Thirty-Seven November 12, 2023
ONE OF the many benefits of being dead is that I can watch reruns of my life any time I want. Today is one of my favourites: the day Bailey gets married. But I don’t need to see the wedding again. “I do,” “I do,” kiss, kiss. It’s the events of the backyard reception that get me every time.
Here, Elsie is standing in line with Zander at the potluck table where guests have left casseroles and bowls of chips, artichoke dip, bean and jelly salads, peanut butter cookies and squares.
Elsie’s wearing the bridesmaid dress Bailey inflicted on her, but it’s not a traditional fluffy gown.
It’s just a simple, purple-to-the-point-of-black button-down dress, a midi she might wear to another wedding or funeral in the future.
(In fact, it’s the dress she wears to her father’s memorial.) Elsie added her own vibe with a pair of purple striped leggings to match Bailey’s purple, off-the-shoulder ruffled maxi dress.
As Elsie fills her plate with a veggie burger and mashed sweet potato, she feels something moving in her belly and puts her hand to it.
The baby wouldn’t even be the size of a tardigrade.
It’s got to be all in her head. Still, she beams at the thought of Luna, her little water bear, this child who’s taken up residence in her body and thoughts.
Elsie’s begun to see pregnant women everywhere, in the grocery stores, on the street.
She counted four pregnant women in the lineup at the bakery, where she picked up her contribution to this potluck table.
It’s like there’s a baby boom in town, though she knows it’s only her brain playing tricks on her, putting her focus on this pregnancy.
Now she sees the tight round of a pregnant belly not only on women, but in the strangest places: the buns at the bakery, the circles drawn by children on fogged windows, pictures of the moon.
“What are you smiling at?” Zander asks, as he fills his plate next to her. The way he stops to look at her with those amber eyes, like he’s recording her face so he can play it back later.
“Oh, nothing. Everything. You.” She breathes in deeply, taking in the joy on her father’s face as he dances with Bailey, the guests laughing in the glow from the crackling firepit, the thought of the future that Elsie’s creating now in her belly.
As Zander wraps an arm around her and kisses the top of her head, a tingling feeling of excitement, of hope, wells up inside her.
But then the song ends and there’s Marcus. He’s hovering at the edge of the small crowd gathered on the lawn, having just stepped out of his car. And Amy is with him.
“Can you hold this for a minute?” Elsie asks Zander. She hands him her plate and marches over to her sister, who now chats with guests by the makeshift dance floor. There, she takes Bailey by the elbow and pulls her to the side. “What is Marcus doing here? And Amy?”
Bailey scans the crowd until she finds them. “I invited him. I didn’t invite Amy, though.”
“Why would you do that?”
“He’s family now. He’s the father of your baby.”
Elsie steals a glance at Zander, who’s chewing as he watches them from the food table. “You could have warned me.”
“And miss that look on your face?” Bailey grins. “Actually, he asked if he could come to the reception last minute. I got a text from him after the ceremony.”
“And you said yes?”
“He wants to talk to you. Evidently you weren’t answering his messages.”
Because he’d been such an ass when they met last, at the café. She just didn’t want more conflict in her life. Not right now, anyway.
But here it comes.
Amy takes Marcus by the hand and, huffing in her late-pregnancy waddle, drags him across the lawn towards Elsie.
“Good luck,” Bailey says as she sidesteps away from Elsie.
Elsie reaches for her sister’s hand. “No, wait—” Stay. But then she lets her sister go. Bailey doesn’t need this kind of drama on her wedding day. And Elsie can handle this herself.
Marcus is the overdressed one this time, in a suit and tie. The other guests are dressed casually, in jeans and T-shirts, as Bailey requested on the invitations. Amy wears a snug-fitting grey knit dress. Elsie can see the outline of her belly button that, in her pregnancy, is an outie.
“Hey,” Elsie says. “I’m surprised to see you here.”
Marcus scratches his ear as he glances at Amy. “Yeah, I’m sorry we crashed your sister’s wedding. But you wouldn’t answer my texts.”
“You said you didn’t want to have anything to do with this baby.” Then Elsie quotes him. “‘What else is there to say?’”
“I came to apologize for being such a dick,” he says. “I was shocked, I guess. I know I can’t walk away from this.” Marcus adjusts his tie. “You’re still . . .?” He eyes Elsie’s belly, the growing fetus there.
“I’m still pregnant.”
“Feeling okay?” Amy asks.
“Wonderful, in fact.”
“I like being pregnant,” Amy says. “Mostly.”
“Me too. So far.”
“My morning sickness started three weeks in,” Amy says. “Except it wasn’t morning sickness. It was all-day sickness, for three months straight. My head was constantly in the toilet.”
So, there’s another vision of Elsie’s near future.
“Can I just say what I’ve got to say?” Marcus asks.
Amy nods. “Sorry.”
Marcus straightens up and clears his throat like he’s practiced his speech. “Ziz—Elsie, I’m sorry for not letting you know Amy and I were together, and for allowing this to happen.” He twirls a finger at Elsie’s belly, this life growing inside her.
“It has complicated our lives.”
Marcus pinches the air. “Maybe a little.” He tries for a smile.
“Anyway, you’re right. I am scared shitless of being a father.
Some days I just don’t think I can do it.
” He loosens his tie, stretches his neck.
“But I will be there, be a dad for your kid, Elsie. We’ll work out custody, visits, and support. I won’t fight you on it.”
“That’s good to hear.”
He slides his hands into his pockets. “Anyway, that’s all I came to say.”
The fire crackles. A car drives by. The crowd hums in conversation. Someone puts on salsa music. Overhead the stars and galaxies twirl and twinkle, oblivious to the insignificant and extraordinary lives on this tiny planet, on this tiny lawn. (A thought I always find calming.)
And then Amy snorts a laugh. “Back at university, you think we’d ever end up here?”
“No,” Elsie says.
“You and me, we’re related now.” Amy rubs her belly. “Through these babies we carry. Your baby and my son will be siblings. How crazy is that?”
It is weird, now that she thinks of it. “You know it’s a boy?”
“We’re naming him Max,” Marcus says, “after my dad.”
Elsie recalls a photo of Marcus as a boy taken with his father, a few years before Max’s sudden death, the two of them on a dock somewhere, in the middle of a jump into a lake, their bare feet in midair, their arms pointed towards the water.
She must have seen it during a Christmas visit to his mother’s place.
A few years from now, there would undoubtedly be a similar photo of Marcus on a dock somewhere with his two kids, a moment in time printed off and framed.
Is that all time is, she wonders, a series of snapshots, stills lined up one after the other?
Elsie takes out her phone, slides through her photos until she finds the one taken at Luna’s graduation, to show them to Marcus and Amy, but then thinks better of it.
It’s probably best if she doesn’t bring up the time travel, at least not yet.
She pockets her phone. “At the café, you said you weren’t sure about you and Marcus,” she says to Amy, “if you’d stay together. ”
Amy looks up at him. “Like I said, the jury’s still out on that one.”
“I think, I know, you’ll find your way back to each other.”
“Why do you say that?”
Elsie shrugs. “Just a feeling.”
Amy holds her back as if it aches. “We should let you get back to the party.”
“You’re not going to stay, have something to eat?”
“We thought we might,” Amy says. They dressed for it, evidently.
“But I’m wiped. I need to go home and lie down.
” Then she surprises Elsie by hugging her, her large belly pressed to Elsie’s.
“This doesn’t have to come between us,” she tells Elsie.
“I’ve missed you. Maybe you and me and our babies could hang out together? ”
Marcus swings his head away, not looking too happy about that idea. (But he’ll come around.)
Amy steps back. “Call me, okay?”
“I will.”
And then Amy says it again: “Our kids will be siblings!” She shakes her head at the weirdness of it as she waddles back across the lawn.
Marcus unknots his tie. “I guess we’ll be in touch, then,” he says.
“It really will be okay,” Elsie says. “All of it. You’ll be a good dad. Luna will turn out alright. Better than alright.”
“Luna?”
She puts a hand to her stomach. “Our daughter.”
“Luna,” he says. “I like it.” He hesitates like he has something else to say but then turns to leave.
“Hey, Marcus?” Elsie calls after him. “Get your moles checked out.”
“Why?”
“Just do.”
Marcus raises his eyebrows but then jogs to catch up to Amy.
Elsie watches as he wraps his arm around her in the way he once held Elsie.
She feels a momentary pang of loss, a familiar longing for the love she once had with him.
No, she thinks, it’s just an echo now. The feeling is only nostalgia.
(But then, what is nostalgia except a longing for what we’ve left behind?)
Zander wanders over carrying Elsie’s plate. She breathes deeply as she takes him in. His straight posture. His exquisite hands. His lovely, strange amber eyes. The way he looks at her as if he can’t wait to see what she’s about to say or do next. “Everything okay?” he asks, handing her the plate.
“Yeah, it’s all good.” She bites into one of the cinnamon buns she bought at the bakery. Sweet and gooey. Damn. It is good. This bun, this man, this moment is perfect.
Zander watches Marcus hold the car door open for Amy. “Want to talk about it?”
She kisses his cheek. “Later.” She puts the plate down and rubs the stickiness from her hands with a napkin. “Right now, I want to dance.”
He holds out both arms. “Then let’s dance.”
Zander takes her by the hand and leads her to the dance floor that Travis cobbled together from two-by-fours.
He pulls her close, one hand resting low on her hip, the other warming hers, and moves her to the music, showing her the steps to the salsa.
He’s a good dancer. As she catches on, others move out of their way to watch.
“Lessons?” Elsie asks him.
“My grandmother taught me.” As, it seems, she taught him so many things.
“It was how she kept up her strength and agility for as long as she did. She wanted me to learn, in case—” In case he inherited the gene that would steal his mobility.
He smiles down on her as he changes the subject.
“As I recall, tomorrow’s your birthday.”
“Yes.” He remembers. But then, after studying her peculiar birth chart, how can he forget?
“A dark moon,” Zander says. “Easier to see the stars.” Together, still dancing, they peer into the star-studded night sky. “I was thinking we might pack a picnic, drive to Saanich in the evening, go up to the observatory to celebrate. It’ll be open all night.”
Zander twirls Elsie, and the skirt of her dress flutters all around. “So, is it a date?” he asks, reeling her back in.
Elsie, swaying within Zander’s arms, grins up at him, eyes glistening. “It’s a date.”