Chapter 16
TESSA
Peggy gets the pizza box open before I have to run.
Garlic follows me down the short passage to my bathroom, where I drop beside the toilet and regret every ambitious plan I've ever made for dinner. Behind me, the box shuts. Peggy's boots cross the floor, then her fingers gather my hair away from my face.
I hate how grateful I am for that.
When my stomach finally lets me breathe, she wets a washcloth under the tap. The cool cotton touches the back of my neck. I stay where I am, with one knee against a loose tile and my palm flattened on the bathmat, waiting to discover whether standing will be a mistake.
“I was looking forward to that,” I say.
“I'll put it away.”
She leaves the cloth with me. A cupboard closes in the kitchen, followed by the refrigerator door, and I rinse my mouth until the sour taste fades. In the mirror above the sink, my mascara has made a black crescent beneath one eye. The other eye has apparently chosen dignity.
Yesterday I blamed a sandwich. This morning I blamed the coffee. Now a pizza I've loved for years has joined the list, and I'm running out of innocent food to accuse.
Peggy returns with water. She doesn't hand it over until I've lowered myself onto the closed toilet lid.
“When was your last period?”
The glass stops halfway to my mouth.
I've been avoiding the question since breakfast. Hearing it in Peggy's voice makes me look past her, toward the little kitchen table where my phone lies under a half-finished lace cuff.
“August,” I say. “The end of August.”
She stays in the doorway while I drink. I want her to make a joke, preferably one so filthy I can concentrate on being offended. Instead she watches me put the glass on the sink.
It's October fourth. I know because I've spent the afternoon stitching black lace for a client who wants her order early. I've checked that deadline twice today while refusing to look at a different date on the same phone.
“I'm about a week late.” My voice sounds small in the tiled room. “There was the shop, and Beatrice, and everything. I thought I'd just... I don't know. Been through a lot.”
Peggy crouches in front of me, her knees nearly touching mine.
“We should get a test.”
I nod before she has to say it again.
While she orders one for delivery, I move back into the kitchen.
My flat is only a few blocks from Hem & Havoc, up stairs that turn sharply around a banister with chipped paint.
Usually I like how little space there is between the kettle and the chair where I curl up after work.
Tonight the smell of Peggy's dinner seems to have reached every corner.
Paper bats hang crookedly over the window.
I'd cut them from black card while talking to Peggy last week, making one particularly fat because she said bats deserved dinner too.
Beneath them, a bowl of wrapped caramels shares the sill with a pincushion.
The whole room is crowded with small pleasures I've been meaning to enjoy when October stops being busy.
Peggy clears the lace from the table. I reach for it anyway, then put it back. A needle would give my hands something to do, but I can't remember which edge needs finishing.
“Bogdan?” she asks gently.
“Yes. There isn't anyone else.”
Saying his name makes me want him here. I picture his broad shoulders filling my kitchen doorway, his coat touching the cheap hooks I screwed into the wall. He would look ridiculous beside my crooked bats. I'd like him to see them.
Then I imagine telling him why Peggy has ordered something from the pharmacy, and I'm grateful he isn't in the room.
Peggy puts bread in the toaster while I open my calendar. August twenty-ninth is there, exactly where I knew it would be. Farther down is the costume launch on September twelfth, still labeled with the time we needed to bring the rail through the club's side entrance.
Twenty-two days since I followed a man whose face I hadn't seen.
I remember the square black stone on his hand and the pleasure of having his attention all to myself. I'd wanted one reckless night. Now I know how he listens when I talk about my work, how carefully he held the little necklace clasp, how the men in his library rose when he came in.
I close the calendar before I can start moving backward through it again.
The toaster clicks. Peggy scrapes the edge of one slice over the sink, leaving most of it pale, and brings it to the table without butter. I manage a corner. Dry crumbs stick to my tongue until I take another sip of water.
“You can stop staring at the door,” she says. “It'll get here.”
“I usually enjoy waiting for a delivery.”
She rests her chin on her folded arms, level with my plate. “You can complain about the packaging afterward.”
I laugh once, and the relief of it makes my eyes sting. Peggy stays there until I eat another piece of toast.
When the delivery arrives, Matvei brings the sealed bag upstairs from the entrance.
Peggy takes it at the door while I sit behind the kitchen wall, listening to the brief exchange.
Our escorts have become part of leaving work and getting home.
Tonight I'm grateful for the opaque paper and the door closing before she takes out the box.
The box has a photograph of the test on its front. I turn it over before I can imagine what mine will say.
I read the instructions twice, use it in the bathroom and put the cap back on. Then I carry it to the table and lay it flat beside the unfolded leaflet. The little display hasn't finished yet. Peggy sits next to me, close enough that her knee presses against mine beneath the table.
I fold the empty wrapper into a narrow strip. When I start folding it again, she slides her hand under mine.
“Let me look first,” I say.
“Okay.”
She turns toward the window. I stare at the display while a piece of black lace catches against my wrist. All afternoon I'd been worrying about whether the cuff would stay upright without scratching its owner's arm.
The unfinished seam is still important. Somebody is going to pay us for that sleeve and wear it to a party.
I want to hold on to the ordinary afternoon that was supposed to happen here.
The display changes.
Pregnant.
For a moment I read the word as if it belongs to somebody else's test. My hand is still in Peggy's, the folded wrapper trapped between our palms. I look at the leaflet to make sure I haven't missed an instruction that changes what I'm seeing.
There isn't one.
“Tessa?”
I turn the test toward her. Peggy draws a breath, then tightens her hand around mine.
“Well,” I say. “That explains the pizza.”
The joke almost works. I get as far as smiling before my mouth shakes, and then Peggy's chair scrapes back. She puts her arms around me while I cry against the soft front of her sweater.
I didn't know I was going to cry. I thought I'd swear, maybe demand another test, do something loud enough to stop the word from becoming real. Instead I'm trying to breathe through tears while an orange sequin from Peggy's sleeve scratches my cheek.
She rubs my back. I hold the sweater at her waist, afraid she'll move before I can make myself let go.
“I'm here,” she says. “Take your time.”
Under my fear, a small, delighted thought keeps returning. There's a baby. Bogdan and I have made a baby, and I'm sitting in my kitchen with crumbs on my plate trying to understand how there can be room inside me for anybody else.
The memory of the broken workshop window catches up with that thought.
I pressed myself behind hanging stock while men came through our door.
Now someone waits below my flat because going home alone is no longer simple.
I want to put my hand over my stomach and keep it there.
I want Bogdan's arms around both of us, and the wanting frightens me almost as much as the danger.
I draw back from Peggy. She passes me a tissue from the box beside the sewing supplies, then waits while I wipe my face.
“I think I want this,” I say. “I know I sound ridiculous. I can't stop crying and I haven't even finished being scared.”
“You can want it and be scared.”
I put a hand below my navel. Through my shirt, everything feels the same. I press no harder than I would against a sleeping person's shoulder, embarrassed by the tenderness of it even with only Peggy watching.
She smiles. That nearly starts me crying again.
“He bought me diamonds on Friday,” I say. “I was planning what to wear with them. That's how far ahead I was thinking.”
“You were also planning eighteen wedding costumes. You're allowed a necklace.”
The box waits on my bedroom dresser, where I put it after coming home. I liked knowing I could open it whenever I wanted, even in pajamas. Bogdan chose those stones before this little screen had anything to say about my life.
I need to remember that when I see him.
Peggy pulls her chair closer and sits again. This time I don't reach for the test. I can read the word from where it lies.
“What if he's pleased about the baby?” I ask.
She tilts her head. “Would that be bad?”
“No. I want him to be. But I don't want to spend the rest of my life wondering whether he would've asked me to stay anyway.”
There it is, uglier aloud. I want his delight when I walk into a room, another evening when he lets his captains wait because he'd rather be upstairs with me. The thought of losing that while being given everything else makes my throat ache.
Peggy looks toward my bedroom, then back at me.
“He called me for your shoe size before either of you knew. He could've bought any pair and had somebody deal with it if they hurt. He wanted yours to fit.”
I remember the tissue under my fingers, the red soles, Bogdan watching while I walked toward the mirror. His smile belonged to that evening. I can keep it even though I have no idea what he'll say tonight.
“I want to tell him myself.”
“Then you should. I'll wait for you to call.”
I ask her to keep it between us until I've spoken to him. She squeezes my hand, then reaches for her water while I pick up my phone.
Bogdan answers on the second ring.
“Are you home?” I ask.
“In the library. What is it?”
Hearing him makes the room around me harder to bear. I want to be on the other end of the call already, where I can put my face against his shirt.
“I need to see you. Can I come over?”
“Of course. Are you hurt?”
“No. I'm with Peggy. I just need to tell you something in person.”
He pauses. “I'll be here.”
After we hang up, I ask Matvei for the car and go to change. My reflection has a red nose and a blotch on one cheek. I dab away the ruined mascara, pull a burgundy dress over my head and get one sleeve caught under my arm before finding the opening.
On the dresser, the necklace case looks too grand beside my hair clips. I leave it closed. Tonight I want to see whether he reaches for me before I've given him anything lovely to look at.
Then I hear myself thinking it and stop with a hand on the dresser. He's seen me behind a damaged shop with my clothes dirty and my knees shaking. He came to me there.
I put on my coat and leave the necklace where I keep it safe.
Peggy meets me by the door. She's put the capped test back in its box, which she holds out without ceremony. I slide it into my handbag beside the leaflet.
“Call me when you can,” she says.
I hug her so hard that she makes a little complaining noise against my shoulder. She's staying here with her escort downstairs until she hears from me. For once I'm the first to let go, because if I don't leave now, I'll ask her to rehearse the conversation with me until morning.
Matvei waits on the landing. I lock my door, feel for the keys in my bag after I've put them there, and follow him down.
The journey to Beacon Hill takes just over twenty minutes.
I keep the bag on my knees, my fingers through its handles.
Orange lights shine against townhouse windows as we approach Bogdan's street.
Someone has wrapped a front railing in black ribbon, with a row of little pumpkins balanced above it.
I'd like to bring a child along here one day, slowly, stopping to admire every ridiculous decoration.
By the time the car stops, I've imagined a small mitten inside Bogdan's hand.
I have to look down at my bag to keep myself from crying again.
Matvei walks me to the guarded entrance. Inside, the warmth reaches my bare knees beneath the coat. Bogdan is already coming through the library doorway, his sleeves rolled back, the open collar of his shirt showing the hollow at his throat.
He looks at my face and comes straight to me.
“Tessa.”
I reach for him before I can explain. His arms close around me, one hand spread across my back, and I breathe against the shirt I've wanted to touch since he answered the phone. The fabric is warm from his body. My bag presses awkwardly between us until he eases it from my hand.
“Come in here.”
He brings me into the library and closes the door. My bag goes onto the table where Kirill laid out the repayment papers on Friday. Tonight there are only a reading lamp and Bogdan's open folder. He closes that too.
I loosen my coat because the room is warm, and he helps me out of it. He lays it over a chair, watching me while I try to decide what to do with my hands.
“Tell me,” he says.
The test is inside the bag within reach. I could give it to him and wait while the little screen explains. Instead I leave it there, because I want him looking at me when he hears this.
He takes my hand. His thumb moves once over my fingers, and I hold on.
“Bogdan, I'm pregnant.”