Point of View: Narrator
The bed shifted for the fifth time that night. I rolled over, waking up, and saw Leighanne slip out the door. She'd caught the bug I'd had the week before and had gotten a bout of sick that hadn't come along with mine. I waited for her to return. It was only like four o'clock in the morning. When she didn't return after ten minutes, I decided to go check on her to make sure she was okay.
I knocked at the bathroom door, "Leighanne, sweetie?" I called, tapping with my knuckles. But no answer came. Concerned, I pushed the door open to find she wasn't even in there.
When I'd gotten into the kitchen, she was there, sitting at the table with a cup of chamomile tea on the table in front of her. The teddy-bear shaped honey jar sat on the counter, and toast was cooking. I yawned as I sat down across from her.
Leighanne smiled, but there was something missing from the smile. "What?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"No baby, whatsa matter?" I questioned, my brow furrowing.
Leighanne yawned, "I'm just exhausted," she said.
I reached over and rubbed her hand, which lay on the table. She grasped mine. "Do you feel any better at all, love?" I asked.
She shook her head, "I was hoping tea and toast might settle my stomach."
"Maybe you should get checked today?" I suggested.
Leighanne hesitated, "I was thinking that too."
I nodded, "It's probably a good idea," I said. "Are you cold? You want me to turn the heat on for you?" She shrugged. I got up and went over to the thermostat and started fiddling with it.
"Brian?" she asked, turning in her seat.
"Hmm?" I was distracted by the thermostat, which was digital and therefore supposedly easier to use than the old fashioned dial type but had always given me trouble because me and 'new fangled' things like that don't usually get along very well. I struggled consistently with the alarm system's passkey pad, too.
"I'm not so sure I have what you had," she said.
"Why's that?" I asked, punching in a degree in the upper eighties.
Leighanne had turned in her seat and was watching me carefully. When I turned back around to face her, she was still staring at me, an unsure expression on her face. "Seriously," I said, "What's the matter, sweetie?"
She pressed her palms together like she was praying. "I think... and I'm not sure what you're going to think about this, but... I think I might be pregnant."
I blinked at her in surprise.
"Brian?"
Pregnant? Another baby? Two kids? A baby? Pregnant. She's pregnant. Funny word, pregnant. Preg-naaaaah-nt... Pregnant? Wow, word's lost all meaning. Wait. Brian, focus. Your wife? Yeah. She's pregnant. Again.
"Brian?... Honey...?" Leighanne was standing.
I grabbed the door jamb.
Running through my head was a memory of walking through the 24-hour Walmart Supercenter in Atlanta, looking for lime Jello at 1:56 AM in the middle of October.
"Brian?"
"Brian wake-up," she was shaking me. "Brian, honey..."
"Go to sleep, pumpkin," I muttered into my pillow.
"No, Brian.." Leighanne shook my shoulder again. "Brian, I really need something."
I'd sat up like a shot fired from a gun. "What? What? What is it? What's the matter? What's going on? What's wrong?" I was vaguely aware I sounded like Nick without his ADHD pills.
"I need Jell-o."
"Jell-o?"
"Lime Jell-o."
"Brian? Shit." Leighanne's hands were on my cheeks now, rubbing my face, "Honey, please say something... Anything?"
"Lime Jell-o," I muttered, and I sank to the floor, my knees feeling like the wiggly green substance.
Leighanne sank down with me. She rubbed my shoulders. "I know, honey, I'm sorry," she whispered.
I'd gone all the way to Atlanta, searched high and low for freaking lime Jell-o, gotten home with a ton of boxes of Jell-o packets, spent the time making it, which is a considerable amount of time when you gotta wait for it to gel. I stuck it in the freezer in hopes it would harden up faster - which it did, but only slightly - and did crossword puzzles. When I'd officially been up all night and roosters around the world were crowing their little hearts out, I went up stairs with a bowl full of wiggly green gelatin. "Here's your Jell-o," I'd announced, sitting on the bed and handing it to her. I'd even gone so far as to put whipped cream on top.
Leighanne had stared at it, then promptly burst into tears.
"Now what?" I'd asked.
"It- It- the smell..." she'd shoved the bowl into my hands and run to the bathroom to throw up.
"You tried so hard, honey," she whispered, leaning her head against my shoulder now as we sat on the floor in the kitchen.
I closed my eyes. "Pregnant?" I whispered.
She hugged me. "I'm not sure, I'm just speculating."
Suddenly Baylee came running down the stairs and rocketed into the kitchen in his pajamas. He leaped over our outstretched legs, having been going too fast to just stop when he reached the obstacle, and skid to a stop on the tile, sliding along on the balls of his stocking feet, then turned to look at us in surprise. "Why are you on the floor?" he asked. He looked at the chairs of the table sensibly, "Are the seats broke?"
Leighanne and I cracked up. "No," Leighanne answered, "Daddy was just being silly."
Baylee blinked at us a couple times, processing this, then apparently decided this answer was good enough for him, because he turned and promptly dragged a chair over to the cupboard that held the glasses and climbed up.
Leighanne looked at me, smiling. I could almost read her mind. Its not so bad, right? That I'm pregnant?
I smiled and kissed her lightly. I hope she could read my mind, too. Nawh, its really not so bad.
