Chapter 3: Preparation

Bill Pierce cleared the table Sunday morning while still wearing the robe over his underwear. He went to join Carolyn in the bedroom where she was already dressing.

“I think,” Carolyn said, “that I show in this dress.” Well, her pregnancy showed more, and more delightfully, when she was wearing nothing at all. Still, knowing it was there, he could see it easily.

“Ihm hmm.” He bent to kiss the tiny bulge that held the fruit of their love. From her frown, that was the wrong answer. They weren’t telling anyone, yet. He hadn’t told a single soul. Carolyn had written her mother, and -- of course -- somewhere there was a doctor’s office full of people who knew. But they were going to church where nobody at all knew. And, he had to admit, that keeping this secret sometimes made him a little smug.

Well, Carolyn wore that dress to church, anyway. He drove there, watched her descend to the choir robing room, and went to sit in a pew until the others came in. He used to enjoy talking with Dan in the back of the church -- they both got there early so their wives could warm up with the rest of the choir. These days, however, Dan couldn’t talk of anything but Watergate. Never had so many talked about so little.

The choir sounded beautiful, as it always did when Carolyn was singing. Jake preached on the Old Testament -- something he’d once confessed he did when he couldn’t find a different take on the Gospel than the take he’d preached on three years before. The rest of the service was okay. After the service, he waited with the other non-singing spouses of choir members. He and Carolyn shared a kiss in the car before he started it.

“I think our secret’s out,” Carolyn said then.

“Well, you couldn’t expect it to last until you delivered. You are a slender girl, and it shows -- shows delightfully.” He’d enjoyed keeping the secret, knowing that his entire life had changed while his friends remained blithely ignorant of the change, but he’d enjoy sharing the news, too.

“What’s the next step?” he asked. Did they send out announcements? Wasn’t that only at birth? He’d learned of pregnancies -- babies attracted him -- but he’d never got an announcement of one. Did he tell his friends while she told hers?

“I suppose I need to buy some maternity clothes.” That made sense.

“Well, I like to see you without any clothes, but I suppose you have to go out in public sometimes. That’s another item that we didn’t put in the budget, but we’ve actually got some savings, now. You didn’t use much of your last TA earnings.” The budget wasn’t a problem, which was his contribution to the shopping. Carolyn, thank God, wasn’t one of those women who liked to drag their husbands along.

“Well, we’ll go through that awfully fast.” And, they would when the baby came, of course. But maternity clothes weren’t going to make all that much difference about when they’d go on credit.

After dinner Monday night, Carolyn modeled her new dress for him. It was lovely, accentuating her melons and flowing around the rest of her body. He would have thought that concealing the bulge would detract from her appearance, but this dress didn’t.

Waiting for the choir the next Sunday, Dan was razzing him. Instead of Watergate, he concentrated on Agnew. Did he think no Democrat had ever taken a bribe? They lived in the metro area of Chicago for God’s sake.

“You can say he took bribes,” he pointed out. “All he was convicted of was tax evasion.”

“That’s all Capone was convicted of, too.” Well, yes, but it was hard to convict Capone of anything. Witnesses died suddenly. He felt Carolyn’s presence behind him. Dan looked a question to someone coming up the stair. Carolyn? Gladys, who might well be with her?

“Well, Bill,” Dan asked, “tired of borrowing babies? Decided to grow your own?” He must have seen the dress and drawn the intended conclusion.

“Well, Carolyn has promised that I can hold him on days other than Sundays.”

Dan congratulated Carolyn, and Gladys, who had been with her, added her own to both of them. They were still in the friendly mode the next week. Dan, waiting with him again, abandoned politics to discuss the dreary, rainy weather and parenting. His opinion of the latter could be summed up as ‘difficult but worth it.’ When the choir members came up together, Dan latched on to Carolyn and drew her away. He started to follow, but Gladys held his arm. She drew him away from the crowd.

“Look Bill, this is none of my business, but, really, Carolyn needs a lot more than one maternity dress.”

“Tell her. I don’t pretend to know anything about women’s fashions.” Indeed, pretty as that dress was, he preferred Carolyn out of it.

“She tells me that the budget doesn’t cover that.”

“Look, Gladys. It isn’t me. She has a checkbook and two credit cards -- well four.” Not that she was going to buy a dress from Amoco. “I’ll try to deal with it, but I didn’t put her on an inadequate allowance -- or, for that matter, any allowance.”

“Well...” Gladys went to the door. “It looks like it’s letting up,” she called. “Want to get the car now, Dan.” He buttoned up his raincoat and opened his umbrella. When Dan got there, they went out together to get their separate cars.

As he drove home, he planned how he could persuade Carolyn to spend more on clothes. Persuading Carolyn wasn’t one of his greatest skills. She, when she wasn’t angrily opposed to anything he suggested, listened and made up her own mind.

He and Carolyn agreed about few things, but they both thought that the mid-day meal on Sunday was ‘dinner.’ Carolyn served wonderful ones. Although he never objected to left-overs of her cooking, and although they were in church, going to and from, or preparing for it for hours before hand, Sunday dinner was always something fresh cooked. Dinner was ham with sweet potatoes and peas. Dessert was a cake, store-bought, but tasty. While they were eating it, he laid the foundation for his arguments.

“You know, the budget we planned out at the beginning has lasted longer than I really expected. Even so, the baby is going to sink it. Up to then, we said your teaching salary -- TA salary is what it turned out to be -- would cover any clothes you needed. Well, when we said that, we hadn’t planned on your pregnancy. Is it still enough? Do you need more? Does it have to be both this semester’s and last semester’s salaries to cover this semester’s expenditures? Something else? I can’t see how it could be something else.” He had, after all, already included ‘more.’ Money was never different; it was only more or less. “But it might.”

“Well, Bill, the salary was supposed to cover the extra clothes of being a TA. That didn’t include this dress, which I don’t plan to wear to class.” Sure. They hadn’t considered the cost of pregnancy back when they were making the budget, but -- when they’d agreed to the pregnancy, or to try for the pregnancy -- they’d agreed that there would be extra expenses.

“Okay. Does that mean that the extra cost of having a baby starts now? That’s okay. We have some savings, and we have tons of credit. I don’t want to use the credit for things we’ll keep needing, but it’s going to be extra for the baby. If it’s going to be extra for the pregnancy, too, so be it.”

“You don’t know how much maternity clothes cost. And it’s so much for things you’ll only wear for a short period.”

“As a matter of fact, I won’t wear them at all.” Carolyn was not amused. “But that isn’t what’s critical. Look, last year you were a graduate student who taught a course. This year, you’re a faculty member. Why are you teaching?”

“Remember? I told you that Kindle won’t recommend me for a teaching position until I do some teaching he can see.” Sure, he remembered. He was reminding her of the reasons. Some days the girl was charming; some days her assumption that he was an idiot grated.