Call Me Charlie

Issue 261

You guys,

The pregnancy test was negative but I didn’t trust it.

According to our math, which consisted of me and Sam staring at our calendars and working backwards, him asking me, “When do you know you had your period?”, and me remembering I needed a tampon for my workout with a trainer last month but not knowing when it was, and Sam telling me to go through my email to find the confirmation, and me finding the date, and then talking through whether that day was the end or the beginning of my period. It was the end, I said assuredly, which meant I should be getting my period tomorrow.

If I was getting my period tomorrow it sure didn’t feel like it. The past few months I knew when I was getting my period. I could feel pressure on my pelvis like a bruise and the desire to lay down on the couch in a ball any time I was standing. But there was no sensation.

Then there was my Oura ring, which told me my body temperature was higher than usual for the past four nights.

Then there was Facebook. I only open Facebook maybe once a week, and this week when I did, the first post in my feed was from a woman offering her night nurse services. Sam and I had just discussed the potential of using a night nurse this time. I took a screenshot.

Then there was George. I was driving with him and Layla one day and he suddenly asked, “Mama, are there five of us?”

I glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “What do you mean, bud?”

“Are there five of us?”

“No, bud, there’s four of us. You, me, Papa, and Layla.”

I could have just waited two more days to take the pregnancy test. That was my plan. But my back was killing me and I felt nauseous. Nauseous already? That can’t be. I Googled, “how soon can you feel nauseous from being pregnant.” Typically six weeks after conception, four weeks at the earliest. It had only been two. I told Sam, anyway, about the back pain and nausea.

“You’re pregnant,” he said. “Just take the test now.”

“Shouldn’t I wait?”

“Why?” he said. “If you’re pregnant wouldn’t it be better to just know?”

At that I hurried into the bathroom even though I didn’t have to pee, and dribbled a tiny bit of urine on a white stick, and a negative sign appeared. I waited for the vertical line, thinking it might still come, but it didn’t.

But I could still be pregnant. This test was found buried in the bottom of our bathroom drawer, expired a year ago. I didn’t trust it.

I kept imagining the moment of finding out the truth for sure. What I would say to Sam after I came out of the bathroom. Either, “We’re going to Greece!” or “I guess Layla’s going to be a middle child after all!”

The next day I got my period. I was shocked to see blood, even though the test had already told me I wasn’t pregnant. Sam was out for a run so for twenty minutes I paced the house. I walked by the mud room, the shoe rack stuffed with random shoes but most of them strewn on the ground and jackets and hats and gloves from the winter that we no longer needed piled in a mound on top of the shoe rack. I would clean that mud room today, I decided, a sudden sense of found time. We were going to Greece! We were really going. And now I could make headway on the new playroom. It would be a playroom, as we thought, and not a nursery.

Then I imagined George, a 5-year-old mother’s helper. Telling me to take care of the baby when the baby was crying. Telling me exactly what the baby needed, because he would know. He would be quite bossy about it, actually. He would take his role as brother-caregiver very seriously. He would relish in his new responsibility. It would be good for him. And Layla would finally get a younger sibling. She would no longer bear the brunt of her brother’s orders. I imagined a louder house. More bodies at the dinner table and cuddled up on couches for family movie night. I imagined five of us—a big family, like I had always thought we’d be.

Sam bursted in the door without a hello, already talking about race logistics before he entered the kitchen. He was finally going to run a marathon this weekend, after being sick for the last one. I waited for him to finish, nodding and not paying much attention. He started to walk away to the bedroom, and I called out, “Well babe, pack your bags…”

He turned. He could tell I’d just said something important but without the punch line it was confusing. Pack your bags… for what? For where? I couldn’t get out the punch line though. Sam took a step forward, his face a question mark.

“I don’t know why I’m crying,” I said, “we’re going to Greece.”

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Until next week,

Charlie

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