At First Sight - Nicholas Sparks [16]
With a quick turn—remarkable considering the man’s girth—he was out of the room, and all Jeremy could do was shake his head. Doris peeked beyond the door to make sure no one else was coming, then leaned toward Lexie. She motioned toward her granddaughter’s belly.
“How are you feeling?”
Listening to Doris and Lexie whisper about Lexie’s pregnancy, Jeremy found himself thinking that there was an irony involved in having and raising children.
Most people were aware of the responsibilities of having and raising children, he knew. Having watched his brothers and their wives, he knew how much their lives could change once a child came along; no more sleeping in on the weekends, for instance, or going out to dinner on the spur of the moment. But they claimed they didn’t mind, since they viewed parenting as a selfless act, one in which they were willing to make sacrifices for the betterment of their children. Nor were they unique. In Manhattan, Jeremy had come to believe that this view was often taken to extremes. Every parent he knew made sure his or her child attended the best schools, had the finest piano teachers, and participated in the right sports camps, all with the goal of enabling the child to one day attend an Ivy League college.
But didn’t this selflessness actually require selfishness?
That’s where the irony came in, Jeremy thought. After all, it wasn’t as if people needed to have children. No, he knew that having a child was essentially about two things: It was the next logical step in a relationship, but secretly it was also a deep-down desire to create a miniaturized version of “you.” As in “you’re” so special, it was simply inconceivable that the world should be burdened with the fact that there’s only one of “you” to go around. And as for the rest of it? The sacrifices that led to the Ivy League? Jeremy was certain the only reason a five-year-old would even know about the Ivy League was that it was important to the parents. In other words, Jeremy had come to the conclusion that most parents wanted to create not only a “you,” but a “better you,” because no parent dreams of standing around at a cocktail party thirty years later saying things like “Oh, Jimmie’s doing great! He’s out on parole and has almost kicked his drug habit.” No, they want to say, “Emmett, in addition to becoming a multimillionaire, just finished his PhD in microbiology, and The New York Times just ran a feature on how his most recent research is likely to lead to a cure for cancer.”
Of course, neither of these issues pertained to Lexie and Jeremy, and Jeremy felt himself puff up just a bit at the realization. They weren’t typical parents-to-be for the simple reason that the pregnancy had been unplanned. At the time it happened, they hadn’t been thinking of a “little you and me,” nor was it the next logical step in their relationship, since technically they hadn’t had much of a relationship yet. No, their child had been conceived in beauty and tenderness, without any of the selfishness characteristic of other parents. Which meant that he and Lexie were better and more selfless, and in the long run, Jeremy figured, this selflessness would give their child the ever important leg up when it came to getting accepted to Harvard.
“Are you okay?” Lexie asked. “You’ve been sort of quiet since we left Herbs.”
It was getting close to ten o’clock, and Lexie and Jeremy were at her house, a small, weathered bungalow that backed up to a grove of ancient pines. Beyond the window, Jeremy watched the tips of the trees swaying in the breeze; in the moonlight, the needles appeared almost silver. Lexie was snuggling beneath his arm as they sat on the couch. A small candle flickered on the end table, casting light on a plate of leftovers Doris had prepared for them.
“I was just thinking about the baby,” Jeremy said.
“Really?” she said, cocking her head to the side.
“Yeah, really. What? You don’t think I think about the baby?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just that I got the impression you sort of tuned out when Doris and I were talking about her. So what