The Last Romantics(25)
And then, back in Kentucky, Caroline became pregnant. She was twenty-one years old. Nathan was three years into his graduate research on Central American tropical frogs. In their rented bungalow, one entire room was devoted to a series of plastic kiddie pools joined together by a complex filtration and pumping system, lit by heat lamps, the temperature maintained at a steamy ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit. Inside this ecosystem lived plant life indigenous to a tropical climate and eight tiny Panamanian golden frogs.
On the day Caroline finally disappointed Noni, she left Nathan at home with the frogs, crouched before the pools, notebook in hand. He nodded absently as she kissed him on the cheek. Caroline was running late for class, again. This one—Ancient Chinese Ceramics—was located across the wide green campus lawn, up a short punishing hill, through a heavy door, inside a room that looked like a doctor’s waiting room or a preflight boarding area: white and gray and brown, full of people who slouched and yawned.
At seven months pregnant, Caroline felt unwieldy as a cello. She was panting slightly, her face hot, as she pushed open the classroom door. The teaching assistant glanced up and then away with a roll of his eyes. Although she knew she had nothing to be ashamed of, Caroline felt ashamed. For being late to class, for being married and pregnant, for being distracted and sleepy, for being herself.
“Ms. Duffy,” the TA said.
“Yes?” answered Caroline as she settled into a chair without a desk; she no longer fit behind a desk.
“Can you please comment on the ceramics of the later Ming years and their use of the symbol of the bee?” A tattoo of a rose crawled up the TA’s neck. He gazed at her with tight, small blue eyes.
“The bee?” she repeated.
The TA nodded. The A/C unit abruptly shut off, plunging the room into silence. Around her, Caroline felt the swollen anticipation of the group, all fifteen, maybe twenty students. Where before they had been inattentive and uninterested, now, with notice of her humiliation, they became alert.
“Um, I don’t know,” Caroline replied.
The TA moved immediately on. “Mr. Purcell?” he asked the boy sitting to Caroline’s right and Robbie Purcell explained to the class the significance of the bee.
As Robbie rattled on, Caroline felt strangely buoyed by the TA’s dismissal. Here she sat in a bland room with bland desks and bland chairs, surrounded by bland people who were not pregnant, who were not harboring life within. Now these people were discussing avidly the importance of the bee. At that moment, deep within her, the baby moved, an elbow or a knee just below her left ribs, and Caroline was transported. There existed nothing so momentous as this feeling of intimacy and distance, the strangeness of it and the atavistic understanding. The TA had no idea. Caroline felt a surge of pity for him. Pity and impatience.
Caroline picked up her notebook and pen and returned them to her bag. She stood and moved toward the door.
“Um, Ms. Duffy,” the TA called. “You just got here.”
Someone in the class snickered.
“I’m leaving,” Caroline said, and she did.
Caroline went directly to the registrar’s office and withdrew from the University of Kentucky. The registrar’s assistant gazed at her belly and accepted the paperwork without comment. When she arrived back home, Nathan was sitting in the same position as when she’d left. He looked up as she entered the room.
“No more college,” she announced breezily, standing in the doorway. “I quit.”
Nathan watched her for one long moment, chewing a pen cap. On his lap was a black-and-white composition book, the kind he used for observations on the frogs. He had dozens of them, shelved carefully in the den, the raw data for his dissertation. Caroline felt her breath shorten and catch. For the first time in their relationship, she feared his rejection. Nathan, steady as a heartbeat, had never wavered in his own professional vision and her place beside him, sharing that life. But a college professor married to a college dropout? The vision tilted and shook. An Etch A Sketch in the hands of a restless toddler. What would Caroline do if she wasn’t with Nathan? What would she do?
Nathan removed the pen cap from his mouth and shrugged. “You can always go back after the baby,” he said. “It’s just one semester.”
“Exactly,” she said, exhaling. Her breath returned. The vision stabilized. “I’m so uncomfortable, Nathan. It just seems so pointless.”
“I agree,” he said, and rose from the chair. “I love you, Caroline.” He kissed her and took her hand and led her into the room. “Did you know that the frogs communicate with gestures?” His face was hazy with wonder. “They wave their hands.”
“Hands? Is that really the right word?”
“Yes. Hands.”
Together they crouched over the pools, lit up like a tropical night by a red heat lamp, and studied the frogs. Their skin was a bright banana yellow spotted with black, the eyes a deeper yellow, nearly gold, and split by a pod of black pupil. Caroline counted the long, thin fingers, each shaped like a tiny upside-down spoon.
“Don’t they look like the baby’s hands?” Caroline said, turning to Nathan. When their doctor had performed the twenty-week scan, Caroline and Nathan both had gasped. The images offered a revelation of bone and form and quick, jiggery movement.
“They do,” Nathan said to Caroline. “See? Life.”