Thirty-Three November 7, 2023
ELSIE ARRIVES at Daybreak Café after the lunch rush, so there’s no lineup.
On this rainy November afternoon, only an hour before the two o’clock closing time, just a handful of people are in the restaurant with her as she takes a seat facing the door.
The server, a woman wearing a beanie and lip piercings, offers her a menu, and Elsie asks for a second, along with a pot of tea.
She drove the winding highway through a heavy rain to Victoria this morning, her tires hydroplaning on the wet patches, yet managed to maintain control.
But now, waiting for Marcus, she feels like she’s lost traction and is skidding off the road.
She smooths a hand over her purple cardigan.
What is she doing here? The decision over whether to keep the baby or not is hers to make.
Not Marcus’s. But he needs to know. He’s the father, after all.
The server brings Elsie her tea. It’s not how she likes it, made from a canister of hot water that isn’t freshly boiled, with cream instead of milk, poured from an almost empty container so bubbles float on the surface.
But Elsie sips it anyway, to warm herself and dilute the anxiety in her belly.
Above her, the purple, yellow and orange squares of glass in the transom cast an eerie light across the walls.
There’s a miniature bicycle sitting in front of the window.
Outside, the slick sidewalks and pools of rain reflect the city lights.
Pedestrians march down the street holding umbrellas over their heads.
Two of them, a couple, the woman round in her pregnancy, the man tall and lean, cross the road, heading towards the café.
Elsie knows Marcus’s stride even at a distance.
The outward splay of his feet, his loping gait. And he’s brought Amy.
Outside the door, they both shake their umbrellas; on entering, they drop them into one of the umbrella holders that are in nearly every restaurant in Victoria.
Marcus in a trench coat and wet loafers.
Amy in a yellow raincoat and duck boots.
They both wave at the server, who greets them by name, then turn to Elsie.
“She insisted on coming,” Marcus says, nodding sideways at Amy.
Amy eases herself into the chair opposite Elsie. “More like, I came to make sure he actually met you.” She glances at Marcus as he takes a seat beside her. “And behaved himself.”
Marcus unbuttons his coat but doesn’t remove it, then sits back, wary. “You wanted to talk?” he asks Elsie, in a way that suggests they won’t be staying, and when the server comes by, they both confirm it by refusing her offer of coffee.
Elsie orders a breakfast sandwich on sourdough, the egg over hard, and hands back the menus. The server has already turned away before Elsie realizes she hasn’t asked her to hold the mayo.
Amy squirms in discomfort within her seat. “This chair is killing me.”
“Can we just get on with it?” Marcus asks. “You said it was important.” In a text, asking Marcus to meet her for lunch today. He answered with a single word: Daybreak. The café the two of them frequented when in Victoria. Now, it seems, it’s Marcus and Amy’s favourite place.
Elsie cradles her teacup. “I think it’s best if I talk to Marcus about it first, privately.”
“Anything you need to say to him you can say to me.” Amy’s hair is damp from the rain, curling in ringlets around her ears, her nose red from the cold. Without makeup, she seems so much younger, like the friend she’d been at university.
Marcus’s knee bounces up and down. “If this is about that night I turned up at your place, I don’t know what to tell you. I was drunk. It was a mistake.”
“I’m surprised you told Amy.”
“I can’t start a new family with a secret like that hanging over my head.”
Amy prunes her lips. Elsie can tell from the worried look on her face that she already has her suspicions as to what this meeting is about. So, Elsie just gets to it. “I’m pregnant,” she says.
Marcus turns to the side in his chair as if he’s about to flee.
“You’re the father.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t be. We were only together once. And I used protection.”
Amy, hands on her belly, lets out a long, maternal sigh. “I think we need to order coffee,” she says. “And something sweet.” She raises her hand to the server, asks for two orders of chocolate lava cake and coffee.
“What about that other guy who was there Tuesday morning,” Marcus asks Elsie as the server pours their coffees. “Your sister’s astrologer? You two have something going on.”
“Zander. No.” Elsie waits until the server leaves. “The baby is yours.”
Marcus ruffles his hair. Now, with bed-head, he’s the old Marcus, the one she loved. But then he opens his mouth again. “I don’t believe this,” he says. “When we hooked up again, you were already talking kids. You didn’t plan this, did you?”
Elsie and Amy exchange a look, unbelieving. “Why would I do that?” Elsie asks him.
“You tell me.”
“That’s just stupid,” Amy says.
Marcus leans back in his chair, crosses his arms, stretches a long leg out under the table. “Are you keeping the baby?”
“I don’t know, yet.”
“Christ, I’ve already got a kid on the way.”
“Well,” Amy says, her tone matter-of-fact but her face ferocious. “Now you have two.”
The server plunks the orders of lava cake and the breakfast sandwich onto the table, her gaze darting between the three of them.
She’s heard everything. Elsie thanks her before tipping the toast back to see the extent of the damage.
One large glob of mayonnaise on both egg and toast. She takes a knife to it, scraping away the dressing, but the bread is already soggy.
“Wait, it’s only been a couple of weeks.” Marcus leans into the table, his face brightening. “You could still miscarry.”
Elsie glares at him, knife in hand. “You want me to miscarry?”
Amy looks to the other tables, embarrassed. “Christ, Marcus.”
He holds up both hands. “I’m just saying, it’s early days. A lot of women lose the fetus in their first trimester.” Up to twenty percent of women who know they’re pregnant, in fact. Elsie’s been reading up. Marcus clears his throat. “Have you thought of—”
“An abortion?” Elsie pushes her breakfast sandwich to the side. “Yes, I thought about it.” Agonized about it.
“And?”
“I’m still weighing my options.”
“What about my options?” Marcus says. “What about what I want?”
Amy slaps both hands to her face. “Oh my god, Marcus. Just stop talking.”
Marcus crosses his arms again, stares out the window. A truck trundles by, casting a wash of cold water over a man in a business suit. Marcus appears to shudder in sympathy.
“Look, I’m scared of being a parent too,” Elsie says. “Terrified. I don’t feel up to it at all, any more than you do.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“That is why you slept with Elsie, though, isn’t it?” Amy says. “You’re afraid.”
His voice softens a little. “I don’t know why I did that.
” But then his tone turns harsh again as he talks to Elsie.
“Keep the baby or don’t. But I want no part of it.
I’ve got enough going on with Amy and our kid.
I don’t make enough to support two families, not with the cost of living as high as it is. ”
Amy stabs a fork into her lava cake. “I guess you should have thought of that before jumping into bed with Elsie.” She stuffs the forkful of cake into her mouth as she stares at him. Marcus is the first to look away.
“So, I guess I don’t really have a say, do I?” Marcus asks Elsie. “You’re making the decision for us, one way or the other.”
“Yes.” Elsie rotates the wheels on the tiny bicycle on the windowsill, an art piece with a working chain. Round and round it spins, but on the stand, it goes nowhere.
Marcus breathes out an almost inaudible fuck and stands, pushing back his chair, which stutters over the hardwood floor. The grumble of wood on wood.
Elsie looks up at him. “You’re leaving?” He hasn’t touched his coffee or lava cake.
“What else is there to say?”
“My god. Where do I start? We may be having a kid together.”
“No,” he says. “No, we’re not. Not together.” He grabs his umbrella and, wielding it like a sword, marches out the door.
Elsie and Amy look at each other, two pregnant women on a rainy afternoon.
“He really did only jump into bed with me because he was scared,” Elsie says.
“No shit.”
“I’m so sorry, Amy. Really, I had no idea.”
“I know.”
“But you’re still pissed with me.”
“Of course I am. Aren’t you pissed with me?”
“I’m mostly pissed at Marcus.”
Amy forks another chunk of lava cake into her mouth as she nods in agreement.
Elsie points at Marcus’s dessert. “You going to eat that?”
“Go for it.” Amy slides the cake her way.
They eat. The chocolate, the warm gooey sauce. The sky is dark with the storm. It seems as if this autumn rain will never end. Pedestrians step over the small lake at the corner to use the crosswalk.
“I’ll talk some sense into him,” Amy says. She licks the chocolate from her front teeth. “Whatever you decide, I won’t let him shirk his responsibilities.”
“Marcus seems to think you’re back together,” Elsie says. “Are you?”
“I don’t know.” Amy scrapes up the last crumb of her dessert. She leans back in the chair, rubs her giant belly. “But we’ve got a baby on the way. Like it or not, we’ll have to deal with each other.”
Elsie rubs her own tummy. “I know the feeling.” And then she laughs. “Why am I laughing?” she asks.
Amy snickers with her, and then it turns into a giggle-fit for them both. Tension release, Elsie supposes. Or the ridiculous nature of their situation. Having heard their whole sordid story, the server eyes them coolly.
“Stop,” Amy says, waving a hand. “I’ll pee my pants. Seriously. With this baby using my bladder as a trampoline, I can’t hold it in.” She clutches the base of her belly. “Oops, too late.” But that only makes them both giggle harder.
And it’s here, within her laughter with her old friend, that Elsie realizes that she does, finally, know what she’s doing.