The Stuff That Never Happened by Maddie Dawson

overly cheerful voice, and then Sophie says to me, “Okay, Mom, I’ll see you at my apartment when you get here.” And the phone clicks shut.
    I call Grant with the intention of crying and being comforted, but all he says is that he’ll assign a writing project to his late class and come on home, and that we can figure out whatever needs to be figured out. This is code for: I am not going to use any words that might let my office mate know what is really going on.
    God forbid anyone should know our business.
    When he gets home, he does not run over and take me in his arms the way a normal husband would. Instead, he stands there in the bedroom with his hands in his pockets, and does three typical Grant things in a row: clears his throat, blinks rapidly, and paces. Then he says, “Well, it’s good you’re going,” and puts his briefcase down on our bed and picks it up again and sighs while he watches me pack. “I guess that’s the right thing to do. I mean, I know it is. It’s the answer.” His Adam’s apple bobs up and down.
    “You’re upset, I know,” I say, and he says quickly, “No, I’m not. I trust the doctors. And Sophie’s young. She’ll be just fine. It’s good you’re going.”
    “Yes,” I say. “It is. She can’t manage by herself, and she’s not sure when Whit can come home and take care of her. Not for a while, at least.”
    “ That’s the part that gets me. Damn it. Why did that idiot marry her in the first place if he had no intention of being a real husband?” he says. “Who goes to an orphanage in Brazil when he’s got his own kid to think of?”
    “I know, I know,” I say. “He should come home. And for all we know, he’s working it out right now.”
    “There’s no working it out to be done,” says Grant. “The way you work it out is you go get on the fucking plane. Or—oh, I know—you don’t go in the first place when you find out your wife is pregnant. How would that be?”
    Grant has been livid about this from the beginning, but I have surprised myself by actually seeing Whit’s point, or glimpses of it at least: this film will be crucial to his career in a field crowded with talented journalists; besides which, he’ll be home in time for the birth itself, and, with Sophie insisting loudly and often that she was not bothered by his going, why wouldn’t he go?
    What I had secretly hoped , though, was that Sophie would come and spend her pregnancy with us, back at home where we could watch over her. I had it all planned out in my mind, how we’d buy baby things together and talk about pregnancy and motherhood, how it would be a wonderful, joyous, womanly time that we’d always look back on fondly. I’d be there for every little kick and Braxton Hicks, and even more important, I’d get to know her better as the adult woman she is, and she could see me without all that adolescent angst hazing her mind. But no. She decided to remain in the city working through the pregnancy, and I had to hide my disappointment. Grant didn’t seem fazed in the least by that part. “Why would she want to come here?” he said. “Her husband is the person she wants right now, not her parents.”
    You see? There is no point on which we agree lately. It’s like yelling to somebody across a big divide.
    “So how long do you think you’ll stay?” he says. “Assuming that husband of hers decides that orphans are his top priority and I have to go kill him.”
    “Well, who knows? The baby is due in three months, and the doctor told me she had to stay in bed until delivery …”
    He blinks behind his glasses. “Three months? You’re going to be gone three months?”
    “Yes . Three months.”
    “Jesus. And we didn’t have Wednesday today, did we?”
    “No, and we didn’t even have it yesterday, when it really was Wednesday. Either in the morning or at night, when you passed up a fabulous opportunity.”
    He makes a face at me. “I like to keep to a schedule. We should have