The Drifter(75)
She stayed perfectly still under the covers, waiting to feel a flutter of movement beneath her skin and muscle walls. No movement, no spark of recognition from within. Then, a few moments later, she felt a sensation of pulling from her back and then encircling her abdomen. Betsy held her breath and then exhaled. For the past two days, she’d been having contractions that everyone assured her were harmless Braxton Hicks. But something about the waves of tightness across her belly gave her pause.
Early on, she’d had a scare. Eight weeks into her pregnancy, she’d hemorrhaged in the bathroom at work and she had been terrified that she’d lose the baby ever since. Betsy called Jessica on her cell phone from the stall, panicked. Jess called a car service, ushered her discreetly out of the loading dock in the back of the building, and rushed her to Dr. Kerr’s office. She’d clutched Jess’s hand until the doctor found a heartbeat. After seventy-two hours of bed rest, she was back to normal, back at work, but determined to be more “relaxed.” She had been diligent, and a little tentative, ever since. Gavin thought she was ridiculous whenever she placed headphones across her abdomen to play classical music from her iPod to the incumbent of her uterus, but whenever he stayed late at work, she’d take the headphones out of the top drawer of her nightstand, recline on the couch, and listen to Yo-Yo Ma with her unborn child. It wasn’t just for the baby, she told herself. It was for her; the muffled hum of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 would lull her right to sleep.
Now Betsy rolled onto her side, pushed herself out of bed, and slid her feet into flattened shearling slippers. Her belly slackened again. Her heartbeat regulated. Remi Virginia would be her name. She struggled to keep her mind from wandering, resisting the pull of the warm sheets and the serene blankness of the white ceiling.
“Hey,” she said, shuffling through the kitchen. Gavin was standing in the hall, still in his socks, shirt untucked, so engrossed in the paper that he hadn’t heard the question.
“So, what do you think?” Betsy asked. He looked up, clearly startled, folded the newspaper, and placed it in his bag, which hung from a hook near the door. He was pale, his eyes looked bloodshot.
“So, what? Sorry. I spaced for a second. Do you want decaf?”
“Sure. What’s going on in the Times?”
“Oh nothing, you know, same shit.” He shoved the paper into his work bag and brushed a stray hair from her eyes. “The Thursday Styles wants me to wear a pocket square.”
“Alright. But only if it’s purple,” Betsy said. “So . . . what do you think of the name? Remi Virginia?”
“Hmm,” he said. “I like it, but . . .”
“But what?”
“Well I know how much you like monograms.”
“And?”
“And her initials would be R.V.D. R.V.? V.D? One part motor home, one part genital herpes.”
“Jesus, Gavin.” She rolled her eyes. “You could ruin anything.”
He went back into the kitchen to start the coffee. Betsy opened the refrigerator and eyed a selection of plain yogurt, a bowl of hard-boiled eggs, and some dense and grainy brown bread. Given her “advanced maternal age,” her gynecologist had suggested a low-glycemic diet, which Betsy had followed to the letter and continued, as much as she could, through her pregnancy for fear of gestational diabetes and ninety-five extra pounds. There were days, and this was one of them, when she wanted nothing more than a salt bagel with chive cream cheese.
“Hey, Gav, do you want to grab a bite with me after my appointment?” Betsy had an ultrasound scheduled at ten. “Just looking at the font on that Greek yogurt is making me queasy.”
“Sure, that’s a great idea,” Gavin said as he watched the coffee drip into the pot. “In fact, I have an even better one. Why don’t you take the whole day off?”
“Wait—what? Are you serious?”
“I have to run into work this morning for a minute to take care of a few things, and then I’ll be free for the rest of the day.” Gavin had vaulted up the ranks in television news to become the executive producer of a cable talk show that aired live at 9:00 p.m. He was rarely home before 11:00 p.m., and they were just delusional enough to think that their reverse schedules would prove to be an advantage once the baby arrived. “I can hook up with you at the doctor’s office, then we can have lunch and check out that overpriced Japanese baby store in SoHo that you like before I head back to the office.”
“OK, now you’re freaking me out.”
“What? What’s the matter? You haven’t taken a day off since the summer. You could use the break.”
He was right. She was tired, and it was getting harder by the day to cram her feet into heels.
“Um . . . alright,” she said, smiling, still with some suspicion. Betsy ate an egg, just to curb the hunger pangs, which came on intensely and often. She showered, slipped into black leggings, which resembled a deflated balloon animal when she pulled them out of the drawer, and a stretchy, heather gray dress that Jessica had passed along in a bag of maternity clothes that were chicer than anything Betsy owned pre-pregnancy. She plopped down on the edge of the bed, already winded from the morning’s effort, and slipped on a pair of Converse, grateful for a day that would not require decent shoes. She scraped her shoulder-length, dark blonde hair, which was longer and thicker in her third trimester than it had ever been in her life, into a bun, grabbed a scarf and her handbag, and made her way down to the lobby. She walked the handful of blocks to Murray’s, hurrying past her favorite newsstand, and started salivating as her bagel was plastered with cream cheese. She had sworn them off for years once she left Gainesville. Betsy recognized the irony of giving up bagels upon arrival in New York. Still, every time she passed a bagel bakery and the scent of caraway seeds and burned garlic singed her nostrils, she thought of her boss Tom and his vampiric 2:00 a.m to 10:00 a.m. schedule. Betsy never thought that she’d remember those painfully early mornings with any fondness. To her surprise, she often did.