Now it was Olivia who waited.
“I think I could make this kid something really great. Like my mother had all these opportunities to make a real family for me, but she couldn’t get her act together.” Ruby’s hands rested for an instant on her stomach. “I’m different from her. I could do so much.”
Olivia’s heart was pounding hard enough to send blood pulsing in her temples. Ruby is just a kid, she thought. She shouldn’t have this baby. I should. I need someone to love more than Ruby does. Ruby will have other chances. She couldn’t say the same for herself.
“On the other hand,” Ruby said, slumping into a chair, “sometimes I don’t. Most of the time. In Home Ec, they made us carry around an egg for like three days. We always had to watch this egg. We couldn’t put it down. We couldn’t break it. We had to take care of it. Like a baby.”
No wonder this kid’s pregnant, Olivia thought. What kind of teaching is that? An egg. Jesus.
“I hated that stupid egg,” Ruby said.
And when she said it, Olivia felt, for the first time in months, hope.
“Why don’t you stay and we’ll see how you feel when the time comes,” Olivia said, forcing her voice into steadiness. There were counselors and professional people who would urge Ruby to give this baby to Olivia. She thought of Ellen, the faceless lawyer whom she’d spoken with on the phone yesterday. Ellen would be on her side. Things were stacked in her favor.
“If I stay here and you take me to that doctor and feed me and stuff like that and then I keep the baby, you can’t do anything about it,” Ruby said.
“Right,” Olivia told her. But what she knew was that Ruby would never keep this baby. “I hated that stupid egg,” she’d said.
Pete Lancelotta was balder than balding, heavier than big, with a beard. Olivia never liked facial hair much, except for the scratchy feel of David’s face on weekends when he didn’t shave. She used to like how he would rub his cheek on the inside of her thigh. That was the only facial hair Olivia liked. Also, Pete smoked. He’ll be dead in twenty years, Olivia thought. Once a widow was plenty for her, thank you.
But the paella was good, overflowing with fish and lobster and clams and sausage and chicken. It was as if Olivia hadn’t eaten seafood in years; the salty taste almost excited her.
“Jeez,” Pete said, watching her. “You can really eat.”
Time was moving differently for Olivia. Instead of the plodding, slow-motion feeling of these last months, she felt something pulling her forward, toward something she was not yet ready even to think of as a future. But she could think: In twelve weeks, I will have a baby. And when she thought it, she could see past those twelve weeks, to some point where Ruby was gone and she, Olivia, was holding an infant. It was cooler and drier in that future. The long, hot summer was over, and the tips of leaves had turned color. Seeing that made her lighter, as if she might float away like a balloon that had been let go. Or like that puff of smoke she’d imagined David had become. The sangria, too sweet, clung to Olivia’s teeth and tongue. Delicious.
Since she would never fall in love with this man, Olivia even entertained the thought of having sex with him. Lately, she’d begun to think of it again, and thinking of it made her wet enough to put her own fingers there between her legs, to bring herself some pleasure. Hadn’t Winnie been urging her to find someone for that kind of companionship at least? “You’re a widow,” Winnie had told her, “not a nun.” Olivia tried to think of Pete naked, inside her, and the image made her want to laugh and cry at the same time.
It made her want to leave. She stood, abruptly, foolish in her backless summer dress and the sandals she’d found in the closet, left there since last summer. When she’d found them, fine strands of cat hair stuck to the straps, and she didn’t have the heart to wipe them away.
On the curvy silent ride back to her house, Olivia knew that Pete Lancelotta was absolutely the wrong man for her. He had lived in Rhode Island his whole life, had only journeyed as far as Montreal to see an Expos game once. He didn’t like to read. There was the smoking and the weight, making him a candidate for horrible things: stroke, heart attack, worse. But she had Ruby and the baby. She felt generous and risky and optimistic. So when they pulled up to her house and he asked her if she’d see him again, Olivia said, “Sure, why not?” His quick scratchy kiss was almost pleasant, but not quite.