I noticed some physical changes in Momma and went to the “Merck Manual” to confirm my suspicions.
When we came home from school, I knew immediately that something was very different. Momma wasn’t at the door or even moving about the house. She was sitting in her favorite chair by the fireplace and knitting what looked like a tiny sweater.
She put it aside to hug us both. Cathy’s eyes never left the sweater. I knew she was thinking it was probably for one of her dolls.
“It’s freezing out there today, Momma,” I said, and moved to the fireplace.
Cathy never stopped staring at the knitting.
“I have news for you both,” Momma began. “I was at Dr. Bloom’s today.”
“You’re not sick,” I said. If anything, she looked healthier. After reading what I had, I suspected what she was going to say.
“No. I’m pregnant, children. Here, Christopher,” she said, and urged me to feel her stomach. She watched me carefully. I think I realized what she was waiting to hear me say.
“There’s a lot of movement in your womb.”
“What’s a womb?” Cathy asked.
“A room for a fetus,” I said, looking at Momma.
She smiled. “Very good, Christopher. They heard two heartbeats,” she said.
“Twins?”
I looked at Cathy, who was acting very strangely now. She began to back away as if Momma might explode. She looked angry, too.
“Do you understand, Cathy? Momma is going to have at least twins. I hope two boys,” I said. “Identical twins, and not simply fraternal.”
“You’ll be a wonderful older brother, no matter what they are,” Momma said, and looked at Cathy. “And you’ll be a wonderful older sister.”
Cathy didn’t say anything. She continued to back away and to shake her head as if she was looking at a ghost.
I rose. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked her.
“I don’t want twins!” she cried. “I don’t care about being a good older sister. I don’t want any more babies.”
“Cathy?” Momma said as my sister turned and ran out of the room and to her own. “What’s wrong with her?” she asked me.
“Sibling rivalry,” I declared, and Momma looked at me as if I was speaking Chinese.
Slowly, she rose. “This is ridiculous,” she muttered, and went off to Cathy’s room to speak to her.
I went to mine to start my homework.
Because of how I acted afterward, Cathy thought I was as upset about Momma getting pregnant as she was. I’ll admit here that I wasn’t overjoyed. I would describe it more as being disappointed in both our parents, especially Daddy.
I thought Daddy was a very smart man, even though he wasn’t what anyone might describe as rich or the top man in his field at the moment. Actually, I was under the impression that he was getting ready to make some very brilliant move. Whenever we were alone lately, maybe watching the news, which usually bored both Momma and Cathy, and there was a story about someone who had done something very important or made a lot of money, he would say things like, “That’s the way it will be for us someday, Christopher. Someday we’re going to live in a really nice house, a big house, and your mother will have all of the things she spends hours admiring in magazines or reading about in one of her romance novels.
“Cathy will train with the best to be a dancer, and you’re going to attend one of the better medical schools. We won’t have to worry about the cost of anything. We’re going to travel a lot, too. I always wanted to do a lot of traveling.
“You get your curiosity about life from me, you know, even though I was never interested in medicine. Oh, I always respected doctors and still do, but I want to take us all on European trips and trips to Asia and safaris in Africa. The nicer ones, of course. Your mother won’t stand for camping out in tents. Nothing like that. We’ll always go first-class.
“We’ll even go on the ‘Queen Mary,’?” he said.
Sometimes, when I sat with him and listened to him talk like this, it seemed to me he was just thinking out loud. He wasn’t even looking at me. He was just going on and on about owning a boat or a very expensive automobile and a wardrobe of the finest custom-made clothes.
I wo