The Mother Beforehand Read online

  And yet those orgasms felt good; they felt so good, in fact, that all she wanted to do was to come and come and come. She wanted to be her partner’s slut. She wanted to be ravaged treated like meat. She’d somehow decided that deep down, she wasn’t anything more.

  Work and home. Work and home. That’s all there was.

  Nicole didn’t talk to friends because they reminded her of the baby inside her that wasn’t, despite her insistence, ready to pop.

  She shut everything out. She watched movies, archived on the web and old enough for her mother to have enjoyed. Her dead mother, who’d taught Nicole the tiny bit she knew about birth and babies because there’d been no school during the fall — her mother who’d summed things up by saying that when things went to shit, no one wanted babies. They wanted sex, but never the life that sprang from the union like a disease.

  Nicole sat. And cried. And worked. But mostly she stayed at home with her hands around her belly as her 10th month of pregnancy began, followed by the 11th.

  CHAPTER NINE

  December 15, 2039 — Voyos Island

  “You need to see a doctor,” Veronica said.

  Nicole looked over. They were sitting by the pool, in the restraint area: the small alcove where she and Clive had once violated spa convention after she’d sat on a Rocket Pop.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Veronica said, eyeing Nicole’s giant belly.

  Nicole kept her face inscrutable, wearing large sunglasses with tortoiseshell frames. They were partly to block the sun and partly for modesty. Now that her pregnancy was entering what seemed to be its 47th week, she’d grown particularly hormonal and moody. It was cruel. Just as she otherwise might have been getting over her past attachments, Clive’s baby had begun playing marimba on her emotions. She cried at a moment’s notice.

  “I’m fine.” Nicole repeated it with the same sense of finality she’d used when Veronica had practically broken into her house and dragged her out of her self-imposed hermit’s funk.

  Nicole hadn’t wanted to leave her bed. Veronica had literally pulled her to sitting, stripped her, and tied on her bikini in a display that the pregnancy fetishists would have absolutely iced their underwear watching. She’d eventually agreed to leave on the condition that Veronica would keep her dumb logical opinions to herself.

  “Maybe you’re fine physically,” Veronica said, “but holy shit are you screwed between the ears. It’s okay, honey. You think you’re the first girl to fall for a client?”

  “I didn’t fall for him.”

  Veronica made a sympathetic face. “Listen, Nicky. Your baby needs you to be well everywhere. You think your stress isn’t getting sent to him?”

  “Her,” said Nicole. “It’s a girl.”

  “You finally went to the clinic?”

  Nicole shook her head. She didn’t feel like explaining. The baby was a girl. Because that’s what she wanted.

  “Hon,” Veronica said, “there are things that should be checked. I know you’ve got a midwife, but the doctors can find more. Simple things, like if the baby is wrapped up in its cord. Surely it won’t hurt to have that looked at, right? The baby can strangle and die.”

  Nicole didn’t dignify Veronica by glancing over. “No.”

  “Then at least get your midwife over early. They can find that kind of thing too. They know all of the parts nearly as good as doctors.”

  Nicole turned toward the pool. She didn’t feel sad. She felt strangely numb. Between her eyes and the pool, her giant stomach loomed like the head of an obstructive moviegoer. What did Veronica know? On the books, Nicole didn’t even have a uterus for her 11-month baby. If the midwife started poking around in there, she might find anything.

  “I’ll call the midwife when my contractions start.”

  “Let me call her. She can come to your house when we go back. I’ll stay with you, just to … you know.”

  Nicole closed her eyes, trying to be patient. Veronica was a nice girl. She had bright red hair and her smile could light a warehouse floor. She worked a horizontal cell with a line of sight to Nicole’s glass fetish table. Earlier in the day, they’d fucked their work partners while trading smiles and glances.

  “You promised me that if I came to the pool with you, we could sit quietly in the sun,” said Nicole.

  “You’re not right, baby. Clive messed you up.”

  “I’m fine, Veronica.”

  “We’re all here for you. You get that, right? There’s no shame in accepting help or admitting that you’ve been hurt.”

  Nicole sighed. “Okay, fine. I was hurt. But I’m over it.”

  “I don’t think you are.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Hon, you are not fine. I know you’re telling yourself that Clive is the father of your baby.”

  “He is.”

  “But he was away when the baby was conceived. He can’t be the father. I know you know that, Nicky. The way you won’t admit it makes me feel like you’re … well … sick.”

  Nicole took off her sunglasses and stared hard at Veronica. She’d been wearing her game face, ready to continue the discussion. But Nicole’s glare closed her mouth. Then, slowly, she put her own sunglasses on and reluctantly sat back.

  “I’m worried about you, Nicole,” she said after a moment, gazing up at the blue sky.

  Nicole reached to the side table, where she had a tall glass of iced tea. She took a sip, delicately pursing her lips around the straw.

  “Veronica,” she said after a moment, “have you ever seen Pretty Woman?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  September 12, 2040 — Voyos Island

  Nicole sat on her home porch with Veronica in the chair beside her. Their visits had finally become friendly again. Nicole liked Veronica again. She hadn’t for a while.

  Toward the tail end of her pregnancy and in the months following Chloe’s birth, Veronica had been like an overbearing guardian. She’d spoken to Nicole as if she might crack at any moment, as if her mental state was so fragile that she might, at any second, go crazy and kill everyone around her.

  In that first month, Veronica had pressed so often to hold baby Chloe that Nicole had come to resent her. Nicole was the mother, not Veronica. And just as she’d had a right to carry and deliver her baby however she chose, she had a right to raise her baby without interference.

  Veronica, at long last, seemed to have understood. With enough time and with the unusual pregnancy over, she’d come around enough to see that Nicole and her way of motherhood were fine.

  Chloe was on the deck beside Nicole’s chair, an array of colorful toys spread before her. The baby had hit most of her milestones early according to Veronica, who’d studied the things Nicole and her mother’s jaded influence had ignored. More and more escorts were interested in becoming mothers. Times were changing, and it was increasingly okay to be a whole being: sexual on one side, sensible on the other. Some girls didn’t think much of telling their children (those who’d had them before coming to Voyos) exactly what they did for work before sending them off to school — perhaps to grow up and do the same.

  Chloe held her head up, rolled over, sat up, and crawled early. She’d babbled. Formed words. Her first was “mama.” Her second, annoyingly, was “want.” Now Chloe wanted everything, including things she didn’t have words for. And most of the time Nicole wasn’t holding her, she was holding her hands out, expressing the simple sentence, “Want Mama.”

  But she wasn’t talking now, as Nicole and Veronica sat in porch chairs and caught up. Instead, she was sprawled out with her toys: no need to want them because they were all right there. She had a cone and stacking rings in bright colors, plus a miniature xylophone which she played almost well enough to form true tunes. Nicole secretly wondered if she’d have a gift for music, but then again she supposed every proud mother felt that way.

  Veronica, as if sensing her thoughts, looked down at the baby.

  “That almost so
unds like a melody.”

  Nicole laughed. But in truth, she’d thought so, too. Chloe kept banging out four simple notes: high-high, pause, low, pause, lower. It was pattern enough that she recognized the tune when Chloe played it … which, Nicole realized she’d been recently doing.

  It must be a tune she’d managed to pick up and emulate. Amazing. Nicole hadn’t even played much music since she’d been born, having lost most of her taste for music when Clive left her. Her favorite used to be Natasha Thomas, but memories of Natasha were bound tightly with memories of Clive. She hadn’t listened to her music in over a year.

  “I should go,” said Veronica, standing.

  “Do you have to?” Nicole looked up at Veronica with her big blue eyes. She’d been so averse to accepting help before Chloe’s birth, but now she was more than willing. Her baby was a handful and took all the help she could get. Especially today.

  Today. Nicole’s eyes watered, and Veronica saw right through her.

  “He’s not worth it, Nicky,” said Veronica, looking down.

  “Who?”

  “You know who.”

  Nicole sighed.

  “The arbitrary nature of today’s ‘anniversary’ with Clive, just by itself, should tell you all you need to know. Do you have a marriage anniversary with Clive? No. A first date anniversary? No. All you have is a—”

  “This is a first-date anniversary,” Chloe interrupted.

  “Mmm-hmm. And how long had you been fucking him before your ‘first’ date?”

  “He took me to the city. He bought me a dress and earrings and a necklace that—”

  “Just like a princess, huh? A princess who needed saving by her fabulous Prince Charming?”

  Nicole hung her head. She hadn’t wanted to celebrate this anniversary. It was stupid. They’d never celebrated it when they were together, but she’d realized yesterday that today was the day, an eternity ago, that she’d been Vivian for an evening, and Clive had been her shining Edward.

  It was the day they’d gone to see Natasha Thomas perform live — Natasha, who Nicole had recently read in the gossip sheets was now dating that man Isaac with whom she and Clive had attended the show.

  Another girl in love. It could happen to anyone. Except for Nicole.

  “Clive was just a client, Nicole. You don’t have anniversaries with clients. You were a long-term lay for him. Nothing more.”

  “I guess. But that night, at Natasha’s concert … oh, Veronica … I did think it could be like that forever. Does that make me pathetic?”

  Veronica set a hand on her friend’s shoulder and smiled, then looked at the monitor. They’d put the screen on to give Chloe something to look at so she’d leave them alone, but the girl was more interested in the four-note tune.

  On-screen, the program had changed. Now it was news footage. About the rollout of the forthcoming Crossbrace network. Featuring an interview with the new network’s charming, beloved financial backer, who looked exactly like Nicole remembered him lying in her bed.

  “No, Nicky,” Veronica said. “Pining doesn’t make you pathetic. But if you leave that on and start moping over him, that most certainly is.”

  “I’m not pining,” said Nicole, looking at Clive on-screen.

  “Good. Then turn it off.”

  Nicole laughed. Then Veronica stepped off the porch with a wave, leaving her alone with her baby who couldn’t be Sam’s, and who certainly couldn’t be the man on the monitor’s, though Nicole told herself that’s how it was.

  At her feet, the little girl continued to plink out notes on her xylophone.

  Nicole looked down. Chloe looked up and smiled, and Nicole smiled back.

  “We don’t need him, do we, baby girl?”

  “Ga,” said Chloe. She hadn’t noticed the screen. But now, as if she knew what her mother was talking about, she looked at it.

  Then she pointed at the man.

  “Ga,” she repeated.

  “You’re saying, ‘Jerk,’ right?”

  “Buh,” said Chloe. She returned to her xylophone. She hit the notes again: high-high, pause, low, pause, lower.

  Like a tune she’d heard, and somehow internalized like a prodigy.

  Nicole watched the girl for a minute, trying to place the tune.

  She stood. The monitor was finicky, and she knew it wouldn’t hear her voice command right. She’d turn Clive Spooner off by hand — the exact opposite of her old mission statement, she thought with an almost chuckle — and end this obscene holiday.

  Today wasn’t an anniversary. It was just another day.

  She was halfway to the screen when Chloe said, “Want.”

  Nicole turned.

  “Want,” Chloe repeated.

  “Want what?”

  “Want.”

  Nicole looked at the screen. They’d turned it on for Chloe in the first place.

  “You want Daniel Hippo back on?”

  “Want,” said Chloe. Then back to the xylophone.

  High-high. Pause. Low. Pause. Lower.

  Nicole swore she knew that goddamn tune from somewhere.

  She pressed the screen to bring up the menu, but before she could search for the Daniel Hippo cartoon, Chloe began to scream.

  “What?” said Nicole, alarmed.

  “Want!”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “WANT!”

  “Okay, okay, fine!”

  And, very reluctantly, she canceled out of the on-screen menu. The news conference returned to the screen. It was as if another of Chloe’s milestones would be her early appreciation of current events. She had to want something different — something Nicole couldn’t reckon. But once the menu had vanished and Clive was infuriatingly back on-screen, Chloe quieted.

  “Want,” she said, pointing.

  “You don’t want him,” Nicole said, trying to smile.

  Disquiet bubbled inside her.

  Chloe hit the xylophone again. And again. And as she did, the finger on her other hand continued to point. Not at the screen, but at her mother. Chloe’s eyes, like Nicole’s, looked almost desperate for understanding.

  Nicole shook her head. She didn’t need this. She’d flushed Clive from her system. And now she had to see him on-screen? She didn’t love Clive. Only, that wasn’t the question anyone had been wondering, was it?

  High-high. Pause. Low. Pause. Lower.

  The same four notes on the tiny xylophone, over and over.

  The child’s pointing finger.

  I don’t want him, the girl seemed to say, stressing the “I.”

  “Want,” said Chloe. Her finger centered on her mother’s chest.

  In one gestalt leap, Nicole realized why she recognized the tune. It the hook of “Down Deep” — a Natasha Thomas song that Chloe had never heard, that Nicole never ever wanted to hear again, and that had been Clive’s oft-stated favorite. Nicole and Clive had never had an “our song” — but her eight-month-old daughter’s melody, plinking from her toy, was the closest they’d ever come.

  I don’t want him, said Chloe’s blue-green eyes, again somehow stressing the “I.”

  “Where did you hear that song, Chloe?”

  I don’t want him.

  The finger pointing solidly at Nicole’s chest, the girl’s eyes flicking to the handsome man on the screen.

  … but you do.

  WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

  The Future of Sex continues in Who is Chloe Shaw?