18. Graham
GRAHAM
T he next morning, I meet Keeley at her twenty-two-week exam. I’m introduced to Julie, who is theoretically an ob/gyn though I have to wonder, given that we’re on a first-name basis.
“Ah, so you’re the mysterious father?” she asks, giving Keeley a look I can’t interpret. God only knows what Keeley has told her.
She leaves and a nurse ushers us into a room and hands Keeley a hospital gown. “You know what to do,” she says cheerfully, with a quick, curious glance at me.
It’s only when Keeley kicks off her shoes that I realize she’s planning to undress.
I scrub a hand over my face. “Should I, uh, leave?”
“Under the circumstances, they probably assume this is nothing you haven’t seen before. Just turn around.”
I stare at the poster on the wall, which documents the progression of a fetus.
“Our kid…looks like a baby already,” I announce, mostly to drown out the sounds of her undressing: the soft slide of a zipper, the jangle of a hanger being used. I have fairly distinct memories of what Keeley looks like naked. I’m trying very hard to forget each of them now.
“Let me see,” she says, shoving in beside me. Her bare arm brushes against me, which is when I glimpse a very sheer bra and creamy skin, and all my efforts to make this not weird go to hell. “Keeley, for fuck’s sake, put on the gown,” I snap.
“Look at the size of these things,” she demands, cupping her breasts. “ Someone should see them.”
“Put on the gown, goddammit.” I turn away and subtly adjust myself.
She crosses the room. “It’s increasingly difficult to imagine how you could have gotten me pregnant.”
I jam my hands into my pockets. “It’s increasingly difficult to believe I’m actually the first one who did.”
She finishes putting on the gown and climbs onto the exam table just as Julie walks in with a younger guy in a lab coat.
“This is Scott. He’s doing his obstetrics rotation. You don’t mind him sitting in, right?”
“Gotta learn sometime,” Keeley says.
I’m not sure he does gotta learn , not given the way he’s currently checking Keeley out.
Keeley’s feet slide into the stirrups. The gown is bunched around her thighs. I can’t see a thing, but this punk has a clear view.
Julie slips on gloves and he does the same. She takes two fingers and her hand slides beneath the gown. “At this stage, we’re just checking for dilation and position of the cervix,” she says to Scott. “Go ahead.”
And then…he’s got his fingers inside my wife. If this were all real, I’d be pissed. Actually, I’m really pissed anyway.
“How dilated would you say she is?” Julie asks, and he glances at me and away. Yeah, I know you’re enjoying this, you smug bastard.
“Uh…she’s not?” he asks.
“Right,” says Julie and he finally withdraws his hand.
That’s an experience we won’t be fucking repeating. I’ll make sure of it.
“I’m just going to check the baby’s heart rate.” Julie reaches beneath the gown to press a wand to Keeley’s stomach. There’s a whirr and a woosh and…it’s there, a tiny galloping beat.
My child’s heart.
I step closer, almost instinctively, as the sound begins to echo through the room.
And it all becomes a little more real to me.
I came out here to make sure Keeley was up to the task, and to make sure things were ready. But this…is really happening. And if there’s anything I can do to make a difference, I need to be doing it.
When the appointment is over, I walk Keeley to her car. “I’ll cook tonight,” I tell her as we part. “So don’t load up on Mike and Ike’s or white rice.”
She frowns. “Is it going to be gross?”
“Would you consider anything that isn’t pizza or Lucky Charms gross?”
Her mouth curves. “Most likely.”
“Then yes,” I reply, “you’ll probably think it’s gross.”
“Fish,” she says flatly. “You made fish.”
I look over at her from the stove. “It’s nearly ready.”
She changes into that fucking sweatshirt and returns just as I’m placing the salad on the table. “No fries?” she asks weakly.
Living with Keeley is basically a trial run for raising a toddler.
She cuts up the fish and disconsolately mixes it with the salad, but nothing more.
“You’re supposed to be putting it in your mouth,” I tell her.
She grins. “I bet I’m not the first girl you’ve said that to.”
“Most women seem to figure it out on their own.”
She blinks in surprise and then there’s something between us, a silent, quicksilver moment of tension.
Her tongue brushes along her lower lip as if she’s picturing the same thing I am, and every muscle in my body tightens in response.
Fuck. Nope. Next topic . Except all I can think of right now is her on the floor, looking up at me with a gleam in her eyes, as if sucking me off was the only thing she wanted to do for the rest of her life. “Eat your vegetables.”
“I had a bunch of Doritos today. The seasoning is full of herbs. It’s practically a salad.”
“I really hope you aren’t the kind of doctor people go to for advice.”
“Not yet,” she replies blithely. “But I will be soon, once I get my show. What do you think of the name Kicking it with Dr. K ?”
“Will it be about an old white guy who adopts two inner-city youths and grows more than they do?”
“Okay, what about Dr. K Knows Everything ? I’ll solve medical mysteries.”
I lean back in my seat, fighting a smile. “ Could you actually solve medical mysteries?”
“Of course not. The production team will solve them. They just need me because then viewers will be like ‘oh she’s pretty and also a doctor, I didn’t see that coming’. No one ever believes I’m a doctor.”
I glance at her untouched plate. “That might have less to do with your looks than you think.”
She clicks her tongue and pulls out her phone. I feel like a dad eating dinner with the teen daughter he’s just grounded. I guess, aside from the daughter part, it’s not that far from the truth.
“Ugh,” she says to her phone. “Fuck you, Shannon.”
I raise a brow.
“My stepmother. She’s having a party,” she explains. “Why the hell would I want to celebrate her son-in-law going to law school at age forty? You know what’s worth celebrating? Going to law school without taking eighteen years off first.”
I focus on my dinner, trying not to laugh since she seems genuinely irritated by the situation.
After a moment, I sense her gaze on me. There’s something about Keeley’s focus.
It’s a physical thing, one that leaves a mark long after she’s left the room, which is the only explanation I’ve got for the way I followed her all over LA during the weekend of the party we threw.
I wanted to shake her off, erase her somehow.
I was sober enough to know that it wasn’t going to work and drunk enough to keep trying.
“We could just eat in front of the TV,” she suggests. “There’s a movie about a sexy kidnapper that—”
“I’m not watching anything that involves the descriptor ‘sexy kidnapper.’”
We are certainly learning about each other by living together. I’m still waiting for one of those things to be good.
I’ve just finished my first conference call of the day with New York when she marches into the kitchen, smoothing balm over her lips while reading on her phone.
“Elijah Wood’s house is really kind of small,” she says aloud, her brow furrowed.
Trust Keeley to worry that a person with way more money than she has isn’t spending enough of it.
“Instead of reading about Elijah Wood, you could actually eat breakfast.”
She narrows her eyes, reaching for the muffin she’s saved for Mark. “Never too early in the day to start giving advice, is it, Graham?”
I hand her a Tupperware container. “Your lunch.”
She takes it, and then her face falls at the sight of the leftover fish and salad from last night.
“Bro,” she says. “I didn’t even want to eat this the first time. If you think I’m eating it of my own volition, without a single witness to laud me for it, you don’t know me very well.”
“Keeley, you’ve got to eat vegetables.”
“I know, but the thing is, vegetables are terrible and…”
I wait for her to finish the sentence and she does not. “Vegetables are terrible and…?”
“That’s it. I realized I’d already made my point. Vegetables are terrible. Where were all these control freak tendencies of yours the night you knocked me up, anyway?”
Muscle memory takes over, as if we’re back in that hotel bed and her nails are digging into my back while she’s saying oh-God-I’m-going-to-come-again-this-never-happens , her voice breathy and desperate, the way it gets just before she… Fuck. Stop. You’ve got to forget all of it .
I turn away. “This isn’t entirely about you, Keeley. I’m not sure how else I can hammer that home.”
She stomps out, and suddenly the apartment feels empty, desolate.
Maybe it’s simply the absence of her incessant noise, which I should be grateful to escape.
I send a few emails, then grab my wallet and head downstairs for coffee with no small amount of dread.
I lived in my building in New York for five years without enduring a single conversation beyond some patently obvious comment about the weather.
Now I can’t even get through the lobby without endless small talk.
“Keeley just got another package,” says the guy at the front desk. “She said it was just another bra and could wait, but you can take it if you want.”
“I’ll get it on the way back,” I say grimly. Why the fuck Keeley needed more bras or had to discuss lingerie with this guy is beyond me.
I walk outside and Keeley’s Homeless Friend waves to me. He’s got The Wall Street Journal open to the trading page. You’d think he’d have more immediate needs than knowing what to buy and sell on the stock exchange.
“Take a look at Press-Kasker,” he suggests. “They make a piece of desalinization equipment that’s going to be in high demand in the next few months.”
Jesus help me . This is what Keeley has brought my life to: I’m back in California, unable to even get a cup of fucking coffee without fourteen conversations and some financial advice from a homeless guy.
“I’ll look.” And because I can think of no other way to escape this conversation, I add, “I’m going to Starbucks. You want anything?”
He shakes his head. “I’m all set. Just ate breakfast, and Keeley brought me lunch.”
And he holds up the Tupperware I gave her not an hour before.