Chapter 8 Remy
REMY
“Here, drink this.” Ariel places a glass of Diet Coke on the table and slides into the booth beside me. “Pretend there’s a shot of vodka in it. Make it a double. You need it.”
I swallow a mouthful and focus on the fizzing behind my teeth.
We’re in a bar. It was the first one we stumbled across when we left the clinic, and Ariel dragged me inside, giving me no wriggle room to protest. Not that I could even see where we were going through the tears.
My brain shut down everything else the nurse told me during the ultrasound, relying on my best friend to soak up all the necessary information.
The fizzing distraction lasts for about three seconds and then the reality comes crashing back. Ariel takes the glass from my trembling hand.
“Twins,” I say out loud.
To anyone else it’s just a word. Twins. Two babies.
Sure, it looks like a lot of hard work, two bottles of formula, two lots of diapers, two babies crying in the middle of the night, a double stroller for walks.
But it’s genetic. As long as there’s no history of twins, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’ll have one baby.
“Look on the bright side.” Ariel swallows a large mouthful of white wine. “Two babies, one pregnancy. Two for the price of one.”
Dazed, I stare at her until she comes back into focus. “You’re serious.”
“Sure.” She shrugs. “My mom said she’d have made life easier for herself if she’d had twins or triplets. Let’s face it, you won’t get much sleep for the first three months anyway, might as well stay up all night for two babies rather than one.”
A chuckle escapes before I can stop it. More tears fill my eyes, and the laughter becomes a sore throat kind of ache that won’t be cured by paracetamol.
This is real. This is happening to me. This isn’t a movie scene where the father comes crashing into the bar, goes down on one knee, and proposes to me in front of a crowd of smiling faces.
“What about college?” I say in a small voice.
Ariel rests her warm hand on my leg. “Let’s take this one step at a time, Rem.”
I nod. I’m happy for my best friend to think for me. She’s the practical one. She comes from a large family. She’ll know what to do.
“You need to tell him.”
My pulse starts galloping away, my heart pumping around step number one, my face glowing like a shiny red apple. I swallow another mouthful of Diet Coke and catch the spillage from the shaking glass before it hits my lap.
“No.” It doesn’t sound as firm as I’d intended.
Ariel doesn’t react. “Why not?”
“I don’t want to.”
“I kinda gathered that when you said no.” She gulps another mouthful of wine; she’s drinking for both of us even though it isn’t lunchtime yet. “Why not? And before you think about repeating yourself, I’ll remind you that I can keep this up all day if necessary.”
“Did anyone ever tell you that you don’t have a heart?”
“Frequently. But Tristan still sticks around.”
I can’t help smiling. She has the biggest heart of anyone I know. If I asked her to hold my hand through childbirth, she’d be there in her hospital gown, mopping my brow, and telling me she can see the baby’s head between my legs.
Heads. Plural.
Okay, here goes. “If I tell him that I’m pregnant, and he doesn’t want anything to do with the baby—babies—that’s it. It’s over. That dream that someday, he might walk back into my life and tell me that he never stopped thinking about me, will be gone.”
Ariel ponders my confession for several long, drawn-out moments.
“He’ll think I’m a gold-digger,” I blurt out while she’s still thinking about it. “He’ll accuse me of trying to trap him into giving me money, and I don’t want him to think that about me. Better to just walk away now.”
“And bring up his babies on your own.” Ariel juggles her hands up and down as if they’re weighing scales. “I see your point. Much better to spend the rest of your life struggling to give those babies a decent life when their father is loaded.”
I slump back against my seat. “Dignity. It’s one of those words you always toss my way when you think I’m being weak.”
“True. I’m glad to hear that you’ve been paying attention. But there’s also dignity in swallowing your pride and having the balls to walk into the Rinse and tell Bastien Murray that he’s going to be a father.” She hisses the last sentence at me so that no one else can hear.
My heart is beating up my ribcage in indignation. “We only had sex twice,” I whisper. I haven’t made eye contact with anyone else in the bar, and I know I’ll never see any of them again, but I can’t bear the thought of seeing the pity in their eyes. “Why would he believe me?”
“Hello?” Ariel widens her eyes at me. “Have you heard of paternity tests? They’re a thing these days. If he demands a test, he’ll know that you’re not lying when he gets the results. But do you want to know what I think?”
“Not really, but you’re going to tell me anyway.”
She grins at me. “Yas! The attitude is coming back. I would say that my work here is done, but I’m not finished with you yet.”
“Go on.”
“I think he’ll believe you.” I open my mouth to speak and she shuts me down. “He said he couldn’t let you walk out of his life, Rem. He said, and I quote, ‘you’ve bewitched me’.”
“I wasn’t pregnant at the time. He’s a successful businessman. He doesn’t want to be a father.”
“He said that did he? In the throes of passion, when his eyes were rolling back in his head and his legs were shaking, he said he didn’t want you to get pregnant. Because in my experience, Rem, men who don’t want to get trapped use a condom. End of.”
“Maybe he assumed that I—”
“He’s a successful businessman, yeah? Your words. He can sit in a boardroom and buy a fucking casino he can wrap up before he—”
“Okay, okay.” I rest my elbows on the table and cradle my head in my hands. “So, what, I go in there, ask him to support his babies, and he writes me a check?”
“Then you won’t have to worry about money for a while.”
Hot tears fill my eyes. That isn’t what I want. I’m not avoiding the conversation with Bash because I don’t think he’ll want to be in his kids’ lives. I’m afraid that he will want to be a father… but with someone else.
“Look, I’m going to throw this out there once,” Ariel says, “and then I won’t mention it again. What if Bastien Murray turns out to be a great dad?”
She doesn’t elaborate. She lets it sit there between us while I sip my Diet Coke, and she orders a second glass of wine.
Finally, when images of Bash cradling a baby in each arm begin to replace the fear of realizing that I can’t afford to buy formula, I say, “Fine. I’ll speak to him.”
Ariel pulls me into a bear-hug. “I’ll come with you.”
“No.” I suck in a deep breath and jut my chin. “I’m a big girl now. I’ve got this.”
And for half a beat, I almost believe it.
I don’t take flowers to the cemetery. I take a packet of Swedish Fish because they were Danielle’s favorite. I sit at the end of her grave, pop a candy into my mouth, and tilt my face towards the sky.
“I screwed up, Dan.”
I didn’t get to say goodbye to my sister.
One of her so-called friends called an ambulance when she didn’t wake up one morning and bolted before assistance arrived.
The paramedics were too late to save Danielle.
Her beautiful soul had already vacated her violated body, so I don’t look at the headstone when I speak to her.
I know she’s out there somewhere listening to me; I come here so that she can find me.
“After George, I swore that I would never let another man hurt me.”
Talking to my sister is like telling myself a story for the first time.
“I thought Bash was different, Dan. I thought… I don’t know… I thought that we had a connection, but I guess I was wrong. I fell for the good looks and the charm because I’m fucking gullible.”
I smile so that she knows I’m alright.
“And now I’m pregnant. Twins. I expect you already know that if you’ve been following me around. Twins! I can barely remember what day it is. How can I be responsible for two little human beings?”
I pop another candy into my mouth and chew. They’re sickly sweet. My sister always had a sweet tooth like our dad, and I preferred savory like our mom. I like to think that Danielle can taste them through me, like Ariel drinking wine when she knows that I can’t.
There’s a reason why I came here first; talking to my sister gives me clarity.
We didn’t always get on when she was alive.
Like all siblings, we fought over clothes and games and magazines.
Danielle once poured an entire mug of hot chocolate over my head because I had the last one and she wanted it.
But now she always seems to put the right thoughts into my head when I need them most.
And suddenly, it wallops me straight in the gut, putting everything into perspective.
Danielle will never know how it feels to be pregnant.
She’ll never fall in love or get married or get her heart broken by someone she loves.
She’ll never hold her baby in her arms, inhale that milky smell of innocence, or kiss the tip of their tiny snub nose.
Her experiences were stolen from her the first time she injected a drug into her vein because from that moment, she stopped living in the real world.
While I get to do all these things. For both of us. So, how dare I sit here and wallow in self-pity because I have to do it alone.
I scrunch up the Swedish Fish packet and leave it on the soil at the end of the grave. I stand up, and read the words on the headstone:
Danielle Jones, a star that will continue to shine.
“Thanks, Dan,” I whisper. “Wish me luck.”
A warm breeze picks up as I leave the cemetery and head towards the subway station. It feels like my sister is stroking my cheek, and I cover it with my hand to keep her close.
Stepping out of the station at Fifth Avenue, my resolve crumbles a little, and all my insecurities come rolling in.
What if he refuses to speak to me?