What The Nursery Needs...

Catherine forgot to blow on the next spoonful in her agitation and ended up burning her mouth. “Oh, damn,” she moaned. “Monica, I’ve been going to him for years. He knows I’m not married. What’s he going to think?”

“That you want a baby. Come on, Catherine, even if you go the live male route, you’re still going to have to get prenatal care. He’s going to figure it out either way. I’m telling you, if you stick to doing things the way you’re talking about, there’s a lot of this kind of thing you’re going to be faced with.”

Catherine slumped over the countertop. “Oh, God. This is all getting to be too much. I had planned to find a place where nobody knew me and I didn’t know anybody and have it done, I don’t know—anonymously.”

“I get the feeling that if you want to be anonymous about this, you’re going to have to wear a bag over your head,” Monica warned.

Catherine poured the rest of the soup down the disposal, unable to finish it now. Well, she’d known the sperm bank approach would be clinical and unromantic. But then again, there wasn’t much romantic about finding out your fiancе was two-timing you, either. So she’d cope with the embarrassment. There was no viable alternative as far as she was concerned. “I’ll think about it,” she said, knowing she wouldn’t

“That’s all I ask. We’ll come by around six-thirty tomorrow night, okay? That should give you just enough time to get home. I’ll order the pizza on my way out the door so you’ll have time to change before it gets there.”

“Fine. Thanks.”

“See you then.”

Catherine hung up the phone feeling disgruntled and put upon. Man, this simple little project—having a baby—was starting to develop a life of its own and turn ugly on her. How was she ever going to work up the courage to do this?

“I’ll pick up some paint Saturday afternoon after we’re back from the mall,” she told herself as she rinsed out her soup bowl. “Yellow. That can go either way, boy or girl. I’ll paint the nursery and set up the crib. That’ll make it more real and give me courage.”

With that, she turned out the lights and went upstairs to run her hand along the beautiful canopy crib leaning against one of the walls. Then she took out the Mary Jane booties and studied them for several minutes. Baby things. Her baby’s things. Her up-until-she-did-something-about-it, nonexistent baby’s things.

She went to bed, exhausted.

Amy and Monica showed up promptly at six-thirty the next night, the pizza man on their heels.

“Well, you two certainly didn’t waste any time getting here.”

“Heck no, we’re starved,” Amy informed her aunt. “We got a bag of baby carrots at the store and some crackers with spinach dip. Mom says we have to have more vegetables than just the tomato sauce on the pizza.”

“Sounds reasonable, I guess.”

“Did Maura call yet?”

Catherine’s brows rose. “No, are we expecting her to?”

Amy shrugged out of her windbreaker and dropped it on the floor by the kitchen door next to her sleeping bag and a plastic bag with her pillow and overnight stuff. “Well, yeah. I happened to mention that Mom and I were coming over here, and she was going to see if her dad would let her come over for the pizza and movie part and then maybe even sleep over, if it’s okay with you. You always fall asleep so early, Aunt Cath, you know you do.”

Catherine glanced at her sister. “Did she just tell me that I’m getting old?”

Monica shrugged and set the pizza she’d taken from the delivery boy on the kitchen countertop. “You already knew it, anyway, Cath. Isn’t that why you decided on an alternate route to your goal?”

“I know, but—”

“Pick up your coat, Amy. You dropped it on the floor right underneath the hook where it’s supposed to be hung. How much extra time would it have taken to put it where it belonged instead of on the floor where someone will step on it...and right after I just washed it?”

“Don’t worry, Mom, nobody’s going to walk on it.”

“I’ll make a point of walking on it myself if you don’t hang it up.”

Amy seemed unconcerned. She lifted the corner of the pizza box and sniffed deeply. “You’d just be creating more work for yourself, because then you’d only have to wash it again. Can we eat now?”

Catherine had to turn her head to keep from laughing at her sister’s frustration. Monica’s eyes had narrowed to slits. “Pick the coat up now, Amy Marie.”

Amy rolled her eyes and stomped back over to the door. She snatched her jacket off the floor and jammed it onto a hook. “There. Satisfied?”

Monica, paragon of virtue that she was, simply nodded and said, “Yes. Thank you. Now you can have some pizza.” Then, with her daughter safely occupied stuffing her face, she turned to glare at Catherine. “You can afford to laugh now,” she whispered to her sister, “but just wait. If you go through with this you’ll find out. Babies are just like kittens and puppies. They grow up and turn into—” Monica waved a disdainful hand at her own progeny “—that.”

“You mean a typical teenager?”

Monica shuddered. “Yes. And let me tell you, it’s a whole lot easier to put up with when they’re just visiting, and you can send them back to wherever they came from when you feel the need for some peace and quiet. It’s a different story when there’s no place to go to escape them. Twenty-four hours a day, they’re there right on top of you, driving you nuts, making you question your own sanity.”