Chapter 28 Andrea
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Andrea
I woke up at six, made it to the bathroom, threw up, brushed my teeth, threw up again. Sat on the tile with my back against the tub until my stomach settled enough to stand. By the time I got downstairs, Grandma had ginger tea and dry toast waiting on the table.
“Drink it slow,” she said from the stove where she was making herself eggs I couldn’t even look at without gagging. “Small sips.”
“I know, Grandma.”
“And eat the toast. The whole piece, not three bites and then pushing it around like you think I won’t notice.”
“I eat the toast.”
“You eat half the toast and feed the rest to the squirrels when you go on your walk. I’ve seen you.”
I took the tea and sipped it. My stomach rolled but held.
Grandma cracked an egg into the pan and the smell hit me so hard I had to turn my head toward the window.
The jasmine bush outside was blooming, which used to be my favorite smell in this house and now made me gag.
Between the eggs and the jasmine I was trapped, breathing through my mouth, gripping the warm mug with both hands.
“Your mother was the same with you,” Grandma said, sitting down across from me. “First trimester she couldn’t keep anything down. Ginger tea, dry crackers, flat ginger ale. That was all she ate for three months. Your father used to make her smoothies and she’d take one sip and throw them at him.”
I laughed. Then my eyes filled. Then I was crying into my ginger tea because everything made me cry now. A commercial on TV made me cry yesterday. A dog in the street made me cry the day before. She mentioned my mother and now I was sobbing over toast at six-thirty in the morning.
“Oh, sweetheart.” She reached across the table and took my hand.
“It’s not just the hormones,” I said, wiping my face with my sleeve.
“I know.” She squeezed my hand. “But the hormones aren’t helping.”
She let me cry. Didn’t shush me, didn’t tell me it would be okay.
Just held my hand across the table while the eggs got cold on her plate and the tea got cold in my mug and the morning light came through the kitchen window turning everything gold.
When I finally stopped, she handed me a napkin and said, “Now eat your toast.”
I ate the toast. The whole piece.
“Good girl.” She picked up her fork and started on the cold eggs like nothing had happened. “I was thinking we should start clearing out the spare room this weekend. For the baby.”
My heart did something complicated. The spare room was full of boxes, old clothes, photo albums, my parents’ things that Grandma had packed up years ago but never had the heart to get rid of. “Grandma, we don’t have to rush. I’m barely showing.”
“You won’t be barely showing forever. And I want to paint. Your mother’s room was yellow. I was thinking yellow again.”
“You hate yellow.”
“I do. But babies like it. I read that somewhere.” She pointed her fork at me. “Also, you’re coming to church with me on Sunday.”
“Grandma...”
“Not negotiable. Mrs. Patterson has been asking about you since you got here. If I have to lie to that woman one more time about why my granddaughter hasn’t shown her face, I’ll lose my spot in the choir, and I have been singing alto for thirty-seven years, Andrea. Thirty-seven years.”
I laughed. A real one, still damp from the crying, but real.
After breakfast I took my walk. Whitebrook was quiet in the mornings, the streets empty except for a few runners and the old man three doors down who walked his beagle at the same time every day and waved at me without speaking. I waved back without speaking. It was a good arrangement.
I walked the route my mother used to walk.
Down the hill past the school, along the creek where the water ran clear over flat stones, up through the park with the wooden benches that had initials carved into them from decades of teenagers.
Back home through the neighborhood where every third house had a garden.
I put my hand on my stomach while I walked, still flat, nothing to show for it yet.
“See that creek?” I said, quiet enough that the runners passing wouldn’t hear. “Your great-grandma says fish used to be in there when she was little. I don’t believe her but she swears.”
I told the baby about my mother. How she used to walk this same route with me strapped to her chest, how she knew the name of every flower in every garden we passed, how she’d stop and talk to the neighbors for so long my father would come looking for us.
I wanted my kid to know her even though she wasn’t here.
I didn’t talk about Finneas. Not yet. I wasn’t there yet.
The walks helped. Movement helped. When I was moving I could almost convince myself I was just a woman taking a morning walk in a small town, that the weight on my chest was just the hill, the slightly-too-fast pace I kept because slowing down meant thinking.
But the walks ended. The hill flattened out.
I’d come back to Grandma’s house, sit on the porch step catching my breath, and the grief would be right there waiting, patient, unhurried.
I spent the rest of my days reading, helping Grandma in the garden, going to the prenatal appointments at the small clinic in town where the doctor had a kind face and called me “mama” even though I didn’t feel like one yet.
I cleaned things that didn’t need cleaning because the action of scrubbing gave my hands something to do when my brain wouldn’t shut up.
I reorganized Grandma’s spice cabinet twice.
She let me do it without comment, which was love in its purest form because that woman had her spice cabinet organized by cuisine type and I put everything in alphabetical order and she didn’t say a word.
Mary called every morning at eight. Without fail.
“Did you eat?”
“Yes.”
“Real food or toast?”
“Toast is real food.”
“Andrea.”
“I ate toast, Grandma made eggs, I threw up once. It’s progress.”
“Andrea, that is not eating.” A pause. “Buddy misses you, by the way. Peter says he sits by the kennel door every time someone comes in. Looks up, sees it’s not you, goes back to his corner.”
My chest ached. I could picture it perfectly, Buddy’s big brown eyes lifting toward the door, the hope, the quick assessment, the slow return to his spot when it was the wrong person. I knew exactly how that felt.
“Don’t tell me that, Mary.”
“I’m telling you because it’s true and because I want you to come visit.”
“I just left. I can’t come back yet.” I picked at a thread on the couch cushion. “Is he eating okay?”
“He’s eating fine. He’s just sad. Dogs get sad, Andrea. They miss people.”
My throat tightened. I knew that too. Better than most.
Mary was quiet for a second, then her voice shifted. Gentler, but firm underneath. “Okay, different topic. The therapy group. You said you’d think about it.”
“I have been thinking about it.”
“For two weeks. The thinking phase is over. Go.”
So I went. Wednesday evening, community center on Birch Street, folding chairs in a circle, a coffee machine in the corner producing something brown and lukewarm that had given up on being coffee a long time ago.
Dr. Rita ran it, a calm woman with reading glasses and a voice that made you want to sit down and tell her things you’d never said out loud.
I almost left before it started. I was in the doorway gripping my water bottle, one foot in the room, the rest of me calculating the distance back to my car, when a woman in the chair nearest the door looked up.
“If you’re thinking about running, don’t. The coffee is terrible but the company is decent.”
She had sharp eyes, dark hair cut blunt at her jaw, and the expression of someone who had zero patience for bullshit, including her own. I liked her immediately.
I sat down.
Dr. Rita asked everyone to introduce themselves. I went last because going last is the coward’s move and I was not above cowardice.
“I’m Andrea. I’m pregnant, I’m single, and I moved across the country because my ex broke my heart.” I paused. “That’s the short version. The long version involves a lot of crying and some noodles.”
“Been there,” the woman by the door said. “Except the pregnant part. That’s a bonus level.”
That was Adela.
The woman beside me snorted so loud it echoed off the beige walls. “Girl, same. Minus the pregnant part. And the noodles. I’m more of a cereal-at-3-am person.”
That was Hallie.
A hand appeared from my other side holding a tissue. I hadn’t asked for it. I hadn’t even realized my eyes were wet. The woman holding it out didn’t say anything, just waited with a patient expression until I took it.
Tara. She carried a bag that seemed to have everything in it.
We talked. Dr. Rita guided it gently. When it was my turn I kept it short: fell for someone, got rejected, left town.
I left out the parts I couldn’t explain and kept the parts that mattered.
My voice shook in places I didn’t expect it to, and I had to stop twice to swallow and regroup, but nobody rushed me. They just waited.
Adela leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms. “That’s garbage.”
“Which part?” I asked.
“All of it. The man is garbage. The situation is garbage. You deserve better.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“Don’t need to. You showed up here pregnant and alone and you’re still standing. That tells me plenty.”
My throat tightened. I took a sip of the terrible coffee to hide it.
Hallie said “men are a disease, I swear” then launched into her own story about an ex who proposed to her and his other girlfriend on the same weekend.
“Same ring too. Bulk discount, I guess.” The room erupted.
I found myself laughing so hard my stomach cramped.
When I stopped I realized my eyes were wet again, but for a different reason, and I couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.