Fiction Ruined My Family - Jeanne Darst [90]
She hung up and screamed, “AHHHH! What’s up, nigga?”
A black man got out of a car in front of her.
We headed to some swanky spot in town for lunch. The whole weekend was their treat, and I was also getting paid nicely. The menu was filled with dishes—aged carpaccio, pork loin salad, whole roasted Chilean sea bass on a bed of fennel—I hadn’t eaten since before the War on Terror. Cassie told me about some recent trips she and Harry, her boyfriend, had taken.
“You would have loved Croatia, Jeanne. We had to refuel there after Russia, so we hopped out for a few days. The Croatian people are incredible.”
I couldn’t imagine whom they could possibly have been hanging out with. Did they rent a Croatian couple for the long weekend? Lately, before seeing her, I had started prepping myself with an ancient Buddhist mantra: She can’t help it. She can’t help it. She can’t help it.
I looked at her diamond studs, Cartier watch and Mafiawife handbag. I could live for six months on her dry-cleaning bill alone. Raskolnikov would have clubbed her over the head with his whole roasted Chilean sea bass already.
“This is so cool! I’m so glad you decided to come,” she said.
I looked around the restaurant at the Palm Beach women: lots of plastic surgery, Lilly Pulitzer–covered wheelchairs, blond toddlers in navy blazers.
“Do you think Harry is going to like my show?” I asked.
“Harry loves your show,” she said.
“He hasn’t seen it yet,” I said.
“You know what I mean,” she said.
My room was above some kind of billiards-in-Africa-themed room with a giant bar. There were stuffed animals, photo albums from safaris her boyfriend had been on, leather club chairs.
My quarters were gigantic and had a view of the water and looked down on the patio. There was a big telescope in my room, but I couldn’t figure out how to use it. I was eager for Nick to get here. I went to sleep wondering what it was going to be like to see him now that we were a family. I barely knew Nick at this point. I mean, yes, we were in love but we’d been dating only for five months and on different coasts. This was how I did everything. How I wrote everything. By instinct, without thinking. One day I’m trying to avoid cat shit while planting shrubs outside a housing development in Crown Heights, the next I’m deciding I’m ready to be a mother?
The next morning from my window, I spied Cassie on the patio so I made my way down.
“Is your room okay?” she asked.
“It’ll do.” I smiled. “I’m pregnant,” I said.
“What?”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Holy shit, Jeanne. You’re going to be a mom.”
“Okay, okay, let’s not get dramatic.” Like when I quit my job at Sundance and my therapist let out a squeal of horror, I hated when people had big reactions to my life. It made me feel like my impulsiveness and running my life on instinct (Am I brave or stupid?), the things I worried about in myself, weren’t exactly going unnoticed. “What are you doing, you broke-ass, disorganized lunatic?” was what it felt like they were saying.
Nick came in from L.A. that night. He was going to film the show and, as it turned out, have a lot of fun filming me throwing up and moaning in bed. When we hugged at the airport, it was sudden and strange and shocking how much things had changed, and also how much I was okay with it. We could do this. I could be a writer and be in a relationship and have a child. Writing did not require a solo life, and artists did not have to be shit-faces.
Back at the house, Nick and I lay around, me drinking ginger ale for my nausea, trying to figure out if it was possible that I got pregnant the week my mom died. Maybe the same day? Nick seemed to get who I was, what I liked to do with my time—mainly spend copious amounts of it alone writing plays and then putting them on and wearing costumes and having some laughs with my friends afterward. He seemed to understand this about me. He had a lot of his own things going on, too, which comforted me. He was a painter who ran his own art galleries and did the occasional real estate