“I realize this is unexpected,” the doctor said, “And not necessarily welcome news.”
“But I’m that woman,” said Clara.
“What?”
Clara was perched on the edge of the examination table and she moved softly back and forth to keep Lucinda asleep in the carrier on her chest. She said, “I used to visualize. There were books that said if you saw it happen, it could come true, and I did it. I imagined being here, and you telling me I was pregnant. By accident. We have been through this so many times in my mind, you and me, although you probably didn’t know.”
The doctor handed her a tissue, and Clara wiped her eyes. The tears weren’t exactly heartfelt, but since Lucinda was born, she tended to run like a tap.
The doctor wanted to refer her for an ultrasound, but Clara said not to bother.
“I’ve been here before too,” she said. “My pregnancies don’t keep.” She left with the referral and promised to make the call, which was a lie. What she was going to do was take the iron supplements, because she didn’t want to faint again, particularly not while holding Lucinda.
She said nothing to Nick. It didn’t seem dishonest because they’d been occupying separate spheres since the baby was born, since even before that, if Clara was honest. He was busy at work, booked with seasonal parties and late nights all the time. She hardly saw him. Lucinda was her planet and she was in her orbit, and Nick and the rest of the world were far away.
Clara kept waiting for something to happen. She was well versed in miscarriages, but there was no sign. She was tired and slept when her baby slept, but she would have been doing that anyway, particularly as Lucinda didn’t sleep at night. So the weeks crept along and Clara was only vaguely keeping track of time, finally booking the appointment because it had been long enough now. She wasn’t so far gone to be that irresponsible.
So she went for the scan and of course, something was wrong. She knew it by the blank expression on the technician’s face, the way it fell over her like a mask, and when Clara saw it, she realized she’d been fooling herself. It turned out she was not hardened enough for this to be old hat, to not be devastated by what was about to happen to her body.To think that she could be here alone, suffering without a hand to hold, without Nick to put his arms around her while she cried. But even if she’d been honest and he knew the real reason for her appointment, he couldn’t have come. He was at home with the baby they already had.
“This is your first ultrasound?” the technician asked, moving her wand across Clara’s stomach, back and forth, squinting at the image on the screen.
“Well, for this pregnancy,” said Clara. “But I mean, this isn’t my first time. It’s happened before.” She wanted to ask the technician to just wipe the gel off her belly and let her get dressed again, let her go home to lose her pregnancy in private and with her dignity intact, before she fell to pieces about a baby she never even knew she wanted.
“Twins?” the technician asked.
“What?” Clara said. “Oh, shit.” And then she started to cry, this time the emotions so far beyond her comprehension that she couldn’t have said what she was feeling. There was a whole other spectrum for moments like this.
So instead she started babbling through her tears. Never in a million years had she imagined twins, she told the technician. Stupid really, because they’d done IVF with Lucinda and that increased the likelihood, but Clara had been so stuck on the miracle of just one baby that she hadn’t allowed herself to consider any more. This time, however, it made no sense: she’d conceived these babies naturally. How on earth had she conceived these babies naturally?
“Bodies can do surprising things,” the technician told Clara, still exploring the wonders of her womb. “Nobody really understands.” She kept searching. “There,” she said, holding the wand still, pointing to the screen, at an incomprehensibleblob. “Baby A, and Baby B.” She tried to find a better angle. “Two healthy babies,” she said. “Fourteen weeks, more or less. But don’t tell anyone I said that. Don’t tell anyone I said anything. You’ll need your doctor to go over your results.”
Clara’s head was swimming. She was thinking of this baby that was supposed to have disappeared, and how it had turned into two. And if she held on longer, would there be another one? Was that how these things worked?
“You really didn’t know?” the technician asked. “Because most of the time with twins, you feel terrible. So tired you can’t see straight.”
Clara said, “I have a five-month-old at home.”
“Jesus Christ.” The technician recovered. “Well, then,” she said, only now conscious of her slip, never mind that she had been breaching protocol throughout the appointment. “I mean, it’s a blessing, it is.” Clara wished she would stop talking.
What was she going to tell Nick? What were they going to do? Three babies. What a disaster—but not completely. Thiswasa blessing. Clara knew the technician wasn’t wrong.
She felt like a pinball, bouncing from one side to another, bells ringing, lights flashing. The child she had imagined as an only, now with siblings. A pregnancy that had happened just like anybody else’s. An “oops baby.” Two oops babies. This was not a terrible thing.
But it was terrifying. And these were the thoughts she entertained once she left the clinic, on the streetcar ride back across town, where her husband waited, unaware. He’d just spent a morning with their baby daughter, and he’d be feeling good about holding up his end of the load because he’d changed a diaper. He didn’t have a clue.
How had she been so stupid that she hadn’t realized what was happening? It was a question that didn’t need answering.She’d been lost in newborn moo-baa-lalala-land. Lucinda was like a drug, and Clara couldn’t get enough of her scent, and her sounds, and the feel of her skin against her body. Since Lucinda was born, there had been nothing else. Clara had shut out the world. And what else had been going on without her noticing? She thought of frogs raining down from the heavens, a kind of prophecy. Was that from a fairy tale, the Bible, or just that Tom Cruise film? She was about to open her front door right now, and what would she find inside? A plague of locusts? So many possibilities because everything was on the table.
But she got home, and it was ordinary, the way she’d left it. Piles of books and newspapers, flyers and magazines, and the usual things scattered everywhere. Everything Clara needed was usually within arm’s length, and she only had to dig to find it.
Nick was asleep, lying spread-out on the couch, Lucinda sleeping on his chest. Oh, this poor man, Clara thought as she watched him. What if she’d left him there in his pub in Derbyshire with that tiny little flat upstairs? His life had been far from perfect, he would tell you, and Clara hadn’t had to drag him here kicking and screaming. But he didn’t like his job here, organizing hotel parties. None of this was what he had planned for.
Recently he’d proposed moving into a caravan, and she liked the idea of wheels rumbling beneath the floor. A rumble would put one baby, Lucinda, to sleep, but then she wondered if it could put three babies to sleep. Where did you put three babies in a caravan? Where did you put three babies at all? Clara imagined telling her sisters the news. They’d give each other that look.This was going to happen to you all along, they’d say. You’re going to turn into everybody else.There’s a house for sale, they’d tell her,just down the concession.
She watched Nick and Lucinda sleeping, listening to their quiet parallel breathing.
So much was about bodies. How she fed and bathed Lucinda, changed her diapers, and the way that she and Nick found solace and pleasure in acts just as intimate. The way she knew the smell of his sweat, his piss, the way he held his head when he was tired. It was all bodies, the way they came to each other, what they took from each other. Clara thought of Lucinda at her breast—she wondered how Nick had got her down to sleep without it. The way her daughter overwhelmed her senses, the smell of digested milk on her bedsheets, and how she inhaled it, slightly rank and wholly sweet, thinking that if there was such a thing as an essence, this was it. Watching her family sleep, conscious of the life growing inside her, Clara considered, What if this was the universe, and who was she to find fault with that?
Nick’s eyes opened as if he’d heard something.
