You know you wish you were me Read online

  You know you wish you were me

  by Marolyn Krasner

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Marolyn Krasner on Smashwords

  You know you wish you were me

  Copyright © 2011 by Marolyn Krasner

  ONE

  The second line is faint, but Hana knows it’s positive.

  A positive test, not something people like to get these days, but here it is.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  As soon as she hears the words, a little bit of fear locks in on the edge of her heart.

  What if I lose it, she thinks as she puts the test back into the little plastic bag it came from and drops it into the trash basket under the bathroom sink. She tries to remember Evee’s little baby clothes and cradling a newborn against her body. She can’t wait to feel the movement of its breath on her neck and kiss the little fingers and toes.

  She could call Olivia at the hotel. Olivia always says the right thing and she’s been looking forward to this day as well. No, it’s too early. It’s not a good idea to distract her from work, Hana thinks as she crosses her fingers dreaming of Olivia’s inevitable pay rise.

  Hana goes to the bedroom and stands sideways in front of the full-length mirror. She never does this. Olivia bought the mirror last year after spending $6000 on business suits. Hana was disgusted and proud at the same time. Disgusted that Olivia is so fully immersed, soaking in fact, in corporate America and proud that they could afford to spend that much without taking out a loan.

  “The mirror is a necessity,” Olivia had said. “I need to know what I look like from every angle. Often, while admiring herself, she says “I love this mirror.”

  “I love you,” Hana will say in reply.

  If she has the time, Hana likes to sit on the bed and watch Olivia get ready. She loves the suits more than she will admit. There is something elite about Olivia in her suits. She’s gorgeous all of the time and Hana tells her as much as possible, but when Hana sees her in the morning ready to walk out the door with her black shoes and her dark brown bob with the sharp pieces framing her face so elegantly, she imagines she is having an affair with the Governor or a CIA agent.

  Olivia laughs at Hana’s nicknames for her, Agent Hot, Ms. Black. Black because that is the predominate color of the suits, except for the little bit of flair she adds with bright collared shirts, red neckties or ornate broaches that Hana finds in dusty counter cabinets at thrift stores. Olivia is partial to bird motifs and says she can get away with a little bit of rebellion because the advertising agency she works for is liberal. Hana has never been convinced because the owner is a blatant Republican who makes them work on Christmas Eve.

  “Don’t complain too much, he likes me and you like the money I’m making,” Olivia argues. Olivia has crossed to the dark side quite quickly in Hana’s opinion.

  It wasn’t so many years ago that Hana wore ripped jeans and punched at as many people she could in mosh pits at punk shows in the name of individuality and anger. Now, in her domestic bliss with no recent bruises, she can buy whatever she wants without having to look at the price or have an internal debate about which bill she won’t pay to allow herself the luxury of a new CD or a trip out of town.

  Sometimes Hana misses the Olivia she met in the late 80s, the girl who would purposely rip her second hand clothes and mend the holes with the most incongruous of fabrics. She was into burlap when they first met. Hana can remember a hot pink skirt with rough, uneven burlap fringe on the edges and a matching jacket. It was itchy when they hugged. Some of Olivia’s creations were impressive, others Hana avoided commenting on because she couldn’t think of anything nice to say.

  In the mornings when Olivia is getting ready, Hana hangs around in her oversized t-shirts and sweatpants while Olivia buttons and zips herself into the fine tailoring of her suits. Hana has contemplated changing her look, but her short haircut, baggy tops and jeans are who she is and has been for as long as she can remember. She is comfortable and she doesn’t stand out in crowds.

  Olivia’s got this sophistication now that Hana feels she can’t match. There’s nothing glamorous about the dishes or the grocery shopping. Olivia has never said anything to make Hana feel self conscious, she just does. Olivia is constantly thanking Hana for making the house comfortable and for doing most of the cooking and cleaning while Olivia is at work.

  Some of their queer friends, who aren’t as settled as they are, make comments about how traditional their roles are. Olivia is the breadwinner while Hana takes care of the domestic duties. The comments have hurt Hana’s feelings at times, but then she thinks of what her life would be like without her roles and responsibilities. What she has now is much better than a lonely alternative.

  She and Olivia still make love, not as often as they used to and a little more mechanically, but it is better than nothing. They still hold hands watching TV on the couch. And sometimes while talking in bed. They laugh a lot and they have planned this second baby, so things must be pretty good.

  Hana’s life is quite simple. Everyday she sends Evee and Olivia out of the house with lunches and kisses and spends most days inside, cleaning and getting ready for when the two to return home.

  Olivia loves her job and Hana enjoys listening to her stories of meeting fancy people and eating at expensive restaurants. Places Hana will probably never go. Advertising is a good fit for Olivia, Hana thinks. She has a natural ability to convince people to take risks. She loves risks and is able to entice others to go along for the ride, even if they’ve never contemplated anything close to what she is suggesting. Hana can’t imagine selling anything to anyone. To her the idea of convincing someone to spend their money is awful.

  Olivia’s pitch today is in Seattle and she is trying to convince her bosses that they need to promote her to vice president in charge of internet advertising. Olivia is convinced the internet is going to transform and the advertising industry and the world. She has been preparing the pitch for months, spending way too much time on her computer.

  Hana has never used the internet. She has only ever baked for a living, mostly alone and in the dark hours while everyone else is sleeping. She’s never been good at small talk and has avoided working in cafes or bakeries where the kitchen can be seen by the customers. Her ideal job is at a cafe where she finishes before the place opens so she doesn’t run the risk of interacting with customers. Now that they have more money, she only works a few nights a month for fun and is able to be a housewife the rest of the time.

  When Evee was born, the situation was totally different and Hana doesn’t want to go back to that. She rubs her eyes at the memory of the exhaustion of baking five nights a week then spending the better part of her days doing housework and taking care of Evee while Olivia worked as a secretary at the ad agency.

  When she feels negative about Olivia’s job, she tries to invoke the frustration and the fights of those days and reassures herself there are worse jobs Olivia could be doing.

  “I’m pregnant,” she says again, examining herself in the mirror. She pulls her long t-shirt down over her chubby belly and pushes her stomach out to create the roundest faux baby bump she can manage. It looks good, she thinks.

  When Evee was born, they were the only gay couple they knew who had made a baby themselves. Hana took a lot of flack for joining the status quo and moving to the suburbs. In fact, not one of her friends from the old days has called or visited. There was one guy who came by when Evee was first born because he needed a place to crash after his car broke down. Hana still tells the story of how he looked particularly shocked when Olivia started breastfeeding Evee at the table during bre
akfast. His tough, anti-establishment exterior just melted away and he left as soon as he could.

  These days it seems like every other lesbian they meet is having a baby or trying to. They are seen as role models and that freaks them out.

  Hana messes her short hair and looks at her baggy sweatpants. She won’t be the least feminine pregnant lesbian around. One woman they met had a mohawk, tattoos up her arms and a huge belly. She was having twin girls. Her girlfriend, who looked like Wonder Woman, with the red lipstick and the big hair, said she had never wanted to give birth. Hana could relate. She hadn’t either, until recently.

  Even after raising Evee for seven years, Hana felt no desire to have a human growing inside of her. But over the past few months she’s been drawn to the pregnancy articles in the women’s magazines in the supermarket and on more than one occasion recently she has caught herself staring longingly at babies.

  A feeling of excitement rushes from her stomach to her throat now and she let’s out little noise of happiness at the thought of the baby, her baby, in the house. Hana pulls her t-shirt tight over her distended belly and jiggles the fat. She can’t imagine her stomach big and hard. Where will everything go?

  Olivia’s belly was like a balloon filled with that cornstarch mixture kids make in elementary school. Hana would push into her belly very slowly, for no reason except that she wanted to. Her finger didn’t sink in like with the cornstarch, instead Olivia’s belly was firm and she would push Hana away after a couple seconds.

  “Just go get some cornstarch and leave me alone,” Olivia would yell.

  Hana looks around their cluttered bedroom. Where is a baby going to go? There is the tall wardrobe, for the suits, a set of dresser drawers, the mirror and their king-sized massive spaceship of a bed that they could not live without.

  When they first moved in Hana bought the biggest bed she could find. She had read that pregnant women get hot and need space. Also they had no other furniture, so Hana could not escape to the couch because there was no couch. On the massive bed, Hana could be far away from Olivia’s sensitive body and still have enough room to stretch.

  Maybe the house is too small.

  Hana is worried. The house is cluttered, mostly with toys and old furniture that she has rescued from a slow rotting death at the dump with every intention to restore or reupholster.

  “Instead this crap will spend its twilight years taking up space and rotting in our house. Why can’t you feed the homeless or something?” Olivia has said many times that she is not convinced furniture restoration is Hana’s calling.

  What if I’m not a good mother?

  The negative thoughts are coming fast.

  What if it has problems?

  Hana paces around the house, picking things up, clothes, toys and setting them down somewhere else in the room. She wants Evee to be here so they can talk about all of the fun stuff they have planned for later in the day.

  Unfortunately Evee won’t be home for hours and Hana has a list of things she wants to get done. She’s been lazy the past couple of days and taken advantage of her freedom by not cleaning or doing any of the errands she had promised herself she would do.

  “Sweetie, just relax. Give yourself a break. I didn’t organize this little time out for you just so you could fill it up with work,” Olivia had said on the way to the airport.

  Hana was trying to listen, but she was thinking about vacuuming the car.

  “Promise you’ll relax,” Olivia was leaning over towards Hana’s cheek which made Hana uncomfortable because she needed to change lanes.

  She got up early today in an attempt to finish all of her tasks and, if she were honest with herself, an unachievable to-do list. The item she chose first, even though it was not at the top of the list, was to take the pregnancy test and now that she has taken it and now that she is pregnant, nothing else seems very important.

  She wants to call Templeton, but she doesn’t pick up the phone. It wouldn’t be right to tell him before she tells Olivia. Even though this was a team effort and he did say he wanted to hear as soon as they knew anything, Olivia should be the first person she tells.

  It is Olivia’s fault she is feeling so anxious now. Why had she forced Hana to be alone? Hana had said it was a good idea, but now that she’s been alone for two days, she is ready for her family to come back. She is ready to be caught up in a wave of things that need to be done that comes with a house full of people.

  She looks around the house again, all of its surfaces and curves. She belongs in this house, she knows this, but sometimes, in this family, she feels like the odd one out. Who is she kidding, she is the odd one out. Evee, Olivia, Carol and Templeton, they’re all blood. At times she has felt that she could just be the housekeeper.

  She tightens her fists and makes a hissing noise to stop herself from letting these thoughts go further.

  When she first told Olivia that she had these feelings, Evee was about two. Olivia knows now that Hana’s sensitivities are serious, but back then she would laugh when Hana said she felt outside of this family.

  “That doesn’t matter, Hana, you are part of this family because we love you,” Olivia has said again and again.

  At first Hana thought that part of the reason she wanted to get pregnant was because having a baby of her own with Templeton as the father, would connect her to this family. She will share blood with her baby, who will share blood with Evee, who shares blood with everyone else and that would be that.

  Hana hoped a baby would make her feel more secure and dissolve her deep fears. Like the one about coming home to the house and finding it empty because everyone took off to New Mexico to be with Templeton, or the one where everyone dies and she is banned from going to the funerals or seeing the bodies one last time because she is not seen as part of this family.

  “Stop that,” she says loudly.

  Now she is pregnant. She is connected to this family. She is not by herself, someone else is with her. She puts her hands on her lower belly and lets out a yell, annoyed that she’s not able to tell anyone this big news right now. She looks over to the phone again. Olivia wouldn’t mind.

  No, she thinks. It’s not a good idea and it wouldn’t be satisfying. Olivia will be distracted, she is so focused on work. Hana wants it to be a big thing. She wants it to be about her. She wants calm, hugs and kisses. Then a party, even if it’s just the two of them.

  She walks into the kitchen and looks at the pile of dishes in the sink. She has no desire to clean them. She turns around goes to the big window in the living room and opens the curtains.

  The sun is coming up and sending silver and pink laser beams through the clouds. On the windowsill, some of their collected things catch the light. Hana picks up a dried out, dusty shell she and Evee brought home from one off their beach trips. She wipes the dust of onto her t-shirt, then puts the round surface against her bottom lip. It is cold and smooth.

  The back of their first Mother’s Day card is fading on the windowsill. The red of the construction paper has turned pale and lifeless from two years in the sun, but the inside is unchanged. Hana adjusts the fold, opening it wider so she can see the inside from anywhere in the room. There is a large yellow sun, a house and three stick people. Two tall and one short, all with outstretched stick arms and little circle hands joined together. They are floating at the top of the card, next to the sun and all three have big red sliver moon smiles.

  The teacher’s aide hadn’t understood that Evee had two moms and made sure the letters the little five-year-old wrote on the card spelled out “Happy Mother’s Day Mommy” instead of “Happy Mother’s Day Mommies,” which is what Evee had repeated to her over and over. The awkward and well constructed “ies” was added later when Evee’s teacher informed the aid of Evee’s family structure. A little note accompanied the card apologizing to them for the mistake.

  “What is the world coming to?” Olivia had laughed after Evee had gone to bed that night. “I thought we were contr
ibuting to the downfall of society and she’s apologizing to us?”

  Hana has been spoiled for the past eight years, she knows this. There are so many people around who love her now, good people. Before they came along she was always alone. At the time, she thought she preferred things that way. No complications, no dramas. But when she experienced life with people, happy people, she admitted that she had hated being so alone, she had just been used to it. It’s the way it had always been for her. People tended to piss her off and, more often than not, needed things without giving anything back. Until Olivia, she hadn’t ever really liked another person.

  She puts the shell down and spins on the hardwood floor in her socks. She spins toward the kitchen, then toward the bedroom and back to the window. She looks outside. The plants in the front yard are wet from the morning’s mist. There are no cars driving past. It’s too early to be so awake. She spins again toward the bedroom. She’s going back to bed. She can make some lists. She loves making lists because they provide so many possibilities and promises. Everything looks good in clean rows on paper. Now that there is baby the need for lists has become very immediate. Babies require preparation and there are so many things to consider like names, necessities and a timeline charting the months and plot points between now and the birth.

  She looks at herself in the big mirror again, and moves her face very close to the glass. Hana has often thought that woman are the most magnificent living creatures on earth. She has thought this for a while, and even though she has never studied any species in depth, her years of observation have convinced her that she is right. She likes to think Olivia has been her main research project.

  When they met, Olivia was a young woman, very comfortable in her sexuality and confident that she wanted to be a mother, no matter how impossible it seemed at the time. Then she had Evee and her next goal was to be successful. Now, she is up for vice president at the ad agency.