The Other Mother. Кейт Хьюит

draws me in. Makes me want something nebulous I’m afraid to name and almost resent. I don’t want to feel this much. I don’t want to wonder.

      That afternoon he’s picked up by his mother rather than his older brother, and she looks about five years younger than me. She’s wearing a sundress of cheap cotton, her dark hair pulled back in a long ponytail, and her face is tight and pinched. She nods tersely at me as I say goodbye to Ramon, and he hugs my knees again.

      She clucks, kind of bemusedly impatient, and I smile. “Ramon loves to draw.”

      She glances at me, completely nonplussed, and then reaches for Ramon’s hand. “Vamonos, Ramon.”

      He follows her obediently, his little hand in hers, and something twists inside me. I don’t know her circumstances, but I know enough about the demographics of the kids here to guess that she is probably low income, without insurance, living in a tenement. Just like me. And she has at least two kids. She did it; why can’t I?

      I’m totally different from that woman, I tell myself. I have more choices, and I chose this. Adoption. Martha and Rob as parents, me making them happy. Me being happy because motherhood is not part of my life, my plan.

      Except I’ve never really had a plan.

      And watching her I can’t quite ignore the little kernel of envy I feel burrow down inside me. Of resentment. I feel as if I wasn’t given a chance to try to be different, to come up with a plan. I didn’t give myself one, and it’s too late now.

      That evening my friend Liza calls me and asks me to go out. I say yes even though I’m still tired and nauseous, because I want just a little of my old life, my old self, back.

      We meet at a bar on Hester Street, a dark cave of a place in the basement of a restaurant, with throbbing music and flashing lights. I have a headache within minutes of my arrival. Liza is there along with a couple of other mutual friends, people I know from art showings and yoga classes, dance festivals and the 4th Street Food Coop. They’re all like me, working several jobs to feed their passion, happy and rootless.

      Except I’m not like that any more.

      I force the thought away because for one night, for a few hours, I want to forget about it all, and just be me again.

      Except just minutes into the evening, I realize I don’t know who that is any more. I listen to them talk about vacations on Fire Island and an art installation in Thompson Square Park, a new restaurant in Chelsea, some performance art on Mulberry Street. It’s my world, the world I loved and lived in, and now it feels as foreign to me as the moon, as barren as a lunar landscape. And I hate that, because I don’t want to change. I don’t want to feel dissatisfied with a life that once made me so happy.

      At least I think it did.

      And yet already I am changing; I fight it, but still it happens.

      Liza goes for drinks and she raises her eyebrows when I say I just want orange juice. She comes back with some lurid-colored girly drink for herself and hands me my juice.

      “Pushing the boat out tonight, huh?”

      I just smile. She narrows her eyes. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

      I almost choke. “What?”

      “No alcohol, you look like shit—sorry.” She shrugs. “What am I supposed to think?”

      “Come on, Liza. Jump to a few conclusions, why don’t you?” I take a sip of juice and look away.

      “You are,” she says, and even with the blaring techno music I can hear the quiet certainty in her tone. “If you weren’t, you would have totally laughed it off. But you didn’t.”

      And I know she’s right. I handled that completely wrong, at least if I intended on keeping it a secret. But I don’t know if I really want to any more.

      She leans forward. “What are you going to do? You’re keeping it, obviously.”

      “Obviously?”

      “If you’re not drinking.”

      “Right.”

      She leans back, a little smile on her lips. “So…Mommy.”

      I flinch. I can’t help it. And I’m not prepared for the lightning shaft of pain that slices through me, leaves me breathless. Mommy.

      No, that’s not me. That will never be me.

      And as Liza looks at me curiously I try to feel the relief that thought should give me. It doesn’t come.

      Chapter 11

      MARTHA

      When I finally call Alex, I make sure to sound upbeat and casual. She sounds alarmingly subdued.

      “So, how are you feeling?”

      “Tired. Nauseous.” She sighs and I resist the urge to offer more advice.

      “Have you been to the OB?” I ask and she hesitates, so I know she hasn’t.

      “I will,” she says. “There’s not much point yet, really.”

      “Isn’t there?” Immediately I know I sound too sharp. I take a breath, release it slowly. “How far along are you, anyway? I forgot to ask.”

      “About eight weeks.” She still sounds subdued, and it irritates me.

      “Well, let me know when you make an appointment and I’ll go with you,” I say, as lightly as I can, and it’s only after the words are out of my mouth that I realize maybe she doesn’t want me to go with her.

      “Okay,” she says after a moment, but she doesn’t sound enthused and I force some more small talk before we finally both call it quits.

      Afterwards I sit at my desk, alternating between anger and fear. Are all our conversations going to be this awkward? I hate feeling as if I have to tiptoe around her and yet I’m too afraid not to. But this is going to be my child, and I want some say in her pregnancy decisions. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? It certainly feels reasonable to me.

      That evening I wait for my friend Maggie in Bryant Park. She’s running late so I surf the Internet on my smartphone, and end up, as usual, on one of the many pregnancy websites that chart fetal development.

       At nine weeks, your baby measures 2.3 cm in length and weighs less than 2 grams. Earlobes are visible, as are fingers and toes.

      2.3 centimeters. That’s what, an inch? An inch of infant, of life, waiting for me. My fingers clench around the phone. I feel a throb of longing, a surge of fear. A single inch and I am desperate.

      “Hey, Martha.” Maggie comes up behind me, and her sharp glance takes in my phone’s screen before I can shut it off. “Baby Bump dot com? Are you serious?”

      I click my phone off. “Hey to you too.” I smile, tightly. Maggie raises her eyebrows.

      “I know you can’t be pregnant.”

      And bizarrely, this hurts. The absolute certainty she has, because I know it too. I can’’t be pregnant. It’s been five years since Rob and I started trying, four years since they found the scarring on my Fallopian tubes caused by undiagnosed PCOS. Three years since the first IVF attempt, when I still felt keyed up with hope and determination, both leaching away with each further attempt.

      And now? Now I feel hope again, and it terrifies me.

      “I’m not,” I say lightly. “But a friend is.” Maggie just looks at me, her eyes slightly narrowed, and I know she’s wondering why I’d be scrolling through fetal development for a friend. It’s definitely not my style, but I don’t feel like getting into the uncertain complexities of what’s going on with Alex.

      “This baby thing has hit you pretty hard, hasn’t