The Family Game by Catherine Steadman (12)
Edward’s second internet-documented ex was more recent, a relatively well-known French actress with an impossibly cool air. I stare at my own distorted reflection in the metal of the toaster and feel a kick of inadequacy. A lifetime without a family, constantly adapting to fit into new groups and situations, stripped me of any kind of default insouciance long ago—I might be able to look relaxed but I rarely actually feel it. Especially today. Now, apparently, I cry for no reason. I try to remind myself that I have been sick for three days, I’m just tired.
The kettle rattles to a boil and clicks off triumphantly. But as I fill the cafetière the rich scent of the coffee grounds hits me with overwhelming force. Do they usually smell this strong? My hand flies to my mouth and I run, full tilt, sprinting past a puzzled Edward as I race for the apartment’s bathroom. I reach it just in time, retching into the porcelain of the toilet bowl until there is nothing left in my stomach. After a moment of hiatus, I catch my breath, my shaking body sinking down onto the cool tile floor.
A concerned tap comes from the door: Edward.
“You okay?” he asks, poking his head around.
“Yeah, fine,” I lie, quickly wiping my mouth and pulling myself up to sit, with a modicum of dignity, on the rim of the tub. “It’s just this virus thing.”
“Virus? Okay. ’Cause it kind of seems a lot like you’re—” he says, leaving the words hanging as if we’re both in on a secret. Except I have no idea what he’s talking about.
And now he’s grinning at me. “You’re not, are you?” he asks.
“Not what?” I croak.
“Pregnant?”
I stare at him, dumbstruck. Of course I’m not pregnant.
I’d know if I was pregnant. Wouldn’t I? My mind races back over the last few weeks, my inability to focus on my writing, my bizarre fatigue, my complete loss of appetite, my intense sense of smell, nausea, vomiting, crying?
Oh shit.
Ten minutes later we’re in the bodega beneath our building purchasing three boxes of pregnancy tests, Edward a ball of contained excitement by my side.
The cashier eyes us both with suspicion as I pay, a bleary-eyed, bedraggled woman and an immaculate, beaming man in a suit.
Back in my bathroom I rip open the tests and go to town. Three minutes later it’s official: we’re having a baby.
Edward scoops me up into his arms and spins me around the sun-filled sitting room, the trees of Central Park visible through our terrace windows, and I can’t help but cry, happy tears this time, because I realize with sudden unearthly clarity what this means. After a lifetime alone, I am going to make my own family. We are going to be a family.
And with that surge of happiness comes, too, the relief of knowing that the writer’s block, the unproductivity, of the last month or so isn’t me losing my creative spark. I have been making a person. Growing the beginnings of a human brain and body deep inside my own.
I check my calendar and a quick calculation tells me that I must be close to eight weeks; what with settling into my new life here and everything associated with that, I must have missed my last period completely.
Edward looks up how long morning sickness lasts and I’m horrified to learn I have at least another month of this never-ending hangover feeling. Though right now, in this moment, I have never felt happier.
Edward makes a call to his family doctor and by lunchtime we are holding hands in Dr. Leyman’s wood-paneled office as he looks at my hormone levels and blood test results.
My dates and maths seem to add up so Dr. Leyman books us in for a scan the following week, where we’ll be able to see the fetus for the first time.
I’m prescribed pregnancy-safe anti-nausea tablets for the constant vomiting and Dr. Leyman talks me through all the things I should and shouldn’t be doing from now on, but all I can think of is the future. The life beginning to take form inside me and what it means for us.
It’s late afternoon when Edward and I get back to the apartment and we remember our almost forgotten Thanksgiving dinner plans.
“We can cancel,” he says, a sliver of hope in his voice. And he’s right in a sense, because just the idea of meeting everyone in a few hours sends adrenaline coursing through my already depleted body. But I know that now that we are becoming a family in our own right, there is even more reason to meet his.
“I have to meet them at some point, Ed. If we do introductions now it won’t be such a bombshell when we tell them about the pregnancy. I’ll be in the second trimester soon and we can tell them then. That gives them three weeks from now to get their heads around the idea of me before we land a baby on them too. It’s probably best to get the ball rolling as soon as possible, right?”
Edward weighs my words. “Put like that, yeah. But I don’t want you feeling pressured by any of this. Dr. Leyman said you should avoid anything too stressful until we get through the first trimester. We’ll go tonight but if it gets too much you need to tell me straightaway. If anything concerns you, you tell me. Right?”
His tone has a seriousness that makes my stomach flip. He’s not messing around; all joking aside, his family is going to be hard work. I think of Matilda, her smile, her ebullient warmth, and then the fact that she completely screwed me into a nonconsensual Thanksgiving. I’ll be walking into a whole nest of Matildas tonight. A building full of people I might not even realize are manipulating me until well after the fact.