Winter Baby

In the living room, the stack of Christmas CDs she’d put on an hour ago clicked and shifted and began playing “What Child Is This?” Cute. Very cute. She felt a faint urge to get up and break the CD in two, but she didn’t have the energy to follow through. Apparently shock and horror worked like a tranquilizer dart. She couldn’t move a muscle.

When the doorbell rang, she was confused, momentarily unable to remember whom she’d been expecting. It rang again, then again, short and hard, as if whoever it was didn’t much like waiting.

Her subconscious recognized that irritable ring. Of course. Ed. Her fiancé was coming for dinner. They’d had an 8:00 p.m. date. It was now 8:01, and he didn’t like tardiness. He had a master plan, too—and, if anything, it was even more rigidly scheduled than Sarah’s own. It had been one of the reasons she chose him in the first place. It was definitely one of the reasons she stuck with him, even though lately their relationship had been…a little rocky. Just a tiny bit unsatisfying.

Still, all relationships had their rocky moments. And Ed would make a good husband. She wasn’t the type to run around breaking off engagements. She wasn’t like her mother. When she gave her word, she meant it.

And now she had no choice. She was pregnant with Ed’s child. Pregnant. She made a small gasping sound, as if she couldn’t breathe around the fact.

She stood numbly, instinctively sweeping all the tiny test strips and empty pink boxes into the waste-basket. For a long moment she stared down at the debris, which seemed to represent the bits and pieces of her shattered master plan. How solid could the plan actually have been, she asked herself numbly, if it had been so easily destroyed?

Ed had given up ringing and was knocking now. Sarah actually half smiled at the frustrated annoyance in the sound. Poor Ed. If he didn’t like her being slow to answer the door, he was going to really hate the rest of his evening.

“Good God, what is that smell?” As Sarah opened the door, Ed started to signal his annoyance by one disapproving glance at his watch, but almost immediately his horror at the odor in the apartment superseded everything else. He wrinkled his aristocratic nose into a disgusted twist. “Sarah, for God’s sake. Have you burned dinner?”

“I think so,” she said. And then, because he was looking at her with an expression of complete incredulity, she realized that something else probably needed to be said. She wondered what it was. She felt as if she were speaking a foreign language. “I’m sorry?”

“Me, too,” he agreed curtly. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast.” He sniffed the air again. “Have you turned off the oven?”

“I don’t think so,” she said, trying to remember. “No. I don’t think so.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you all right?” He didn’t wait for her answer. He moved into the kitchen with the assured purpose of a man in charge in his own home. But it wasn’t his home, Sarah thought suddenly. It was her home. Why did he feel that he was in charge?

Because somebody had to be. She obviously would burn the whole apartment complex down if somebody didn’t take over. Already the kitchen was filling with smoke.

After he flicked the thermostat off and determined that dinner was completely ruined, Ed let the oven door slam impatiently. He punched the exhaust fan to High, then returned to the living room, closing the kitchen door tightly behind him. The Christmas CDs were still playing, and the gentle pine scent of her tree fought with the nasty burned smell of dinner.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah said again, although she no longer felt very sorry. It was just a soufflé, after all. Why was Ed making such a big deal out of it? His handsome face couldn’t have looked sterner if she had just charbroiled the original copy of the Magna Carta. “Maybe we could order pizza.”

He looked at her silently, as if he didn’t trust himself to speak. Sarah felt the beginnings of rebellion stir. Was burning dinner really such a sin? In the early days she had thought Ed’s perfectionism was admirable, a sign that he possessed high standards. He expected a lot from others, but he required a lot of himself, too. For instance, Sarah knew that he would require himself to be a faithful, reliable husband, which was exactly what she wanted. What she needed. She had no intention of repeating her mother’s mistakes.

After Sarah’s father had been caught cheating, when Sarah was only eight, her mother had promptly divorced him. She’d spent the next several decades trying to find a replacement. But she was a rotten judge of men.

Sarah couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been determined to choose more wisely. She wanted someone sensible. Strong. Faithful. Someone with a plan.

Several times during the past few weeks, however, traitorous thoughts had crept in. He had sometimes seemed not admirable, but…pompous. Petty. Dictatorial.

Out of nowhere came a chilling thought. Someday he would turn that expression, that cold, unforgiving blue gaze, upon their child. Over a broken toy, a soiled diaper, a C in math. She felt a quick, primitive burning in her legs, as if they were straining to run somewhere far, far away—somewhere he couldn’t find her. Or the baby.

But this was crazy. It must mean that her hormones were already acting up. She’d better pull herself together, or she’d never find the courage to tell him.

“Chinese. How about Chinese?” Ed liked Chinese food. Maybe he was just hungry. Maybe he’d be less tense after he ate something. She smiled as pleasantly as she could. “My treat.”

“No.” He sighed from the depths of his diaphragm. “Oh, maybe it’s just as well. I really shouldn’t stay very long anyhow. I’ve got a lot to do tonight.”

He gestured toward the sofa, which was decorated with small needlepoint pillows that read “Peace on Earth” and “Joy to the World.”

“Sit down, Sarah,” he said somberly. “I have news.”

“Oh,” she said. She moved the pillows out of the way and sat. She looked up at him, trying to find the man she had fallen in love with, that handsome, twenty-eight-year-old former math teacher whose extraordinary maturity had made him the youngest high school principal in the state of Florida. That worthy man couldn’t have disappeared overnight.

She smiled the best she could. “I have news, too, Ed.”

He sat on the chair opposite her. “Let me go first,” he said. “Mine is very important.” He winced. “Oh, hell. I didn’t mean it like that.”

Somehow, still smiling, she waved away the insult. He’d know soon enough that her news was important, too. Life shattering, in fact. She tried to compose her face to look interested, but her mind couldn’t quite focus on anything except the new truth inside her.

What would he say? How would he feel? How, for that matter, did she feel?

After a moment she realized he wasn’t speaking. She glanced over at him, surprised to see him looking hesitant. Ed was rarely at a loss for words. At Groveland High School, where they both worked—Ed as principal, Sarah as Home Economics teacher—Ed was legendary for his ability to subdue hostile parents. He smothered every complaint under a soothing blanket of verbiage.

He cleared his throat, but still he didn’t begin. He looked around her tiny living room, then stood abruptly. “I can’t breathe in here, with all this smoke. Let’s go outside.”

Sarah felt a new unease trickle through her veins. What was this news that he found so difficult to share? But she followed him out onto the small balcony that overlooked the complex swimming pool. The air was balmy, typical December weather in south Florida. The colored holiday lights looped along nearby balconies blinked rather desperately, as if reassuring themselves that it really was Christmas, in spite of the heat.

Ed went straight to the railing and leaned against it, looking down at the turquoise pool, where several of Sarah’s neighbors were having a keg party. They were all dressed in Santa hats and bathing suits.

Sarah was suddenly eager to postpone whatever Ed had to say. Eager, too, to postpone her own devastating news. “Uncle Ward had hoped we could come spend Christmas with him in Firefly Glen,” she said. “Wouldn’t that have been lovely? White mountains and sleigh rides, and marshmallow roasts, and—”

“And four days snowed in with a bad-tempered, senile old man?” Ed shook his head. “No thanks.”

Sarah stared flatly at the stranger in front of her. “I never said he was senile.”

“Well, he’s almost eighty, isn’t he? Besides, I didn’t have the time, you know that.” Ed turned around, squaring his shoulders as if he had finally come to a decision. “Sarah. Listen.”

She stood very still and waited. A drunken chorus of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” wafted up from the party below, but she could still hear Ed’s fingers drumming against the railing.

“All right,” she said. “I’m listening.”

“They offered me the job, Sarah. The superintendent’s position. I’m going to California.”

She didn’t take her eyes from him. But she had heard the telling pronoun. “I’m” going to California. Not we. “I.”

“Congratulations.” She’d known he was applying for the job, a plum assignment as superintendent of schools in a small, affluent Southern California county. But she hadn’t really believed he’d get it. He was so young. He’d been a principal only a couple of years. But apparently he had wowed them in California, just as he wowed people everywhere, with his good looks, his sharp mind, his glib conversation.

“Sarah, do you understand? I’m going to California. Next month. Maybe sooner.”

“Yes, I understand.” But she didn’t, not really. “Are you saying you think we should postpone the wedding?”

He set his jaw—his square, well-tanned jaw…he really was so incredibly handsome—and licked his lips. “No. I’m saying I think we should call off the wedding.”

“What?” She couldn’t have heard him correctly.

He shook his head. “It’s not working, Sarah. I know you’ve sensed that, too. You must have. It’s just not the same between us. I know we haven’t wanted to admit it, but I don’t see how we can deny it any longer. And now, with me leaving…”

She waited. Her whole body seemed suspended in a weightless, airless space.

He looked annoyed, as if he had expected her to finish the sentence for him. “Well, now, with me leaving, it’s the right time to just admit it isn’t working, don’t you think?”