Making Babies

Oy vey. When she examined herself head-on, her fair, translucent skin—a plus at age twenty—became a potential liability. Lines had formed.

Pursing her lips, Elaine pulled her shirt out from her waistband, unbuttoned the top button and tucked the pillow into her shorts. She felt only a little foolish, and once the pillow was in place, the effect it had on her was almost electric.

As if by magic, suddenly she had more than a worn sofa pillow under her shirt; she had an internal sense of purpose. Smoothing her T-shirt over her now expanded belly, she turned to view herself from the side, and of course it was silly, but for the first time in ages, she felt like she had an identity again. Like trying on a uniform before starting a new job and discovering the fit is just right.

And then for the teeniest, tiniest second she allowed herself to picture more than the belly; she pictured the whole kit ’n caboodle—one child by the hand, one on the way and the man, smiling that private, sexy, me-man you-woman smile that said, “Look what we did.”

The image was so darned appealing that the tiny second she’d meant to spend on it extended into another and another and then just one more, until finally Elaine sank into the fantasy like it was a tub of hot water, letting the image grow clearer and more detailed until it became obvious the man smiling at her was Mitch Ryder.

Damn it.

Reaching under her shirt, she yanked out the pillow.

A woman could get pretty disgusted with herself over this sort of thing.

Granted, he was the only eligible male she’d spent any time with in ages, and granted, he was attractive…in a straight-backed, bordering-on-pompous way.

But he listened. And he seemed to care, for some reason, what happened to her. And that was hard to ignore.

Elaine scrunched the pillow between her hands. In the end, she knew exactly why she’d pictured him. It was that night. The memory—or lack thereof—of that night hung over her like a rain cloud ready to burst, and the worst thing was Mitch’s silence. He knew what had happened, and yet he never mentioned it, never even alluded to it. He was an overprotective, overbearing, buttinsky, and yet every time she saw him there were a few seconds—usually right before he opened his mouth and ticked her off—when she felt…dare she admit it?…a surge of desire. A fleeting—and, really, it was fleeting—sense of the absolute rightness of being with him.

“Rrrrrggghhhh!” She smooshed the pillow as hard as she could to release some of her aggravation, then sent it sailing like a Frisbee back into the living room. She checked her watch—four-fifteen. A run along the river—that’s what she needed. When she set her feet to the pavement, her mind cleared. Seratonin rose; sanity returned. She hadn’t run in ages, but knew where her shoes and running shorts were without having to think about it and was ready to go fifteen minutes later.

Wrapping a scrunchie around her ponytail, she grabbed the remainder of a bag of French bread to feed to the ducks (according to Fertility Nutrition, white flour upset insulin balance and wreaked havoc on the hormones) and took an organic apple for herself. She felt virtuous before she was halfway out the door. She was being proactive. Not a whiner. She wasn’t staying home to worry or to obsess about a man; she was doing something good for herself and her baby-to-be.

Locking the front door, Elaine dropped her keys in her pocket and prepared to head out. As she turned toward the porch steps, however, she stopped short. A tall, slim woman dressed in pleated, straight-leg trousers and a man-tailored shirt that looked like it was pressed to within an inch of its life peered in the window of the apartment next door. She had thick dark hair cut in one of those choppy, supershort cuts Elaine so admired, but which made her look like a little girl whose brother had played “barber” on her head.

The other woman, however, looked just right in the charming cap of hair. Her bone structure was strong and classic. Her entire appearance telegraphed confidence, a woman who could be counted on to lead the crowd rather than follow. With a tanned, ringless hand, she rapped on the window, obviously frustrated when there was no immediate response.

Elaine stepped forward. “May I help you?” The stranger turned toward her with penetrating brown eyes. “I live next door,” Elaine explained, hoping to appear helpful rather than nosy. She gestured. “The apartment you’re looking at is vacant. Are you hunting?”

Taller than Elaine had first thought, the woman looked first at her then at the duplex as if the question didn’t quite compute.

“Hunting?” Then she burst out, “You mean apartment hunting? Here? God, no!” She surveyed the old wooden eaves, the broad concrete porch with its hairline fractures and actually shuddered. “I’m looking for Mitch Ryder. He left this address on my answering machine.”

Elaine took another, longer look at the brunette, who appeared to be in her early thirties, and glanced at her watch. “Ah, he was here, about…hmm…an hour ago? Maybe?”

The other woman frowned, and Elaine knew she should wash her own mouth out with soap. Could she be a bigger fake? She knew darn well Mitch had been in the apartment as recently as fifty-two minutes, forty-five seconds ago, because her watch had a sweep second hand and that was when the hammering had stopped. But she wasn’t going to parade her interest in front of a woman whose long neck and lithe body could make Audrey Hepburn look stumpy.

“Do you know when he’s coming back?”

“No.” At least that was the truth. “No idea. Sorry.”

“Thirty-six years of impeccable reliability, and he has to screw it up now—” peeking through the window again, Mitch’s visitor appeared to be speaking mostly to herself “—when I am absolutely, freakishly starving.”

“Would you like an apple?” Elaine held it up, feeling a bit like the wicked stepmother in Snow White. Was this woman Mitch’s girlfriend? Come to think of it, she couldn’t remember his ever bringing a date to the office get-togethers.

The brunette looked at the apple, but shook her head. “Nah. I don’t want to kill my appetite. I want beef. I hope he brought clothes to change into.” Still mumbling, she tried the front doorknob, surprising both of them when it turned easily and she was able to wait inside. As she crossed the threshold, Elaine heard her say, “Jeez, what was he thinking? He could have had two condos in Lakewood for the price of this place.”

Elaine fought a terrible desire to go back into her apartment, station herself behind the curtains and wait for Mitch to return, but that nosy image was just too awful, so she directed herself down the porch steps. She was halfway to the sidewalk when she heard, “Oh, hey!” She turned. “Thanks, uh…”

“Elaine.”

“Elaine. Right.” And with that the brunette disappeared inside the apartment again and shut the door.

Elaine stared at the closed door for a time. Well, obviously he did see women and obviously he liked them slender as grass, tall as elms and surprisingly offbeat. Fine. Wasn’t any of her business.

Setting off down the steps, Elaine prepared to outrun the emotions she wanted no part of. By the time she reached the corner, she was practically sprinting.

When she returned an hour later, the porch steps looked like the side of Mount Hood. Her pronounced limp was the result of a rather painful attempt to jump over a Chihuahua that had crossed her path at the park. Elaine’s knees were not what they used to be, apparently; she’d successfully avoided crushing the tiny canine, but her knees had buckled upon landing. Neglecting to warm up hadn’t helped.

Before she’d jogged ten minutes, her chest had felt like thick rubber bands were holding her ribs together. Lord, how would she work and care for a baby on her own when she was this out of shape? Plus, now she was starving. Her stomach growled, her legs groaned. She was too tired to go out for food and too hungry to think that tofu anything would satisfy her tonight.

Trudging to her door, she saw that the light was on in the vacant apartment. Vacant, but not empty. Mitch and the woman were seated on the floor, smiling and laughing as they helped themselves to bags of food laid out between them on the carpet.

She watched the woman take Mitch’s burger and help herself to a big bite. The gesture was natural, as if they’d done this many times in the past.

Apparently preferring his burger to her own, she handed Mitch her sandwich and kept his. He pulled a comically woeful expression then reached out when she wasn’t looking to pull a piece of bacon from the sandwich she’d appropriated, popping the strip into his mouth before she could snatch it back.

Then they both laughed, and it all looked so cozy, Elaine had the most awful impulse to bang on the window and shout, “Knock it off in there!”

Getting a second wind, she gave in to her next awful impulse: hobbling back down the porch steps and around the house to peep through the side window. Since it was still fairly light out, this seemed like a good plan for a budding voyeur. The shrubbery on this side of the house was tall, terribly overgrown and made good camouflage.

It was also scratchy. Branches poked and scraped at Elaine’s arms and legs while she wedged herself into position.

These old-Portland-style homes had windows that were relatively high off the ground to accommodate daylight basements and tall front porches, so Elaine had to stand on tiptoe and jump a little to get a good view. Mostly what she could see was the back of Mitch’s head and the woman’s profile as she reached into a bag, pulled out several long, skinny fries and ate with unabashed enthusiasm. They spoke the entire time they ate, and though Elaine couldn’t make out words through the closed window, she could see that the conversation flowed easily. They laughed frequently.

At one point, Mitch’s shoulders shook. The man she regarded as rigid, self-righteous and a stick-in-the-mud was sitting on the floor with an idiosyncratic but lovely woman, scarfing burgers and fries and, unless Elaine missed her guess, fresh marionberry milkshakes from Burgerville.

A wave of sadness washed over her, and she began to wonder whether, in fact, she was the stick-in-the mud? Because, criminy, she was legally single, as footloose and fancy-free as she was ever going to get, and she hadn’t even flirted with anyone since her divorce. Here it was, Saturday night, and the only thing waiting for her at home was a little light reading about artificial insemination and half of a cold soybean sandwich, hold the canola mayo.

She was about to detangle herself from the shrubbery, if not the humiliation of being a Peeping Tom, when she saw Mitch’s friend look at her watch, scoop up a bag of food and stand. Mitch rose, too. Elaine’s heart pounded, as anyone’s heart might when she realized she was about half a minute away from looking like a complete idiot. A complete idiot with questionable morals.

She had mere seconds to make a decision: attempt a run to her front door and risk running smack into the happy couple and, worse, being seen coming from around the corner, or stay where she was until Mitch returned to the apartment. Mitch decided for her when he opened the door and stepped onto the porch.

Elaine froze, hoping the scratchy bush would freeze, too.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” The woman’s distinctively deep voice carried easily.

“Is there any way I can avoid it?”

“No. If you don’t show up, I’ll hunt you down.”

Mitch laughed. “I’ll be there. In fact, I’ll pick you up, and we’ll go to the airport together.”

There was a moment of quiet. What was going on? A hug, a kiss? Elaine strained to hear.

“Love you,” the woman said.