrows.
During the exam, Dr. Bass spoke to the nurse, who took notes. Then she went out, and the nurse drew blood. And after a short wait, Natasha was led into the small office off the corridor. “Well, we’ll know for sure in a few days, but from our little urine sample and the feel of your uterus, you’re expecting.”
Natasha put her hands to her mouth for a second and had to fight for breath a little.
“This surprises you?”
“Not really, no.”
“You’re a little pale.”
“I’m all right.”
“We’ll set you up with some vitamins and prenatal instructions.”
“Doctor — is it possible to have a … is it possible to be impregnated and have a period just after?”
“Well, some women have bleeding episodes.”
“Like a heavy period?”
“Well, yes, actually. I’ve known it to happen that a woman has what she believes is a period or even a miscarriage. Enough blood to think that. And then three weeks later shows up still pregnant, with a healthy and viable fetus. Why?”
Natasha couldn’t speak for a moment.
“Have you had a bleeding episode? Did you think you had your period?”
She shook her head. “But it’s not common. You haven’t seen that sort of thing a lot — it’s rare?”
“I’d say it’s quite rare. What’re we talking about, honey?”
“Is there a test that can tell when conception took place?”
“Well, to calculate your due date, we count forward forty weeks from the first day of your last period. And we can make a pretty good guess at it from the amount of HGC in your blood, but that can vary from woman to woman, and so none of it’s absolutely certain. It’s all estimation mostly until we get a look at a sonogram — and even then we’re really only guessing. Educated guesses, you know.”