“Like the Goodyear Blimp. How else am I gonna feel?” she retorted. He laughed. She added, “And I do wish he’d come out and get it over with. I’m sick of lugging him around.”
Dr. Suzuki nodded. How many times had he heard variations on that theme? Probably from every woman close to her due date. He glanced into the chart. “Your numbers have been good all along. Your BP is low. You’ve never had protein in your urine or anything like that. It should be a normal delivery. We will be extra careful, though. I don’t mean to offend you, but at your age we can’t take anything for granted.”
“I’m not offended. I know how old I am. I’d better,” Louise said.
“Er-yes.” Dr. Suzuki didn’t seem to know what to make of that. Was I so dry before I married Colin, or did it rub off from him? Louise wondered. Chances were it had rubbed off. She still thought of anything peculiar as nutso because of Wes Jones. And he was just the guy who’d lived across the street, not somebody who’d fathered her three children.
Three out of four now, she thought.
Dr. Suzuki tried again: “If anything seems even a little out of the ordinary, call me or go to the hospital right away. Don’t waste time and don’t take chances. Do you understand?”
“I can’t very well not understand that, can I?” Louise returned sharply.
He rolled his eyes. “Ms. Ferguson, you’d be amazed.”
And that was bound to be true. If anybody learned never to underestimate the power of human stupidity, someone who’d been married to a cop for a long time sure would. The armed robber who’d left his driver’s license on the counter of the liquor store he’d knocked over but who seemed surprised anyway when he got busted. . The gal who’d stabbed her husband in the neck over a six-pack of Big Red chewing gum. . Oh, the list went on and on.
“Well, I hope I’m not dumb that way, anyhow,” Louise said.
“Okay, fair enough.” Dr. Suzuki nodded. “I’ll see you again in two weeks or when your contractions start, whichever comes first.”
Louise made the appointment with the receptionist. Whether she’d keep it, as the OB-GYN had said, was more up to Junior than to her. The doctor’s office was in a better part of town than the ramen works. It didn’t have, or need, a fortified parking lot. Louise sighed. She remembered the days when no business in San Atanasio did.
Which proved. . what, exactly? That the world changed whether she liked it or not? That she wasn’t so young as she had been once upon a time? All of the above? The baby kicked inside her as she got into her car. “Stop that,” she told him, not that he listened. She wasn’t too old to get pregnant. She’d thought she was, but nooooo. Life was full of surprises, wasn’t it? Uh-huh. You betcha.
When she walked into the ramen place, Patty asked her, “How you doing?” In the old days, Patty would have been a man with a green eyeshade. What she couldn’t do with and to numbers couldn’t be done.
“Except for this”-Louise patted her front bumper-“I’m fine.”
“Yeah. Except.” Patty would have to fill Louise’s slot, too, when Louise had the baby. It wasn’t that she couldn’t. She could do the job better than Louise could; she’d taught it to Louise. But she couldn’t stand Mr. Nobashi-he drove her nutso.
As soon as Louise got back to her desk, he yelled for a Coke and a danish. He ran on them. Why he didn’t have diabetes, Louise couldn’t imagine. Not from lack of effort, that was for sure. Fetching the stuff for himself would have been beneath a Japanese boss’ dignity. Having a massively pregnant woman do it for him wasn’t.
All things considered, Patty had a point.
Once she’d supplied Mr. Nobashi with his early-afternoon sugar and caffeine, Louise went back to figuring inventories and sales trends. It wasn’t what you’d call exciting. Well, if she wanted excitement, all she had to do was wait till Junior came out. He’d take care of that for her. Oh, wouldn’t he just!
III
The door to Marshall Ferguson’s room had a strip of yellow police tape running diagonally across it. CRIME SCENE-DO NOT CROSS was printed on it in big black block letters. Like any newly returned college graduate living in a house with his father and his father’s new wife, he was sensitive about his privacy.
Unlike some, he realized they were sensitive about theirs, too. And they didn’t pry. He could even smoke dope in there if he didn’t make it too obvious he was getting wasted. For somebody whose dad was a cop, that was a small, or maybe not such a small, miracle.
About the only thing his father required of him was that he sit in front of his computer for a couple of hours every day, working on whatever he was working on. “Look,” Colin Ferguson said, “I know turning into a writer doesn’t happen overnight. But it doesn’t happen if you don’t work at it, either. So you’ll work.”
Marshall resented that, but not as much as he might have. He was old enough to have got past the teenage thing of being sure anything his old man said was bullshit just because his old man said it. But he did bristle when his dad suggested-no, ordained was the better word-that he pay a third of whatever he made as rent.
“What happens if I get a fat book contract?” he asked. Two sold stories, and he had big ambitions-or dreams, anyhow.
“Then we dicker,” Dad said at once, which tossed a bucket of water on Marshall’s sparking temper. His father went on, “Look, I’m not trying to screw you. I’m just trying to remind you that you’ve got some obligations. You’re allegedly a grown-up, after all.”
“Thanks for that allegedly. I appreciate it,” Marshall said.
“Figured you would.” Dad didn’t even blink. Trying to top him at sarcasm was a losing game. He eyed Marshall. “Other thing is, if I get sick of nothing coming in after a while, you’ll start looking for a job or you’ll find yourself somewhere else to stay.”
“How long is a while? Who gets to decide?”
“I decide how long it is.” Colin Ferguson answered both questions at once. He even explained why: “After all, I’m the guy paying the mortgage.”
What am I supposed to say to that? Marshall wondered. He almost asked if Kelly was paying rent. Fortunately, he had the sense not to. For one thing, she was married to Dad. For another, she had a paying job at Dominguez Hills. So all Marshall did say, after that brief pause for thought, was, “Okay.”
His father had inhaled. Dad was braced for an argument, all right, and ready to blow Marshall out of the water. Now he exhaled again: he’d got dressed up, and he didn’t have any place to go. He sent Marshall a crooked grin. “You are growing up, aren’t you?”
Marshall was convinced he’d been grown up for years now. Whenever he tried to say as much, his old man gave him the horse laugh. Since they’d come through this exchange without the fireworks that might have soured things between them, he let it go without offering Dad such a juicy target. “Whatever,” he said, and left it right there. The less you came out with, the less you’d regret later on.
Then his father caught him by surprise: “I bet I know where you’ll be able to make some money, anyhow. Not enough to live on, but some.”
“Oh, yeah? Where?” Marshall wondered what kind of harebrained scheme was dancing through Dad’s beady little mind.
Only it turned out not to be so harebrained after all. “Taking care of your half-brother, that’s where,” Colin Ferguson answered. “Your mother will be looking for somebody to do that, I’m sure, once she runs through however much maternity leave they give her.”
“Huh,” Marshall said thoughtfully. Whatever he might have been looking for, that wasn’t it. “I’m. . not sure I want to do that. I. . don’t know how much I want to have to do with Mom these days. And taking care of, of that kid?” He didn’t even want to say Teo’s name. Teo, after all, had stolen Mom away from Dad and screwed up the family. That was how he’d seen it at the time, anyhow. Little by little, he’d come to realize things weren’t so simple (which was another part of growing up). The first approximation still ruled his gut, though.