Sonia looks at her friend and does all she can to not say just be GAY. It’s the twenty-first century, just be GAY. “Yeah, he’s been helpful in the past. And I’m suffering.”
“Let’s get a bunch of pretty pink baby clothes and some clothes that fit you and maybe that will cheer you up.”
“Thanks for coming with me, Clara. You know I’m not much of a shopper.”
“Of course! I love shopping. I could be a professional shopper.”
“Good. I’ll just follow you around and say yes to stuff.”
“Sounds perfect.” Clara grins at her and Sonia feels OK, almost OK, even if behind that OKness lurks the panic, waiting for its moment to pounce.
THAT NIGHT, AFTER SONIA cooks a chicken for her family and Dick helps her clean up, after the kids are tucked in their beds and Dick is in front of the TV, Sonia unpacks her carefully wrapped maternity clothes up in their loft. There is the pair of khaki pants with a huge elastic stomach that Clara convinced her she had to buy. There is a pair of pants that resembles the black sweats Sonia wore every day until they stopped fitting her. There’s two black T-shirts, a blue T-shirt and a white one, all cut for a burgeoning belly. And there is the most dreadful thing of all, maternity underpants. As Sonia unpacks these items and holds them up in front of her face, the TV making a slight noise from down below, her hands begin to shake. She’s holding the blue shirt, the one Clara told her she had to have, and it seems enormous, it seems like it’s mocking her, and her hands go cold as if her blood just froze. The shirt jitters in her hands in front of her and Sonia puts it down. How did she survive this before? And then again? Those two children were wanted, they were, despite her nagging doubts and fears. This time, it’s totally different. She never wanted three children. With three children, you can’t fit in the booth. With three children, you can’t fit in a station wagon, you need a minivan. With three children, you are outnumbered. You have to learn how to play zone defense. With three children — and it hits her, it’s a sharp stab straight in her brain, it’s a revelation, it’s like finding Christ — there won’t be anything left of herself. She’ll be eaten alive. She’ll disappear. Now her head starts swarming and her hands, as she holds them up to her face, look red. They are red. They start to ooze sweat, her palms glisten as she turns her hands around in front of her face. They burn with heat, this, just after rattling with ice. It’s the start of an anxiety attack and Sonia knows it, but it doesn’t make it OK. She feels as if she’s going to faint and she throws herself down on the bed, shaking, breathing rapidly, and she buries her face in pile of enormous underwear and cries without a sound. She can’t do this. She’s made a mistake. She needs to call her shrink.
THE NEXT MORNING, DICK takes the kids to school. “Are you OK, sweetie?” Sonia looks ashen. Pregnancies can have complications, she knows from their various friends. They were lucky with their two boys in that although Sonia was a psycho-bitch when she was pregnant, she didn’t get high blood pressure, she didn’t get diabetes, she didn’t get any of the bad things that one can get when one is pregnant. But now Dick looks worried because Sonia looks horrible.
“I think I’ve seen a ghost,” she says, and she thinks, I’ve seen the ghost of my future.
“Call Dr. Silver, Sonia. And maybe go see your midwife and get your blood pressure and stuff checked.” He sits on the bed next to her. Sonia looks at him, but does not see him.
“Yeah, maybe I’ll call Dr. Silver,” she says, and they kiss goodbye, lightly, and the boys run up to her and throw themselves at her and everyone gets kisses and goodbyes and she lays there and thinks, I’m not calling my shrink.
I’m not calling my shrink because he can’t make me not be pregnant. I’m not calling my shrink because I don’t want someone watching over me, trying to get me to get through my days like a good person. Like a responsible person. I don’t want to cook dinner for anyone, I don’t want to do laundry, I don’t want to pick up milk. I don’t want to be that well-functioning person that everyone wants me to be. I want out. I want out of here. And my shrink won’t “support” me on that. My shrink’s on their side, even if he pretends to be working for me.
The apartment is quiet. She pulls herself out of bed and she’s not shaking. She’s calm. This pleases her and she hums while she showers and afterward, after rubbing herself dry delicately so that it feels really nice, her flesh all damp and clean and the towel kissing her, then, then, she pulls on her new maternity black sweatpants. They are big and make her look and feel like a cow but hey, she doesn’t fit into anything else so what else is she to do? And she’s still relatively small, considering how far along she is. Then she attempts to put on her new blue maternity shirt and that’s it, her calmness is gone. Her rage has been triggered. The fucking shirt, the pale blue huge shirt. It is not what she is. She rips it off and scrapes her ear in the process and pulls on a Hanes wife-beater and then grabs her old black leather jacket from the closet, and dammit, she’s shaking again. Her apartment seems tilted sideways as she stands in the center of it. It’s a lovely apartment. Dick picked up all of the toys. The floor shines up at her, the dark brown wood serene and perfect in front of her. This is her home. She’s always loved this apartment but it’s too small for three kids. Exposed brick walls, the large open living room with a soaring ceiling. The loft, the privacy of the loft, their bedroom. The children’s room off the small kitchen. They’d had such a good life here. But she doesn’t belong here.
She doesn’t call Dr. Silver. She doesn’t even call her husband. She calls Clara, who answers the phone.
“Hello?”
“Clara?”
“Hi, Sonia! Wearing that blue maternity shirt I told you to get? It was the best color for you. It matched your eyes perfectly.”
“Clara, I have to ask you a favor.”
“Sure thing.”
“I need you to pick up the boys from school today.”
“OK.” Says Clara. “Are you OK? Is everything OK?”
“Everything is not OK. Oh, and after you pick them up, call Dick at work, OK? His number is 212-652-7742. Got that?”
“What’s going on Sonia. Are you OK? Are you going to the hospital?” Clara asks.
“I’m not going to the hospital. Don’t worry. Thanks for doing this for me,” Sonia says.
Clara can tell she’s about to hang up. “Wait, Sonia. Don’t go. What’s going on? You have to tell me.”
“Thanks a lot, Clara. I gotta go.” And that’s it. She hangs up. She throws her new maternity clothes in a bag and heads out the door.
AS SHE WALKS TO the garage to get the car, her legs feel like rotten vegetables, like mushy stalks of zucchini. Will they live without her? And she didn’t even say goodbye. How can they live without her? If she’s not there, she will be dead to them. They took away her life, they didn’t mean to, but they did. And now here she goes, pretending she can claim it back.
AND AS SHE STARTS up the car, she thinks, where am I going? And then she thinks, it doesn’t matter. I’m going, I’m gone, I’m doing what every mother dreams of doing because I’ve always followed my dreams. I’m doing what every mother fears she’ll do, because I’ve always confronted my fears. I’m doing something really terrible and I’ll be punished for it, no doubt, but I’ve always been a troublemaker. And that’s it, her hands want to shake but they can’t shake too much because she’s driving. They want to freeze but she grips the wheel and it keeps them warm. And her mind starts to expand and then it stops, because she has to focus on the road. It’s called survival. Fear and flight. Our natural reaction to a bear in the woods. Sonia’s been in the woods. And the bear’s her whole fucking life.