Death and Other Interruptions

Chapter Twenty-Three

Being away for a week had reminded me just how important having a place of my own was. It was time to stop feeding off the generosity of my mother and find an apartment—preferably a two-bedroom. Now that I was ready to face that step, I was excited by the prospect of putting together a home. I started browsing home goods websites for ideas on how to decorate the baby's bedroom, occasionally sneaking a peek at the grown-up stuff to wonder if I should indulge in new furniture or linen for myself. Al and I hadn't ever really decorated our apartment, waiting instead for the money and gifts that would come with a wedding, and now it felt luxurious to spend money on items I already had, even if they were leftovers from college or hand-me-downs from Amy.

I had two days of planning and searching, even looking at Zillow and the like to find the ideal apartment, before I had to go back to group. What had once been my comfort was now a frightening prospect. I would see Ethan after two weeks away, after no word in either direction. True, we had never exchanged numbers, so contact would have been rather difficult, but I worried that he thought I was hiding from him. I worried if I was hiding from him. I worried what it meant if I was. I wondered if I had a tranquilizer somewhere that I could take to stop all this nagging worrying.

But then it was Tuesday. I went out that morning and bought my first maternity outfit that didn't originally belong to my sister. The bump was unavoidable and, if I was being honest, didn't really qualify as a bump anymore either. Seemingly overnight, it had exploded into a full-blown belly, the kind that announces itself before I've finished walking into a room. I picked my way through the store with my eyes half-closed, trying to avoid all the happy expectant couples, picking through the clothing as if it would help make their new child as perfect as they knew it would be. My outfit was largely chosen based on its location in the store, in a corner where no couples were currently standing holding hands.

I told myself the outfit wasn't for Ethan, it was for appearing in public as a normal human being, but then I remembered that group wasn't really public and no one there expected to see normal human beings. I had spent the whole week at the beach without thinking of Ethan once; that meant I wasn't into him, I decided. To prove my own point, I put my hair in a ponytail. If I really wanted to impress him, I wouldn't put my hair into a ponytail, would I? I told myself, proud of my logic. Then my mom came down and commented on how cute I looked. She was understandably surprised by my annoyed response. Clearly the frizzy ponytail didn't outweigh the new, happy mommy-to-be, look-at-my-cute-belly outfit.

"I didn't fit into anything I owned," I explained hastily, as if she had criticized me for buying the outfit. "I needed to buy it."

"Good," she said simply. "You needed a new outfit. That sweater was starting to smell."

I'd been wrapping myself in an old sweater of my father's, the only thing that fit other than pajamas and Al's old T-shirts. I had thought it was rather hipster-chic, with its secondhand look and worn elbow patches. Maybe I needed to review what was hipster and what was just old. The distinction was lost on me.

"I don't look too nice, do I?" I asked hesitantly, hoping she wouldn't give me a knowing-mother look, or ask prying questions.

"You look perfect," she said breezily, turning to put a kettle on the stove. Even my mother, with her exasperatingly impeccable instincts, wouldn't suspect me of something so disloyal to the memory of my freshly-dead fiancé. "There's never been a cuter pregnant lady. And don't tell your sister I said that, but she was a whale when she was pregnant. Both times. I was sure they'd be twins, at least."

"I'm sure you say the same thing to her about me," I said, touching my stomach self-consciously. No matter how often I reminded myself that I was pregnant, that there was another person growing inside me, when my pants didn't fit I had horrible flashbacks to freshman year of college, when my face got so swollen from stress-eating that my parents didn't recognize me four months into the year when I came home for winter break.