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We watch the calendar, and speculate about when Olivia will decide to be born. She glides past Valentines Day without event, but then we expected her to. (Her due date's not until March 10.) On a date that holds some private, inside significance for Amy and me, February the 24th, Olivia makes a few gestures that get us excited, but to no avail. My dad calls me on the 27th to tell me that 100 years ago today his father was born, and wouldn't it be neat if Olivia's birthday could mark that date? But, no, Olivia has other ideas. I have been campaigning for her to be born on the 29th, leapday in the year 2000, which would be cool beyond words, but does Olivia care? No. She just keeps on not being born. All through the day on March 3 Amy lays low, dreading how she'll feel if Olivia is born today of all days, the anniversary of her mother's death. But now we're past all that stuff. We're grabbing at straws now. How about today? Today is Labor Day, after all… in New Zealand. Or how about Wednesday the 8th, which is Ash Wednesday? But neither of us is religious. St. Patrick's Day is March 17, but big whoop. Looks like Olivia is just going to have to make her own special date on the calendar. We're ready.
Whenever the commercial for the movie The Beach comes on, Amy looks at me and says, "There she is, Derek. Get an eye-full." She thinks I have this crush on the actress who stars opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach, Virginie Something, and she doesn't like it at all. So, okay, she did catch me once admiring Virginie during a commercial, and I did happen to admit I thought she was attractive. But we both do this sort of thing all the time; it's a form of flirting for us, normally, to talk about how attractive certain actors or musicians are to us when we see them in movies or on TV. We do it all the time. She does it, too. But this time, when I did it, it really bothered her.
Driving home from somewhere the other night, she admits that this thing with Virginie uncharacteristically bothers her. "I usually think it's cute and kind of a turn on when you're attracted to other women, but this time it isn't. I've analyzed this," she says, "and I think it's because you and I aren't very sexual right now, compared to usual. It's hard to be sexual when you're almost full-term, you know what I'm saying? With me so pregnant, I feel like a cow, and that Virginie Whatsername, that twelve-year old looking girl with her bikini bottoms riding up on her butt, is so skinny, I feel threatened, I guess."
I in turn confess to her that in reality I'm not particularly attracted to this Virginie person. I have been playing it up a little bit, for Amy's benefit. Sure, Virginie's attractive, but she's not that attractive. I like looking at her in the commercials because she's pleasant to look at, I won't lie, but if I'm really honest with myself it's mostly because there's this thrilling knowledge that Amy knows I find her attractive. It's just a little jolt, a little sexual frisson, to spice up our prime time viewing pleasure.
Amy assures me that it usually is fun, that such flirting seems to bring us closer. It's just her feeling insecure in her late pregnancy. I apologize like crazy, and the next time the commercial comes on she stares at me to see what I do. I glance down at my New Yorker the whole time, smiling self-consciously, looking anywhere but at the TV. She laughs. I laugh. We hug.
Saturday morning. Abby sleeps in, and Amy and I spend hours in bed talking, giggling, debating, speculating. The subject turns to religion. Amy says, "I was thinking about our girls last night-plural, girls, I'm just starting to think of myself as a mother of two-and I started getting really scared. I started thinking of all the bad stuff that could happen to them, despite our best efforts. A lot of religious people seem to take a great deal of comfort from turning thing over to God's hands. To them, whatever happens, good or bad, is God's will. But in the case of my kids, I don't want God's will to be part of the equation. I want to know that if I keep my children safe, if I teach them well, if I do everything right, they'll be okay. I don't want to turn them over to God. Because God may have something in store for me, for them, that I don't want."
Saturday night: we let Abby stay up late with us. Usually I take her upstairs at 8:30 sharp, but tonight we keep her up until ten. We're all three on the sofa, our limbs overlapping, our bodies intermingled so tightly you could blur your eyes and wonder which foot over there will move when you will it to. We're having a great time: singing, reading story books, having long conversations about Pooh and feet and the scabbed-over sores on her shins. Amy and I gang up on Abby, one on each side of her, and hug and kiss her and make little cooing noises at her until she giggles.
Then, Amy feels what she thinks is a contraction. I note the time. Seven minutes later, another contraction. I write it down on a pad of Post-Its on the coffee table. Abby touches Amy's belly and says, "Don't worry, Mommy, baby come out soon." But the next contraction is milder, and then there are no more. We go back to playing. We give Abby a snack of cheese and crackers and milk. She asks us to be like babies. I put my head in her lap and say, "Waah, waah." She touches my face and says, "Don't cry, little baby, I make you feel better." We talk about flying a kite someday soon. Abby says, "Mommy come, too?" "Absolutely." Then, finally I take her up to bed.
On Sunday we take a walk over to the small playground in our apartment complex. Abby rides down all the slides several times. She then asks to ride in the swing. I push her, and Amy gets in the other swing and shows her how to pump with her legs by kicking them out each time she flies up. Then Abby returns to the slides. Each time she gets ready to go down a slide she turns to us and waves goodbye. "Good luck!" we say. "Good luck!" she says back. "I had fun time." Then she goes down the slide.
And it occurs to me, all at once, that this whole weekend has been, for all three of us, sort of our last blast as a family of three. In a matter of days Abby will no longer be the only child; we've indulged her this weekend, we've let her enjoy the exclusivity of our attentions one last time.
When it's time to go home, Abby throws a tantrum. "I need to get paahk!" she screams, flailing all over as I try to pick her up. "Paahk! I need paahk!" Only after we get home do I realize that she's been crying about her rock, not about the park. (Rock, paahk: you can see where we got confused.) Each time we go on an outing she finds another rock on the ground to add to her collection. Only this time she set it down on one of the slides and forgot to pick it up and take it home with her when it was time to leave. I feel bad, because it would have been so easy at the time to let her walk back over and retrieve her stone. And now it's too late.
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