this is Kendi at the front desk. I have Mr. Douglas Hoyt down here, and he is asking to come up.”
Oh, this is all I need.
She heard some scuffling on the other end of the line. “Beth? It’s me. I just need five minutes. That’s all. I promise.”
Jesus. “All right, Doug. All right.”
“Thank you.”
He handed the phone back to Kendi, and Beth gave Kendi her go-ahead and hung up. She poured the water into the coffee maker and watched it while it began to bubble and hiss.
She hoped Dana would decide to stay in her room a little longer. Whatever she and Doug were going to have to say to each other now, it was not a conversation she wanted Dana to be any part of.
Beth had not planned to have a child with Doug. He’d never really even been a boyfriend, never mind a potential partner. He was more like a pressure valve. They’d go clubbing and dance to bone-shaking techno and hip-hop. She fed him shot after shot of tequila, enjoying the sight of him getting insanely drunk and then getting to send him home, sometimes without his pants or to the wrong address. Then he’d call up to howl at her, and the next weekend they’d do it all over again.
He’d make grand, romantic gestures: the elaborate picnics in the park, the time he’d painted a gorgeous sunset scene on her bedroom wall to surprise her, and how he kept sneaking back in to revise this and that, never quite satisfied with what he’d done and never wanting anybody to see him doing the actual work.
That should have told her something right there. So should all those times he’d talk about how he hated San Francisco and that he wanted to live someplace real, to have a real job and a real life. He never talked about taking her with him.
Twenty-nine was late for this kind of craziness. But she figured she was owed an adolescence, and now was when she could afford to have it. An ongoing series of therapists told her that she was seeking out the chaos. It was comfortable to her because of her childhood.
Which was almost true, but not quite. She needed to prove that this time she could use that chaos for exactly what she wanted. I’ll handle this thing, in spite of everything you’ve done, in spite of everything I am. I’ll make it whole and right and real and shining, and the whole world will see I’m better.
Rafi’s first fund made just enough to let him put together a second. The second did a little better and led to a third. Beth brought Doug to the party Rafi threw to announce that third fund. They popped the cork on multiple bottles of French champagne and handcrafted, locally sourced sparkling cider and toasted the future.
The next morning, she woke up sick as hell and realizing she’d lost track of her days. This was quickly followed by a trip to the drugstore for a pregnancy test kit. Then came all the gross, fumbling awkwardness of trying to pee on a stick. Then there was the sitting there with her jeans and panties around her ankles and staring at the stupid stick while the stupid little plus sign formed in the stupid little window.
Beth remembered pulling her pants up and looking at the stick again. Yes, it was still a plus sign. She flushed the toilet and went out into her bedroom. She sat on the edge of her bed.
The sun had broken through San Francisco’s semipermanent cloud cover, and a beam fell on the ends of her toes. They were a mess of cracked red enamel. Doug, for reasons known only to himself, had decided he wanted to try painting her toenails, and she hadn’t been able to hold still because he’d kept tickling her.
She looked around her apartment. She looked at her messed-up toes and at the sky outside her window. She exhaled.
“Okay,” she said to the empty bedroom and the new clump of cells busily dividing inside her. “Okay, I guess we’re doing this.”
Why that choice and that time? She didn’t know. She did spend a couple of nights bawling through the kind of panic attack she’d thought she’d put behind her, but she never seriously tried to change her mind.
She called Doug, and she told him, and he listened and said it was a lot to process and could he call back tomorrow? She told him yes because