Angela watches Evelyn’s features morph as a wave of emotions colour the canvas of her face.
“Yes,” she says, her eyes shining. “I’d like that very much.”
* * *
A few days after Angela’s tense meeting with Dr. Taylor, she and Tina are back at their ob-gyn’s office for the results of Angela’s early ultrasound. Tina perches on the edge of a chair in the corner of the cool, brightly lit room while Angela settles herself down on the crunchy white paper of the exam table. The nurse today is a squat, curvy twenty-something woman with black hair pulled up in a puffy topknot. Her scrubs have Simpsons characters on them, and Angela likes her immediately.
“Is this your first pregnancy ultrasound?” she asks Angela with a toothy smile.
Angela hesitates. “You mean for this pregnancy?”
The nurse’s smile falters. “Yes.”
Angela nods.
“Okay, excellent. And you’re at, what”—she consults her computer screen—“about seven weeks?”
“Yup.” Angela’s stomach is fluttering with nerves now. But the good kind. Like a first kiss.
“Okay, good. Good. And how have you been feeling?”
“Nervous.”
The nurse nods sympathetically and types several words into the system while Angela waits. Tina catches her eye and winks. “All right, then! Dr. Singh will be with you shortly. Hang tight.”
She slips out the door and leaves Tina and Angela alone again. They can hear a child wailing from another room down the hall. A phone rings.
“Always lots of waiting, eh?” Tina says. Her hands are fidgeting in her lap.
“Ha! Yeah. The anticipation is kind of killing me, T.”
“Oh my God, I know.”
“Right?”
“Fuck.”
They both laugh. Angela shakes her head and lets her eyes wander across the walls, vaguely registering the crayon children’s drawings and public service announcements for the flu shot. A few minutes later, the door finally opens again.
“Hi, Angela, Tina,” Dr. Singh says, nodding at them both. “Nice to see you again.”
“You, too,” they mutter in unison.
“Well,” Dr. Singh says. “I have some more very good news for you both. Based on what we could see in the imaging, you have at least one viable sac in the uterus.”
“Did you say at least one?” Tina pipes up.
Dr. Singh is smiling. “Yes. There’s a shadow behind the first sac and they couldn’t quite get a clear angle on it during the ultrasound. There’s a chance you may be pregnant with twins, but we can confirm that today with a fetal Doppler.”
Tina is on her feet now, striding over to Angela. She puts her arm around her wife’s shoulders. “So you mean we can…”
“Listen to the heartbeat. Or possibly heartbeats, yes.”
“Ha!” Tina exclaims.
Angela can’t stop smiling. “We’re really pregnant, T!”
Tina plants a kiss on her forehead. They’re beaming like newlyweds.
“I’ll just get the monitor set up for you,” Dr. Singh mutters, busying herself with a small white machine Angela doesn’t take much notice of. “Just lie back, Angela, and lift your shirt. This will be just like an ultrasound.”
Dr. Singh squeezes the cold blue gel onto Angela’s midsection. She turns up the volume on the system and all three of them freeze, their breath caught. She glides the wand over Angela’s belly as the Doppler crackles. It reminds Angela of trying to tune an old radio.
A moment later, the doctor stops the wand and holds it steady.
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump goes the machine, but there’s another strand of beats weaving in with the first. The most beautiful sound Angela has ever heard. A perfect harmony.
“That’s two heartbeats, ladies,” Dr. Singh confirms, and both Angela and Tina burst into tears at the same moment. Tina nearly crushes Angela’s hand as she squeezes it.
“I love you,” she says.
“I love you, too.”
The moment suspends itself in time, drawn out and shimmering with a pale golden light. A precious and rare moment of pure, unadulterated joy.
“Congratulations,” Dr. Singh says. “You’re having twins.”
CHAPTER 23 Nancy
SPRING 1987
Nancy has spent the half-hour streetcar ride to Dr. Taylor’s house thinking about how much she’s been lying to her husband.
Nearing the intersection closest to Dr. Taylor’s street, Nancy tugs the cord for her stop and pulls herself to her feet, cradling her pregnant belly with one hand and bracing herself against the nearest seat back with the other. A woman in a seat across from the back door smiles at her, and she feels her baby squirm along with her guilt.
Nancy realized she was pregnant right before their first Christmas as a married couple. She had missed her period, her boobs were sore, and the dreaded morning sickness was back. She’d welcomed the symptoms, knowing what they meant, though she didn’t tell Michael she knew the signs from past experience. It had been difficult to pretend, but once she got past the first month, the experience became new again, unfamiliar, and it belonged to both of them.
They went to the doctor and got the results confirmed, and Michael picked her up and swung her around in celebration on the sidewalk outside the clinic. It was a moment of true happiness. Possibly the first of Nancy’s adult life. And she couldn’t believe how stark the difference was between learning about this pregnancy versus her first one. She hadn’t been too concerned about her fertility, but discovered, with no small measure of surprise, that there was a razor’s edge in her life where she went from being terrified of getting pregnant to terrified of not getting pregnant. You could hardly fit a toothpick in the space between.
She’s at six months now, with a beautiful rounded belly and breasts firmer and bigger than she’d ever dreamed possible. Aside from the usual tiredness, swelling, and difficulty bending over, her pregnancy is going smoothly, and her relationship with Michael is strong—except for the fact that she continues to lie to him about where she disappears to on evenings and weekends when she goes to work for the Janes.
She isn’t sure how much longer she can keep finding excuses. When Michael asked her this afternoon where she was heading off to, she told him she would be out shopping for baby things for the next few hours and would be home in time for dinner. But that didn’t seem to cut it this time. As her pregnancy has progressed, Michael has become more and more protective of her, and less inclined to let her run errands or overtax herself.
“Whatever it is, I can do it, just give me a list,” he’d said, tossing a dishcloth into the sink and frowning at her. “You don’t have to do all of this yourself, Nancy. Let me help.”
Nancy muttered something noncommittal and left for the streetcar without looking back. She knows she’s running from something dangerous here. It’s been weighing on her mind at three in the morning when her pinched bladder drives her from her bed and the pregnancy insomnia takes hold. She lies awake for hours at a time, considering whether it’s still even going to be viable for her to volunteer her time with the Janes once the baby arrives. She hasn’t told Evelyn or Alice about the possibility of quitting yet, and she would hate to have to give it up. But there’s a part of her that might welcome it. The risk of arrest has stressed her out more since she became pregnant, and it would be a relief to stop lying to Michael about this particular secret. The baby will bring them closer together, she figures, and if she bows out of the Janes at the same time, well, maybe this is the fresh start she needs. She’s wondered before how the other Janes manage to navigate this with their husbands. Does the secrecy weigh on them like it does on her?