The weird thing is it didn’t seem that shattering to them, and later, when they tried to reconstruct the events they had set in motion, they couldn’t, and couldn’t believe that their little bit of gossip had changed everything. They didn’t even lead off with it.
“We have cake,” announced Jason, striding directly to the kitchen, taking out plates and forks, putting on water for tea.
“Left over from the restaurant last night. A whole untouched cake. Never happens,” Lucas added. “I should make pasta more often. Everyone’s too full for dessert.”
“Not very good for sales,” said Daniel.
“No,” Lucas reflected. “But good for you guys. You get free dessert.”
“I can’t believe we’re going to eat more,” said Katie. I had made pizzas. I had also made salad, grilled vegetables, and garlic bread. We had started with hummus and crackers. But Lucas-cake was too good to refuse.
“Busy tonight?” I asked.
“So-so. That new place Grill Art opened last week, so some folks are going there.” Lucas shrugged.
“We ate there for lunch yesterday,” Jason said conspiratorially. “Terrible.”
“It wasn’t terrible,” said Lucas generously. “The place just opened. Maybe it’s better for dinner.”
“Over-sauced. Nothing was hot enough. Too salty. Too bland. The man wishes he could cook like you.”
“Oh sweetie,” said Lucas, leaning over and kissing Jason on the mouth, “everyone wishes they could cook like me.”
“What are you guys doing all weekend?” asked Jill.
“Not much,” said Jason. “We have tickets to the ballgame tomorrow afternoon.”
“We must do something with the lawn.”
“I need to do some work for my summer course.”
“And we really should go visit Elise,” said Lucas.
“We don’t even know Elise,” Jason protested.
“Who’s Elise?” I asked.
“I told you about her,” said Jason. “She’s Ed’s ex-boyfriend’s pregnant fiancée.”
“Was,” said Lucas.
“She died?” I gasped.
“No,” said Jason. “Was pregnant.”
“And was a fiancée,” Lucas added dryly. Across the table from me, Jill and Daniel both hushed though neither had been saying anything.
“What happened?”
“She was in an accident on I-5. Someone two cars up blew a tire. She tried to swerve. Everyone tried to swerve. She got hit from the side and from behind,” said Lucas.
“She’s okay,” Jason reassured us. “She broke an arm and banged her head badly enough that they’d like to keep her for a couple nights. And she lost the baby.”
“And then Martin broke off the engagement. No reason to do it at that point. Said he did love her but not in that way, he’d been confused, he was really sorry, et cetera, et cetera. I feel bad for her,” Lucas added, “but the guy is so obviously gay. You don’t ungay.”
“Plus, it’s so much better to find this out now than later. Before marriage, before kids. This is a blessing really,” mused Jason.
“Except she’s so in love with him, poor thing. Gets in a huge accident, wrecks her car, wakes up in the hospital with a broken arm, a concussion, and no baby, and then Martin breaks up with her. Which is why we should try to visit her at some point this weekend. We cheer people up.” The discussion had stopped being among all of us and was happening just between Jason and Lucas, who had slipped into private conversation, so comfortable that they didn’t notice Daniel had turned greenish-white, and Jill’s face was covered suddenly with a silver sheen of wet. She was shaking her head over and over, mouth open, nothing coming out.
“Uh-oh,” said Lucas, looking up.
“She lost the baby?” Jill managed, barely a whisper, barely words.
“Oh honey.” Jason was back with us now. “I’m so sorry. She did. She lost the baby. But it was okay. She was just barely pregnant. The doctor says she’s fine in there. Told Martin they could start trying again right away,” he added with a half smile because obviously Martin wasn’t trying in the first place.
Small silence.
“You’re fine.” Katie cut to the chase. “It’s not you. You’re fine.”
Jill was clutching her flat stomach, looking around a little wildly.
“She’s fine too,” I added. “She’ll be fine in a couple days.”
Jill wasn’t responding, and we weren’t, any of us, sure exactly what was upsetting her—the accident, the miscarriage, the broken engagement, the fact that it could all be lost so completely and so suddenly.
Daniel, his color starting to return, licked his lips and took his turn at trying to be comforting. “It’s so much better for everyone this way,” he said slowly into what felt like thirsty, gasping silence. “She’ll find someone else, someone who really wants her and really wants to have a baby instead of trapping this poor guy into marriage and fatherhood with her.”
I’m sure he didn’t think about what he was going to say before he said it. And what he said was true. But also tragically misguided coming, as it did, out of his mouth.
Jill got up from the table, walked directly to the purple bathroom, and loudly threw up. It was six weeks of repressed morning sickness, six weeks of denial and rejection, of fear and panic and isolation, of endless deliberation despite the lack of any real options. It was realization, finally, of what this all meant, how it was going to change her life in ways which could not even be construed as good or promising. It was realization, finally, that she was probably going to have a baby, and she was probably going to have it alone.
We sat in silence. You can’t eat cake when someone is throwing up in a one-bedroom apartment. You can’t eat cake when your friends are collapsing. The vomiting and all it meant had been six long, unnecessary weeks in coming. I exchanged guilty glances with Katie. We had spent these first weeks evading decisions, responsibility, and reality, the truth, and we’d helped Jill and Daniel do the same when it was the last thing they should have done. We were complicit in this, and I felt just as (well, maybe almost as) nauseated.
Daniel pushed back from the table, took an almost comically deep breath that went on and on—like the whole inside of him was empty and he was trying to inflate—and walked to the bathroom. He closed the door, probably in a vain attempt at privacy, but really it was a very small apartment and cheap besides and poorly built. You try like hell not to hear when someone’s puking in the bathroom, but of course this is disgustingly impossible, and we tried not to hear Daniel and Jill’s conversation, but of course that wasn’t possible either. We should have gotten up and left the house right away, but paralyzing gas seemed to be spewing invisibly from the cake.
“Sweetie, I’m sorry,” said Daniel. “I didn’t mean us. I meant them. I wasn’t thinking.”
Pause.
“Are you okay?”
“I have to have the baby,” she said, shaky.
“Okay,” he said.
“Daniel, what if I lost it?”