Chapter Seven #3
Johnny’s office would be the nursery, they had decided.
She was already using the nook in their bedroom as her office, so they would hire a contractor to add on a room for Johnny on the far side of the back patio, near their orange trees.
That was the plan when they thought Johnny was getting his movie, anyway.
In the past, anticipating a new child’s birth had made Tasha’s mind race with decorating plans.
Now she only saw the work ahead. The expense.
Tasha often felt like an intruder in this space where Johnny holed himself up to field calls and write, but more so tonight.
They had vigorously redecorated the rest of the house over the years, but this room retained the light pink paint of his mother’s childhood.
Johnny’s Misery Swamp and Frat House Haunting posters were framed above his L-shaped desk by the window, but the far wall was a shrine to his mother’s childhood: Sadie Washington’s framed photo backstage with Sammy Davis Jr., her girlish grin as wide as the sky.
Happy photos with her older brother, Johnny’s uncle Ricky, also dead now, posing on the front porch that was eerily unchanged.
A photo of young Sadie with a beloved black cat.
But not a trace of the woman who had built the house, who was starkly absent. Erased.
This was Tasha’s other secret, which complicated the first: Although Johnny was averse to even talking about his grandmother, she had decided to write a book about Mazelle Washington called Little Girl Lost, researching her history from the silent era in Hollywood to her nearly forgotten Lazy Mazy franchise from the 1940s.
Tasha had only sketched out an opening chapter and an outline, so she had hoped she could race through researching and writing her book next summer and find a publisher by fall.
It was a tight schedule, but she hadn’t published a book in ten years—and she needed to publish for tenure.
Her department head had hinted that her application might not withstand scrutiny without it.
Now that she was pregnant, her summer of writing was in jeopardy. And for the first time in twenty years, she had lied to her husband—not just claiming she only wanted to go to Bear Creek Lodge for the girls, but the ongoing lie she had been carrying since the day she found out she was pregnant.
Tasha felt trapped, and it was a trap of her own making.
She knew she could stop her tears and lift a weight from Johnny’s shoulders if she went to the bedroom and said they should make an appointment at the clinic.
He might disagree at first, but then he would remember he didn’t want another baby either—not really, except to try to please her—so what were they disagreeing about? It would be that easy.
She needed to tell him. And he needed to hear it. Yesterday, they’d had a plan. Now, just like that, they didn’t. The only time Tasha had seen that dim, hollow-eyed look on her husband’s face was after his mother’s funeral.
And she had helped hollow him out. She had painted a sunny picture of what their future could look like with a new baby so she would believe it herself.
She’d smothered her own shock and terror at the idea of carrying a child again because of course she wanted to have another child—didn’t she?
They might have a boy this time. Before she and Johnny got married, despite their fifteen-year age difference, at the outer edge of their comfort zones, Johnny had promised that he wanted to be a father and stay healthy for their children.
And he had kept that promise. Since the night he met her at the Pan African Film Festival, he’d chosen monogamy rather than his past lifestyle with the shallow women he’d partied with through his thirties.
He hadn’t touched coke since before they got married, although he’d confided to her that Money threatened to put him in rehab in the nineties because he was coming to the set high.
So, no coke anymore. He rarely drank either.
He’d cut out pork and fried foods, except for the occasional undeniable plate of french fries.
He’d transformed their garage into a gym with a heavy bag and sets of kettlebells he used religiously several times a week.
When his blood pressure shot up, he had allowed her to introduce him to yoga and meditation to help bring it down.
And he was so good with Sharise and Imani, taking on the uncomfortable role of disciplinarian when it hadn’t been a natural fit for either of them.
And he had never lied to her—or at least she’d never caught him in one. Until tonight.
It’s time, he had said, although his eyes said something very different.
His eyes made her realize that between the test results and obstetrician appointments to weigh the risks of a perimenopausal pregnancy for a woman with fibroids, she had robbed him of the question: Do you want to have this baby?
The obstetrician, seeing a happily married couple in his office, never mentioned any options except safely taking her pregnancy to term, even as he laid out the risks that she might need bed rest if she bled heavily during the latter months, as she did with Imani.