When Girlfriends Step Up (28 page)

Mom pushed over the stroller, encouraging me to try out the smooth handgrips. “It’s perfect, since you’re a runner. It’s supposed to be top-of-the-line.” Her voice started out chipper and kind, then, as if she realized she was showing her soft side, she firmed up and said, “That’s what they say anyway. What the sales clerk said. What your sister says.”

“Mom,” I said, peeling my eyes away from what I figured was the most impressive stroller on the market. I couldn’t believe I had such a stroller. And from my mom. “That’s too much. On top of everything else you got me?”

She waved her hand in front of my mouth and told me to hush. “Well, Grandma can’t be a complete ass. Needs to do some of that usual grandmother spoiling stuff. And plus, you’ll be needing to get back into shape once that baby comes out. Run off all that baby weight.”

Good God, here we go. Can a gift just ever be a gift? A kind gesture remain a kind gesture? A sentiment be only a sentiment?

Kaitlyn stepped in. “I think it was a great choice, Mom. It’s perfect for Robin.” She gave a weak smile, bobbing her head as if to say, “Let’s change the subject. Sorry!”

“So does this mean my little girl can call you Grandma?” I asked. I know she was never fond of being called Grandma, having Kaitlyn’s two children refer to her as Nanny.
 

Mom laughed her high-pitched cackle. “Yeah, right. I’m Nanny to your little girl. Make sure she knows that. No one’s going to be calling me Grandma.”

“Cupcakes, anyone?” Claire and Lara asked in unison, Lara holding up a pot of coffee that appeared seemingly from nowhere.

“I think it’s dessert time,” Sophie said. She was stuffing the wrapping paper, bows, and ribbons into a large trash sack. “Definitely time for some dessert.”

“I agree,” Kaitlyn said. She nudged Mom’s back as they made their way to the buffet table.

I mouthed a “thank you” to my sister and she mouthed back a “no problem.”
 

“I love you, Mom,” I said, sighing and following them over to the picnic table. “Thanks again for the stroller. It’s really cool.”

She responded with a simple grin and a nod of the head as she held up her teacup for Lara to pour her coffee.

Can’t win them all.
 

I glanced up at the large oak tree. Its leaves and new branches were swaying considerably with the light breeze. A grey cloud, looking heavy with rain, passed slowly in front of the sun, casting interesting shadows over the grass and the flowerbeds that lined all three sides of the backyard. The chatter was resuming once again. Spontaneous giggling and story-swapping circulated the tables, along with some news updates. Ironically enough, a robin, of all birds, landed for only an instant on the handle bars of my new stroller and gave a few tweets, as if chirping her own well-wishes, before flying off over the oak tree, and swooping down into the adjacent yard.

Chapter Nineteen

“Are you sure we’re doing this right?” I asked, my knees drawn up to what felt like my chin, the weight of my upper body clumsily burying into Lara’s upper body as she sat with me on the yoga mat. She was supporting the weight of us both with her hands splayed behind her, an angled (and very uncomfortable) position.

“It’s what everyone else is doing,” she muttered.

“Well it doesn’t feel very good.”

“It’s not supposed to. That’s not the purpose of the exercise.”

I blew out a quick puff of air. It felt like a twenty-pound brick was resting underneath my breasts.

“Now, this position is supposed to be very calming. Very
relaaaxing
,” the Lamaze instructor cooed, walking around the room of yoga mats, inspecting the couples seated on them.

“See,” I said to Lara, trying to keep my voice low. We’d already been asked once by the instructor, Sky, to keep to our library voices. “I told you it’s supposed to be a comfy position. And I am
not
comfy.”

“That makes two of us.” Lara tried to heave herself further up, pushing me right with her.

“Ow, ow. Stop moving.”

“Ladies?” Sky asked, bending down to us. “Is everything all right?”

“I think we’re doing this all wrong. This is anything but comfortable and soothing,” I said.

Sky helped me up into a seated position; Lara readjusted her position on the mat. Sky said we could give it another go when I was ready. This time Sky helped ease me back, trying to help me find the right way to fall into Lara’s chest. My chin was smashed on my own chest, and what I thought was belabored breathing earlier, was even more so this time around.

“No, no,” I whined, my arms flailing as I tried to pull myself up out of the position. “Not going to happen. I can barely breathe.”

Sky rubbed at her jaw, poised in thought. “Baby’s still sitting up high. Feels like a ton of pressure sitting on your chest, correct?”
 

I nodded, wincing.
 

“Baby hasn’t dropped yet.”

“Dropped?”

Sky explained that at some point during the last trimester, as the due date neared, the baby would turn and drop, getting ready for that “thrilling rite of passage, the ride through the birthing canal,” as Sky so romantically described it.

“Yeah, think I read about that somewhere,” I said casually. I made a motion to Lara to not bother with another try at the position. No one in hell could make me sit like that again so long as I was carrying around a watermelon on my chest.

“We like it when our mommies have dropped babies during Lamaze. Makes it easier for exercises like these.” Sky walked to the front of the class and fished for a piece of paper on the table.

Lara and I giggled like children at Sky’s choice of words: “dropped babies.” She returned with a diagram of a couple doing a modified exercise. She told us to try it out for ourselves and see if it helped with the breathing and pressure.

Turns out this modified exercise worked out well, and it actually did help relieve the backaches, like the original exercise intended. Lara and I decided we’d try it out one night when we were sitting in front of the TV watching yet another episode of
90210.
Lara joked that show had become a preggo craving just like my food cravings. (Little did she know I anticipated still having that “craving” long after the baby was born. Had she truly forgotten what it was like living with me during college? Some things never change.)

“How’d you think we did? B plus? Minus?” I asked as Lara unlocked the front door of our apartment. She flicked on the overhead lights, a slow-burning, golden glow cast across the living room, the eco-friendly power-saving bulbs creeping to life. Beebee, obviously startled, made a fast dash from the recliner and into Lara’s bedroom.

Lara tossed her keys onto the coffee table, careful not to walk any further into the apartment with her soaked and muddy shoes. Summer was disappearing, autumn swooping down upon us with a hellish thunderstorm and dark downpour hitting us, no joke, the
instant
we left our first Lamaze class. “Minus. For sure! Definitely a B minus for that course.”

“It
was
pretty awful.” I took off my shoes and tiptoed, soggy socks and all, into the kitchen so I could set down the bags of burgers and fries we picked up for lunch. “Of course the super healthy doughnuts we had for breakfast probably didn’t help us out.”

“And our greasy burgers aren’t going to do us any better,” Lara said with a laugh.

“Got to live a little.” Now and then a woman, even a pregnant woman (maybe even
especially
a pregnant woman), deserved to splurge on something that didn’t follow the strict and healthy guidelines of the dietary rulebook.

“We’ll do better next week. And we weren’t
that
bad. Besides, it was tough for you; your baby hasn’t dropped yet, or whatever Aura called it.”

“Sky. Not Aura. Sky.”

“Aura, Sky, whatever,” Lara dismissed. “Some hippie name.”

I carried our plates of greasy food into the living room, actually excited to pop in the birthing tutorial DVD Sky sent home with us. A good two minutes in on the section “Delivery,” however, and I was ready to find some
92010
re-runs, or some HBO film I’d already seen a dozen times, or even a CNN World Report. Anything but a preview of what I was to experience firsthand in, oh, T-minus two months and counting.

“No way. No how,” I said, shutting the production down. “No way in hell am I watching that.”

“Robin, don’t you at least want to know what you’re in for?”

I gave Lara a blank stare. “What for? There’s no going back. If I absolutely have to do that—and I
do
have to give birth—then I’ll find out when that day arrives. It’s not like I can prepare for that kind of trauma anyway.”

“That’s what Lamaze is, goober. Preparation.”

“No. Forget it. Lamaze can teach me to breathe and count and remain calm. When it comes to
that
,” I pointed at the blank screen, “forget about it.” I headed into my bathroom, overdue for a shower and a change out of the confining yoga clothes. I had a coffee date with Kaitlyn in a few hours and I didn’t want to go looking like I was minutes away from labor and delivery.

***

“Would you say it’s serious?” Kaitlyn asked, sipping on her mocha frappé-style drink. I stole a finger swipe of her whipped cream topping.

God, I’m really sucking it up with my preggo diet today.

“I think it’s definitely heading in that direction,” I said. “Bobby and I seem to have a real connection. It’s indescribable, really.”

Kaitlyn and I met at Randy’s, a friendly bookstore and café that I’d been frequenting since the college days. She stole a few hours away from the kids, leaving them with Dad, and we were finally enjoying the sister date we’d been trying to plan for months.

“He’s a special guy, Robin? Like, ‘the One’ material, you think?”

I bashfully stirred my nearly cooled mug of tea. “Well…I don’t want to jump the gun or anything. And we’re taking things really slow. I told him I wanted it that way. You know, with the baby and all. With all these big changes and everything, slow is good.”

“Things can still be slow but serious.”

“Oh they’re definitely serious.” A smile spread across my face; I couldn’t hold it back. Simply thinking about Bobby, about the way he dramatically draws his hand out when he holds the door open for me, saying in the cutest way, “After you, my Lady.” Or the way he absentmindedly scratches at the back of his neck when he’s deep in thought, or runs his fingers through his hair when he’s answering a question of which he isn’t sure the answer. Or that endearing way he presses one hand on the small of my back, and draws my chin near his, kissing me tenderly, at first slowly, supplely, and then with a steady increase of depth and pressure, yet still gracefully.

“Robin,” Kaitlyn said, waving a few fingers in front of me. “Helloooo. Ran off to dream world there?”

“Exactly. I’m seeing stars with this one, Kaitlyn. Having those sparks. And
he
is, too.”

“It sounds like you two have something. Something pretty special.”

Like a love-struck teenager, I rested my chin in my palms and stared up at the ceiling, sighing deeply. “I’m falling in love with him, Katilyn.” I looked in her eyes. “And it scares the crap out of me.”

“Naturally it’s scary. It’s
love
. It’s new, it’s exciting, it’s
real.
It’s normal to be a little scared.”

“I don’t want to ruin things between us. Like I’m scared that I’ll give up my hopes and he’ll leave. Or that me having a baby will eventually scare him off. He says he knows what he wants…even told me he, unlike his last girlfriend, wants children. But…wanting mine? It’s hard to believe, I guess.”

“You’ve talked about it, though?” Katilyn took a drink.

“Yeah. Of course we’ve discussed it. He told me he knows what he wants and what he doesn’t want.” I slightly grinned. “He said he wants to keep seeing me. That he knows I come with a baby and he’s completely fine with it.”

“But you’re not sure?”

“Exactly. I’m scared. No, I’m terrified. Robin? Find true love? And while
pregnant
? Pardon my language, but what the fuck?”

Kaitlyn guffawed loudly then took another pull on her drink.
 

“I’m serious!” I said, lowering my voice when I noticed there were several people within earshot who probably didn’t appreciate my word choice. “What if things don’t end up working out? They’re great now, but what about when the baby’s actually here? Will Bobby be ready for that? Can he really commit to a relationship with a woman who has a newborn?” I shook my head, as if in disbelief that such a fantasy—that Bobby would almost act as the adoptive father to my daughter—could become a reality.
 

“Time will tell, huh?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Time will tell. I’m scared that time will tell me what I don’t want to hear. And then I’ll be alone.
Again
. I’m terrified of being alone, Kaitlyn.”

“You’re not alone,” she said. “You’re never alone.” Those familiar words that my girlfriends told me time and again. They were right; I needed to remember that—play those words over and over.

“If things end up really working out with you and Bobby,” Kaitlyn said, wiping a touch of cream from her lips, “you definitely won’t be alone. And even if things don’t work out with him…you still won’t be alone. You’ve got a lot of support and love, Robin. Come on. Let’s finish our drinks and then I’ll show you some of the books I was talking about that have all sorts of neat and helpful information about infants.”

The following evening, while I was skimming through the three new infant care books Kaitlyn recommended I read, I received a call from Bobby. It was nearly ten o’clock, rather late for him to be calling since he knew I was a stickler about getting to bed at a decent hour when I had work the next morning.

“How’s my beautiful woman?” Bobby asked.

“Hey, Bobby. I’m doing great. What are you up to so late?”

“Yeah, I know it’s late, but I wanted to hear your voice.”
 

Such a charmer.

“Here it is, sweetie,” I said softly. It still felt odd to be calling each other pet names, and I blamed the start of it entirely on Bobby. One day he called me “sugar” and then over a sack lunch one day in the break room he called me “honey,” so I went along with it.