Chapter Fourteen
Malena
My mom has pneumonia. The doctors are in and out of her room regularly. They say she has the same care at Garden Breeze as she would have at a hospital. There are monitors beeping and saline bags dripping into her frail body. It came on quickly, a common cold morphing into this threatening monster overnight. Her coughing and wheezing make it seem she’s on her deathbed. They reassure me she’ll pull through, but there’s this nagging feeling in my chest that tells me otherwise.
This, a mere hour after a doctor’s appointment where I discovered that not only am I pregnant, but I am three months pregnant—a basically all the way formed baby in my still flat stomach. My shock and stymie are still there, but now I’m contending with my mother’s life. I feel like in a matter of a few hours I’ve lost everything, including my grip on reality. With my head resting on the edge of her bed, I clutch Mom’s hand, the one not drowning in tubes and needles, and sob. I pray. I ask God to let her remember everything. For her to wake up and remember I am her daughter, that she loves me, because I need her right now more than I’ve ever needed her in my life. I need the warm hug that tells me everything is going to be okay. The one she would give when I skinned my knee or had a fight with my best friend at school. My mom is the only person I have.
With my hand on my stomach, I acknowledge the life that will steal Leif away from me. The irony that this relationship will fail because of a baby, when another relationship ended when a baby didn’t arrive, is too freaking much. Her door is closed, so her room is shrouded in a morbid darkness. Tears streaming down my cheeks, I walk over and throw open the door. A nurse comes in and checks her vitals and does her best to ignore me, but I see her gaze wander to the crazy woman clutching her stomach.
“I’m sorry,” I say, manners dictating I should be presentable at any given time while in public. That’s the southern way, and I am breaking that custom all to pieces in this moment of weakness. “I need a second or two. It’s a lot. She looks so bad. That’s all.” My explanation must work because the nurse closes the door after she writes down notes on a thick file.
“Mom,” I say. “I need you to hear me.” My throat clogs with emotion as I sit back down in the chair next to her bed. “I’m having a baby and I need you to be here for me. Like you used to be here for me.”
Her eyes flutter, her mind in deep sleep. A spluttering, horrible sounding cough breaks the silence. “Because you owe that to me!” I yell. “I never had a chance,” I say, wincing. “It’s your fault. It’s all your fault! You got sick,” I say, losing my breath. “He left because you got sick. It’s all your fault!” My breaths are shallow now, my anger controlling my words. “Come back to me. Be here. For your grandbaby.”
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t stir. Won’t wake up and be my mother. “He doesn’t want this baby, Mom. I’m going to do it by myself. I have to,” I say, tone calmer. “I don’t know how I’m going to do it. It’s going to break me.”
The doctor comes back in and sees my red-rimmed eyes. “Visiting hours are different for sick patients, Malena. I have to ask you to leave. She needs her rest. We will take care of her. I promise.” The nurse must have sent him in, afraid of my apparent anger.
The need to bargain with the doctor for her life arises, but I squash it. He can’t do anything more for her. No one can bring her back to life in the way I want. I thank the doctor for his time and flee Garden Breeze without a purpose, my mind a disaster. Do I tell Leif? How do I break up with him? There’s no possible way I’d ask him to stay with me because of the baby. No one should be presented with that kind of pressure when they don’t want a family. I think he may stay with me because of it, but that’s not the kind of forced love I want, and he deserves to have a life of his own choosing. The life he thought he was getting with me.
I pull into a random parking lot and take out my phone. I fire off an email to Leif because I haven’t done it yet today and I have expectations to meet regardless of my mental state. Especially if I want to hide this secret for any length of time. I need time. More time. I try to sound happy and write about the nice weather and the job I’m currently working on. I hit send in a blind, manic rush. On a second thought, I write up another email and tell him that my mother has pneumonia and tell him to call me as soon as he can. This pregnancy will label me a liar. It breaks apart the foundation our love was built upon.
The anger and terror slices deep, and I don’t know who to call or who I can trust. Shirley. Shaking my head, no, I realize I can’t talk to her or to Caroline about this. I need someone who is completely removed from my life. Someone who has no stakes in my failures or successes. Maybe it’s the bitter resentment, or that I’m grasping to find some sort of positive in this, but I know who I need and want to tell. With tears in my eyes, I pull up the internet browser on my phone and begin searching. It doesn’t take long to locate the information I need.
The name and address stares at me from the screen like a dirty joke no one finds funny. This is what I have to do. I head for home to change and shower off the doctor’s office scent. Then I go to war.
______________
I pull into the dusty side access road and park my car in one of the free spaces adjacent to the garage. Maybe it’s because I’m still shocked, but I have no problems pushing open the office door and walking directly up to the tattered desk covered in flyers reminding people to get their oil changed. It smells like grease. It’s a scent from my past. One that used to soothe my worries. How time changes things. Everything. “Where’s Dylan,” I ask, glaring at the bleached blonde receptionist with a swollen stomach. She ushers a little girl who can’t be more than two to the waiting room with a fenced in area. It has a few broken toys and an old-fashioned box television tuned in to a kid’s channel.
“What do you need done?” she lilts, leaning around me to try to glimpse my car. “He’s finishing up a grease job, but can get to you next.”He got to you next, I think bitterly.
I almost feel bad for her, but I can’t. Nope. Today is the day the world will feel my wrath after years of never getting a break. “I’m Dylan’s ex-wife. I need to speak to him about an important matter.”
Her big blue eyes widen. A deer caught in headlights. She opens her mouth to respond but closes it again. “Let me get him,” she says, rounding the corner again to pick up the toddler and uses a side door to walk into the garage area.
Closing my eyes, I breathe out. This could be my life, and the thought makes me want to be sick. Dylan comes through the door, eyes just as wide as the woman’s was. “Malena, what in the hell are you doing here?” He doesn’t say it in a mean way, he really is shocked and wondering what in the hell I’m doing here. I’d feel the same way if he popped into the General Store at any point in time that I was working there. Especially after all of these years of no contact.
I feel absolutely nothing when I look at Dylan. I wait for it—the feelings I used to have for him, the feelings I have for Leif, and they don’t come. Nothing except a blind numbness and a huge heap of regret. I needed this more than I would have ever thought. Swallowing down the horror, I whisper. “I need to talk to you outside.”
“Is everything okay?” he asks me. The blonde slides through the door but doesn’t put the girl down this time as she eyes me down suspiciously. “I’ll be right outside if you need me, okay?” he says, kissing the woman’s cheek. She looks pleased, victorious that she’s won this prize of a man. It’s laughable. Insane. Sad. I don’t say so though. I would never go that far.
I lead him outside, to my car, and cross my legs at the ankle. “I’m fine,” I say, shielding my eyes against the sun. “I came here to tell you I’m pregnant.”
The words spoken aloud feel freeing. “Pregnant,” I say again, pleased I’m able to say this word in his presence.
“What?” Dylan narrows his eyes.
“I’d say it was your fault we never got pregnant instead of mine, but it looks as if you’ve already started filling a minivan in there,” I point to the office. “So, I guess it was just you and me together that didn’t work. Thank God. Someone was looking out for me,” I say, shaking my head. “You were dreadful at the end, Dylan. And you need to know that’s not okay.” I cross my arms at my chest.
He stares at my stomach like a gremlin is going to pop out and eat his face off. “Fuck, Malena. They said you couldn’t, that it was doubtful you could ever have a baby.” I remember the words. I lived by them. Our marriage died by them. “What was I supposed to do? You knew how much children meant to me.”
I shrug. “They were obviously wrong. Or things changed. I just wanted you to know that I’m pregnant and I’m glad it’s not yours.” Why? Now I’m pregnant by a man that doesn’t want the baby. The juxtaposition of the two scenarios is laughable.
“I loved you, Malena. Wanted this life with you,” he says quietly, motioning to the building with his first name emblazoned across the top in juvenile script. “More than anything in the world.” Dylan must be on autopilot, because he kneels in front of me, and hugs my waist, the side of his face pressed against my stomach. My car is behind me so I can’t back away. Too shocked to say anything, I freeze. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t treat you right.”
Swatting his hands and face away, I step to the side to juke his grasp, disgusted he’s apologizing now after everything we went through. “I was never enough for you,” I say, shaking my head. “I came here to…”
