Chapter 16
GENEROSITY
Dr. Gen Wright—deadass short for Generosity—was the delight he said she was.
She peppered Barry with hugs and kisses on both of his cheeks before giving me the same treatment.
She pulled me to her chest, then held me at arm’s length to get a good long look at me.
I wished I had taken a minute to look at my hair, still in two braids which were probably now half disassembled.
She said I had terrific skin, which I thought was a lie, but she seemed very genuine.
She said that pregnancy does horrific and dazzling things to us, then asked if she could touch my belly, to which I said yes.
She closed her eyes, both hands on my stomach, as if searching spiritually for the life growing within.
I wished she’d kick, but baby was chilling. Barry stared mortified at the scene.
“A girl,” Gen said after finally opening her eyes.
“Holy shit,” I said before I could think better about cussing in front of her. “How could you tell?”
“I told her,” Barry said. Gen smiled and brought her shoulders toward her ears before clapping her hands in front of her chest three times.
“A girl! We can’t wait to spoil her.”
It made my palms hot to think about the baby being spoiled by the Wright family, not to mention how popular she’ll be in my family.
Was I setting her up to be a monster with all this spoiling?
Did every parent worry about this? I tucked this concern away in the growing folder of reasons to invest in some parenting books and tried to focus on the woman in front of me.
She had these bangles on her arms that clacked together when she spoke, short bare nails, and a bright floral blouse.
The three seasons of Grey’s Anatomy I had watched did not prepare me for a real-life surgeon to look like this. As far as I knew, surgeons were supposed to be sterile, somewhat stilted in their relationships, and generally sexy.
“Would you like some tea?” I offered, like we were in nineteenth century England.
I hoped she’d say no as soon as I said it because all I had on hand was this laxative one and a few boxes of pregnancy tea that I was supposed to drink one cup, only one cup, per day to help with something, I can’t remember what—Kate got it for me.
“Tap water would be just fine,” Gen said and looked at Barry with a well-practiced hop to it face. Would I have an album of my own mother faces like that? The kind that anyone could read? How long would it take to get the expressions down, and does that sort of thing come naturally?
Gen followed Barry into the kitchen and made herself quite at home at the island. She said she was fond of puzzles, too, and placed a piece immediately. That’s the thing about puzzles, people can’t resist trying to put things together when they know there’s a solution.
Barry filled up a glass of water, then stood behind her and placed another piece. Total naturals.
A minute passed of mother and son quietly picking up and organizing puzzle pieces, twin creases in the middle of their foreheads.
The baby would get those too, I thought.
I leaned against the counter and assessed them, listening to the heater blowing through the vents.
Junior padded out of the bedroom, but not too quickly.
Barry looked up at me and cleared his throat. “Mom, did you bring the vitamins?”
“Oh!” Gen stood from the table and retreated past me into the living room to retrieve a large reusable grocery bag like the ones Mom carried in her car but seldom remembered to bring into the store.
She dropped the bag on the counter and withdrew a box that said BEST FOR BARRY in a trendy serif font down the side.
The bottom of the box opened to reveal little packs of pills, kind of like Greg Senior’s gravity feeder with the food up top slowly trickling into the rest of the bowl as needed.
Barry assessed a pack, squinting and pulling the package first close to his face, then further away. Sometimes at night when he was still working on something, or reading one of the books off my shelf, Barry wore these tortoiseshell reading glasses (very overwhelming).
He grinned at me over the pack. “Biotin, sure enough.”
“And I hope you don’t mind…” Gen looked to me as she rustled in the bag. “But I got you some supplements, too. Not personalized, but some of the prenatals a friend recommended.”
Gen laid out three various-sized bottles on the counter, describing what each of them were for—a powder to mix into a smoothie or a cup of tea, a once daily, and some probiotics to help keep me regular that I should keep in the fridge and take with breakfast.
“You couldn’t help yourself.” Barry rubbed a palm down his face, stretching the skin under his eyes in this look of melting dread.
“I don’t mean to overstep,” Gen said. I believed her. “I’m sure you have these already, but I just wanted to make sure you had everything you needed.”
“My sister would be thrilled to know about another person so invested in the baby’s health.” I picked up one of the bottles, unsure of half the words listed there. “And I’m thrilled, too.”
“For the baby, of course, but what’s really important is your health,” Gen said. “You have to take care of yourself through all this. It’s a trauma on the body, pregnancy. It’s important to take care during and long after.”
I stared at Gen, who must be an authority on this subject, having presumably birthed all the many children that made up Barry and his siblings.
Of course, I knew my health was important, but only so much as it had to do with the baby.
I didn’t realize that somewhere in the last few months I’d begun to think of myself as a sort of incubator, not as myself, a human at risk of suffering my own damage.
Gen looked at me in this all-knowing, understanding sort of way.
Pity and love both. My mother looked at me that way, too, like I was entering a club I didn’t know existed, this club of motherhood where all mothers were tasked to look after one another.
It all sounded very Divine Feminine Horoscope (my favorite Instagram page to laugh at with Kate even though both of us secretly took it very seriously).
I wanted to hug her, or be hugged by her, I wasn’t sure which.
“That was really kind of you,” I said.
Her bangles clinked as she patted my shoulder. “I’m just glad to meet you.”
Barry’s face was openly softer when I turned back to him.
His insistence to move in with me still didn’t make total sense, but meeting Gen showed some of it; he knew something about pregnancy that I didn’t, something that he learned from his mother.
Kate, too, and my dad, Josie, Mom and Ron, each of them knew that this was not something to be done alone, not if it could be helped.
“And just who is this?” Gen crouched to meet Junior, a hand reached out in the cat’s direction. She spoke to Junior like he, too, was another grandchild to be cared for.
Back at the island, Barry hinged at the waist, considered for a moment, then placed another puzzle piece.
I don’t know how I ended up alone with Barry’s parents at his game the next night, only that both Jeremy and Kate were rudely busy, and I was unreasonably nervous to be sitting with the future grandparents of my child.
I showed up a little late to the game and found them in the room with all the food, both greeting me with a full hug, even Barry’s dad who I hadn’t met before.
The whole family was tall, but Barry was the most freakishly tall of them all.
One of the team employees found us and brought Barry’s parents a bag with some team merch in it, similar to what they’d done for me.
“There’s so many games in a season,” I remarked as we settled into the seats I’d become rather familiar with over the past few weeks.
There were three home games this week. I had no idea they played so often.
I don’t think I’d been to five professional sports games in my life, and now I could say I’d been to that many in one month.
“Oh yes, they work hard, don’t they?” Gen said.
Her husband, Stuart, sat on the other side of her, a box of popcorn in his hands and wearing one of Barry’s jerseys from his previous team.
I wore a warm team half-zip atop the usual overalls, and a team hat.
I was telegraphing that I was a true fan, obviously.
The jacket had Barry’s name on the sleeve because, well, it was his.
It just looked so warm hanging from the hook by the back door when I left, and I was entirely certain he wouldn’t mind.
In fact, he’d probably get that dangerous I-really-want-to-kiss-you-and-make-another-baby face that he got anytime I wore something of his.
Also, it smelled like him, a smell I liked, which meant something since pregnancy had given me an especially sensitive sniffer.
“You’ve been going to games his whole life. Does it ever get old?” I asked.
“Oh, we love it. Always something different every season. It’s a bit addicting, isn’t it?”
“A bit.” I could admit that the more I knew about the game, the more into it I became.
The first game I watched was overwhelming—fast, it seemed so lawless and intense.
I could recognize that it was strategic, and the guys out there made it look easy only because they’d practiced so hard for so long.
I couldn’t remember the last time I put on a pair of ice skates, but I don’t think I could literally sprint across the ice, much less handle and shoot a puck while I was at it, without breaking multiple bones.
“You a hockey fan, Hannah?” Stuart asked, offering me some of the popcorn across Gen. I took a handful and smiled.
“I didn’t know much about hockey until I started working at the practice facility, and then when Barry got traded, I guess I really started learning.”
“You work for the team?” Stuart asked, surprise etched across his face.
Gen’s face mirrored it, and suddenly I was nervous to tell them.
Had Barry not told them I was a janitor because they never asked or because he was embarrassed?
And if he was embarrassed, was it something I should be embarrassed about too?
“I—uh—yes. Well, no, not really. I work for my dad, and his janitorial business does the cleaning at the facility. So, in a roundabout way, I work for the team, but more so I work for the building.”
They both looked stunned at this news, and either fortunately or unfortunately, the stadium chose the perfect time for the lights to lower and the team skate-in music to start playing, cutting off any questions they could have had about my noble profession.
We didn’t chat while they introduced the players, then sang the anthem.
We cheered when we were supposed to, waved at Barry when he located us in the crowd, and I ate another two fistfuls of Stuart’s popcorn.
I supposed him offering me his snack was a good sign that my job hadn’t disqualified me from esteem in the presence of two highly educated medical professionals.
When the game officially started, Gen leaned over and picked up where we left off: “Now, how long has your family been doing janitorial?”
“Or is it called facilities management?” Stuart asked while his eyes remained on the ice. I looked at the game, too, if anything just to keep my nervous gaze away from what I feared would be judgement on their faces.
“It’s janitorial,” I said, then sipped some water I knew was just going to make me have to pee again.
“My dad started the business before I was born. Both of my siblings work there, too. We’ve all been doing it since we were teenagers.
” Or earlier, I didn’t say. Just in case they thought us helping do carpets on weekends as kids was in violation of child labor laws and ethics in general.
“And how do you like it?” Gen asked.
“It’s mostly good. Been harder the more pregnant I’ve gotten, but it’s a good job. Benefits, overtime pay, I get to work with my family—I like it.”
It wasn’t a lie, though I still felt somewhat embarrassed to admit it.
Did I want to work full-time janitorial for my whole life?
Not particularly. Did I like it well enough to keep going for as long as I needed?
Certainly. It wasn’t the most flexible job, but I figured it was better than a rigid nine-to-five in an office.
At least with this, I could work early mornings and have the days to do with what I liked.
“Do you see yourself there long term?” Stuart asked. Gen chided him under her breath. “What? I’m not saying it’s a bad job.”
The conversation paused for us to cheer for an especially impressive save from Kozlov. Stuart offered me more popcorn, which I accepted.
“I don’t know that it’s forever, but it’s great for now.
” I sounded more confident than I felt. In my secret heart of hearts, I was afraid that it really would be my only thing forever.
I had dreams that I barely knew how to articulate, and those felt impossibly far away even before I was pregnant.
I didn’t want to put voice to the fear that I’d be doing the comfortable thing always.
“Barry says you’re a talented interior designer,” Gen said. I took my eyes off the ice, surprised at both the idea of Barry talking about me and him telling his mom I was into interior design.
“That was kind of him.” I supposed he wasn’t lying—I really did love noodling over room renovations and how the right paints, textures, decorations, and light could make a room feel finished, but he didn’t have much evidence of this beyond the in-progress baby room and my PowerPoint.
I tried my best to make every space look comfortable, even when I dreamed of transforming them someday, but the distance from where I was and where I wanted to be still felt vast.
“He respects you a great deal.” Gen looked straight at me, voice lower and serious.
I believed her sincerity, and my stupid-ass hormones would have made my eyes water if Stuart didn’t start exclaiming, drawing our attention to the ice where O’Neil slid the puck up to Barry, who slap-shotted it to the net.
It hit the top bar and dropped down—I could imagine my brother screaming BAR DOWN, LET’S GO BABY if he was here.
Gen, Stuart, and I all screamed, jumping up and down while the arena erupted. Gen wrapped an arm around me and jumped with me. While Barry skated past the goal, he pointed in our direction, grin on his face before his teammates skated into him in celebration.