THE PREGNANCY

She occasionally resents the way her body is reacting to the pregnancy

Tommy arrived back home after a long day at work, and he felt like doing no more than putting his feet up and maybe even closing his eyes for a few minutes. Work did that to him, especially after an hour or two of overtime.

But he had walked out of the calm world of man and into a storm.

Lydia had her sights aimed on him.

“Nine months,” she said to him, “is too long for a woman to put up with it! Now you listen here, Tommy, and ask yourself how you’d be feeling if it was you growing ever fatter like I am! You wouldn’t want it at all, would you? You’d be off down the pub like a shot and before I could say Jack Robinson the baby would be born an alcoholic into a world of chaos! But I don’t do that sort of thing, do I? I find myself resembling a beached whale, vomiting all over the place every morning and having to put up with it while you rush off to work. And to make sure you avoid the worst of it you put in for endless hours of overtime so that you don’t have to listen to my opinions on the subject of pregnancy. And don’t you forget … it was you who wanted this baby, you who wanted to pass your genes on to a new generation, not me! And there’s no need for you to be pulling that face, you know that I’m right...”

He shuffled, felt guilty, knew it wasn’t his fault but wanted to take the blame because he didn’t like seeing her like this. He didn’t mind the bump under her dress, in fact he quite liked it, it was mumsy and special, but he didn’t like the way she hated her pregnancy. And she still had weeks to go, weeks during which the bump would grow bigger and she would probably feel more bitter.

“I’d take the discomfort from you and share it if I could,” he mumbled. “and I just couldn’t avoid the overtime if I wanted to keep my job.”

“That’s easy for you to say!” she retorted scornfully. “It’s easy to say you’d do the impossible if you could because there’s no way you can prove it and I’ll tell you here and now there isn’t a man on this planet who’d put up with what I’m having to put up with! Oh, if it was men who got pregnant the human race would have petered out ages ago! Everyone knows that much! There’d be no more babies if you lot had to grow enormous for nine months! Instead we’d all be down the pub whooping it up and pretending there’s going to be a tomorrow when we’d know there wasn’t!”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “I really am...”

“I could have had a termination,” she suggested, “though it’s a bit late for that kind of thing now! But I could have gone to the clinic and demanded they cut it out and flush it away for good and all! Then I wouldn’t be the vomiting beast in front of you, all stomach and sickness, all misery and… and…”

“And love?” he asked. “When we did it, when you became pregnant, when we talked about wanting a family, when you were so eager to make a start before your body clock said it was getting to be too late… wasn’t there love in it? Wasn’t there us two people, you and me, close as close could be, and both talking the same language and on the same road?”

“What on Earth do you mean?” she mumbled. “What road? Who said we both wanted the same things? Who said I wanted to be so obese… so huge and unwieldy, so repulsive?”

“You’re not repulsive,” he whispered, “there’s not one thing about you that’s repulsive, though I could mention your hormones and the way they’ve changed you from the sweet little lover in my life to someone who enjoys having a jolly good moan...”

“You’d moan, too, if you had to put up with it...”

“I’ll tell you want,” said Tommy quietly and thoughtfully, “Get your coat on and we’ll go out for a bite to eat. I’ll treat you to something special. You like Indian curries, don’t you? We’ll go to the Indian restaurant and you can have a teal treat...”

“And make me bloat up even more?” she asked, and managed a feeble smile. “Then you won’t blame the baby for having an ugly wife, but the food you’ve just forced down her throat?”

He reached for the telephone, and held it in front of him. “I’ll phone for a table for two,” he said quietly. “I’ll ask for an alcove table, and we’ll be together, just the two of us, and I’ll tell you exactly what I think of you, which is something you might have forgotten...”

“Two and a bit,” she said, rubbing her bump.

“You want this baby, don’t you?” he asked, gently.

“You know I do. It’s just that sometimes I get to wondering why it’s we women who have to do all the suffering, carry all the burden, and you men get off scot-free. There are such things as mirrors, you know, and I don’t like looking at myself any more. Yet I used to think I was quite pretty.”

“You’ve never been lovelier,” he said, and it was a truthful observation. Even the bump was okay to his eyes. It was part of something new and vibrant and, yes, lovely. And there was a radiance to her face, a winsomeness that touched his heart when he looked at her along with a kind of promise for a future that wasn’t so far off and getting closer by the minute, when she’d be delivered of the produce of his love for her and they’d be a family, the unit that they’d discussed endlessly and that he knew they both wanted.

It was just this awkward time when a kind of resentment bubbled up and she flew, verbally, at him and blamed him for what she perceived as being ugly and obese, the precious bump that was a real promise for tomorrow.

“Come on, then,” she said, “if you’re going to buy me dinner I’ll let you even though I have peeled enough potatoes for a fortnight while I was waiting for you to get back from work!”

He grinned at her, trying not to yawn. “The potatoes can wait,” he promised her, “and you can even have a glass of red if you want one!”

“I might,” she conceded, “and: “I love you Tommy,” she whispered. “It might not always seem it, but I really do.”

© Peter Rogerson 09.12.16