The Thin Pink Line Read online

  So now at least there was a financial motive to my madness.

  I couldn’t wait to tell David my good news!

  While strolling the few blocks home from the bar, I pulled my mobile from my purse and punched in his number. Sure, I might’ve waited until I got home and then gone upstairs, but I was pretty sure Christopher wouldn’t appreciate my popping in on them so late.

  So, naturally, it was Christopher who answered the phone.

  “Oh. Jane.” He sounded peculiarly short and groggy. “David’s right here.”

  David was on in an instant. “Jane? What’s wrong? Are you okay? I saw Trevor leave earlier with his suitcases, but I never got the chance to come down and see how you were. And then when I did finally make it down, you were gone already and I had no idea where you went. Are you okay?”

  “Yes!” I danced down the street. “I’m fine!”

  I could almost see him hold the phone away from his ear in shock, before bringing it in closer again and replying, “You are?”

  “Yes, I really-really am!”

  “May I ask…why?”

  “Why? Because two stupendous things happened to me this evening! I fell in love—”

  “You fell in love?”

  “You sound so surprised.” I gave it a brief moment’s serious thought. “Yes,” I said, thinking of Tolkien, “I think that I did.”

  “That’s amazing, Jane. If it’s true, then I’m very happy for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And the other stupendous thing that happened…?”

  I hesitated. For some reason, I was reluctant to tell him about the book contract. For some reason, now that I had told him about Tolkien, the book contract didn’t seem like as big of a deal.

  “Nothing,” I said softly, stopping on the sidewalk and tilting my head backward in the hopes of counting the stars beyond the city lights. “Isn’t one stupendous thing enough for one evening?”

  “Yes.” I could hear him smile through the phone. “One stupendous thing is quite enough.”

  I smiled back. “Yes.”

  “And you should be coming inside soon. I can see you down there from the window. I’m glad you’re safe, Jane.”

  “Thanks.”

  I heard a muffled voice in the background. “David?” It was Christopher’s voice, calling out to him from across the room. “Aren’t you ever coming back to bed?”

  “I’ve got to go,” David said.

  “I know,” I said.

  “See you tomorrow?” he asked, waving down at me through the window.

  “Yes.” I lifted my own hand, waving in reply. “See you tomorrow.”

  According to the pregnancy books, the variety of things I might be “feeling” in the first month of my second trimester was mind-boggling. There was, on the physical front: fatigue; constipation; heartburn, indigestion, flatulence and bloating; continued breast enlargement, although, thankfully, this was usually accompanied by a decrease in tenderness and swelling; occasional headaches; occasional faintness or dizziness, especially when suddenly changing position; nasal congestion, occasional nosebleeds, ear stuffiness; “pink toothbrush,” meaning bleeding gums; increase in appetite; mild swelling of feet and ankles, occasionally affecting the hands and face; varicose veins in the legs and/or hemorrhoids; a slight white vaginal discharge called leukorrhea (in case there have been no other signs, now one can have smelly discharge seeping out of orifices); fetal movement by end of the month, but only if one is very slender or this is not one’s first pregnancy.

  Oh, dear! I was very slender. Would people be wanting to touch my moving baby?

  If none of that was enough, of course, there was always the emotional: instability comparable to premenstrual syndrome, possibly including irritability, mood swings, irrationality and weepiness; joy and/or apprehension, provided one has started to finally feel pregnant (oh, I think that the constipation and leukorrhea would have clinched that for me by now, leaving me a bloody manic-depressive); frustration, if I don’t feel pregnant yet but can’t get into regular clothes while still being too small for maternity clothes (not going to be a problem in my case); a feeling of being not quite together, of being a scatterbrain, accompanied by the tendency to forget things, drop things, and have trouble concentrating…

  It was at that point that I took the book and hurled it across the room from where I’d been lying on my living room sofa, whereupon it made a satisfying crash against the wall which had the unsatisfying effect of causing the Marcuses down below to thump on the ceiling. Oh, well. I guessed that, being the scatterbrain I now was, I’d forgotten what I was doing and somehow dropped the wretched thing. Now where was I?

  Oh, yes.

  I poured myself the rest of the bottle of wine I’d been killing while boning up on pregnancy and drank a toast to all of the poor slobs who really were pregnant. Good God, I thought, with all of that happening to a woman’s body—and those just the tip of the symptom iceberg for the fourth month alone—it’s a wonder that women still bother to have babies at all.

  When I finally told the women at work that the wedding was off, their reaction made me wish that I hadn’t.

  “But this is no time to be alone,” Dodo said.

  “I think you’re brave to be a single mom,” Louise said, “even if there are so many others doing it.”

  “You know it’ll be tough for you to find a man who’ll take you on under these conditions,” Stan from Accounting said, intruding as he passed through on his way to pester Minerva in Publicity about a trifling matter that he’d undoubtedly never win. “Most men are hesitant enough as it is to start anything with a woman who’s thinking about turning thirty any minute, never mind having to contend with soiled nappies as well.” He put his arm around me, protectively. “You might come to find your Uncle Stan starting to look pret-ty attractive—”

  “Shut up, Stan!” everyone shouted.

  After Stan’d been chased back under a rock, the youngest country was heard from. On that day, she was wearing contacts that were more golden than brown, lending her eyes an otherworldly quality which, when taken in conjunction with the words she spoke, would be having me in nightmares for a week.

  “You know, Jane,” Constance said, reaching up toward my shoulders so that her hand replaced the warmth where Stan’s arm had been, “I’ve been meaning to move out of my parents’ house for some time now. It’s just that I’ve never managed to find the right situation. If you wanted, I could—”

  “God no!” I fairly recoiled out of her embrace. “I mean, I think it’s so unimaginably kind of you to offer that I don’t really know how I can say no—” her eyes brightened briefly, so I rushed on “—but I must. You see, part of the new spirituality I’ve found since this all started has had to do with taking full responsibility for my life—a feeling that Trevor clearly doesn’t feel for his, I might add. Nevertheless, despite his poor example, I am determined that I should hoe the row I’ve been given alone or die trying.” It might have been my imagination, but I could have sworn that I heard “Rule Britannia” swelling somewhere in the background as the RAF boarded fighter jets. From the looks on their faces, apparently the others were hearing it as well.

  “So brave,” went the half-heard murmurs of the little people who surrounded me.

  “But won’t it be an awful financial burden for you,” Dodo pointed out, “having the expense of the flat all on your own shoulders while you have so much else to financially worry about?”

  Ah, the voice of reason.

  Not that I had so much else to worry about financially, not like they thought. True, it would normally have been a strain, footing the entire rent each month for the flat; except that now it wouldn’t be, not once I received that first advance check.

  In order to distract people from the Trevor-deserting-me-in-my-time-of-need issue, which really wasn’t the kind of undeserved sympathy I preferred to cultivate, I thought it was as good of a time as any for me to make a switch in
my obstetric arrangements. Having learned a trick or two from observing the other women in the office, I ripped a page out of Louise’s book, sauntering out to the copier to copy something that didn’t need copying. I timed my trip perfectly to coincide with Dodo being in the common area as well by leaving my door open and watching obsessively until she crossed by, meaning that I would only have to pull this particular mendacious stunt once, allowing the gossip line to do the rest for me. For good measure I whistled so as people could not help but notice my passing, although, since I’ve never been much good at it, the result was more a hard blow than a twittering cheep.

  “Oh. Jane.” Constance eyed me with that day’s aqua eyes as if she’d not seen me before, like maybe I was a new species or something, before returning to her daily feigning of typing skills. “Any news?” she asked, not looking up as her hands flew across the keyboard with what I was sure would look like fhygoy;yhgjvgjdkty if anyone bothered to check. Whenever Dodo was around, she made an extra effort to look as though she actually did something for the company.

  “Oh, nothing much,” I said casually. But then, when no one pressed me for any further details—like asking “Have you felt the baby kick yet?” or “How’s that tilted uterus coming?”—I realized that I was going to have to be more direct if I wanted to get them to worm the false information out of me.

  “Oh, nothing much,” I said again, turning my back on the copy machine à la Louise, although when I tried to further imitate her by giving my hair a nonchalant flick the move failed to have the desired effect since she had long hair while I did not. “Nothing much, that is, if you count firing the great Dr. Shelton as nothing much.” I studied my nails, which had nothing particularly right or wrong with them, letting my bombshell sink in.

  “You did what?” practically shrieked Louise, scandalized. “People wait in line to get him to attend them. They say that there are some women now who actually refuse to go off the pill until he’s signed a contract stating that he’ll be their obstetrician.”

  “It’s true,” put in Constance, who was an avid reader of the Globe whenever there was no pressing need to pretend to type. “I read that even Princess Niquie timed her conception so as to ensure he’d have a vacancy in his schedule.”

  “Actually,” I said coolly, always willing to compare my lot with that of the Royals, even minor ones, at the drop of a name, “Princess Niquie’s horrifying experience is part of the reason why I’ve given old Shelton the boot.”

  “You don’t say,” oohed Constance, rising from her chair and drawing closer.

  “Yes,” I said dryly, “I do say.”

  “But I thought her experience was only horrifying before Dr. Shelton swept in to save the day.”

  “Not quite. That’s just the part of the story that’s printed for public consumption.”

  “Do you mean that there’s another part?” asked Louise as she drew near as well, her interest now piqued nearly as much as Constance’s.

  I looked over at Dodo. “Do you remember what you told us about that friend of your friend? You know, the one who was told by Shelton that she’d used pregnancy as an excuse to turn into a big fat cow?”

  “Well, I don’t think that those were my exact words….”

  “Well. I heard that she’s not the only one he pulled that stunt on.”

  “Oh?” Dodo’s proximity as she asked this proved that I’d finally caught her as well.

  “Yes,” I said cagily, “that’s right.”

  “Well, tell us,” said Constance, aqua eyes flashing. “Who else did he pull it on?”

  “Would you believe Princess Niquie?”

  “No!”

  “Yes! That’s what was so horrifying about the entire pregnancy-childbirth process for her. Well, outside of the fact of that multiday labor period, et cetera, yawn. But what she really said was the worst was how, the whole time she was pregnant, he kept riding her about every pound she put on. Told her that just because a woman has a hereditary right to put a crown on now and again is no excuse for gaining an ounce over the accepted limit.”

  “He didn’t!”

  “He did!”

  “Wait a second here,” said Constance, hands on hips. “This was never in the Globe.”

  “Course not. You don’t think that either the Royals or Dr. Shelton would allow a story like that to leak out, do you? After all, it does neither of them credit now, does it? For his part, it makes him look like an unfeeling old misogynistic pisser and, as for Princess Niquie, it makes her look as though she has no self-control.”

  “Well, she doesn’t.”

  “True.”

  “But if neither of them would ever allow such a story to leak out,” pressed Constance, enquiring mind ticking away every second, “then how did you come by this unknown knowledge?”

  I wanted to point out to her that her last two words formed one of the oddest verbal constructions I’d ever heard, but I was worried that I’d only confuse her. Instead, I said, “Because I’m one of his patients, aren’t I? Or, I was anyway, before I fired him in a show of solidarity to other women laboring—all puns intended—under the patriarchal system that has been oppressing them for so long.”

  “I don’t even understand what any of that means,” said Constance. “What I want to know is—where did you hear this?”

  “From the nurses in his office, of course. They all gossip something dreadful, don’t they.”

  “Really?” asked Louise. “I always thought that it was part of their job to keep things as confidential as possible.”

  “That’s just what they want you to think. In truth, they’re worse than a bunch of magpies.”

  “No!”

  “Yes! Why, one day, when they were doing the blood pressure thingy with me, right next to me was this teenaged girl, about five months’ gone, who had this older woman with her whom I assumed had to be her mother since they both had the same nose only on different faces. Anyway, the nurse says to her, cool as you please as she reads right off of this form, ‘It says here that you were pregnant once before?’ Well, believe you me, it would have taken something a lot less heavy than a feather to knock that poor mother over and I sure wouldn’t have wanted to be her daughter when they got home to Soho.”

  “But that’s not gossip,” Louise objected. “That’s merely indiscreet.”

  “Close enough,” I shrugged.

  “Getting back to Dr. Shelton,” prodded Dodo, going all practical on me. “You can’t really mean that you gave the heave-ho to the most sought-after obstetrician in all of England. Can you?”

  “Oh, yes, I can.” As a matter of fact, I’d been giving the matter considerable thought, ever since I’d first made the mistake of laying claim to Dr. Shelton. Knowing that I couldn’t possibly continue under the care of such a public figure, I’d been working on an alternate birthing plan for the past two months. I’d figured that, if a person could get an at-home pizza delivery, there was no reason why I couldn’t get an at-home baby delivery.

  “I’ve decided to go with a midwife,” I announced firmly.

  Dodo eyed my obviously still slender frame. “But I don’t understand. Surely Shelton can’t be giving you a hard time for gaining too much.”

  “Course not. Matter of fact, he’s mostly given me a hard time for being in too good of a physical condition. Apparently, the man’s got some kind of bizarre fetish concerning women’s weight. But that’s neither here nor there. I’m certainly strong enough to take it. Stronger than poor Princess Niquie by a long shot, I can tell you,” I couldn’t resist adding. “No, as I was starting to say before, about the show of sisterly solidarity—”

  But before I could go on, Constance cut me off midgloat. “Well, I think it’s just marvelous!” She clapped her hands. “A midwife! It’s just…brilliant!”

  “Well, I guess it won’t be too awful,” said Dodo. “I mean, I seem to recall reading in some reasonably non-Stone Age publication that some of these private group practices have
even taken to keeping a midwife on staff. And, of course, since the baby will be born in a legitimate hospital…”

  “No!” I nearly shouted. “No, no, no, no, no. Why, that’s part of the reason I’ve selected a midwife. I mean, apart from the whole female-solidarity thing. I want to have my baby at home. You know—natural lighting, soft music mimicking wave sounds, squatting in the corner if you feel like it. I don’t want some institutional setting. That’s why I’ve employed Madame Zora.”

  “Madame Zora?” Dodo appeared skeptical. “Sounds more like a tarot-card reader than a midwife.”

  “It’s funny you should say that. Actually, Madame Zora is both.”

  “She’s both a midwife and a tarot card reader?”

  “Oh, yes. And you have no idea how convenient that’s going to make things. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but ever since I’ve been, well, enceinte, I find that this newfound sense of spirituality has overtaken my life.” I did some hand embellishments in the air to help illustrate. “It’s just that, with this new being growing inside me…”

  “Oh, yes, I’ve read about that,” eager Constance cut me off. “They say that, if you haven’t been real religious before, it really gets the old God thing going.”

  I tried not to glare at her too much for interrupting. “As I was about to say, ever since this whole—dare I say, unbelievable—process started, I’ve found that the whole Judeo-Christian thing isn’t quite enough anymore. I feel as though there’s something otherworldly going on in my life as well and only forms of alternative spirituality seem to fit the bill.” I finally let my gesticulating arms drop. Like Will Shakespeare seeing the finish line, I was now sprinting for it, talking double-time. “And that’s where Madame Zora comes in. You see, the perfectly marvelous thing about her being both a midwife and a tarot card reader is that she brings her cards to the delivery and, at any time during all of that panting and pushing that I feel like it, she just whips them out and does a reading for me right there. Want to know how much longer or difficult the labor will be? Done. Want to know if it’s going to be a boy or a girl? Done. Grow up to be a criminal or a Cabinet minister? A harlot or a talk-show host?” I folded my arms across my chest and nodded my head twice for emphasis. “Done and done.”