Matchmaking for Beginners(31)

Still, I was proud of myself for not complaining about the pain and the disappointment and also not minding the fact that, overall, Brad Whitaker didn’t really care anything about me. I just did what you do in those times of your life when you’re trying to make yourself be something you’re not: I stepped up my game, tried harder, shortened my skirts, wore my hair in a side ponytail (you’ll have to trust me that this was übercool), and took to lowering my eyes and holding my mouth in such a way that I looked charmingly bored.

It didn’t really do any good. Brad turned out to be a heartbreaking narcissistic toothache of a guy, and he forgot that guys are supposed to take their girlfriends to the prom, and he took some other girl instead. I got to be the Wronged Woman and everybody felt sorry for me, and my mother said, “You should have stuck with that Jeremy Sanders. Now there was a nice guy!”

So, great. Just great. He’s moved back home.

Cheers.





TWELVE





MARNIE


A week later, I’m at Natalie’s house painting a mural on a wall in the nursery, having decided that a scene with a budding dogwood tree, a rolling green hill, and a garden of purple tulips would be just the thing to welcome little Amelia Jane to the world, once she makes up her mind to get here, that is.

Natalie has been in the kitchen reorganizing her spice cabinet, but when I look up, I see her leaning against the doorway of the baby’s room, holding on to her belly and squinting at the wall. I do not think she really likes this mural. Her idea was to paint the baby’s room gray. Gray! Can you even imagine what that might do to a newborn’s psyche?

“Would you do me a huge, huge, huge favor?” she says.

“Drive you to the hospital because you’re now in labor?”

“Stop it,” she says. “Believe it or not, I have to go to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned, and I honestly don’t fit behind the wheel anymore. So will you drive me?”

“How is it that you have an appointment for teeth cleaning now? What if you were in labor? What if you’d already had the baby?”

“I know,” she says. “My appointment was actually for three weeks ago, but the dentist went on vacation, and they needed to reschedule.”

Natalie does not look so good as she gets into the car, tipping herself way back so that she can maneuver her huge stomach without banging it into the dashboard.

“How’s it going?” I say.

“Shut up.”

I start the car and fasten my seat belt. “Oh, Ameeeeelia? Did you hear what your mother just said to me? Don’t be scared to come out, baby. She’s really a very nice lady. It’s just that you’re pressing on some of her vital organs, sweetheart.”

Natalie bares her teeth.

I turn the car around to head out to Roosevelt Boulevard, and I’m surprised when she yells at me that I’m going too fast and that there are dips in the road I’m not feeling, but they’re there and they are KILLING HER. I slow down obediently.

And then she says, “OW!”

“Nat. Are you about to have this baby?”

“No,” she says. “These are Braxton Hicks contractions. Fake.” She takes a deep, ragged breath.

“Because I’m just saying, since we’re already in the car and all, maybe we should go to the hospital.”

She doesn’t even answer that, just lies back with her hands on her massive belly and looks like she’s in the most amount of pain a human has ever endured, doing little puffing things with her mouth.

“Does it hurt . . . a lot?” I say. We pass a lumberyard and a row of shops. “I could pull in here, if you want.”

“Please. I’m concentrating. This is not pain. We don’t use the word pain. There is some . . .”

“Some what?”

“Marnie. Please. Be. Quiet.”

We finally get to the medical building—a low-slung little stucco building with banana trees and azalea bushes planted out front—and I pull up to the door and get out and come around to help her. But she waves me off and then—just like that—she loses her footing and she falls down on the pavement with a loud smack.

“Oh, no, no, no! Oh my goodness!” I cry, and I bend down to help her. “Don’t move. Let’s see . . . oh crap . . . did you land on your stomach? Did you hit your head?”

“No, I didn’t hit my head. Calm down, will you? That was my purse making that noise.”

She’s lying on her side in the flower bed, her head resting on a big old palm frond, looking up at me through her same old calm-as-anything Natalie eyes. She’s not frothing at the mouth or bleeding or giving birth. She’s just Natalie, lying there as if she meant to. Then she starts trying to pull herself up and can’t.

“Here, maybe you shouldn’t move. Really, Nat. It could be you broke something.”

“Stop yelling,” she hisses at me, which is weird because I’m almost positive I’m not yelling. “I’m fine,” she says. “Just help . . . just help me up, would you? And don’t attract attention.”

“Okay, here, hold on to me. Can you hold on?” I go around to the other side of her and get down on my knees, but I can’t figure out where to grab on to her, and she’s so big, but just then a man’s large hands show up in my field of vision, and somebody in a white coat is gently grasping my sister under the arms and gradually easing her upright until she’s on her feet, and then supporting her gigantic body against his until she can steady herself. I’m still on the ground, scrambling around to get the contents of her purse, which have spilled everywhere, and I can’t see his face, only that he has dark hair, and she seems to be leaning against him as he walks her inside.