Talk To Me: The Dance Thriller, Part 1

The Walls Run High To Veil A Swelling Tear

Los Angeles, California
Wednesday, May 28, 1997
(2:00 pm)
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If it's a girl, her name is Robin.

Stevie was staring out the window on the passenger's side of the car as Karen drove her home from the gynecologist's office. On the radio, Toni Braxton was singing her hit song of the past winter asking the man she loved to "unbreak her heart," and Stevie couldn't help but think that the song didn't match her mood. She had just heard thirty minutes earlier that she was six weeks pregnant, the doctor telling her she'd most likely conceived April 16 to 18, and her baby was due on January 24.

April 17... the night before the interview... Her memory went back to the night Lindsey had touched and kissed her all over in an effort to prove that her entire body was beautiful, and what had followed was perhaps the most amazing lovemaking they'd ever shared...

"Get on top of me, angel. I want to see all of you...how beautiful you are...my sweet girl..."

Stevie had turned forty-nine on Monday. She'd celebrated with Lindsey and her family in Arizona, flying in for the weekend so they could have dinner and Stevie's usual carrot cake, and she'd stood back and smiled as the entire Nicks family had welcomed Lindsey back with open arms. They'd spent the evening dancing in the living room to old disco songs and then Frank Sinatra as Jess had taken over the DJ responsibilities, and Barbara and Lori had both cried and hugged her repeatedly when she'd revealed her engagement ring. Jessi had asked to try it on, running through the living room singing, "Here comes the bride! Here comes the bride!" as Lori followed her around to ensure the safety of the ring and Frank Sinatra's voice had melted into the living room telling the three couples that "love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage." They had ended the night upstairs in the bedroom where Stevie had once cried over her life and her addiction and her weight and losing the love of her life, only this time she'd fallen asleep in his arms, wearing her engagement ring proudly as her fingers rested on his chest and his heartbeat lulled her to sleep, thinking that forty-nine years had all led up to this moment, and she had not a care in the world.

"How are you going to break it to The Mac?" Karen's voice broke into her thoughts. On the radio, Gwen Stefani of No Doubt had begun to sing, "You and me...we used to be together...every day together, always...I really feel that I'm losing my best friend; I can't believe this could be the end..." Stevie wondered why modern music was so depressing all of a sudden.

"Listen, let me break it to Lindsey first!" Stevie said. "The Mac will handle it. If we wind up going through the fall, I'll only be six or seven months along when the tour ends. Clearly costumes won't be a problem...people laughed at me twenty years ago when I put on a cape...well who's laughing now?" She laughed out loud, which made Karen laugh.

"It's a high risk pregnancy, Stevie. You're not thirty anymore; you can't be running around the United States singing about landslides bringing you down if you have to be on bed rest!"

"No one's talking bed rest yet, Karen! My God, I'm not the Crypt Keeper!"

Stevie had been having an irregular cycle for about two years, had suffered through a handful of hot flashes. She would never have guessed in a million years that she was still fertile. She'd thought back to her last pregnancy scare, shortly after her relationship with Rupert Hine had ended abruptly and sent her home from London so far ahead of schedule that Lori and Sharon and Waddy had peppered her with questions. She'd refused to say a word about what had happened, and instead had sent Karen to a drugstore in West Hollywood for a rudimentary pregnancy test, which had improved greatly since January 1990, she'd discovered. She'd silently thanked God - and Robin, to whom she had prayed - for the negative results. She was almost forty-two then, and she would have had a decision to make, since that baby would have been her last chance to be a mother to someone who wasn't a dog, or to Matthew, with whom she had just started to correspond years after Kim had taken him back to his family in Minnesota to raise after their divorce.