Discovery

"You ok?" I asked from the front seat. Andi lay in the back, a plastic bag hung limply from one wrist. The other was thrown over her head. If I were to paint this picture, I would name it Agony of the Pregnant Martyr.

"It's better when I close my eyes."

"That's what she said!"

"Peter, I am really not in the mood for this right now." She punctuated her statement with a belch. "How far?"

"Google says ten minutes out. Need me to pull over?" She shook her head.

"I'd rather just get there. Mom'll have some ginger tea ready. She knows what car rides do to me."

"Well, does she know how bad pregnancy is on top of that?" She moaned in frustration at my implication.

"You know the rules. We can't tell them, not yet. Don't fuck this up."

"Magic 8 Ball says: you may rely on it." It was one of the jokes from early on in our relationship, back when everything was sunshine and couch sex. Usually it made her laugh. Not this time.

Precisely ten minutes later, she unfolded herself from the car and threw up on her parent's clamshell drive. I watched her breathe the fresh sea air deeply, hands on her knees, belly heaving. She wasn't showing yet, especially not with her bulky knit sweater on. Still, I saw the look on her mother's face. A glimmer of excitement there belied her suspicion.

"Oh, sweetie. Don't worry, I already had the ginger steeping. Come on in, you two. How was the drive?" We made small talk about the traffic on I-95, agreed that the new toll system was just swell, made jokes about the constant road work in Connecticut. I hauled our suitcases from the trunk and we entered the house.

"Are we upstairs again, Diane?"

"Yes, her old room is all set up for you. Why don't you bring those up, and I'll get some tea in this poor wretch." She pinched Andi's cheeks. I saw a hint of aversion flare in Andi's eyes, but she covered quickly with a smile.

It was another one of those mother/daughter moments that I never quite understood. Andi, my beloved, and also the most terrifying woman I knew. Despite her petite frame, she carried herself like a freight train. It was perhaps a symptom of her career. She'd spent the early days of her job screaming to be taken seriously as a family law attorney and her recent years painstakingly building her sterling reputation. She was a lady who took no shit, not from her bosses, not from her clients, certainly not from me.

And yet she allowed her mother to pinch her cheeks and call her sweetie. It was a mystery I pondered as I tipped the suitcases onto our bed. It mingled with the one thing I couldn't keep out of my mind these days. What kind of mother would she be? Would she be warm with our child? Terse and strict? Present or absent? I knew she planned to return to work immediately, for me to become a stay at home Dad. It was a no-brainer. I thought my paintings were great, but galleries weren't exactly chomping at the bit to sign me. I could still 'poke away' at my 'little paintings,' as she had so generously phrased it at the last work event she dragged me to.

God, I hated those things. I hated feeling like the butt of every joke. Her starving artist husband, plucked from poverty by her grandness. The crystal champagne flutes, one usually tumbling awkwardly off some pedestal or bartop and shattering as some muckety-muck got too drunk towards the end. And always Andi's hand clenched tightly just below my elbow, jerking me here and there to greet so-and-so and ask after their ex-wives.

I'd noticed a small stain on her sweater on the driveway. Likely vomit. I pushed aside my snide thoughts and opened her suitcase, intending to find her a replacement and perhaps some mouthwash. I grabbed her old Harvard sweater. Rifling through her toiletries, I found the mouthwash.

I also found a small orange box with a pharmacy label. Mifepristone, it read. I sat heavily on the bed, between the two suitcases. Why would she have this? Well, that's a stupid question, I thought. There could only be one reason. Carefully, I teased open the edge of the cardboard. The tablet was still there, cradled in its little white cup.

I replaced the mouthwash. I replaced the box. I replaced the sweater, too, then zipped up the suitcase as if I'd never intruded upon it at all.

"Some wine, sweetie?" asked Diane.

"Sure," said Andi, giving me a quick frown across the table. Don't you dare say a word, that frown warned. I kept my face blank. We'd discussed this potential test last night and agreed she would nurse one glass, just one, doctor's orders and all that. But a necessary move to keep our secret.

Diane gave me a look too. This one was more knowing. She saw the pitch we were playing. She was seeing how far we'd take it. I liked Andi's parents, but I hated the games the Crawford family liked to play. Duke, tall and imposing, leveraging his silence to make his few words punchier. Diane, smart as a whip and too bored, enriching her life by stirring us up like a punch bowl.

Andi. Doing whatever she wanted, whenever.

"How's the work?" Duke asked me from across the table. En garde!

"Oh, same as always," Andi laughed, answering for me. Riposte! "New series, but where's the old one? Still in the storage --" I cut in.

"Just swell, thanks." Parry! He raised his eyebrow but said no more. "Andi," I continued. "Didn't you have something you wanted to share tonight?" Disengagement.

Her hand tightened around the stem of her glass. She looked at me with fury and fear. Diane's eyes widened, delight turning her a delicate shade of pink. "Um, I --" she stuttered.

"Andi," I interrupted her again, "just tell them already! The award?"

"Oh, that!" she coughed. "Yes. The award." She told them all about the industry gala circle-jerk gala that had painted her as a rising star. I drank my wine and watched her talk. I noticed Diane's face contort in disappointment and mingled pride. I knew she hardly cared about Andi's career achievements.

Duke and Diane. A tale as old as time. They'd been paired together by their parents and seemed content enough to fulfill the roles cut out for them. Duke brought in the big bucks as a corporate raider in the 80's. Diane kept up a marvelous house. They dutifully provided a couple of heirs as their legacy. Were they happy? Sure. Would that set-up work for Andi and myself?

I suppose we were attempting it in reverse. I was less sure it was working at that point than I'd been in the car just three hours earlier. But in Andi's parent's eyes, we were certainly a shame of a pair. Me with my audacity to not make money, Andi with her evidently empty womb. Would our baby turn that around in their eyes? Would there even be one?

Diane set her napkin on the table. "I'm going to set up dessert. Andi, care to help me clear the table?"

"Let me take care of that for you," I offered. Andi nodded her thanks cautiously. She could tell something was afoot. I was playing harder than I usually did in this family game of information tug-of-war.

In the kitchen, I loaded the dishwasher while Diane prepared the miniature china plates and began cutting a lemon meringue pie into narrow slices.

"So," she whispered conspiratorially. "When are you planning to tell us?" A lump found its way unexpectedly in my throat.

"I don't know what you're talking about." I couldn't look her in the eye. I imagined a parallel world just alongside ours in which I'd never brought the suitcases upstairs, never found that little orange box. I could picture myself confirming Diane's deepest hope and swearing her to secrecy. I briefly mourned that impossible moment. "How did you do it?" I asked her instead. "How did you tolerate playing second fiddle?"

"What do you mean?" she asked, but I heard her stop cutting the pie.

"I mean, the balance between you two. Didn't you ever struggle with it?" I finally turned around, swinging a dishtowel over my shoulder.

"I do hope you aren't considering a divorce," she said quietly. "She'll eat you alive." I shook my head.

"Not yet. But I don't know how long I can take it."

"Take what?"

"Her disappointment in me. It's crushing. Part of me gets it. Believe me, I wish my work was selling better, too. But I warned her when we got married. I thought she understood that for me, painting is the only thing that I can ever do."

"Peter, did Andi ever tell you what her first major was?" Diane returned to cutting the pie.

"You mean before Philosophy? No, I didn't know she'd changed."

"She was accepted as an art student. She used to do such amazing sculptures. Broke my heart to hide them in the attic."

"What are you talking about? Andi never said."

"Well, she wouldn't. I don't quite know what happened. She came back from her first semester and demanded we take down everything she made. Her grades from that period were - well, they were frankly appalling. We were scared it was drugs or depression. We didn't know what to do. Duke talked her out of dropping out, thank God, but she told us she never wanted to step foot in a studio again."

"Why wouldn't she tell me that?"

"Peter, imagine, if you will, that you were to stop painting. Were forced to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and take a job as an accountant, perhaps, or a consultant. Who would you be?" I considered.

"Bitter, I suppose. Angry."

"I imagine you would also be quite jealous of somebody who weren't forced to make such a choice."

"But no one forced her," I argued. "Unless there's something you're not telling me."

"The only things I'm not telling you are what I don't know. We certainly didn't tell her to stop. We would have been quite happy for her to pursue a life that gave her purpose. In some ways, it doesn't surprise me that she found you. I think on good days your presence helps her feel that art is not lost to her."

"And on bad days, I'm probably a reminder of her failure."

"Or just a regret. Like calls to like. I suppose this is my longwinded way of telling you that I've always managed quite well with Duke because deep down, we are the same. We want the same things. We wanted this house, so we earned it. We wanted children, so we had them. I've never played second fiddle to him, and I would resent that remark if I felt it weren't a sly, masochistic slip of your subconscious."

"I'm sorry," I said, and I meant it. "I'm a little worked up today."

"Why don't you take a second to calm down? I'll make some coffee. Decaf." She winked. I winked back.

Upstairs, I returned to Andi's childhood room. In the late evening gloaming, the bare walls struggled to hold onto the light. I flicked the switch and took a second to really inspect the room. I had always assumed the vaguely Spartan air was due to an aesthetic scrub of Diane's. But there were still signs of child Andi all around. The stuffed animals arranged in a pyramid on the steamer trunk at the end of the bed. Her bookcase stuffed full of fantasy series, schmaltzy romances, historical epics. This wasn't a room empty of her, but I now realized it had a hole in it. Artist Andi.

I unzipped her suitcase and dug into the toiletry bag once more. I removed the orange box and placed it on top of the suitcase. I took the sweater down with me and handed it to Andi with a kiss on the top of her head.

"You've got a splotch," I told her. "Thought you might want to change." She looked at me with gratitude.

"Thanks, Petey," she said. I held onto that moment, wondering if it would be one of our last good ones.

I let her go up first. I nursed my coffee and sipped some port with Duke before turning in. He surprised me with a strong clap on the back. In his world, that was about as good as a hug.

"Things'll turn around, you'll see," he said. "The market's down. It'll be up again." I thanked him for his confidence. I could see it now, the subtle ways in which he and Diane were cautious about my career. Duke always referred to it as work, never art. Diane only asked after it when she got tipsy. Neither of them had ever asked to see it in person, let alone purchase any.

I'd assumed it was shame or distaste that made them avoid the subject. I now realized it was tact on their part, or fear of upsetting Andi. I climbed the stairs, relieved to see the light from our room still shining from under the door. I knocked twice and twice again, the way we always let each other know of our presence.

"Come in," Andi sniffled. She sat cross legged on the floor, the box next to her. She held one of her stuffed animals, a tiger, in her lap. I sat across from her. "Do you hate me?"

"No. But I'm really hurt. And I'm really confused." Tears pooled in her eyes. "Is it not mine?"

"Oh my God, no." She looked horrified. "I swear. No, that has nothing to do with it."

"Then what's going on? Was there something you didn't tell me about from the checkup?" She shook her head. I waited. We sat in silence for a little while.

"I'm scared," she finally confessed. "I'm scared I'm going to fuck it up. Everything. My career. My marriage. My - my child!" she wailed. "I feel so broken, and the only thing that fixes it is being the best at what I do. And I already know I'm going to suck at this. What kind of mother doesn't stay home with her child? What if I can't do my job and be a good mom at the same time?"

"Then we'll figure it out, together," I said. "Plenty of moms work. I don't believe for a second that you, a rising industry star, will be punked by a tiny baby." She laughed. The sound gave me hope. "Our child will be so loved, no matter what. But I can't force you to do this, not if you don't want to. Do you want to?"

"I don't know. I just wanted every option, you know? But then you found the test, and I felt like my choice was gone. We've talked about this for such a long time."

"You always have a choice," I promised her. "It's never too late."

"Well, it will be in a week. For the pill, at least."

"Then we have a week, yeah?"

"Yeah." She stroked the ear of the tiger tenderly. "Do you think I'll be a good mom?"

"Only if we have a good baby." She laughed and pushed off the ground, heading to the en suite bathroom to begin her complex routine of brushing and lotions.

"What if it's a really terrible one?" she asked over her shoulder.

"Then we'll have to try again."

"The definition of madness."

"Ok, philosopher's stone." It was a joke we often bandied about between us. I used it as a crow bar to pry at her past. "Hey, did you ever want to do something other than Philosophy?"

She paused. I saw her look herself in the mirror with that frown she usually reserved for when I pushed her too far, or a case went poorly.

"Once. When I was a child I imagined a very different life for myself. Didn't work out."

I pulled my PJs out of my suitcase. "Magic 8 ball says: try again."

She shrugged and picked up her toothbrush.

Early the next morning, we held hands and walked on the beach. The sun rose slowly but steadily over the horizon. Small birds darted back and forth across the sand, hemming the edge of the frothing waves.

"I think I want to know if it's a good baby or a bad one," she said. "I want to find out if I'm a good mom."

I smiled, grateful for my life. Grateful for my family.

"Magic 8 ball says: It is decidedly so." This time, she laughed with me.