Chapter Seventeen Tessa #2
It takes me a moment to realize he’s talking about my checkup with my OB scheduled for this afternoon.
I’m always telling Gabe he doesn’t need to come to every appointment.
I did want him with me today, though, for my thirty-seven-week visit, when I’ll find out whether the baby is still breech.
If she is, I’ll need to schedule either an ECV to turn her or a cesarean to cut her out of my body.
Both procedures involve pain. Both are my decision.
Still, I’d hoped Gabe would be with me. I don’t text him back.
Instead I text Claire, asking if we can do nanny share at our house for the foreseeable future, claiming that with the baby coming, Jasper’s been regressing, that he’ll be better in his own home.
It sounds plausible enough, even though I’m pretty sure Jasper has zero understanding of how drastically his life is about to change.
When we say Jasper, where’s your sister?
he points to my stomach. When I poke my own belly and say Who’s here?
he shouts, Baby. Those are memorized responses from weeks of trying to prepare him.
Claire wouldn’t know this, though. She only has Summer.
More of the women stream onto the street, unlocking cars, disappearing around corners, on to other rooms where they will blend into other crowds.
We’re going to have to find our own nanny.
Jasper can’t share a nanny with a murderer’s daughter.
I can’t be friends with a murderer’s wife either.
I’m not prepared to face that fact any more than I am the nanny share or how exactly we’re going to live across the canal from a killer.
Claire texts back a thumbs-up, no questions or protests.
For now, I don’t need any long-term solutions.
I just need to keep my son away from Dan Huntsman.
A few minutes later, Barb struts out, high off her performance. As soon as we’re back at my car, she collapses into the passenger seat, drained. For his part, Jasper drifts to sleep before I’ve even started the engine.
“Do you mind if we call it a day? That was a lot,” Barb says.
“Sure. I have a doctor’s appointment anyway.” I drive toward the serpentine highways that will take us back to the Westside. “Did you learn anything else from the other actresses?”
Barb shakes her head no. “That’s all they knew.
A movie about a mother who dealt drugs to save her son.
I think Regina must have written the script too.
There’s no way she would have cast someone else’s movie when she wanted to write her own.
” There’s a smugness to Barb’s assessment, a relief that she can speak confidently about her daughter’s motivations.
“But a movie about an oxy dealer?” For some reason, the little I know about Regina, this doesn’t seem right.
“Regina always worked through things by writing about them,” Barb says.
I think back to Regina’s essay I found online, the one about their complicated relationship. Has Barb read it? Does she know her daughter worked through their struggles by writing about them too?
“And she was always interested in how it’s not just the addict that makes an addiction.
” The assuredness fades from Barb’s face as her words hit too close.
Whether or not she’s read the essay, Barb knows her daughter found her triggering.
“I can see her wanting to understand the perspective of a drug dealer.”
She says this last part so stoically, I can’t tell if she views this as a form of empathy or blame.
I press down on the gas pedal, trying to decide how I can be a comfort to her. The car propels us up the ramp to the highway. The only thing I can think to do is inch her toward the truth.
“Dan Huntsman, my neighbor—”
“I remember,” she interrupts. Of course she does.
“He’s a producer. A movie producer, I mean.”
“You think he had something to do with that audition?”
“It’s the biggest hurdle, getting funding. If they were having an affair—”
Barb’s phone rings, and she motions for me to hold on.
I listen as Barb says, “Oh, hello,” followed by “That would be great,” and then “Right” and “Sure” several times.
When she hangs up, she explains that it was Regina’s super, who can let us into Regina’s apartment tomorrow.
She doesn’t have to ask if I’ll join her. We’re in this together.
At lunchtime, the freeways are surprisingly clear, even through downtown, where too many roads intersect at once.
“Dan Huntsman,” Barb says to the looming buildings as we snake through downtown. “Dan Huntsman.” She rolls the name over in her mouth, tumbling it until it’s familiar. Each time it makes me shiver. Each time it becomes more fact than suspicion.
I don’t need Dr. Avagyan to tell me that the baby is still breech.
On the ultrasound, my daughter’s head floats upward, her legs suspended as they kick.
Dr. Avagyan stares at me expectantly, wanting my answer on the ECV.
She’s been trying to talk me out of it—Gabe, too, although he’s skeptical of her reasons, believing she prefers the efficient, more lucrative C-section.
There are benefits to a scheduled C-section.
It will be easier to plan around. It’s quicker, safer.
The recovery is what preoccupies me. I don’t know when major abdominal surgery became both routine and stigmatized, as though by trading a vaginal delivery for having your midsection sliced open, you’re somehow cheating labor.
Seeing my baby on the sonogram, so comfortable, so playful, I know that even if Dr. Avagyan wrenches and twists my stomach, the little lady isn’t budging. I tell her to book the surgery.
She spreads my legs apart to feel inside me.
“Well.” Dr. Avagyan snaps off her gloves. “You aren’t dilated yet, so we can go until thirty-nine weeks. No later.” She wags a finger like I’m trying to get away with something. That gives me ten days.
Ten days is a vacation, a guest who’s overstayed their welcome. Ten days is all I have left as a mother of one. Ten days to prove that Dan Huntsman killed Regina. Ten days to discover what her death has to do with my son.