Weapons of Mass Seduction Read online

  “I’ve missed one period and I’m late this month. I took another EPT this morning and it was positive.”

  “So are you going to call Grand and tell him he’s going to be a daddy?”

  “No. He doesn’t want to know if I get pregnant, and if I do, other than a yearly update, I promised not to involve him unless he requests it. Dee, am I doing the right thing having his baby?”

  “You’re not having second thoughts because Grand doesn’t want to be involved, are you? I thought that was the plan. You didn’t fall for him or anything, did you?”

  “Oh, no. Absolutely not. Grand is sexy as hell and we have an off-the-charts sexual chemistry, but that’s where it ends. Neither one of us is interested in the other like that.”

  “Okay, then I don’t get why you’re questioning yourself. Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve always talked about wanting a kid. And even with all your plumbing issues, you got pregnant on the first try. This baby is meant to be.”

  “That is true.”

  “So, chica, what’s next?” Darlene asked, leaving out all the smart cracks and putting a supportive arm around her boss.

  “I’m going to see Dr. Montrae today at one and make sure that everything is okay.”

  “And then?”

  “And then, I guess I’m going to have a baby,” Pia declared softly before releasing a big sigh.

  Dee, unable to contain her enthusiasm any longer, began doing the highly contagious happy dance, causing Pia to momentarily forget her queasy stomach and conflicting emotions and join in. She allowed herself to revel in the realization that after wishing on so many stars, fountains, candles, and turkey bones, she was finally going to be a mother.

  “But you can’t tell anyone. Not even Hector. At least not yet.”

  “I won’t, but you’re going to have to tell someone else.”

  “I know, and I’m dreading it,” Pia admitted.

  “You have to do it. You have to tell Maizelle.”

  “Despite the fact that my mother has been wanting and waiting to be a grandmother for years, she’s going to freak out when she finds out that I’m pregnant by a man I have no intention of marrying.”

  “Chica, surely your mother is aware that you’re not some teen pregnancy statistic,” Dee teased.

  “My teen years may be long gone, but that won’t matter much to Maizelle. She’s a traditionalist all the way. In my mother’s eyes an unwed mother is an unwed mother—no matter what her age.”

  “In that case, you might want to tell her soon. She’s going to need these next seven months to get used to the idea.”

  “You’re right. I just have no idea what to say.”

  “Try saying, ‘Mami, the sad news is that I’m not getting married. The glad news is that I’m pregnant. And the best news is that the paramedics are standing by.’”

  Pia stared at the ceiling tiles and listened to the crinkling sound of her paper gown as she lay on the examining table. She winced slightly as the doctor spread the cool, clear gel across her belly in preparation for the ultrasound.

  “This is just to help the transducer pass smoothly over your abdomen,” Dr. Montrae informed her. “In just a minute, we’ll be able to see the baby’s heartbeat and make sure we have a viable pregnancy.”

  Viable. Pia ran through the word’s definitions in her head. Feasible, practical, doable. Suddenly all the logical concerns she’d pushed to the back of her head came rushing to the forefront. What the hell was I thinking? Have I lost my damn mind? How am I going to raise a child by myself? Especially with my work and travel schedule? And particularly when Maizelle is going to disown me for being a trollop and her grandchild for being illegitimate?

  The whooshing sound of the ultrasound drowned out her thoughts and forced Pia’s attention back into the room. She was greeted by the fast, steady beat of a fetal heart. It was a beautiful sound that washed away all her doubt.

  “That’s it? That’s my baby?” she asked, lifting her head to look at the grainy black-and-white image.

  “Yes, Pia, congratulations. You are officially a mother-to-be.”

  Pia acknowledged the news with a weak smile and a deep sigh. “Hi, my miracle baby,” she whispered.

  “Let’s see, today is April seventeenth. Judging from the date of your last period and the size of the fetus, I’d say you’re about eight weeks pregnant. You can expect your little bundle of joy somewhere around Thanksgiving, give or take a week.”

  Still too stunned to speak, Pia simply shook her head. She felt strangely detached from this experience. It was as if her thoughts, emotions, and senses were muddled together, filling the room with a thick fog and keeping her from totally engaging in the reality.

  “Are you okay with this? This is what you want, correct?”

  “Yes, this is what I want. It just feels a little strange—in a good way.”

  “Because of your age, I’ll be doing a few extra tests to rule out any chromosomal issues like Down syndrome,” the doctor said as she wiped the gel from Pia’s belly and helped her into a sitting position. “All routine stuff, so I don’t want you to worry. Now do you have any questions?”

  “The queasiness. That’s normal, right?”

  “Perfectly normal. Just keep your stomach from being empty by eating small meals and munching on saltines or rice cakes in between. That should help. Start taking your prenatal vitamins, and I will see you in a month. If you have any issues or questions before then, give me a call. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  Only if you can tell my mother that her grandchild was conceived in a relationship that was based on the endearing premise of Knock Me Up and Go Away.

  “I’m fine, Dr. Montrae. See you next month, and thank you.”

  Pia dressed and minutes later stepped into New York’s spring sunshine feeling unsteady and indecisive. It was a foreign sensation. But the fact was that in a few short months Pia’s life was going to change forever. And crazy hormone fluctuations aside, she needed to get a firm grasp on her fast-changing world. And now was as good a time as any to get started. Conjuring up her deceased father’s wise advice of ‘Start it the way you want it to end,’ Pia fished out her cell phone and dialed the number she’d been calling for the past twenty years. In the ring span of six seconds, Pia sent a prayer up to the heavens, asking God to fill her mother’s heart with love and understanding and, if that wasn’t possible, the ability to forgive in time to babysit.

  “Hello.”

  “Mom, how are you?”

  “Pia? I’m fine. Where are you?”

  “Here in New York.”

  “Done globe-trotting for a while?”

  “I wish. I’m leaving for London tomorrow and will be gone a week. I thought maybe we could have one of our legendary mother-daughter gabfests when I get back.”

  “I’d like that, honey—it’s been a long time since we’ve had a chance to really sit down and talk.”

  “Me too. How about brunch on Saturday of next week?” Pia asked, knowing the majority of her mother’s Sunday was taken up at the church. “I can meet you at eleven at Zoe’s.”

  “My favorite restaurant? Okay, Pia, what’s going on?”

  “Don’t be so suspicious, Mother. But something…well, I have some good news to tell you,” Pia said employing Joey Clements’s lesson of smiling while speaking on the phone. Hopefully her grin was filtering out the uneasiness from her voice.

  “So tell me, sweetheart.”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you.”

  “Okay, sweetie. Good news is always worth waiting for. I’ll see you then.”

  Pia hung up the phone well aware that in this case, one woman’s good news was another woman’s Lord, where did I fail? nightmare.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I thought you said you had good news,” Maizelle remarked as she gently but purposely placed her spoon on the saucer. “You do realize that your father is turning over in his grave at this very minute. He loved you
dearly, Pia, but he would be so disappointed in you right now. And I have to admit that I am as well.”

  Even though she could have written the script, Pia winced, crushed by her mother’s dismay and the implied disapproval of her beloved father. She’d been a daddy’s girl all his life, and the idea that he was out there in the great beyond unhappy with her hurt deeply.

  “And what am I going to tell Mimi? Your eighty-three-year-old grandmother is going to be devastated. We just don’t do this kind of thing in our family.”

  “Mom, calm down. I’m not giving birth tomorrow. Both you and Mimi have several months to get used to the idea,” Pia said, wishing like hell she could have a glass of champagne to take the edge off this uncomfortable moment.

  “I will never get used to this idea, Pia. How am I going to explain this to my friends? To Pastor Saxton? To God?”

  “You don’t owe your friends or pastor any explanation other than you’re going to be a grandmother. And if they are truly in your corner, they won’t judge you on the sins of your daughter. And as for God, I don’t know, but I think ultimately it won’t be you that has to make things right. This will be between Him and me,” Pia added drily. Her outer stance might have been defiance, but inside she was shaking. Like most children—grown or not—she loved and respected her mother, and disappointing her felt painful and humiliating.

  “Don’t get smart with me. This is not how your father and I raised you, Pia Clarice Jamison.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching for her mother’s hand. Just as they made contact, Becca Vossel popped into Pia’s mind. Her young friend was smack dab in the middle of trying to navigate the line between living her own truth and acknowledging her parents’ values and expectations, and here she was, nearly twenty years Becca’s senior, worrying about the same damn thing.

  “Mom, I realize that for you this might seem disappointing and embarrassing, but let me try to explain it to you in a way that will hopefully make sense,” Pia said softening her tone. “After last year’s myomectomy to remove the uterine fibroids, my doctor made it very clear to me that time was running out and if I wanted to have a child, it was now or never. So I decided that I’d rather be a single mother than not be a mother at all.

  “I would like nothing better than to marry some amazing man and raise a baby together like you and Daddy did, but it’s just not meant to be. I’m not in a serious relationship—in fact, I’m not even dating anyone at the moment.”

  “Pia, you’re pregnant. You must be in some kind of relationship. Who is the father? Is there no chance you two could make it work?”

  Damn. The one question she was hoping to avoid was now on the table, but Pia had no intention of making an already bad situation worse by revealing the entire set of facts.

  “No, there’s no chance for us to be together. I used a sperm donor,” she revealed, settling on the basic truth in hopes that it would sound more acceptable to her mother’s ears.

  “I’m going to have to pray on this. I just don’t understand how you could do something like this.”

  “I realize that this is a difficult concept for you to wrap your head around. I’ve spent most of my adult life looking unsuccessfully for the same kind of loving relationship you and Daddy had. But I’ve given up looking. I’ve decided to let him find me. But the reality is, he may not come looking.

  “But Pia, you’re already forty-one. Soon you’ll have a baby. What man is going to want you even if he does find you?”

  “Hopefully, a man who truly loves me. I know what you’re saying, and maybe if it wasn’t a now-or-never proposition, I’d wait longer—wait to do it the way I’d always intended…the way you intended. So maybe we won’t plan the wedding together, but how about a christening?”

  “I don’t know. This is all too much. This is not what your father and I wanted for you.”

  “Just know that I love you very much and want you to be happy about your grandchild. I need you to help me get through this now and in the years to come, because there is no other woman who can give me better advice on being a great mom.”

  “Being a great mom begins with doing what’s best for your child. Are you sure this is what’s best?”

  “It is for me and it will be for the baby. Now, I’m sorry, but I have to go. I have to get to the studio,” Pia said.

  “It’s Saturday. Did you ever consider that maybe if you weren’t always traveling and working on weekends, you could find a proper husband and move that right-hand ring over to the left?” Maizelle remarked, eyeing Pia’s new diamond band.

  Pia felt herself cringe. They’d been down that road so many times before in the past ten years, she had no intention of retracing her steps. It seemed as if two minutes into Pia’s thirtieth birthday, Mai had begun the drumbeat that is the angst of every unmarried woman over twenty-nine. When are you getting married and having some grandbabies?

  Instead of replying to a remark she’d heard too many times before, Pia reached over and hugged her mother. And for the first time since she had been caught shoplifting a Jackson Five T-shirt on a dare, severe disappointment buffered her body, insulating Pia from the warmth of her mother’s love.

  “I love you,” she said, a tear threatening to fall.

  “I know you do, Pia.”

  Her mother’s lack of return affection cut the same way it had decades ago when she was standing in the department store’s security office. And just like that shunned thirteen-year-old, grown-up Pia was feeling ashamed and alone and left wondering if her actions had been worth it.

  Pia and Darlene sat in the edit bay with the editor, sorting out the order of appearances for Hector’s “shout out reel.” Months ago, Dee had arranged with Pia to have various singers, rappers, and celebrities record short messages to be sent to Iraq as a surprise for his twenty-seventh birthday.

  “So should we end with Ashanti singing ‘Happy Birthday’?” Dee asked, sorting through the cut list. Pia, sitting with her head in her hands, trying to ride another wave of nausea, could only reply with a low moan.

  “Why don’t we start with Ashanti and close with you. That way you’ll be the last thing on his mind when it’s over,” the editor suggested.

  Pia lifted and gestured her agreement with one hand before resuming her ailing position. She really was feeling horrible—not only nauseated but dejected and dog tired as well.

  “Are you okay?” Darlene asked.

  “Mommy pains—in all meanings of the word,” Pia whispered, trying not to share her business with the rest of the production crew.

  “Can I get you something?”

  “No, I’ll be fine. I’ll just munch on some more rice cakes and sip on my ginger tea and try to remember that my mother would never disown her only child, even if she thinks I’m a terrible daughter.”

  “It could be worse. My mom plans to exact her revenge on me by moving in when she gets old and refusing to wear clothes.”

  “Don’t make me laugh. The shaking makes the nausea worse.”

  “So Darlene, if you’re ready, we can tape your close,” the editor interrupted.

  He and Dee slipped into the next room, leaving Pia to rewind the mental video of this morning’s brunch. While it had gone pretty much as she’d expected and Maizelle’s disappointment weighed heavy on her, most surprising was the battle waging inside. Traditional, righteous, good girl was warring with independent, modern, ain’t-nobody’s-business-if-I-do girl for rights to her peace of soul.

  Pia Clarice Jamison had been trained to be a good girl in a household where traditional family values were touted and instilled long before the idea of “family values” was a political lightning rod.

  For the second time today, Becca Vossel popped into her head. When you took away the race and adoption issues, their upbringings weren’t all that different. Both were brought up in God-fearing middle-class households where dignity, respect, and a daughter’s reputation were paramount issues. Pia’s late father, Charlie, was a man
who respected women but also expected those same women to respect themselves. The avoidance of parental disapproval became Pia’s internal police force and moral guidance system.

  Pia, determined to respect both her wants and her parents’ rules, unconsciously took on a passive-aggressive approach to her teen years. Pia had spared Maizelle and Charlie the stress of any true teenage rebellion and she’d experienced enough life on her terms to feel as though she hadn’t missed a thing.

  Despite Maizelle’s doctrine, Pia marched to her own truth and lost her virginity to her first love the summer before going off to college. Pia had been pleased that her initial sexual experience had taken place in the context of a loving (though not marital) relationship, and she had been responsible enough to get herself on the pill, which was how Maizelle had discovered she was sexually active. Her mother had been upset and “disappointed” that she hadn’t waited until marriage, but eighteen-year-old Pia, in love and intoxicated with innocent lust, had stood her ground. But later, in college, when love moved on, Pia was left dealing with the contradictory pull of her physical urges and her parents’ morals. Fifteen years of tiptoeing through those sexually and emotionally explosive mine fields had left Pia confused and eventually celibate. And now, at forty-one, sex, love, reputation, and parental approval were still causing her conflict and muddying her self-image as a sexual being.

  “Hector is going to love this,” Darlene exclaimed, interrupting Pia’s thoughts as she burst back into the room. “Thank you, chica, for making this happen.”

  “No problem. We’ll send a bunch of CDs along for him and the rest of the unit.”

  “I miss him so much. I hate that I can’t be with him on his birthday or Christmas or our anniversary,” Dee revealed in an uncharacteristic moment of vulnerability.

  “One year goes by fast,” Pia said, trying to comfort her friend. “And you’ll to be so busy playing Tia Dee that before you know it Hector will be walking through the door, safe and sound, and you two will be making a baby of your own.”