The Thin Pink Line Read online

  She looked at me as though I were a mental defective. “Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting. You never read magazines.” She shrugged off my inexplicable behavior. “Anyway, in the beginning of her first pregnancy, she was telling people that she was going to lay low throughout, that she didn’t want people photographing her when she was no longer attractive, or something to that effect. Well, let me tell you, that set women back to before Virginia Slims came out. Who did she think she was, implying that pregnancy is anything other than the beautiful and natural condition it is? It’s people like her who create anorexic pregnant women. Of course, once things got going and she got used to the idea of being considered the world’s most attractive baby machine, she started capitalizing on it. No more keeping it in the closet. In no time flat, she was going the Demi Moore let-it-all-hang-out-and-then-some route. I tell you, these exhibitionists. If they were doing it on the cover of Playboy, it’d be an embarrassment, but because it’s Vanity Fair, it makes it art. You would think that at the very least, they’d give some thought, prephoto shoot, to how their child would feel about it once he or she—”

  “Constance. Constance. Constance.”

  “Hmm?”

  “What does any of this have to do with constipation and the BBC?”

  “Well, I was getting to that if you’d’ve let me, wasn’t I? There was so much about Cindy and her pregnancy in all of the magazines, that you never read, that the BBC decided to jump on the bandwagon. In honor of Cindy’s public pregnancy, they did a four-part series on the nine months of pregnancy, narrated by Helena Bonham Carter. In it, in addition to going over all of the joys, they also talked at length about the downsides. One of the big ones, it would appear, is constipation. It seems that the added hormones produced—the progesterone?—slows down the metabolism. Plus, you’ve got the pressure that the growing uterus exerts on the bowels, inhibiting normal activity. Anyway—” she began to look a bit embarrassed “—that’s how I got from Cindy Crawford to constipation.”

  “Interesting,” I said, pencil to lip. And, believe it or not, I thought it was.

  “So? Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Constipated? You know, the frown you had?”

  “God, no. I was just trying to decide what to eat for lunch.”

  I encouraged her to leave, promising all the while as I was ushering her out that I had found her information most informative.

  And I had. I would most definitely be filing it away for future use. After all, who knew when I might suddenly need a spa day.

  “Have you heard the baby’s heartbeat yet?” asked Dodo.

  “Hello? What’s that?”

  “The baby’s heartbeat. I read somewhere that with some special instrument thingy called a Doppler you can sometimes hear it as early as the tenth week.”

  “Nope. Haven’t heard it yet. But I have been having the most marvelous sex.”

  “Do tell. That friend of my friend was so sick the entire time she was pregnant that she swears that she didn’t have sex from the time she conceived until the baby was weaned and her breasts stopped hurting. Of course I’ve heard that pregnant women sometimes feel really sexy, but I’ve never met any who did.”

  So here was something else that I could excel at.

  “Well, let me tell you, I have been having so many multiples, that it’s as though my multiples are having their own multiples.”

  “No!”

  “Yes! Course, I don’t expect it to go on forever.”

  “But why shouldn’t it?”

  “Oh. You know. The whole fluctuating-hormones thing.” After all, I didn’t want to be so happily orgasmic that other women would hate me. “By the time I’m into the second trimester, I’ll just probably want to have my feet rubbed.”

  Later that afternoon, while boning up on What to Expect during my midafternoon break, I came across a section called “Twins and More.” For a while there, I briefly debated the idea of, when I finally did “hear the heartbeat,” claiming that there was more than one. There could be definite advantages built into the exaggerated symptoms that accompanied a multiple pregnancy, the kind of symptoms that might entitle me to more days off whenever I felt like it. Then, too, there’d be the added hoopla that doing something a little bit extra, like two or who-knew-how-many more babies instead of one, would bring along with it. Of course, the downside would be that, once I did start finally showing, I’d have to gain sufficient weight to ensure the health of each child, and I really didn’t like the idea of getting too big.

  Oh, well. There was still time to decide. I could always say that it was thought that there might be two heartbeats, and just see how people reacted.

  It was easy to see that Trevor had stumbled across something he shouldn’t have.

  “What the hell is this?” he demanded, swearing at me for the first time since he’d met me, believe it or not, while waving a pink Magic Marker in my face. “And how about this?” He waved the plastic wand which, amazingly enough, still bore its weird diagonal line.

  “Would you believe—?”

  He cut me off at the lie. “I don’t want to hear your lies, Jane! You must think I’m stupid.”

  “Not really. How did you find out?”

  I knew what was coming next, formed a mental picture of myself that first night I’d “discovered” my pregnancy, gleefully stowing the incriminating evidence—pink marker, the original botched test—in the back of the cabinet, fully intending to dispose of them when the coast was clear. But I’d never done that, had I? Good God, I thought, what was I—the most self-destructive woman who’d ever lived? Fucking Freud would have a fucking field day with me. But I couldn’t be bothered with fucking Freud right now. Trevor had bigger things than my own questionable sanity for me to worry about.

  “My electric razor died on me and I was looking for a disposable one beneath the sink when I came across all of this.” He looked angry at himself for having bothered to answer me. “But that’s not the point.”

  “No. I suppose not.” I sat down on the edge of the couch, hoping to marshal my energy. “What exactly is the point, as you see it?”

  If my approach was to sit and conserve, his was to pace and explode. “The point, the way I see it, is that you should be explaining to me just what exactly you had hoped to accomplish with this crazy scheme, rather than grilling me on how I managed to find you out. What did you think, that I’d never notice that anything was amiss?”

  Well, I thought to myself, he hadn’t noticed up until the truth smacked him in the face; hadn’t noticed that I kept getting a period; hadn’t noticed that my body wasn’t changing at all. But I didn’t think that this was a good time to point out the shortcomings in his powers of observation.

  “Good God, Jane.” He waved the incriminating wand in my face. “Here I was thinking that I was soon going to become a father, and instead it turns out that my child is no more than a fake pink line!”

  “Well,” I said, a trifle defensively, “you never did seem all that excited before about the prospect of becoming a dad. As a matter of fact, this is the most energy you’ve shown on the subject since—”

  “Oh, will you just shut up, Jane! Don’t you understand? This isn’t about whether or not I showed the optimum measure of preparental enthusiasm, this is about what you did. And why.” He sank to the couch, beside me but not touching, spent for the moment. He rested one elbow on his knee and massaged his forehead and closed eyelids with his fingers. “Just tell me, Jane. What was going on in that head of yours?”

  So I told him.

  Odd, but when I’d originally conceived The Plan it hadn’t seemed nearly as, well, diabolical as it did when I tried to lay it out before Trevor. Was it so awful that I just wanted the kind of attention that every other woman seemed to take for granted as her God-given right? Well, apparently in Trevor’s book…

  He leapt to his feet, no longer exhausted. “You must be starkers! You’ll never get away with this!”


  “Only if you tell people!” I shouted desperately, leaping to my feet as well.

  Before I knew what was happening, he was in the bedroom we’d shared for years, tossing items haphazardly into leather suitcases, not even bothering to obsessively fold things as he normally would.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Well, I’m not staying here with you anymore, now, am I?”

  “But why not? Surely we can go on living together. We’re supposed to be getting married in six months’ time, don’t forget.”

  Okay, so maybe I was in denial.

  He came round the bed, gripped me by the shoulders. “Think, Jane. Even you can’t possibly imagine that we’ll still be getting married after this. Use your head and look around you. I’m leaving you.”

  I thought about the years we’d spent together, about the hopes I’d entertained for our future, about how I’d miss even his obsessive folding habits.

  Obsessive folding habits may not seem a likely trait to hang one’s love on, but I suppose a part of me had secretly hoped that we would somehow spend the rest of our lives together, in which case it would be helpful to delude oneself into believing that annoying traits were really somehow endearing ones.

  Could it really be over?

  I collapsed onto the bed next to his open suitcases. “But where will you go?”

  “Does it matter? Anywhere but here. I’ll stay with people I hate from work if I have to.”

  “What will you tell people?”

  “About this insanity? Nothing. I want no part of it. Besides, you can’t keep this charade up indefinitely, not unless you’re planning on maintaining the longest-running pregnancy in all of England’s history. Before the day is done, you’ll find yourself hoist by your own petard. Your kind always does.”

  Suddenly, I found myself feeling not quite so sorry to see him go.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “I won’t be around to have to worry about it.”

  “Oh?”

  “No. The firm’s been after me to do a year in the Tokyo office, see if I can do anything to help salvage the situation there, but I’ve been putting them off. The way I figured it, with you being pregnant and all, I didn’t feel it was right to ask you to up and move during such a fragile time, but now…” He allowed the thought to trail off as he finished packing.

  A moment ago, I’d thought I was no longer sorry to see him go. Now that the moment was imminent, however, I was back to feeling reluctant again. Casting my eyes about the flat, I sought an excuse to keep him there, if only for just a little while longer.

  Pointing to the two suitcases, I said, “Don’t you want to take anything more than that? Some CDs or pictures, perhaps? The couch we bought together?”

  Trevor looked thoughtful. Perhaps he was thinking about the couch in question, remembering the cold Saturday in January two years back when we’d struggled with it up the stairs together?

  Then he shook his head, abruptly, like a dog coming out of water. “And have reminders of this?” He shook his head again. “No, thank you. And, besides,” he added, considering, “it’d probably cost more than we spent on any of this junk, paying the air freight to Tokyo.”

  Trevor snapped the locks on the suitcases and hoisted them off the bed. “Goodbye, Jane,” he said. “I can’t say that it hasn’t been interesting.” He looked as though he were going to kiss me one last time, but the moment never materialized. “And may I say, good luck. Because God knows, one way or another, eventually you’re going to need it.”

  And he was gone.

  It took me a moment to realize the finality of it all, but the sight of Punch the Cat lurking in the corner brought the perfect coda home to me. Picking up the detested orange puffball, I rushed to the door, opened it, and half hurled the feline in the general direction of Trevor’s retreating back.

  “Fine!” I shouted. “Desert me if you must. But if you’re going, you’re taking your awful cat with you. I’ve always hated that cat. And I don’t care if he has to spend the entire time you’re in Tokyo in quarantine!”

  Then I slammed the door.

  With both Trevor and Punch the Cat gone, there was now no one here but me. Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it? After all, now I could repaint the flat so that it would no longer be the omnipresent salmon pink that it was, now that I didn’t have anyone around who had to be made to pass tests.

  The important thing to do now was to make myself a nice soothing cup of tea, even if I didn’t like tea very much. I needed to gather my thoughts, make sure there would be no holes left in my plan once I told people that I’d been deserted by the baby’s father.

  Would Trevor be true to his word? Would he abstain from telling people the truth about our breakup? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it didn’t even matter all that much if he didn’t. During my two-year obsession with him, I’d made the cardinal error that many other women before me had made when faced with the notion of a steady boyfriend: I’d become socially removed from the people I formerly spent time with, willingly drifting away. In my case now, though, my estrogen-driven silliness had resulted in a happy state of affairs. Since the girls at the office had never really known Trevor, except by name, they’d never notice he was gone. And as for any mutual friends we had, well, he could tell them whatever he liked since they’d always been his friends more than mine anyway and no one from his suspenders set was the type to mix with my book-reading set. Hell, if I wanted to claim to still be getting married in six months’ time—having bridal showers, going shopping for shoes and a dress—I could probably get away with that, as well.

  But did I want to?

  After all, being a single mom might not be so bad, not if one took into consideration all of the extra praise for bravery that would accrue to one’s character for having toughed out a tough situation.

  I would just have to wait, and everyone else would just have to see.

  And, I thought, with an oddly contented sigh, even if Trevor had left me, at least I still had the baby to dream about.

  The tiny human which had been theoretically growing within me was now a fetus. It was two and a half to three inches in length and weighed about half an ounce, so more now than any quantity of pot I’d ever smoked single-handedly. More organs were in the process of developing. The circulatory systems were up and running. The liver was producing bile. The reproductive organs were already developed but, from the outside, it would be difficult to tell yet if my fetus was a girl or a boy.

  Well, I still had time to decide about that, didn’t I?

  The Second Trimester

  The Fourth Month

  As the first step in my campaign to get over the trauma of Trevor having dumped me, I did what any other self-respecting girl would do. I put on my not-so-glad rags, found the darkest pub in the neighborhood and, as my late father used to say, endeavored to see the bottom of every glass in town before the sun came up.

  Okay, so maybe I wasn’t exactly traumatized by having lost Trevor per se. After all, I’d had a few hours to reflect and in that time I’d come to terms with the startling truth that while I had long been in love with the idea of marriage as a whole, I’d never exactly been in love with Trevor. And perhaps, if I were really being honest, I’d have to admit that he’d never been in love with me, either. Would a man in love insist on waiting until his child had been successfully born to marry its mother, if he were in fact in love with her? I think not. Wouldn’t a man in love, whether there was a child involved or not, take the first opportunity to propose to his beloved, if for no other reason than to keep other suitors from snatching her away? I like to think he would.

  Sour grapes? Perhaps. But it does work for me. Not to mention that, being no Scarlett O’Hara, I’ve got just enough of the realist in my soul that I recognized that Trevor was never coming back to me, not after this.

  And, yes, I did still need to go out and get drunk, because it is traumatizing being the one dumped, no matter
what one’s true feelings for the dumper.

  The Valley of Fear, once one got inside, was something less than the emporium of Sherlockiana that its name implied. In fact, probably the only thing it had in common with the Doyle story was the concept of fear, in this case inspired in patrons by the notion of ever eating anything from the glass jars of eggs and pickles and unidentifiable (in?)edibles that lined the front of the bar and served as the chief nod to interior decoration. The pub was sufficiently dark that one could try to convince oneself that the wood on the wall-to-wall bar was authentic mahogany, the gleaming something-or-other real brass. What was undoubtedly authentic, however, was the barmaid, who had the kind of loose stomach that came from multiple child-births combined with no discernible exercise regimen, and yellow hair that even in the dim lighting was unmistakably the color of pee. Also authentic were the hunched-over patrons, who looked like they’d come with the lease, and the publican, who was Uriah Heep with just a wistfully fleeting dash of Mr. Darcy.

  He made a pass at wiping the bar in front of me with a damp rag that had seen better centuries. “Know what you want then, miss?”

  “Mmm…”

  “Come on. Haven’t got all day.”

  Well, actually, looking around at the scant patronage, who would tip in shots if at all, it appeared that he did.

  “Mmm…better make it a pint of Guinness.”

  “Fine choice, miss.” He began to move off.

  “And a shot of Glenfiddich.”

  “Very well.”

  “No. On second thought, make it Laphroaig. Might as well treat myself well.”

  “Might as well.”

  “But make it a double. No point in you having to run back and forth more times than necessary. Heh, heh.” Good God, where did that oil-less laugh come from?

  “Is that quite everything, miss? Or would you be wanting me to park the whole distillery in front of you?”

  “No. Heh, heh. I can always order another round later.”