Alien Solar System

During the first couple of months, when she was queasy and exhausted and edgy, sleep was Pam’s salvation. She spent more time unconscious than she’d ever done in her life.

She couldn’t stand the smell of most food; even the aroma of the hot chocolate Jim made when she woke up oddly craving it one unseasonably balmy April morning gave her dry heaves. So, she avoided the kitchen. She couldn’t stay awake at night long enough to watch much TV or movies; she couldn’t even muster the energy to pretend to watch anymore, just so she could lie on top of him and feel the vibration in his chest when he laughed. She was too distracted to concentrate on reading, except for trashy magazines whose antagonizing photos of skinny models and starlets did little to lighten her mood. Even drawing became a rare occurrence. Once her spring semester class ended, her sketchbook sat untouched beside their bed, beneath a stack of unnerving baby books.

There wasn’t much left to do, besides sleep.

Jim suggested that in her limited waking hours, she research a trip they could take, after the baby was born.

‘We could go to Paris,’ he volunteered.

‘With a newborn?’ she shot back, as if he’d just proposed a jaunt to a hostile alien solar system.

‘Okay, not right away,’ he redirected. ‘But when Jr’s a few months old maybe. They just sleep all the time then anyway, right?’

‘Do you have any idea how much stuff you need to lug around to travel with a baby?’

‘Far as I know, they make babies in Paris, Pam. I gotta believe they make diapers and baby food and all the other gear too.’

She rolled her eyes in utter annoyance and he let it go.

************

Jim was patient. Relentlessly so. There were times when she’d look at him and think: you did this to me, and now you get to play the supportive, long-suffering husband, and everyone says how great you are? Fuck that. She knew it was irrational. He wasn’t playing anything. He hadn’t done this to her and she could hardly fault him for not being the one with the uterus. On the contrary, she was quite fond of the equipment he did bring to the equation, even if she hadn’t shown it much love lately.

He cooked for her, ran her errands, rubbed her back, her feet - if he could get his hands on it, he’d rub it. Despite the dramatically dwindled frequency with which she felt inclined to rub anything of his in return. When they’d once gone an entire week with little more than a chaste kiss goodnight, he’d made a lame joke about going cold turkey. She knew he meant it as a compliment, but it had felt like a thinly veiled dig too. He’d taken the hint. Still, no matter how carefully he tried not to wake her, she knew she wasn’t dreaming late at night when she’d hear his stifled grunts, followed by the sound of rustling in the tissue box. She knew it wasn’t enough; it wasn’t just release he wanted, he wanted her.

He rode out her irritable periods, even when she said some pretty awful things to him. Sometimes she couldn’t believe it was her own voice, saying that, to him, even as the words were coming out of her mouth. He seemed to take it in stride, as if it was the price he had to pay. She always felt horrible about it later and apologized, but in her worst moments – though she didn’t like to admit it - she kind of agreed with him.

‘My boobs are huge,’ she blurted in disgust one morning, as they dressed for work and a favorite – and formerly roomy - blouse strained closed across her increasingly voluptuous chest.

‘I know,’ he’d smiled, wolfishly wiggling his eyebrows in an attempt to diffuse her distress. ‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure it’s very nice…for you. This must all be a lot of fun for you.’

Her breasts, in fact, had become a sore spot, literally and figuratively. Even her softest bra touching them could be uncomfortable and she found herself swatting away his hands when he was just being affectionate. In bed one night, she’d actually yelped when his lips closed innocently around her nipple. She knew he was just doing what came naturally, the same things she’d always liked before. She’d say she was sorry, and he’d say, no, no he was sorry, but her reaction wasn’t exactly subtle and she could tell she’d bruised his feelings.

Having her expanding anatomy become a lightning rod for comments at the office didn’t help matters. Dwight’s unsolicited – but highly detailed - tutorials on ‘the biology of maternal lactation’ were innocuous and mostly concerned goats anyway.  They drove Jim crazy all the same.

‘Maternal lactation? What the hell other kind is there? I don’t want him even noticing my wife’s boobs. Or comparing you to livestock. Is that so much to ask?’ He’d pout when she laughed off Dwight’s latest advice on ‘efficient teat handling.’

She found Michael’s remarks much more offensive. When, staring straight at her breasts, he proclaimed them ‘magnificent’, as if this was standard break room chat, she saw Jim squirm in discomfort. He’d valiantly attempted to change the subject to some absurd sales strategy he’d spent the better part of the morning trying to get Michael to forget about. But even that wasn’t enough to derail the mammary-related roll he’d begun.

‘So beautiful. Like a Madonna. And I bet they look even better without clothes.’

He’d looked expectantly at Jim, as if she weren’t standing right there, mouth agape. Jim had not, of course, responded; but he apparently couldn’t help grinning like an idiot either. It had been confirmation enough for Michael, who proceeded to wink knowingly at him.

‘Oh relax, Pammy Mammy,’ Michael chided, intercepting the death glare she’d shot Jim. ‘The female body is a glorious vessel. We’re all adults here …hell, ask me anything you want about Jan’s boobs.’

************

But, even at her crankiest, she was crazy about him. Christ, she loved him. She always had, but now the intensity actually made it hard to breathe sometimes. He’d walk out the door to play basketball or go to his journalism class or some other equally treacherous destination and her chest would seize in panic until he returned. And despite all indications, and Jim’s repeated reassurances, she worried about the baby. Nothing specific, just free-floating omnipresent anxiety about all the bad things that had ever happened to a developing baby anywhere in the world, at any point in time.

‘We were just at the doctor’s,’ Jim would reason with her, his level tone not hiding his barely suppressed frustration.  ‘He said everything’s fine. Why would he lie?’

Common sense had nothing to do with it.

Sometimes she’d wake with a start in the middle of the night, convinced something was going to happen to him. To the baby. To her. To all of them. It would be almost sunrise before she’d settle down enough to go back to sleep, burrowed into him, his arm snugly encircling her. She’d hold his big hand against her barely burgeoning belly and finally drift away, his drowsy gravelly voice in her ear, whispering soothing things she knew he was just making up.

He wasn’t going anywhere. But Paris seemed further and further away.