Chapter 70
Was this the street she turns on? She couldn’t quite remember. She’d driven it a thousand times, but today, everything looked different. She wasn’t quite herself. And to think she had to pack her bags tonight for her afternoon flight to Buffalo tomorrow. What would she pack? She tried to busy her mind with other things, but it was too difficult. Her mind was still reeling. What time was it again? She looked at the dashboard clock for the umteenth time. Four thirty. Gosh, maybe he’d be there now. You never know, sometimes she came home in the middle of the day and found him on the couch with a pen and paper and his guitar, or sometimes he was just lying there as likely to be watching an old black and white movie, as he was to be watching Gilligan’s Island or Cartoon Network. The life of a musician was an unpredictable one, that was certain.
She walked in the kitchen door and tossed her purse and keys down, never noticing that they both slid off the counter, hitting the floor with a resounding thud. Space seemed to pass beneath her feet as if she weren’t moving; so much like a zombie she moved, as she navigated her way through their home. He was here; she knew he was. She saw his car. Now all she had to do was find him. He wasn’t in the living room; he must be upstairs. With all the determination she could muster, she trudged up the steps to find him walking out of their bedroom, a half empty bag of pretzels in one hand and a can of Coke in the other. He looked really happy for someone who, for the last half hour, had been packing a suitcase.
“Hey babe!” He greeted her with a bright smile and a quick peck on the lips. “How’d your day go?” He noticed the serious expression on her face and took that to mean she wasn’t in the mood to talk about it. “That bad, huh?”
“I, um, I…” she stuttered. Somehow the English language was failing her at the moment. She couldn’t compose her fractured thoughts into a coherent sentence.
“C’mon darlin’ I’m going downstairs.” Setting the pretzels aside, he put his hand at the small of her back, directing her back down the steps. He led her to a seat on the couch. Maybe she wanted to talk after all. He calmly sat her down and looked at her with genuine concern in his eyes as he spoke, “What happened today?”
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I,” she paused and looked out the window to their shady front yard, trying to draw some calm from what she’d always felt was a soothingly beautiful view. “Johnny, I, um, I,” She turned to face him once again, meeting his now worried eyes. She didn’t want to cry; she was determined not to. She choked back the tears as she announced, despondently, “John, I’m pregnant.”
A wide-eyed look of shock overcame him. Little noises left his mouth but they weren’t enough to qualify as words, until at last, an actual sentence left his lips, if it could be called that. “Oh shit.”
Gennie swallowed hard, on the verge of tears. “Don’t sound so enthused.”
“Oh God, Gen, no! I’m… I’m… well… I’m thrilled! But… we’ve been so careful. You’re on the pill, y’know. This isn’t supposed to happen.”
“I know. I had no idea. Nothing was unusual, no symptoms. My doctor just found it by accident today.”
“By accident? How does that happen?”
“The ol’ pee in the cup is how it happens. Just a routine part of the exam.” She shook her head. “Imagine my surprise when she walked in and told me we’re gonna be parents.”
“Oh my God, Gen. We’re pregnant!” He smiled at her; he’d never felt more love for anyone in his life than he did for her right now. “So, well… when?” He had so many questions, he felt like he couldn’t fire them off fast enough.
If he was trying to make her feel better about this unexpected situation, he was doing a pretty good job. She couldn’t understand why exactly, but he seemed sincerely happy. “Well, she wasn’t sure, but she thinks it’ll be late September, early October maybe. I need a more, um, thorough exam to really know for sure. That’s gonna be in a few weeks.”
“Do you feel Ok? Are you alright?”
She shook her head and shrugged. “Yeah, I’m fine. I feel great, same as usual. I had no clue, so nothing’s happened… yet.”
He ran his fingers through his hair. This was so much information to consume so quickly- not that he wasn’t pleased. He was. But, God, why did it have to be so sudden? He’d always imagined that they’d go through this together, planning every step of the way, flowers, music, champagne- the total romance package. But the end result was the same. “Holy shit, Gen, I’m gonna be a dad!”
A smile crept across her tear stained cheeks. “Yeah, you are,” she giggled.
No wonder he’d found her to be so beautiful lately, he’d been feeling really happy recently and this must be what it was all leading up to. More of that divine intervention, he supposed. “Just a sec…I’ll be right back.” He excused himself and dashed up the stairs two at a time. After a short while, he returned wearing a smile from ear to ear. He descended the stairs deliberately, watching her all the time as he made his way back to her side. He knelt in front of her, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “It’s gonna be all right, darlin’. It really is. You know that I wanna have kids. And I think you know that I want you to be their mother.”
A pathetic little smile found its way to her face. “It’s gonna be that way now, like it or not,” she laughed.
“This isn’t how I imagined it happening, y’know, but, um…” He faced her with a huge smile, completely confident in their future. “Genevieve, will you be my wife?”
He held up a beautiful diamond ring set in platinum. He’d purchased it not long after she’d moved in with him; he just didn’t know the right time to give it to her. Originally, he’d been thinking Christmas but they were so on the go with family obligations all over the country, that the timing would’ve been really bad. Then he thought about New Years, but as it turned out, it didn’t work with the crowd and all; bad timing once again. Then it was definitely Valentines Day, but in the end, it wasn’t very romantic- he was in bed with the flu. So the ring sat in the back of his sock drawer, waiting for the perfect moment. He was just relieved to have finally found the right time to give it to her.
The ease with which he’d just proposed to her and his swiftness at producing a ring astonished her. Clearly, this was something he’d done some preparation on. How else could he have had such fortuitous timing? She sat with her jaw agape; she could hardly believe her eyes. Without even thinking, she brushed his hands, and the ring aside as she made a grab for his face. Taking his head between her shaking hands, she kissed him passionately. “Yes, Johnny. Of course, I’ll be your wife. I would love to be your wife!”
“God, Gen. You have
no idea how happy you’ve just made me!” The elation showed on his face. He
recounted in his mind the events of the past several months. With one fateful
choice of a simple piece of paper last May, he’d changed his life forever. It
hadn’t even been a year yet since he’d met her, but what a year it had been!
“So this isn’t because of…”
“No!” he objected fervently. “No, not at all.” He caressed her cheek tenderly. “Do you wanna know how long I’ve had this ring?” He paused and gazed into her eyes. “I’ve had this since right after you moved in here. I’ve wanted to marry you all along. I just needed the right opportunity to ask. I never thought we were in a hurry.”
“Till now,” she smiled.
“Till now,” he repeated, kissing her softly. “But don’t think that my feelings aren’t genuine. I’ve loved you since almost the first time I saw you.”
She gave him a coy smile. “No you haven’t,” she blushed. “You can’t tell me it goes back that far!”
Easing himself onto the couch beside her, he put his arm around her. “Darlin’ I can honestly say I fell for you that night in Minneapolis. And I’ve wondered what it would be like to be married to you since we were in St Louis.”
She rolled her eyes. “Tell the truth now. That day in St Louis was nice, and you may have wanted to act like we were married, but I somehow doubt you were thinking about getting married then.”
“Well, I didn’t say I’d have asked. I said I thought about it,” he teased her with a wink of his eye. “But, Gen,” he said, suddenly getting serious, “I knew it would happen.”
“Me too, I guess. It’s like you became a part of me. And it happened so quickly that I never realized how… integrated into my life you’d become until it was too late. I knew you were there for good.”
“Gen, I wanna be there forever.”