Chapter 24 Roo-Roo
Roo-Roo
Jack was lying on the carpet with Jane in the living room, and she was staring at him. He’d fall silent, she’d smack the toy in front of her with her fist, he’d pretend to be scared, and she’d crack up laughing. This from the guy who said he didn’t get along with kids.
Sue kept shooting them nasty looks because she was trying to read a book, but she didn’t complain, and for her, that was saying something. Will could tell she was agitated and thought it was funny, but he didn’t bother saying anything.
“How about this one?” Naya asked. “It’s perfect!”
I looked at her laptop screen, unconvinced. She had found a page about theme weddings, and one of the examples was Disney, and she was elated as she carried on about how she could be Cinderella, I could be the Beauty from Beauty and the Beast, Sue could be Grumpy, and so on.
“I guess that makes Jack the Beast,” Will said.
Jack shrugged as if it didn’t really bother him.
“That’s sweet, though! You’d be a great Beast,” Naya reassured him, but I interrupted her to tell her I didn’t think a Disney wedding was a memory I would cherish for the rest of my life.
Jack agreed, and I said it was probably a bad idea to look for wedding ideas on the internet. “Why can’t we just do a normal wedding like everyone else?”
“Because a normal wedding is boring!” Naya objected.
“Naya, imagine me telling my mother she has to come to my wedding dressed as Mrs. Potts or whatever. She’d probably kill me.”
“Jenna’s right,” Will said. “What’s the point of stressing over trying to be original? They should just do what everyone does: rehearsal dinner, wedding, reception, honeymoon.”
“You’re not taking this seriously!” Naya growled. “Weddings are supposed to be special. It’s the most wonderful day in a person’s life!”
“Whatever,” Jack said. “I’m leaving all that stuff up to Jen.”
“Thanks a lot,” I responded. “You know it’s your wedding, too. You could try to help out.”
“But I just don’t care, Jen!” Jack objected. “I care about marrying you, but the when and how are irrelevant.”
“Irrelevant!” Naya shouted, as though she were about to burst into tears. “Isn’t that sweet. I’m sure you’ll make an incredible husband.”
Will turned down the volume on the TV and asked, “Why are y’all even talking about this? There are people who organize weddings for a living, you should just hire one of them.”
“That would cost a fortune,” I said.
“Babe, your husband-to-be is loaded,” Sue reminded me.
“It’s not just about the ceremony,” Naya continued.
“You need to think about the setting, the guest list, the food…and now that Jack is who he is, you can’t just do some reception at his mother’s house with a cake from the supermarket.
People will come with expectations, and you can’t disappoint them… ”
“Can we please chill?” Will asked. “It’s not your wedding, Naya, and we know Jack couldn’t care less. So it’s really about Jen and what she wants.”
I did have something in mind. I’d tried to pretend it wasn’t a big deal, but I’d been thinking about it much more than I’d have cared to admit.
And since I was terrified at what nonsense Naya might propose next, I came out with it: “What I’ve really always wanted to do is get married on a beach.
” Since nobody responded, I went on, “I mean, it’s just an idea. If Jack doesn’t like it, then…”
“Why on a beach?” Sue asked.
“I don’t know. I hate the idea of everyone having to put on a tux or evening gown and there being a section for the bride’s family and another for the groom’s, and a priest being all solemn and whatever.
I wish everyone could just relax, wear whatever they want, kick their shoes off and walk in the sand if that’s what they feel like. ”
Naya was horrified, but Jack agreed. “I love it. No more need for debate. We’re having a hippie wedding on the beach.”
By now, I’d had enough of the subject—it was something private, between Jack and me, and not a proposal the whole apartment got to vote on—so I asked, “What are we doing for dinner?”
“Well, Jane’s sleeping at her grandmother’s tonight, so that means we don’t have to eat healthy for once,” Will said with relief.
“Burgers!” Naya announced.
Jack responded, “I don’t know, maybe my lovely bride wants one of her nasty barbecue pizzas.”
“No way,” I said. “I got a slice yesterday and I thought I would puke just from the smell. It’s weird, but that’s been happening to me a lot lately. Believe it or not, I could go for a salad.”
Sue was shocked that I’d turned down barbecue pizza. Will and Jack were relieved and were debating between tacos or Chinese. Naya, though, was staring at me with a panicked look on her face. Out of the blue, she stood and said, “Jenna, come with me. Feminine emergency.”
I followed her to the bathroom. She forced me down onto the toilet seat and looked me dead in the eyes.
“Jenna, when was the last time you had your period?”
That caught me off guard. “I think it was on May fifth?”
“You do know it’s June seventeenth, right?”
That silenced me a moment. I think my brain simply refused to admit what she was implying. She rested her hands on my shoulders and asked, “Are you absolutely sure?”
I nodded. And I was regular as clockwork.
“Do you guys use protection?”
“Uh…”
I remembered the night of my graduation almost a month ago. We had laughed, gotten drunk, stayed up late, and wound up in bed. I didn’t remember many details of that night, but I was pretty sure there hadn’t been a condom in the wastebasket in the morning.
Reading the panic on my face, Naya cursed before rushing to reassure me: “OK, OK, no need to panic yet. We still don’t know anything for certain. Do you have a pregnancy test?”
“Why would I have a pregnancy test?”
“For emergencies!”
We’d been in there long enough that I was worried people were getting suspicious. And in this case, people meant Jack. Like magic, he knocked at the door. “Is everything all right in there?”
“No!” Naya responded, before I hissed at her and made her correct herself. “I mean, yeah. Great. Everything’s great.”
Jack clearly didn’t buy her performance. He burst in, worried, stared at us from head to toe, and asked me what was going on. He knew me too well to think that I was fine, and I could feel the blood draining from my face and my fingers shaking.
“Are you sick or something?” he said.
“Not exactly,” Naya answered for me. Her presence was unhelpful, to say the least.
Unsure how to proceed, I began, “Jack, you remember my graduation night…?”
“Not much,” he responded, grinning.
“Yeah, exactly. I don’t remember it too well either. And now it turns out that I’m late.”
It took him a few seconds longer than it took me to grasp the significance of that. When he did, he started stuttering: “B-b-but… I wore a condom, I’m sure I did.”
“Are you?” Naya questioned him.
Looking at me almost apologetically, Jack said, “I really thought I did.”
“Well, it’s time for a test. I’m going to go see if I still have one,” Naya announced, like a parent chastising her children.
She soon returned, holding the test out sternly.
I quivered as I peed on the little strip, shook the stick off, and started waiting.
Five minutes it took. Five minutes that felt like five eternities.
I had forced Naya and Jack to go out in the hall while I was taking it.
Now they were both back, standing in front of me with arms crossed.
Jack ran his hand through his hair, I rubbed my arms to try to get warm, Naya held the test and looked at it closely, waiting for a little telltale stripe to appear.
Hoping to distract me, she asked what we had going on over the next few days.
We were planning on doing some shopping: we needed furniture for the lake house, materials for the reno, and we were thinking about taking Mike away for a trip to the lake house, because he was having another one of his lonely phases.
“Keep talking,” Naya told me, which I did, just babbling to not think about the emergency at hand.
Poor Jack, I must have been driving him insane.
When the five minutes were up, Naya interrupted me and said, “OK, showtime.”
Everything moved in slow motion as she brought the test out and scrutinized it closely. She seemed to be taking forever, and in a huff, I said, “Dammit, Naya, are you going to tell us the results or what?”
“Eh… I think it didn’t work.”
“Excuse me?” Jack murmured.
“There’s no lines on it at all. I just remembered that these things expire, and I bought this one just after Jane was born, so…”
“NAYA!” I screamed, and she apologized profusely.
It was getting late and there was nothing open nearby, so we decided to wait for morning, even though I knew there was no way I could sleep.
I kept telling myself I couldn’t be pregnant.
I didn’t feel pregnant, and I always took it for granted that I’d know as soon as I was.
I was nervous all night. I couldn’t enjoy my dinner, and all through the meal, I could feel the pressure of Jack’s eyes on me.
We conversed and pretended to laugh, but I don’t think our act convinced anyone.
When we got in bed, I told him, “Don’t stress about it. We’ll find out tomorrow and we’ll decide what to do then.”
“Sure,” he said distractedly.
Hoping it would cheer him up, I added, “How about we go back to talking about the wedding? We still haven’t picked a day, but I was thinking sometime next June would be nice.”
“June’s too hot.”
“May?”
“It rains too much in May.”
“How about April?” I asked.
“Yeah, April, I like that. Mid-month, though, when it starts to get warmer. The sixteenth, maybe. Does that sound good?”
He smiled like an angel as I agreed, “Yeah, April sixteenth sounds good.”
“Well, that’s one thing we can clear off our plate,” I told him.
“Great,” he said. “Good night.”
Weirdly, he was calm, and he managed to fall asleep without much trouble.
I wasn’t so lucky. I felt hysterical thinking about the pregnancy, but I tried to talk myself into happiness: I thought how beautiful Jane and Owen were and reminded myself I really wanted children…
I was older than Naya and Shannon had been when they gave birth.
What did I have to worry about? And yet…
By one in the morning I couldn’t take it anymore, so I threw on some clothes and stole Jack’s car to drive to the nearest Walmart, a half hour away. A while later, I was back in the bedroom, tugging Jack’s shoulder softly. At last he woke. “Wh-what the…?”
“Come, Jack. It’s urgent.”
He struggled out of bed for a few seconds before following me out like a mummy, only opening his eyes once we were out in the hall. “Why are you dressed?” he asked.
“I went to get a test. Now lower your voice or you’ll wake Mike.”
I walked him into the bathroom. Shut the door. Sat on the lid of the toilet. Pointed to the test, which was on the edge of the sink. As Jack’s eyes widened, I told him, “There’s a minute left.”
“A minute,” he said. “OK. I can survive a minute. Everything’s fine. No matter what, everything’s fine.”
Ordinarily, I would have smiled at him. This time, I just couldn’t.
“What will you do if it’s a no?” I asked.
“Jen, I’m more than happy to keep trying as many times as you need.”
“And if it’s a yes?”
“I guess we’ll go buy a crib and I’ll go on eBay to see if anyone’s selling Kill Bill baby sheets.”
I shook my head. “I’m being serious, Jack.”
“Trust me, I’m being serious, too. If it’s just you and me, I love that. But if there’s a little Jay or a little Ellie in that belly of yours, then you’ll be making a dream come true for me. Now is that minute up yet?”
“Forty seconds, Jack.”
“What if we had three kids?” he asked.
I chuckled nervously. “I’m not even sure if I want one.”
“Come on, now! One’s nothing. Five is too many, obviously.
But two is too few. Look at me and my brother.
I’m sure the fact that there were just two of us left lasting psychological damage.
So we’re talking about three or four. Unless you want six.
Seven, obviously, is out. Seven’s an unlucky number… ”
“Three, Jack. Three’s my limit.”
“Fine. What should we name the third? Rufus? We could call him Roo-Roo. It would be cool.”
“You’ve had a lot of stupid ideas,” I said, “but that is possibly the worst one ever.”
“Tyler, then.”
“Tyler could work. Now shut up. This thing is ready, but I don’t know if I’m ready to look at it.”
Jack could tell how worried I was as I looked at the time on my phone. He brought a hand to his chest. “I’ll tell you one thing, Jen. I’ve never prayed in my life, but I’m praying now.”
“What for?”
“For a positive, obviously.”
“I wish I was as confident as you about this whole thing,” I said.
I felt his eyes on me as I looked down.
“So…?”
“Well,” I said. “One line is negative. Two is positive. The problem is, I can see like five lines now. I don’t have my contacts in.”
“Jesus, Jen, you’re killing me! Give me that thing!”
He grabbed the test and stared at it, not saying anything for a few seconds. Only when I bugged him did he look me straight in the eyes and say, “Looks like we’re going to have to make a trip to the baby store, Michelle.”