Jennifer Lohmann - A Promise for the Baby

Thank you for your concern,

Vivian

Of course that was ridiculous. Karl would be at work too much to teach Jelly Bean—the name Vivian had taken to calling the baby growing inside her—how to flip someone the bird.

Dear Karl,

Jelly Bean returns from visitation having forgotten how to talk, but has become a surprisingly good correspondent. His teachers are worried.

Talk, dammit!

Vivian

She needed things from him. Humiliating though it was, she needed a place to live and health insurance. And she had also needed to get out of Las Vegas. Karl had given her those things with a poof of his magic fix-it sense. But an apartment and health insurance—and food, and a laptop so she could search for jobs, and a transit card and gas to get her around Chicago and to interviews—only solved her physical problems, not to mention that they made her feel increasingly dependent and trapped.

Maybe she didn’t need someone to talk to, but she wanted someone to talk to. Jelly Bean was still abstract; she couldn’t feel the baby yet, but she could feel her body changing and she wanted to talk with someone about it. When she told Xìnyùn everything she ate tasted like metal, he only whistled. And she couldn’t face her Las Vegas friends—not yet anyway. Not until she found new bearings.

Chicago was a big city, with people who might be her friends, eventually. But right now she was alone and the one person she knew was hiding from her.

Plus, she had things she needed to discuss with him. Such as whether or not she was officially on his health insurance yet and could go to the doctor. And did he want to go with her? She didn’t expect him to be an equal partner in her pregnancy—they were married, but they weren’t intimate—she just wanted...

Hell, she didn’t even know what she wanted.

She wanted to be able to stay awake past nine at night and catch him when he came home so she could eat dinner with him, rather than leaving his food on the stove. Maybe have a conversation with an animal that wasn’t a bird. Play a game other than solitaire. Measure Karl’s head for the hat she was making him as a gift rather than just guessing his size.

Vivian put Xìnyùn back in his cage, packed up her purse and headed out the door with a list of potential employers to visit. Her solution to her current situation was to get a job. A job would give her money. Money would give her the freedom to get her own apartment. There was always the possibility she’d make friends with someone she worked with.

Besides, being unemployed was not something she could handle for long, if only because getting up in the morning and going to a job had been a part of her daily routine for so long. She’d been working since it was legal for her to do so. It had been the only way to make sure she had money to save for college and find a life that didn’t involve moving in the middle of the night.

Fat lot of good it had done her. Her father had taken her life savings and disappeared into the darkness, leaving her to do much the same.

She shook her father out of her head. He had no place in Chicago. He wouldn’t think to find her here and if he couldn’t find her, he couldn’t ask her for more money. All the money she got from a job would go to providing for her and Jelly Bean. And she’d start to get some of her self-worth back. With a job would come the knowledge that she wasn’t a leech on Karl’s silent kindness. And maybe the hope that she could pay him back, somehow.

* * *

WHEN KARL WALKED through the doorway to his apartment at eleven o’clock on Friday night to find Vivian had pulled a dining chair into the entryway and was reading What to Expect When You’re Expecting, he knew it had been too much to hope that he could dodge her for eight months.

“Good evening, Karl.” She rested the book on her lap and looked up at him. “Have you been avoiding me?”

It sounded cowardly when she put it like that. He stared at the curve of her lips above her pointed chin—soft over sharp—and he had to stop himself from running his thumb over the bow. He didn’t have to be drunk to be susceptible to the arcs of her face, but he needed to remember that she was only temporary. The baby was permanent, but Vivian fleeting.

“I work a lot.” It came out like a defense.

“Well, you’re home now, and I’m still up, so we can talk.”

He beat her to picking up her chair to carry it back to the dining table. As he passed the bar area of the kitchen, someone whistled at him. The bird was climbing around on a miniature jungle gym. Xìnyùn whistled again, a high-pitched, squeaky wolf whistle. The bird was on his kitchen counter. And whistling at him. He stopped to look at the bird, who hopped in response.

Vivian made kissy noises—at the bird, not at him. “Xìnyùn always did prefer men.”

Karl shook his head and continued carrying the chair to the dining room table. “Why is he out of his cage?” That wasn’t the question he wanted answered. “Why do you have a bird that prefers men?”

That still wasn’t the right question—the one that had been niggling at him. He wanted to know why she was here in Chicago. The growing fetus and health insurance didn’t seem enough of a reason for a stranger to be living in his apartment. But he didn’t ask those, because he was too caught up watching Vivian bend over and encourage the bird to hop onto her finger.

“Luck, be a lady tonight,” the bird squeaked. At least, that’s what Karl thought the bird said. It might have been a whistle.

He sat in a chair at his table in the apartment that used to be his escape from the chaos of life.

“Xìnyùn’s out of his cage because he needs the exercise and mental stimulation. Parrots are smart and need regular challenges to their intelligence. In answer to your second question, I have a parrot that prefers men to women because he’s not my parrot.”

“Are you going to be hunted down by someone whose parrot you stole?” What did he know about her other than that she claimed to be pregnant and was living in his apartment? And that he liked the curve of her lips and length of her neck.

She laughed, but a haunted look accompanied the noise. “Xìnyùn’s my father’s bird.”

“Where’s your father and why doesn’t he have the bird?”

“Um...” She looked at the window.

“There’s probably bird shit on my kitchen counter. You can at least tell me where your father is.”

She looked back at him. “I’ll clean up Xìnyùn’s mess. I’ve been cleaning it all week.”

Of course. He hadn’t been home all week. The bird could’ve been dancing on his pillow for all he knew.

“And my father said he couldn’t keep the bird right now. I came home from work one day to find Xìnyùn in my apartment, along with a note.” She said all that while looking at him, but then she looked out the window. There was more to the story of her father. “But I wanted to talk to you about our child.”

She sat at the table across from him, and the bird hopped down her arm, landing on the belly of the pregnant woman on the cover of the book.

“Should you be around a bird while pregnant?” He really should know more about pregnancy than that Vivian shouldn’t have caffeine or alcohol.

“It’s fine. I wear gloves when I clean up after him and wash my hands often, but that’s one of the things I wanted to talk with you about. I need to find a doctor.”

“Are you sick?”

She pulled her chin back into her neck and gave him a funny look. “I’m pregnant.”

Karl’s throat tried to choke him and he coughed. “This is all new to me.”

“It’s new to me, too. I’ve not had much more time to get used to the idea than you have.” She patted his hand like he was a child. Her hand was warm. “I need to start having regular checkups for myself and the baby. Would you like to go with me to the first visit?” When he turned his hand palm up, she grasped it and squeezed. “Maybe it will help this all be real to you.”