Remy #2
When I finish typing I think about Simone.
I wonder what she would think of this life I’ve made for her, and how accurate it could be.
These chapters will begin to collect digital dust on my laptop as soon as inspiration for my second book strikes—but until then, it’s nice to be back in the flow of writing for the first time in a long time.
During a walk the next day, I’m still thinking about Simone and Jenni. I play scenes in my head. I make up conversations for them. They act out my stage directions and move amidst my curated soundtrack. They cloud my daydreams and consume my imagination like nothing has before.
I might have made up the reason for their falling out, but it’s obvious they did argue about something. Jenni’s sadness over their distance suggests she might be willing to make up. Which makes me think… what if I could reconnect them?
I have to, don’t I? Wouldn’t it be weird of me to know both of them and not at least try ?
Then my stomach churns without warning. I halt but realize I have to think fast. I dive to the left and throw up in one of the park’s hedges, then collapse onto a bench, exhausted.
I’m holding my head between my knees when I hear, “Remy?”
I look up and see Simone. For a minute, I think I’m still playing scenes from my story in my head, but I eventually realize that this Simone is real.
She’s blocking the weak sun and frowning down at me, tote bags from a supermarket visit balanced on her shoulders.
“I just saw you vomit in that bush,” she says.
“Do you have a virus? You have to tell me—I work with children.”
“No, no virus,” I assure her. “I don’t think so anyway. Just… pre-period cramps I think.”
She continues to frown. “Does that typically happen to you?”
I try to stand, but I feel too weak and give up. “No, but I am due on…” I rapidly blink to dispel the oncoming dizziness. “I haven’t had pain like this in a while though. I’m a little lightheaded.”
“You don’t look very good,” Simone says. “Could it be appendicitis?”
Then everything goes dark.
I wake up in a hospital room with Simone by my side. “Thank goodness,” she says, helping me to slowly sit up. “You kept going in and out for an hour.”
My voice is weak, but I manage to croak, “Am I dying?”
A kind-looking nurse appears on my right. “No, Remy, you’re not dying,” she says. She puts a warm hand on my arm and it soothes me. Until she adds, “But you are pregnant. About eight weeks. Still early days, of course, but congratulations.”
There’s a ringing in my ear because the room is so silent.
“Oh.” Simone steps back. “Right… well.” She looks around as if suddenly unaware of how she got here.
The nurse continues to smile. “We’ve checked your vitals and—”
Finally, I find my voice. “No, thank you.”
The nurse shakes her head. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re forgiven.” I look at the nurse. “I said, no, thank you.”
“Remy…” Simone starts. “I’m not sure if this is shock or simply a lack of education. I do remember our health classes being poorly taught…” She turns to the nurse. “They simply told us if we didn’t want babies we shouldn’t have sex.”
“Terrible,” the nurse says, shaking her head. “A common cause of pregnancy in young women is improper education around the topic.”
“I’m not in shock!” I shout over them, and there’s only a slight hint of hysteria in my voice.
“I’m not in shock because I’m not pregnant.
When I get home, I’ll take a pregnancy test and it’ll show I’m not pregnant.
I understand the NHS is underfunded.” I turn to Simone.
“I heard they use our tax money for their children’s private schools.
” I return to the nurse. “But you obviously have my test results mixed up with somebody else’s. ”
Simone steps forward. “Remy, your voice is a little…”
“And you shouldn’t say congratulations!” I continue. “I could interpret that as a medical professional encouraging adolescent pregnancies!”
“Your friend here said you were maybe born in 1994,” the nurse says, looking back and forth between Simone and me. “How old are you?”
“I’m only thirty!”
“All right,” Simone intercedes. “Thank you, Nurse Bellman. I can take… whatever this is, from here.”
Nurse Bellman nods gratefully and leaves the room.
“I appreciate that, Simone”—and when I hold my hand up, it’s shaking violently—“but this really is a misunderstanding. Trust me. I’ve had a fertility test and it…” I stop to wipe the spit dangling from my lip like a broken spider’s web. “It’s a misunderstanding, okay?”
Simone holds her hands up. “Okay.”
When we exit the hospital, I blindly turn left, only to reverse direction after a few steps. When I reach the end of the street, I realize I don’t know how to get home and begin to feel as if I’m trapped in a maze.
“Remy, you’re not taking this very well,” Simone says, coming up behind me and resting her hand on my shoulder. “You need to calm down.”
“You don’t understand!” I feel my focus slipping. “I’m… pregnant?”
“You are,” Simone replies. “I have to say, your acceptance of the matter has arrived quicker than—”
“I don’t think I can keep it.”
I feel Simone stiffen. “Why would you do that?”
“Choose not to have a baby?”
“No, that’s obviously none of my concern,” she says. “Why would you tell me that you might not keep it? That’s very personal and I’m a stranger.”
I frown, suddenly irritated. “What can I say?” I tell her, rubbing my eyes with the back of my hand. “You have such a warm and personable aura, I felt compelled to share.”
Simone delicately huffs. “I can’t always detect sarcasm, but I’m going to assume that was it.”
“I think I’m going to be sick again.” I run to the corner and retch, but nothing comes out. I rest my back against a wall, breathing heavily.
Just then, what looked like a harmless brewing cloud turns dark and splits open, dispensing seeds of rain. Simone sighs heavily, turning to me. “I have lemons in my fridge.”
I straighten with a groan. “I have expired milk in mine. See? Sharing can be fun.”
“I was unaware sarcasm was a symptom of pregnancy,” Simone says sharply.
“Lemon juice mixed with water can help with nausea; I learned that from one of my student’s mothers, just after she expelled her lunch of broccoli soup and cheese toast on my shoes.
” She looks down at what might be new trainers given their pristine condition.
“I’d like to avoid a repeated occurrence. ”
“You’re… inviting me to your place?”
Her jawline tenses. Simone clearly doesn’t want me in her house, that much is obvious.
“Morally, I can’t abandon a pregnant woman who’s crying in the rain and clearly suffering from a panic attack,” Simone says, “so, yes, I am. Only for a short while. Until you get a handle on your nausea. Then I’d like you to leave. ”
I stare after her as she walks away. “There’s that warm aura I was talking about.”
“What is it you do, again?” I say, entering her flat.
“I’m a schoolteacher.”
“Right, and who is in your class—the Obamas?”
Simone coughs and I realize too late that it may have been to cover a stifled laugh. She moves into her kitchen, depositing her bags and pulling lemons from her fridge. “I teach Year One.”
“But look at this place.” I hang up my coat and remove my shoes. “How can you afford it?”
Simone doesn’t answer my question, supposedly too busy squeezing lemon into a tall, ribbed glass before adding filtered water. She passes the drink to me after inserting a metal straw. “To protect your teeth from the acidity.”
“Thank you, Miss Simone.” She narrows her eyes but gives me a small smile before returning to the kitchen to unpack her groceries.
There’s something almost robotic about the way Simone is moving about her kitchen, and I can tell that she doesn’t quite know what to do with herself now that I’m here. Maybe she doesn’t get a lot of guests. Her place is beautiful, but it’s showroom beautiful.
My last flat revealed a lot about me. My fridge was covered in photos, paper souvenirs, and magnets, like the inside of a scrapbook.
There were always fresh flowers on my dining room table, thanks to a monthly subscription that Lin gifted me.
(One night at dinner, we watched this guy present his blushing date with tulips and I mentioned that I had never received flowers, but it was fine because I’m probably not a flower kind of gal, anyway.
The note attached to the first bouquet read: There’s only one way to find out if you’re a flower kinda gal. Love Lin x .)
I had three different blankets on my sofa, including the one Melissa made during her patchworking phase; I had a rug with red-turned-pink wine stains because, regardless of what she’s holding, Nova laughs like she’s possessed and spills accordingly.
Handmade pieces from Mum’s various travels took up any remaining surface space.
But Simone’s home is completely devoid of any colorful character.
“Do you live with anyone?” I ask her.
“No.” She unpacks the last of her things. “Please sit,” she says over her shoulder, nodding at the sofa. “So, first things first: Do I need to alert the baby’s father?”
“You can try,” I tell her. “He ghosted me.”
She frowns. “It was a one-night stand?”
“My first, so don’t judge.”
“I wouldn’t judge you for that,” she says.
“Trust me. But your first one and you get pregnant as a result? My aunties used to threaten us with stories like yours; I thought they were merely scare tactics for the uninformed—I guess not. The nurse said you were eight weeks along. How could you not know?”
“It’s not my first time missing a period,” I tell her. “It used to happen quite often when I was in school, so even though I was late, I didn’t think for a second I’d be pregnant.”
“I suppose that makes sense. You really might not keep it?”
I look at Simone and something in her eyes assures me that the question doesn’t stem from disapproval or a love of salacious gossip, but genuine curiosity. Also, a part of me knows that even if Simone did wish to pass my secret on, she would have no one to tell.
“I don’t know,” I confess.
“If you don’t mind me pointing out the obvious,” she says, “you don’t seem happy to be pregnant. So maybe the better question is, why would you want to keep the baby?”
“Because I’m not one hundred percent sure I don’t want to keep the baby,” I answer. “Especially if… what if it’s a sign?”
“How do you mean?”
“A couple of years ago, I took a fertility test…” I shake off the incoming ramble. “Long story short, I never thought I’d be able to have kids.”
“Ah.” Simone nods. “I understand. Then maybe you ought to keep the baby.”
“How can you say that?” I look at her incredulously. “I’ve got no partner, no support system, not much money, and I’ve only crossed two things off my bucket list, one of which was trying that viral cube croissant.”
“I keep hearing about those,” Simone says, taking a seat beside me. “But they’ve always looked too big for just one person. How was it?”
“Fucking average!” I cry, a snot bubble emerging from one of my nostrils. “It tasted like a regular, dry croissant!” I wipe under my nose with the back of my hand and Simone recoils before handing me a square of kitchen paper.
She considers me for a bit before saying, “I think I would struggle to be you. You’re like a human pendulum: back and forth, back and forth.”
I pout. “I have no idea what to do with that.”
Simone stands to brush something imaginary from her jeans. “You don’t have to do anything with it. Your glass is empty. Are you feeling better?”
I pause to consider my nausea. “Huh, actually, I am.”
“Good.” Simone looks at her watch. “Shall we bring our time together to a close, then?”
“Wait, that’s it?”
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“Well… what am I supposed to do now?”
Simone frowns. “About your baby?” she says. “Remy, why on earth would you ask me?”
I gulp, feeling embarrassed, stupid, and desperate. “You’re right. Sorry, I’m just a bit…”
Simone sighs. “I can sympathize,” she says. “You clearly have a naturally chaotic energy, and I don’t imagine this news has done anything to calm it. But you’ll have to figure out what to do without me. My advice is to sleep on it and then talk to someone.”
“But not to you?”
“Precisely,” Simone says, somehow not unkindly. “Like your friends and family,” she adds, returning my glass to the kitchen. “And if after that you are still craving the unwarranted opinions of strangers, well, that’s what the internet is for. I’ll drive you home.”