Be My Baby Tonight (30 page)

“I know, dear, but I’ve planned your wardrobe
as my Christmas present to you. Your wedding present, too, since we
never got to throw you and Tim a party.”

The clerk looked from Suzanna to Aunt Sadie,
measuring both of them, an avaricious glint in her eyes. “You want
to start with undergarments? That’s a good place to start. When are
you due, dear? You’re definitely blooming. How about we go into the
dressing room, dear, and I’ll measure you?”

“Oh, God,” Suzanna said, wincing. “I’m going
to hate this.”

And she did. She hated that maternity bras,
while not really terrible, weren’t exactly great, either. She hated
that maternity underwear, as explained by Martha, the salesperson,
was to be worn with the waistband inches higher than her rapidly
disappearing waist.

Standing in front of the mirrors—why on earth
anyone would put three-panel mirrors in a maternity shop dressing
room was
totally
beyond Suzanna—dressed in nothing but
maternity bra and the above-the-waist underpants, she decided that
the next time Tim saw her naked would be in his
dreams!

Because there was no way in hell he was going
to see her looking like this.

Aunt Sadie came into the room without
knocking, carrying an armload of slacks, sweaters, blouses, and a
few dresses. “Ready to start?”

“Ready to go hide,” Suzanna said, grabbing a
pair of the slacks and quickly stepping into them. Oh, this was
great. These fit around her expanded waist... and now the underwear
stuck out above them. “Quick, hand me one of those tops.”

A very long ninety minutes later, Suzanna and
Aunt Sadie sat in the pizza parlor across from the maternity store
with several bags on the floor beside them, Aunt Sadie sipping a
soda, Suzanna working on her second slice of pepperoni pizza. She’d
skipped the garlic bread, and figured she was at least making a
start on eating more sensibly.

“Martha told me she thinks you look just a
little too advanced to be only four months along. She wanted to
know if you’ve had a sonogram.”

“Had one,” Suzanna said around a mouthful of
pizza. “On my first visit. I don’t get another one for a couple of
months, as long as I’m doing well. Why? What does Martha
think?”

“Other than that, if she’s on commission,
she’s made one great sale today? Well, dear, she mentioned twins.
So I told her that Tim was a twin, and—”

“
Grrrummmmff!”
Suzanna quickly picked
up her napkin and coughed her half-chewed pizza into it before she
choked. Then she grabbed another napkin and wiped at her eyes.
“That
is not amusing, Aunt Sadie.”

“Funny. I thought it was,” Aunt Sadie said
with a grin. “When do you go to the doctor again?”

“Next week, and Tim insists on going with
me.”

“He’s concerned.”

“He’s
nuts,
that’s what he is,”
Suzanna grumbled. “Like I want him there when I step on the scale?
I don’t think so.”

“But he’s going?”

“Yes, he’s going. I warned him that I’m going
to tell Dr. Phillips about his male pregnancy symptoms, and he
doesn’t care. He says they’re not so bad now. But I saw him downing
some antacids last night, so he’s lying to me. I’m telling you,
Aunt Sadie, the man is driving me crazy.”

“How?”

Suzanna looked at the rest of her pizza and
knew she wasn’t hungry anymore. “How? It’s school lunch all over
again. He takes me out to dinner, that’s one. He rents movies and
insists I watch them with him, then pops popcorn—with butter—and
all but hand feeds it to me. And he
reads.
He has more books
on pregnancy and delivery than Dr. Phillips, I swear it. He’s
obsessed
with my labor and delivery.”

Aunt Sadie nodded sagely. “Because of Keely.
He’s worried, Suzanna. He’s really worried.”

“Well, he should be,” Suzanna said, knowing
she was being entirely irrational. “He is the one who got me this
way, remember.”

“You know, dear, some would call you
heartless.”

Suzanna bit her lips together.

“I mean, he’s being so good, trying so hard.
We told him to court you, and he’s—”

“Wait. Back up a moment. You
told
him
to court me? Who’s
you?
Keely? Mrs. B.? Or did you just send
out postcards all over Whitehall, asking for a vote?”

Aunt Sadie nodded, not realizing that
suddenly, Suzanna had designs on the woman’s neck, and her hands
squeezing it. “He’s been so lost. We know he made a mistake,
Suzanna; but he really meant well, and we told him he’d just have
to take his time, prove to you that he—”

Suzanna held up her hands, really angry now.
“You can stop there. I think I get it. Does anyone in this family
have any idea what the concept of
private lives
is all
about? Since when did Tim and I become some darn committee
project?”

Aunt Sadie didn’t even blink. “Since the two
of you began making total asses of yourselves, I suppose.”

Suzanna’s mouth opened, then shut again, and
she sagged in her seat. “Oh,” she said in a small voice.
“Okay.”

“He loves you, Suzanna,” Aunt Sadie said,
reaching across the small table to take one of Suzanna’s hands in
hers. “He didn’t know it when he married you, but he knows it
now.”

Now the tears were threatening. “He doesn’t
say anything.”

“Doesn’t he? He’s reading all the books. He
wants to go to the doctor with you. He’s popping you popcorn.”

“With double butter,” Suzanna said, trying to
maintain her anger, but it wasn’t working.

“It’s you now, isn’t it, dear?” Aunt Sadie
asked, giving Suzanna’s hand a final squeeze, then sitting back in
her chair. “You’re the one who isn’t sure.”

Suzanna lowered her head, feeling the heat
rush into her cheeks. “I love him... but...”

“But you think maybe it’s leftover puppy
love, like the puppy fat you got rid of years ago?”

Suzanna looked at Aunt Sadie, blinking back
tears. “How can I know? How can Tim know? We got married for all
the wrong reasons.”

“Tim, to save himself from a worse fate, and
you, because you figured it was time you finally won one?”

Suzanna made a face. “That’s it, in a
nutshell.” She put a hand on her belly. “This baby deserves better
than that, Aunt Sadie.”

“Yes, dear, he does. Or she does. Or”—Aunt
Sadie paused, smiled—“they do.”

“Oh, God...” Suzanna said, sinking in her
chair once more.

* * *

“Don’t look. You promised not to look.”

Tim dutifully turned his back as Suzanna
stepped on the scale, then turned around as the nurse, obviously
not part of Suzanna’s secrecy plot, brightly called out, “One
hundred forty-three. Hmmm, that’s another eight pounds, Mrs.
Trehan. Dr. Phillips is not going to be happy.”

Suzanna mumbled something under her breath as
she stepped off the scale, then glared at Tim. “Not one word. Not a
single damn word, you got that?”

He held up his hands. “Who? Me? I wouldn’t
even think about it.”

Then he grinned, once Suzanna was walking
ahead of him, into one of the examination rooms. What was she
worried about? She looked cute, damn cute. Her cheeks were fuller,
her breasts were—no, he couldn’t think about her breasts, not if he
wanted to sleep nights. And her backside? Hey, there was a handful.
He had a flash of a Lone Star song in his head, one of his favorite
groups. Something about hating to watch a lover leave, but sure
loving watching her go.

“Are you coming, or what?” Suzanna asked from
the doorway, and Tim quickly caught up with her, then wished he
hadn’t.

Small room. Big table. Those stirrup things
for Suzanna’s feet—somebody would have to hunt him down and tackle
him to get him in that position.

And artwork. A huge poster showing the nine
months of fetal development, in color. Another showing the stages
of labor—the one showing the baby’s head half out of the mother was
particularly vivid.

And a sort of plaster of paris wall hanging
with arrows drawn on it and words like cervix, and uterus, and
vulva and... Well, he really didn’t want to look.

After helping Suzanna onto the end of the
table, where she sat, glaring at him, he found a pamphlet and
decided the safest thing he could do was take a chair and read
it.

He put it back down when he saw it was a
breast feeding instruction pamphlet, with photographs. Not line
drawings. Photographs.

What was he doing here? He felt about as out
of water as a fish on top of the Alps.

“You could go back to the waiting room,”
Suzanna said as he stared at his feet. At least they were his feet.
He could trust his own feet.

“No, that’s okay,” he said, rubbing at his
gut. The burrito he’d had for lunch was lying there, like
Gibraltar. “I have some questions for the doctor.”

“You’re kidding.”

He looked up at her. She looked so cute in
that long sweater and those slim jeans. Didn’t she know how cute
she looked? “No, really. I want to know about those parents
classes.”

“Birthing classes? Tim, I don’t think you
want to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because, then you’d have to be in the
delivery room, remember? Like Jack?”

“Jack never made it to the delivery room,”
Tim said, feeling the muscles clenching in his jaw.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. You don’t want
me there. You don’t want me to be your cheerleader.”

“Oh, Tim—” Suzanna said, sighing. Then the
door opened, and Dr. Phillips and a nurse stepped into the
room.

Tim ran a hand under the collar of his shirt,
suddenly claustrophobic. What was he doing here with all these
women and all these pictures of... women stuff? His had been a male
household, except for his mom, who definitely had been
outnumbered.

He had a sudden flashback of the day he’d
been looking for another bar of soap and found his mom’s sanitary
products under the bathroom sink. He’d asked what the box was for,
and got his one and only sex education lesson from his mother.

After that, he did his best to stay away from
“women stuff.”

Now he was surrounded by it.

“Mr. Trehan, how nice to meet you,” Dr.
Phillips said, extending a hand to him as he stood up, remembering
his manners. “You look very much like your brother.”

“Yeah. Identical twins.”

“Interesting. One sperm, one ovum, and a
split. Fraternal twins are more common. Well, Suzanna,” she said,
turning to her, “I take it any morning sickness is definitely all
gone?”

Suzanna blushed to the roots of her hair. “I
gained eight pounds. I know.”

“You’re still under the limit, and even
limits have extensions; but I would like to measure your belly if
that’s all right with you?”

Suzanna nodded, then lay back on the table,
the nurse draping a paper sheet over her.

“I... I mean, maybe I should...?”

“No, no, Daddy,” Dr. Phillips said. “You’re a
part of this.”

Yes, he was, wasn’t he? Tim stepped closer to
the table.

“What’s that?” he asked as the nurse squeezed
something from a tube onto Suzanna’s now bare belly, and then Dr.
Phillips began moving a small plastic rectangle across Suzanna’s
skin.

“I’m looking for the baby’s heartbeat,” the
doctor told him, and Tim had this sudden urge to sit down again.
But he stood there, waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

“Ah, here we are. Hiding, weren’t you?” Dr.
Phillips said as a quick
thump-thum-thump
echoed in the
room. The nurse held up her arm, watched her wristwatch. “So?”

“One-forty-four, Doctor.”

“Thank you. All right, now let’s
measure.”

Expecting something else high-tech, Tim was
surprised to see the nurse hand the doctor a regular cloth tape
measure. He looked away as she pulled Suzanna’s slacks lower, then
measured from there to Suzanna’s navel.

She glanced over at Suzanna’s opened chart,
then looked at the tape measure again.

“Hmmm, let’s do that one again, shall
we?”

“Why? What?” Tim asked, instantly
panicking.

Dr. Phillips ignored him. “No, that’s right.
Suzanna, when was your last sonogram?”

“Why? What?” Tim asked, reaching the second
level of panic. After this, it was either the doctor talked to him,
or he grabbed her by her shoulders and shook her until she did.

“Nothing’s wrong, Mr. Trehan,” Dr. Phillips
said, going over to the sink and washing her hands as the nurse
helped Suzanna pull up her slacks and sit up once more. “It’s just
that your wife’s uterus is growing faster than I expected. Unless
we’ve got the due date wrong, of course. Suzanna? Are you sure of
the date?”

“No, I told you I wasn’t. The earliest I can
figure is near the end of July,” Suzanna said, looking at Tim.

He flinched, remembering the day he’d tossed
that “if I am the father” line at her in the heat of anger.

“Yes, I remember now,” Dr. Phillips said,
paging through Suzanna’s chart. “Irregular periods. All right, this
is what we do. We get another sonogram. Iris? Set it up,
please.”

“So that’s it?” Suzanna asked. “You think I’m
farther along than we thought? But I can’t be.”

“Then maybe we’ve got multiples.”

“Multiples?” Tim asked, the sound of the
ocean somehow rushing in his ears.

“Twins, Mr. Trehan. I only got one heartbeat,
but twins can be tricky. One could be hiding behind the other
one.”

Tim didn’t remember hitting the floor....

* * *

It was the longest ten days in Suzanna’s
life, waiting for the appointment at the hospital, and the sonogram
that would tell them if, just maybe, she was carrying twins.

“Are you okay?”

She looked across the car at Tim as he cut
the engine in the hospital parking lot. “I’m fine. Please stop
looking at me as if I’m going to
explode
at any moment.
You’re driving me crazy.”