The Thin Pink Line Read online

  The Thin Pink Line

  Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 2003 by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition February 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-607-7

  Also by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  Johnny Smith Novels

  The Bro-Magnet

  Isn’t It Bro-Mantic?

  Jane Taylor Novels

  The Thin Pink Line

  Crossing the Line

  For Jackie:

  If it weren’t for you,

  I never would have come up with the idea.

  “The man has a penis which he puts inside the woman and sprays things out. The things are called semen. And that is seed that makes the baby grow.”

  —What We Keep, Elizabeth Berg

  PROLOGUE

  Planned Parenthood, or the Story Behind the Story

  “Have you become a fuckwit, Jane?”

  Not exactly “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” or “It was the best of times, blah, blah, blah,” I’ll grant you, but it’ll do for my life story.

  “Have you become a fuckwit, Jane?”

  No, perhaps it’s best not to start there for a first impression.

  Okay. Let’s try this one last time. Deep breath here: I didn’t plan on getting pregnant, I swear, although I am certainly capable of going to great lengths to get what I want. The way I figured it at the time, it was a combination of rare animal passion and manufacturer’s error. It does happen, you know. Surely, all of the world’s unplanned pregnancies can’t be from people silly enough to engage in unprotected sex, can it? Regarding the passion and the error, er, at least that was how things came about the first time I was pregnant…but then wasn’t really.

  Perhaps I’d better back up a bit and explain.

  You see, Trevor and I had been to yet another friend’s wedding that weekend, so of course I was understandably depressed afterward. After all, I wasn’t an au courant Singleton or even a much maligned Smug Married, but rather, that lowest of the social lows, an inhabitor and cohabitor of that famed female limbo, an Unholy Unmarried, or UU for short, which looks kind of like a cow’s udders when seen on the printed page, but perhaps that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, after the wedding, Trevor, being Trevor, since he knew he wasn’t ready to ask me to marry him but still wanted to make me feel better, had great sex with me.

  It’s always amazed me how often heartache and really great sex go hand in hand. From what I hear other women say, I think it must be different for them. Hell, sometimes I think everything must be different for other people. But for me, the more melancholy, the bigger the bang. I mean, if I’m actually happy, then I’m probably eating something and even letting myself enjoy it, and sex is the furthest thing from my mind.

  But back to Trevor, great sex and pregnancy.

  So there we were, having great post-someone-else’s-wedding sex, and I was thinking how not only had everyone I knew been getting married lately, but they were even having babies as well, when the thought occurred to me, What if I turned up pregnant? Well, no sooner did the thought occur to me than Trevor hit my high note, prophylactic rubber barrier and all, and the thought flew completely out of my mind.

  Until I didn’t get my period when it was due three weeks later.

  Of course I told my best friend David—pronounced Duh-veed—right off the bat.

  “But this is great news, is it not, Jane?” David asked in his overly precise English.

  David lived upstairs from Trevor and me. Just over the minimum height requirement for the Israeli military, in which he had served—I mean, they all do, right? Israelis, that is—he was a regular spark plug. Given to wearing muscle T-shirts and early eighties-style blue jeans, as far as I could see he was the sole item in the plus column for bringing back Jordache jeans. He also had coils of black hair that, along with his bronzed skin, gave him a Semitic Caesar profile. A former fighter pilot, make that gay fighter pilot, he was now trying to make a go of it as a chef in his own trendy Covent Garden bistro, still in the planning stages.

  “In the Israeli military, Jane, you both ask and tell, and you take gays and women and anyone else who can handle an Uzi,” he’d once told me over a shared bottle of Burgundy left over from a boeuf bourguignonne that a lover of his had failed to show up to share.

  When David suggested that my days-old pregnancy was great news, I found myself agreeing with him. After all, it wasn’t as though I had deliberately set out to snag Trevor, but this would certainly do the trick. Trevor was such a Do-Right Dudley that he was sure to marry me.

  At the time, I didn’t even think about what an actual baby might actually mean.

  I also didn’t think about the emotional consequences of telling people other than the father before I told the father. This was another one of those things that falls under the heading of I Didn’t Plan It That Way, But. In this case, the “but” had to do with how gleefully David had received the news. (And him I’d only told about the news first because Trevor was away on business in Singapore for the week.) Bowled over by how happy my pregnancy had made him, I proceeded to tell a few more people. Oh, I didn’t go overboard—well, maybe just a bit—didn’t do anything so silly as telling my mother or sister or even the girls at work, but I did tell the Pakistani newsagent down the street (“Here, have some curry—it will bring good luck”), a policeman who helped me jimmy my lock one night when I’d locked my bag in the flat (“You can’t be too careful at night now that there’s two of you”) and the odd stranger or two; so, just enough to give me a taste of how the other half lives. Their combined reactions were enough to make me start to experience a warm glow. I began to feel like, maybe, were I to miss out on being pregnant, that I’d miss the potential for the world to be a rosy place.

  Of course, never one to do anything by halves, I started to tail pregnant women. You couldn’t really call it stalking, but I did spend the Saturday just prior to Trevor’s return trailing every prego I happened to casually encounter, until I finally settled on one who looked so close to delivery that I thought I might be called into service at any moment.

  And it was amazing the things I learned! Following my quarry through a heavy doorway, I was surprised to see a man who’d been walking ahead of both of us double back to hold the door patiently for her until she’d squeezed her way through. I was still smiling my surprise when he let the door go just in time to smack me in the face. Apparently, the fact that I didn’t have the equivalent of a sack of flour attached to the front of my body rendered me invisible or at least not in need of any courtesy. Oh, well. As I followed her about her rounds that day, it wasn’t even so much the common courtesies she was shown that impressed me, although I was damned shocked when the drunken old sot on the tube blearily yielded his seat to her so that she could “rest yer Madonna feet, luv.” No, it was more the mere fact that people actually talked to her, all the time; perfect strangers who might step over their own mothers in the gutter kept making comments and asking her questions in the most solicitous manner imaginable: “When’re you due?” or �
��Do you know yet if it’s a boy or a girl?” or “Spring babies’re always so extra special—just like little sunny angels, they are,” this last from the bleary old sot.

  Why, it was as though someone had sprinkled pixie dust all over her! Her existence seemed that enchanted, and I longed to find out if my bout with pregnancy would prove the same.

  The only problem was that just as I was on the verge of telling Trevor, who had returned from his trip just in time to partake of the pre-celebratory Sunday dinner that was waiting for him, an odd thing occurred. As I was teetering on the precipice of my new future, while serving up a helping of the blanquette de veau that David had prepared for me to pretend to prepare, I felt an unwelcome twinge of pain in my lower back.

  “Fuckfuckfuck,” I swore under my breath, just barely restraining myself from slamming the pot back down on the stove.

  “What was that, Jane?”

  “Nothing,” I informed Trevor, ignoring the twinge. “Just a little back pain.”

  “Mmm,” he said distractedly, still rifling through the post that had accumulated since he’d been gone. “Perhaps you should take some Tylenol?”

  “No, that’s okay. I’m sure it will pass.” I brightened. “Ready to eat?”

  Moments later, I eyed Trevor as he speared a piece of meat.

  “Mmm, Jane, this is really great. It’s always so wonderful when you take it into your head to do the homemaker thing.”

  That sounded promising.

  He chewed some more—he makes it a practice to always chew each piece something like fifty-four times—and flipped open the newspaper to see what had been going on locally while he’d been gone. Eyes glued to some story about Charles and Camilla, he absently asked, “Wasn’t there something you said you wanted to tell me?” He yawned and briefly glanced my way, looking a bit knackered after his long trip. “Didn’t you indicate that there was a reason why you were fattening me up for the kill?”

  “I’m pregnant,” I said, remembering the simple script I’d planned out earlier in the day. “I’m late and I think I must be pregnant.”

  Trevor didn’t even bother to look up again. “Oh, that.” He flipped another page. “That happened to Sam’s Dolly and it turned out that she just had a bad case of anorexia, compounded by acid reflux.” Then he smiled at me, helpfully, indulgently. “But if you want, why don’t you pick yourself up one of those at-home test kits? That should put your mind at ease.”

  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t exactly the reaction I’d envisioned, but it was a start.

  I would have thought that, given the news that we were going to have a baby, Trevor would have wanted to make wild passionate love to me that night. I certainly wanted to make wild passionate love to him.

  But no.

  “Sorry, Janey.” He gave my shoulder a vague pat when I made overtures to him in bed. “I’m just so tired from the plane and all. And you know how lethargic red meat always makes me. Perhaps tomorrow night?”

  “That’s okay,” I said, watching him roll away before I even got the chance to explain just why it was okay.

  And it really was okay, you see. Oh, sure, I would have liked to be physically close to him right then. But, I thought as Trevor started to snore, what did missing out on one night of passion really mean in the greater scheme of things? Trevor and I were going to have a baby together! I was finally going to have what everyone else had!

  I let myself get—dare I say it?—sentimental.

  I lay beside him, night-dreaming of our future together: pushing the pram down the street; going to rugby games or dance recitals—or even both if I had twins; being part of that rosy world I’d glimpsed while stalking the other pregos.

  Then I thought of what it would mean to me personally: I’d finally be a member of The Club. After a life lived mostly on the fringes of what constituted normal female friendships for other women, I’d finally have a legitimate reason for joining in on their discussions. We would be able to talk about—oh, I don’t know—diaper rash or something. It wouldn’t really matter what we talked about. What mattered was that I’d be one of the group.

  I thought and I night-dreamed, and I thought, and I night-dreamed…

  Blast! There was that damned lower-back pain again, only now it was worse and the pain had radiated frontward to my abdomen as well.

  I sighed, trotting off to the bathroom, thinking to follow Trevor’s earlier advice about taking Tylenol.

  Switching on the bathroom light, I grabbed a glass and took two pills from the plastic bottle. Just as I was about to toss them back, however, I vaguely remembered something about pregnant women being not supposed to take certain kinds of painkillers, something about it being bad for the developing fetus. Was it just aspirin? Was it Tylenol, too? I couldn’t remember. I shook my head, dropped the pills back in the bottle, set down the glass. No point in taking any chances. I could just muscle through the pain. After all, I had a baby to think about.

  Oh, well, I thought. I’m in here already. Might as well pee.

  I dropped my drawers, squatted on the toilet.

  Well, of course I had gotten my period.

  I’d never been pregnant at all.

  I don’t know why I did what I did next, but, after peeing and wiping, without even thinking about it, I balled up my stained undies, wrapped them in paper, tiptoed across the flat and buried them in the kitchen trash beneath the leavings from dinner. Then I tiptoed back to the bedroom, got out a fresh pair of undies, returned to the bathroom, attached a sanitary napkin and tiptoed back to bed.

  As I crawled in, Trevor stirred.

  Shh, my mind telegraphed my urgently whispered plea to him, wishing him to remain sleeping while I lay on my side, watching him sleep blithely on as I thought about how to tell him that I wasn’t really pregnant after all.

  I was just about to reach out my hand to rouse him in order to tell him what I’d discovered—I swear I was—when, in a reversal of the clichéd near-death experience, my future rather than my past flashed before my eyes.

  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t my real future: my future as still-single Jane Taylor, now that I wasn’t really pregnant. No, it was my potential future as Trevor’s wife, as a mother, as one of The Club, the potential future represented by that rosy world I’d glimpsed while stalking, the potential future that I knew in my heart with certainty that I’d be giving up in the instant I told Trevor the truth.

  Then I thought about how Trevor had behaved when I’d told him I was pregnant, when I’d still believed it myself.

  I’ll never know what it was: the recollection of Trevor’s offhand manner, the fact that I had set myself up by telling others first—even if one of them was David, whom Trevor never spoke to, and the others were people neither of us knew—or the position of the stars and the planets, but I did a strange thing that night. In a second, without even thinking about it, I leapt into the void.

  By leaping into the void, what I mean is that when Trevor stirred once more, murmuring a vague, “Still awake? Is everything all right, Janey?”, rather than telling him the truth, I simply replied, “Everything’s fine. Go back to sleep.”

  I told myself that I wasn’t doing a hugely bad thing by not telling him right then and there. After all, it wasn’t as though he’d expressed hatred for the idea of our having a baby together. No, he’d hardly seemed bothered by it at all. Come to think of it, what he’d mostly been was indifferent.

  I told myself again that I wasn’t doing a hugely bad thing.

  Then I snuck upstairs to consult my best friend.

  “Did you tell him?” David asked.

  “Yes.” I hurled myself into a sling chair. The wretched thing would probably destroy my back, but who cared now.

  “Then why are you so glum?”

  “Well…”

  “Jane.” He said it as though the name itself were a caution, full stop.

  “Well, the thing is, see, I’m not pregnant anymore. Actually, as it turns out, I never was.”
/>
  For my part, in case I haven’t mentioned this before, I loved David with a rare human passion. I mean, if a girl’s lucky enough to have a gay pal, she has to be nice to him, doesn’t she? After all, they’re the only ones you can count on for the truth.

  “Have you become a fuckwit, Jane?”

  Apparently, David’s idiomatic English was just growing by leaps and bounds.

  “Let me get this straight,” he pressed his verbal advantage, not even giving me a moment to answer his unanswerable question. “You now realize that you are not pregnant, but you are neglecting to share that teensy bit of information with the father of your nonexistent child. May one be so bold as to enquire as to what you plan to do next? It’s not as if a person can impersonate being pregnant, like a trained assassin might impersonate being just a regular guy.”

  “Well,” I shrugged, attempting a smile, “that was sort of the plan.”

  “Now you’ve got a plan? Oh, you’re really beginning to scare me, Jane.”

  “Actually, I don’t have the whole plan yet, just the beginnings of one.”

  “And what do you propose to do in nine months’ time? Don’t you think that eventually Trevor might begin to notice that there is no pitter-patter of little feet on the horizon?”

  “Odd that you should say that. I don’t think that you can actually see the pitter-patter of little feet. It’s not really a visual thing at all.”

  “Jane.”

  “All right. It’s not a big plan. Like I said, it’s just a little bit of a plan. The way I figure it, now that I’ve already told Trevor that I’m pregnant and he hasn’t gone through the roof about it, I might as well just go ahead and get pregnant. In a way, when you think about it, it’s not exactly like I’m trapping him in the conventional sense, not since his behavior indicates that he’s not terribly bothered about it. It’s more like I’ve trapped myself.”