“Puking? What do you mean puking?”
His face has changed, hardening till the pores stand out, the skin dull and worn beneath his sunburn. She doesn’t like the look in his eyes, doesn’t like the way his mouth draws down around his pursed lips. When she first met him, the first few weeks till he began to relax with her, he used to get that look because no matter how funny he might have been or sweet and caring and genuine, he always held something in reserve. It was because of his ex-wife. Crystal. Crystal had a career of her own — she managed a dress shop in which she owned a half-interest — and couldn’t begin to appreciate the sacrifices he had to make in order to pursue fieldwork, which was the only kind of work he was going to do because sitting behind a desk would just kill him, that’s the way he felt. I’m no desk jockey, he’d said when the subject came up on their third or fourth date. And then he’d backtracked, flushing suddenly, embarrassed, because at that moment he realized what he was saying and he fumbled out an apology, hoping she hadn’t taken offense. I know somebody’s got to do it, I’m not saying that, but I’m sorry — and it’s what I told Crystal — it’s just not going to be me. Not yet anyway. Not till I’m old and decrepit.
“It’s called morning sickness.”
“Are you sure? I mean, is there any chance you’re wrong about it?”
What’s left of the calamari looks sodden and greasy and her stomach flutters at the sight of it. She takes a sip of Diet Coke, reaches across the table for his hand, but he pulls away. She feels a flash of irritation. He’s being a child about this. He’s being an idiot. “I ran the home test three times,” she says in a quiet voice. “And I have an appointment with this obstetrician Paula Meyers recommended—”
“Obstetrician?” The word drops from his lips like a curse.
“—to have her take blood so we can know for sure. But I’m ninety-nine percent positive.” And here she is, soaring again, her glands open wide, the blood beating through her veins on a million tiny wings. “Or no: a hundred percent.”
He sits absolutely rigid, his hands clasped in his lap, the second beer sitting untouched on the polished wooden surface of the table before him. Freshly poured and set there by the vanishing waitress, the beer gives up its carbonation in a mad delirious rush of ascending bubbles, working its way flat. All around them, people are eating, chatting, laughing. Their voices meld and rise in a muted roar that nullifies the thin throb of the music bleeding through hidden speakers. They’re in a restaurant. It’s noisy. He’s been away for ten days, she’s just presented him with the biggest news of her entire clear-eyed life and he’s not looking at her. He’s looking at the table. Out the window. At his beer. “Well?” she says.
“Well what?”
“Don’t you have anything to say? Aren’t you”—and here she feels herself sinking, as if the legs of the chair were melting and the floor sucking out from under her—“at least, I don’t know, interested? Engaged? Or, God forbid, happy?”
His eyes jump to hers. “Happy? No, I’m not happy — I’m just stunned.”
She sees his face as if he’s very far away — across the room or out on the boat still — as if she’s trying to focus it in with a pair of binoculars. His mouth is clamped shut. His eyes are dull, sheenless, squinted like the eyes of a prisoner in an interrogation cell. Maybe this isn’t the time, she’s thinking, maybe she should have waited till they got home at least. . but no, this is their life they’re talking about here, the rest of their life, and he’s got to understand that, got to wake up and give ground, talk to her, dial it up, lock it in, take her hand and tell her he loves her. “We’re going to need to get married,” she says, pushing it, and she can’t help herself.
“Is that a proposal? Because if it is, isn’t it supposed to be me that does the proposing? Isn’t that the way it works?” He reaches for the beer, but then stops himself. “What’s wrong with the way things are now?”
“Everything,” she says, angry suddenly, furious. “Because I am not going to have our son — or daughter, I hope it’s a daughter, I really do — grow up with that kind of stigma attached, because let me tell you it was hard enough when I was growing up without a father.”
“Don’t I get a say in this? I mean, you lay this, this shit on me the minute I step off the boat and it’s like a done deal — I don’t want any kids, okay? I never wanted any kids. I thought you understood that? Aren’t you the one always bitching about seven billion people?” He gives her a sour look, pitches his voice high, in mockery: “‘We’re coming up on seven billion people by 2011 and all the resources are gone and we’re all doomed’? Isn’t that you? Or am I mistaken? Huh?”
She ignores him. “It’s happening. It’s a fact. It’s life. I’m pregnant.”
“Get rid of it,” he says, pushing himself up from the table and gesturing angrily for the waitress. The interior of the restaurant rises and recedes again, the waitress there suddenly with a face so shining and bright it’s like the big bloated headlight of a locomotive heading for a wreck and he’s saying “Forget the food — just bring me the check, will you?” and there’s no trace in him of the man she knows, no soothing, no consideration, no love. In that moment, even before he flings down two twenties and stalks out the door without another word, without looking back to see if she’s coming or even if she’s alive, she feels nothing for him, absolutely nothing.
Four months later, in the descending gloom of February, when each drizzling fogged-in day becomes a soul-killing replica of the last and the windows of the office are so gray and opaque they might as well be cardboard cutouts, things are still unresolved. She hasn’t begun to show yet, at least not that anybody would notice, and if she’s layering her clothes — loose tops, bulky sweaters — people just think it’s because of the cold, because it’s winter. Her breasts are tender, there’s a tight swollen band of flesh protruding just below her navel that reminds her of the bulge in the gut of a just-fed brown tree snake and half the time she feels as if she’s having an out-of-body experience — as if she’s floating above herself like a kite in a stiff breeze — but nobody knows about it except her mother, Dr. Chandrasoma and Tim. And Tim isn’t around. Because Tim left in December to accept a six-month assignment all the way up the coast in the Farallones to census the murres, cormorants, Cassin’s auklets, puffins and pigeon guillemots that were already staking out their ground for nesting in the spring. He had no choice if he wanted to see a paycheck, he told her, ducking his head in shame, guilt, anger and relief. Plus, it was an opportunity to do something with the winter months.
And what about her? What about the baby?
I’ll call, he’d said, lamely. And I’ll visit every fourth week. Or fifth. Whenever they rotate us back to shore.
And marriage? Commitment? Love, support, empathy — friendship, even? All that was on hold. Indefinitely.
That first night they’d wrangled in the car the whole way back from Ventura — thirty minutes that seemed like thirty hours — and by the time he turned into the driveway they weren’t talking. He stalked through the door, flung his backpack down in the entryway and locked himself in the bathroom. She could hear the thump of his crusted jeans hitting the floor, the sigh of the smoked-glass door on its abraded hinges and then the wheeze and rattle of the shower. He was washing the grit of the island off him, running water down the drain till it went cold, purifying himself — and for what? If he thought she was just going to dab perfume behind her ears, slip into a see-through negligee and give him what he wanted as if nothing had happened, he was out of his mind. She was so wrought up she was trembling, actually trembling, as she set the teapot on the stove, thinking to calm herself with a cup of herbal tea and maybe one or two of the chocolate-covered biscotti she was always craving yet denied herself because of her waistline, but that didn’t matter now, did it? She slammed the pot down on the burner, her elbow kinetic, her wrist snapping angrily. Why did everything have to be such a struggle? Why?