“NAT! ARE YOU SITTING DOWN?”
“I’m thirty-four weeks pregnant, I’m always sitting down,” Nathalie snorted into the phone, as her tired eyes glazed over another student essay. It was a beautiful day at the end of April, spring was in full flower in Los Angeles and Nathalie couldn’t get off the couch.
It had only happened recently, this need to ABC—Always Be Couching. One day she was completely fine, practically trotting down the halls at school, around the house as she cleaned, and in IKEA as she finally picked out the crib and the furniture she wanted after the previous aborted trip. Then, all of a sudden, her body was just done. It said, “Nope! No putting up wall decals or assembling that combination dresser and changing table for you! Have a seat. Rewatching last season of Fargone is a much better use of your time.”
She should have known it was coming. Dr. Duque had warned her after all.
“The baby shifted. She’s head down and you’re starting to carry her lower,” she had said at their latest appointment—she was seeing Dr. Duque weekly at this point. Nathalie felt like she should ask if they were going steady. “It’s starting to get exciting.”
For someone who still had six weeks to go, exciting was not something you wanted.
But her ABC motto wasn’t the only thing that had her stuck on the couch at the moment. No, what had her placed in the center of the microsuede not paying attention to her papers was the terrible trip she had just returned from, and the weight it left her with.
Nathalie hadn’t spoken to Kathy since the baby shower. She had no illusions as to why. But it was incredibly jarring to have no contact from her stepmom—the woman was not prone to giving the silent treatment. In fact, this was the longest Nathalie had gone without hearing from Kathy in the entire history of their relationship. So, when her dad called and invited her up to see them, she was a little relieved. She burned one of her sick days (when she called her department head and told her she had a cold coming on, she was treated to a list of symptoms she’d had just previous to going into labor with her own kid ten years ago—seems like Dr. Duque wasn’t the only one who thought things were getting exciting) and drove the two hours up to Santa Barbara.
Only to be met by her dad—and just her dad—at the door.
“Where’s Kathy?” she asked, as her dad took her jacket, and led her into his den. She was expecting Kathy to be fussing in the kitchen as per usual, but there was no one there.
“She’s visiting her friends in San Luis Obispo,” her dad replied.
“So . . . she doesn’t know I’m here?”
Her dad looked at his shoes. “She told me she’d already arranged to see friends when I invited you.”
“Oh,” Nathalie replied, feeling the blow like a punch to the chest.
“Yeah . . .” her father said, sighing. “You know I don’t like to get in between you and Kathy. You two have always had to find your own balance. But she worked really hard putting that baby shower together for you girls. And she was hurt by what you said.”
“I know,” Nathalie said.
“I think you have to fix this one, kiddo.”
“Don’t you think I’ve tried? I’ve called to apologize a dozen times. I’m so, so sorry I insulted the shower.”
“She doesn’t want an apology.” Her dad shook her head. “Not for that.”
“Then for what?”
“You . . . you’ve never been able to think of Kathy as a parent. And that really hurts. She made you lunches. She explained your first period. She attended band concerts. She put in the work.”
“What does she want then?” Nathalie asked, her voice cracking. “Does she want me to forget my mother?”
“Of course not.”
“Good, because I’m holding on to the few memories I have for dear life! I don’t need somebody to make my lunch right now. Or attend a concert.” Nathalie’s eyes fell to the one picture of her mom on the mantel, as tears began to fall. “My entire pregnancy, the only person I wanted to talk to, I can’t. I want to ask her what it was like when she held me for the first time. I want to know what I’m going to feel when I have my daughter. And I’m sorry, but Kathy can’t help me with that.”
Her dad’s voice was choked with emotion when he finally spoke. “I’m sorry I can’t help you. I . . . Your mother would be so proud of you. Kathy and I are proud of you. I think Kathy just wants you to recognize her.”
“And I wish she would have recognized me!” Nathalie cried. “And you, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not Lyndi. And Lyndi’s not me. You—both of you—have been treating us like the same person with the same pregnancy. And we’re not. It was really hard for me to get pregnant. I know every baby is special, but this one is special to me. I just think my mom . . . my mom wouldn’t have done that.”
By now, her dad was openly crying. She hadn’t seen her father cry in nearly twenty-five years.
“I’m sorry, Dad.” She sniffed. “Tell Kathy I’m sorry, too.”
“You’re leaving?” her dad asked, surprised. “You don’t have to go, kiddo. We can hang out. Talk.”
“Thanks, but . . . if Kathy doesn’t want to see me, I don’t want to risk being here when she gets back.”
She came over, squeezed her father’s arm, and gave him a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. He didn’t move. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
And she’d cried the entire two-hour drive back.
By the time she arrived home, her emotional exhaustion matched her physical exhaustion, and she collapsed on the couch.
Which was not uncommon.
After all, she had begun to do everything from the couch. She graded papers from the couch. She ate dinner on the couch. She burst into tears at pictures of kittens from the couch. She had very strained, very polite conversations with David from the couch.
Another reason her heart felt so heavy.
They had been unbelievably polite with each other, ever since the fight in IKEA. When he’d picked her up from the baby shower, they hadn’t talked much on the way home. David had tried to broach the subject, by saying he was glad to see her, and that she was okay, but as Nathalie was busy trying to not burst into tears in the car, she didn’t really respond.
Since then, they had begun their dance of politeness. The fight, and all the emotions therein lay just below the surface of every “good morning,” and “should we get pizza for dinner?”, but neither of them dared to mention it. Because neither of them wanted to risk the fragile state of affairs, where everything was okay, as long as one didn’t look too closely.
Even when Lyndi had had her accident, David’s relief that she was okay was palpable, but he didn’t take her sister’s near-death experience as the sign it obviously was to clear the air between them.
It was getting worse than unbearable. It was getting livable.
Part of Nathalie felt like it was up to him to approach her. Because he was the one who was fighting against the reality of their situation, he was the one regretting that they were pregnant. But another part of Nathalie—the small, female, constant-calm-waters part, felt like this was her fault. She was too busy getting back together with her sister to spend the time to get back together with her husband.
However, it was hard to regret that. Ever since Lyndi’s accident, the two of them had been in near constant contact—when Lyndi wasn’t busy making up with Marcus, that is. But they were constantly on text, on email, or on the phone with each other—the last of which Nathalie was now doing from the couch, of course.
“I’m glad you’re sitting down,” Lyndi singsonged, “because I have a surprise for you.” Nathalie could practically hear the sunshine in her sister’s voice.
“What’s the surprise?” Nathalie asked. Unless it was a transferrable reserve of twenty-something energy, a repaired relationship with her stepmother and/or husband, or a sneak peek at the next season of Fargone, Nathalie didn’t think she much cared. “And where are you? You sound like you’re in an echo chamber.”
“I’m at Marcus’s office at the website. I’ve never been here before, it’s very . . . industrial,” Lyndi replied. “As for the surprise . . . How would you like to meet @WTFPreg?”
Nathalie sat up. Twenty essays about the poetry of Dylan Thomas spilled off her lap. “What?”
“I found her!” Lyndi cheered triumphantly. “Well, Marcus found her. Okay, actually, it was Marcus’s friend at work George who found her. Or we think he did.”
“Hi, Nathalie,” she could hear Marcus say in the background. “For legal purposes I’m telling you it wasn’t me or anyone at the website who did this.”
“Lyndi,” Nathalie said, warning in her voice. “What did you do?”
“Nothing illegal.”
“That’s not gonna make her feel better,” she heard in the background, from someone she assumed was George-from-Marcus’s-work.
“It’s totally legal and in no way an invasion of privacy. Anyway, ever since you told me about the Twitter feed, I’ve been following it. It’s pretty funny.”
Nathalie blinked. “Okay. But she didn’t put her name or location on there—believe me I looked. Or is there some secret social media thing I, as an old, do not know?”
“No there isn’t. But you know that tweet she posted last week? The one about being tired all the time?”
Nathalie looked down at her couch-prone body. Of course she remembered the tweet. She was currently living it.
@WTFPreg—Discovered pretty much all work can be done from a prone position on the couch. Plus don’t have to deal with marathon traffic. Score!
“What about it?”
“Marathon traffic!” Lyndi crowed triumphantly. “When that posted, I started looking up major marathons, and when they are run, trying to narrow down where she might be. Nathalie—she’s here.”
“Here. In Los Angeles?” Nathalie said. There was a decided note of panic in her voice; where did that come from? But then, “Hold on—the LA Marathon was a month ago.”
“Yes, so I initially dismissed it. But then when I couldn’t find any place with a traffic-causing marathon, I remembered. Last Friday, the morning that posted? One of our drivers Foz had a terrible time making his deliveries because of a half marathon in Hollywood! It couldn’t be a coincidence.”
“Okay . . .” Nathalie said, trying to keep her heart from beating out of her chest. “So, she’s in Los Angeles. So are four million other people. How would I meet her?”
“Because we know where she’s tweeting from!” Lyndi crowed, triumphant. “At least, we know where she tweets from on Friday mornings.”
“This is going to give me a headache, but . . . how do you know that?”
“Marcus noticed this pattern in the tweets. On Friday morning, she’ll usually send a tweet or two between the hours of eight and nine. Every other day of the week, tweets are midday, lunchtime. We figured, Fridays . . . she has a little extra time in the morning.
“Then, a couple months ago there’s a tweet on a Friday morning with that photo, remember?”
“Which photo?” @WTFPreg often posted pictures—memes usually, of annoyed pets or zen-like places. Basic internet amusements, but nothing that would ever tell you who someone was.
“The one of the pregnant lady from afar.”
Nathalie remembered that one. It had been a zoomed-in shot of a pregnant woman in a horizontal striped shirt, standing on a street corner, about to cross. The pic was tagged: #eerilyfamiliar #horizontalstripes.
Yes, it was eerily familiar. Especially because Nathalie had bought that exact same shirt at Target.
“She posted that photo on a Friday!” Lyndi said.
“ . . . But that doesn’t mean she took the photo on a Friday,” Nathalie replied, dubious.
“Actually . . . hold on, I’ll let George explain it.”
“Hi Lyndi’s sister,” said George. He spoke matter-of-factly, like he was explaining how to boil rice, instead of internet-stalking someone. “Basically, knowing they were in Los Angeles, we used the shadows in the original picture to determine time of day. That picture was taken right before it was posted, likely 8:30 in the morning.”
Then, some noises as Lyndi took back the phone. “And behind the pregnant lady there’s a blurry billboard. So, using an internet image search, we found other shots of that corner—one of which was geotagged. Using map features we could figure out where the picture was taken from . . .
“Nat—that picture was taken in front of a Starbucks, about ten minutes from you!”
It took Nathalie a moment to realize what Lyndi was saying. “She’s . . . she’s here? She’s not only here, she’s ten minutes away?”
“I figure she gives herself a weekly treat on Fridays before she goes into the office,” Lyndi reasoned. “So, if you find yourself at that Starbucks on Friday morning, between the hours of eight and nine . . . chances are good you’ll meet your pregnancy Twitter twin.”
“But . . . but tomorrow is Friday!” Nathalie cried. Then she looked around at herself, fat butt glued to beige microsuede, sitting in a sea of ungraded Dylan Thomas papers. “I have school, and papers to return . . . and if I went how would I even figure out who she is?”
“She’ll be the one who’s super pregnant,” Lyndi said, flatly. The duh was implied. “Nathalie, you have to do this—and if you don’t I will.”
And with that ultimatum, Nathalie knew she would be spending tomorrow playing hooky from school.
Once the decision was made, a strange awareness tingled across her body. Destiny coming to shove her off the couch. It took all the energy she had, but she went along with destiny.
The next morning, she took extra care with her hair and makeup. She flossed. She contemplated giving her eyebrows a quick pluck. It wasn’t because she was nervous, oh no . . . but somehow, today felt monumentally important.
“You look nice,” David said, his mouth full of toothpaste. “Assembly at school today?”
“Hmm? No,” Nathalie said quickly, smoothing her hand over her green dress, the one outfit she still felt like she looked decent in. She had long since gone past the point of trying to appear glowing and vibrant. Now, most days she opted for “covered.” But the stretchy green sheath dress, that old workhorse, had survived early and middle pregnancy, and now was her go-to for anytime she wanted to look presentable. “I . . . I’m not going to work.”
“Why?” He looked immediately concerned.
“I have a doctor’s appointment this morning,” she lied easily. “Just my regular checkup,” she added to appease his worried look. She had doctor’s appointments so often now there was no way David could keep track of them all.
In reality, she had let her department head know that her cold was lingering another day. She was again met with a litany of signs of early labor—what was it about pregnancy that made people share personal medical information? “And it’s a half day at school for . . . testing . . . so I’m just taking the whole day.”
David met her eyes in the mirror, his toothbrush paused in midbrushing. Then he shrugged, rinsed out his mouth, and moved on in sleepy unawareness to get ready for his day.
Usually, Nathalie was the first one out of the house, what with school hours starting so early. But with her lie, she would have to wait out David—because the doctor’s office wouldn’t be open until normal hours and she was nothing if not committed to the details of her lie. He moved ridiculously slowly. Tying and retying his tie. Brushing his hair into place—which was always going to stick up in the back, there really was no use in trying. Slurping his cereal. Nathalie kept a small, patient smile plastered on her face, all the while her insides were screaming.
Finally, finally, David went out the front door.
Immediately, Nathalie dashed back to the bedroom. One last check in the mirror. Hair was still good. Brush her teeth again, just to be extra fresh. Maybe she really should pluck her brows? Sophia would know, but . . . No—no time to call. She had a date with a decaf mocha latte, and possibly with someone she knew very well, but had never met.
The entire drive to Starbucks, she wondered who @WTFPreg could be. Not that she hadn’t been wondering that for months, but now that they would meet, face-to-face . . .
Would it be a complete stranger? Someone who would no doubt be alarmed by the other pregnant lady who had cyber-stalked her to her Friday mocha ritual? Or could it possibly be someone she knew?
Not Lyndi—but what about Sophia? She was the other pregnant person in Nathalie’s life—other than Ms. Hicks in the math department, but both seemed unlikely. Ms. Hicks only announced her pregnancy last week, and Sophia’s work schedule made it so it was unlikely she was able to keep a standard Starbucks date. No . . . there was no possibility it was someone she knew.
But it felt so close to her. Like there was this mirrored version of herself, sitting just inside the Starbucks, taking a moment for herself in the morning, before life began.
Her hand fell on the tinted glass of Starbucks’s door. And she froze.
She wondered if anyone would be there. She wondered—briefly, crazily—if she would see her mother there. Young, and healthy. Exactly the same as she had been in the picture that lived in Dad’s office.
She almost didn’t want to walk in—because doing so would destroy that fiction.
But she had come this far. She would regret it if she didn’t open the door.
Besides, Lyndi would kill her if she didn’t.
The smell of coffee embraced her like an old friend. The Starbucks was in what was surely its usual morning chaos. Long line of cranky uncaffeinated people waiting as patiently as they could to make their orders, and a half-dozen baristas scrambling to meet their needs while wordless indie pop played over the sound system.
She looked around for another third-trimester pregnant woman. But there was no one. Only people in suits, or tired moms in yoga pants carting preschoolers around. No pregnant woman.
Maybe she had beaten her here, she thought as she joined the line, and eventually ordered a decaf mocha. But then, her phone dinged—a notification from Twitter.
@WTFPreg had just posted.
Coffee is a deeply held religious belief.
Okay, she was definitely here. But where? The bathroom? Maybe she was on the patio outside, or tucked into a corner table—if she was sitting down Nathalie wouldn’t be able to see her belly. She scanned the tables. But there were no women sitting. Just a bunch of young twenty-something guys, typists that populated LA coffee shops, heads in their computers while they worked on their screenplays. Her eyes scanned over to the left where two grandfather-aged men talked about baseball, and an Asian man in a suit with his eyes on his phone—
An Asian man in a suit who looked achingly familiar.
Suddenly, everything clicked into place. The tweets . . . everything feeling so familiar, lining up with her pregnancy . . .
Because it was her pregnancy.
Or rather, it was their pregnancy.
Slowly, she approached the table. “Is this seat taken?”
David looked up. At first, blinking, unable to realize what he was seeing. Then it dawned on him that his wife was smiling down at him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought you had a doctor’s appointment?”
“That was a lie. I lied,” she said, as she sat down. Then she slid the phone across the table, opened to the latest @WTFPreg tweet. “I’m not the only one.”
He stared down at the phone for several seconds, total confusion on his face.
“How did you find it?” he finally asked.
“Twitter recommended you. Because they thought I might know you. Those predictive algorithms are really scary. You didn’t notice that I was following you?” He shook his head. “Well, I have been,” she said. “For months. Suffice to say I’m your biggest fan.”
They sat there, the bustle of Starbucks around them. David watched her, lost.
“I’m sorry,” she said eventually. “I thought . . . I thought you weren’t interested in the baby. I thought when I talked about the pregnancy and how I was feeling, that you just tuned me out.”
“I was listening,” he said.
“I know that now.” She nodded. “You heard everything. You don’t know how much that means to me, because I thought . . . I thought I was alone in this. I just wish you would have talked to me about it.”
“I didn’t know how. And I didn’t think you wanted me to.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. We never talked about the first pregnancy. The one we lost,” David admitted. “I know you were devastated. But I . . .”
She reached out and took his hand. His breath shuddered.
“I thought I was going to lose you. When you were in so much pain and we didn’t know what was going on, before they diagnosed it as ectopic. I thought, ‘This is it. She’s going to die and my life is going to end because I can’t do it without her.’ It’s why I didn’t want to go back to Monterey over Christmas. I can’t think about that place without thinking about that time.”
“You never told me that,” she whispered.
“So, I was scared when we got pregnant again. And I guess I started distancing myself. Tried to provide for my family, because that’s what men do, but leaving everything having to do with the baby up to you. But I had all these feelings and thoughts about it—you’re right, all pregnant women wear horizontal stripes, I’ve never noticed that before—I had to put them somewhere.”
“So you made the Twitter feed,” she concluded.
“The Twitter feed helped. But then as you’ve gotten bigger, all those old fears have started to come back, and I finally . . . just lost it. In IKEA, of all places.” He smiled ruefully.
“There’s something about pictorial-only directions that just drives people to their limits,” she joked gently.
“I’m so sorry about what I said that day. I didn’t mean any of it. I’ve wanted to have a family with you since the day we met.”
“It’s all right to be scared,” she said. “I’m scared, too. But it would be a lot easier to handle if we had talked to each other about it.”
“You’re right,” he agreed. “So let’s talk.”
“Now?” She blinked. “Don’t you have to go to work?”
“I’m thinking about playing hooky,” he said, his eyebrow going up in that way that had made Nathalie’s heart zing since she was nineteen years old. It was still there, she realized. Her love for this man.
And it always would be.
“I’ve already called in sick,” she replied.
“Great. So, let’s talk. I’m really curious to know how you knew I’d be here. At this Starbucks.”
Nathalie let out a bubble of laughter. “I’ll let Lyndi explain that to you. She’s never going to believe me when I tell her about this.”