My Babies and Me

One of the babies moved again on Wednesday night, just after Michael and Susan had made love. It wasn’t a kick this time, but a heel or something sliding across her entire belly, sticking out as it went. They both watched its progress.

“Can you feel that?” Michael whispered, as though he’d disturb the children if he spoke any louder.

“Of course,” she laughed. “You try being rubbed from the inside out.”

Michael couldn’t imagine the feeling, but he knew what it felt like to carry a lead weight around in his chest. A weight that was getting heavier by the hour.

He’d never experienced a stronger need to get up and go, to run as far and as fast as he could. Or to stay.

“Have you decided what to name them?” he asked instead, studying the mound of her stomach.

Susan frowned. “I change my mind at least twice a day. There are so many names I like.”

That sounded like Susan. If she could get away with it, she’d pin a minimum of six names on each kid.

“Remember to pay attention to initials,” he told her, rolling over to lie on his back, staring at the shadows on the ceiling. “Kids can be awfully cruel when they tease, and names and initials always seem to be a target.”

“So I can’t name her Katy Kathleen ’cause she’d be KKK, huh?”

Katy Kathleen Kennedy. His name. That he’d given to Susan and she’d kept after the divorce.

“Right,” he said, jumping up as if self-propelled, shrugging into his robe. “Want a snack?”

“I’m not hungry,” Susan surprised him by saying. She was always hungry these days.

He shouldn’t have been surprised, though. He wasn’t hungry, either.

But he escaped to the kitchen anyway. Dished himself a bowl of ice cream he didn’t want. And then, while it melted beside him, took up paper and pencil and doodled.

What was the matter with him? What in hell was the matter with him that he checked out anytime she got too close, anytime those babies got too close? Michael wished to God he knew. Wished he could control the claustrophobic dizziness that assailed him anytime he tried to force himself into a decision about the children.

One thing was for certain. He couldn’t keep on like this much longer. Couldn’t keep hurting Susan. There didn’t seem to be much point in moving forward when there were some fundamental things that couldn’t be changed.

Zack Kennedy. He looked down at what he’d written. A good name for a boy. Short. Strong. Solid.

If the boy were his, he’d name him Zack.

LAURA WAS getting desperate. In the four weeks since Jeremy had announced he was quitting soccer, the boy had been late for school six times, he’d been held for detention twice, and failed an exam. Looking around to make sure no one was paying attention to her, she stole over to the computer cubicle in one corner of Jenny’s classroom and logged on to the Internet. She was at the school to volunteer, but the class was having reading time. That gave her fifteen minutes.

Moving around the Internet much more slowly than her kids would have done, she managed to find a search engine, and then a button to click on to find people. A prompt asked her to type in the name of the person.

She did that. And waited nervously, glancing over her shoulder every couple of seconds. It wasn’t that anyone cared whether she played around on the computer; she just didn’t want to have to explain what she was doing. Not even to herself if truth be known.

Had she no pride?

And then, just that easily, up popped a listing—name, address, phone number. And even a place she could click on to see a map.

She clicked. And printed. Snatching up the page as soon as the printer let go of it, she folded it and slipped it inside her purse.

She was armed.

MICHAEL WAS making her walk on a treadmill. He’d brought one home the day before without even discussing it first and set it up in her study. “To make the birth’s easier,” he’d said.

And because Susan was so crazy in love with him, so thrilled that he’d cared enough to buy the stupid thing, she was treading quite sweatily Saturday morning.

She just wished Michael looked as pleased to have her on it as he’d looked bringing it home the night before.

“You sure you feel okay?” she asked for the second time.