by Pares
"Why can't I have nice things?" - Jaye, "Caged Bird"
Maybe there had been times, back in high school, that had involved Mahandra imagining being admitted to Jaye's hospital room to find her sitting up in a smock with a baby in her arms, but those had been inspired mostly by overexposure to after-school specials and in part by watching Jaye leave pool parties to sneak into the cabana with Francis Holyoke. And Brad Troy. And Danny Succonetti.
This was really nothing like she'd pictured it, in any case: Mrs. T looked proud, Mr. T was dabbing at his eyes, Sharon looked tender, Yvette wasn't offering anyone freshly baked French-Canadian pastries in hopes lulling the family into a sugar-induced stupor in order to take the heat off of anyone, and Jaye was smiling.
What, no police had been called? Why wasn't Mr. T shaking a likely hoodlum/insemination candidate by the scruff of the neck? How could any of this have happened without so much as a single pair of shoplifted baby booties?
"Because Jaye is a full-fledged responsible adult now. Mostly," Aaron murmured in her ear. His hands were warm on her shoulders and she missed them when he let her go in order to edge around her and lean down to kiss his sister's rosy cheek.
"You're glowing," Mahandra accused. "You promised not to do that. Money changed hands."
Jaye brushed her lips against the baby's forehead and grinned meanly.
"It is merely the flush of exertion that comes from expelling an eight pound infant through a very small space. I'm still totally within the boundaries of our gentleman's agreement. Gentlewoman's agreement. Whatever the hell it was."
"Jaye," came Mrs. T's slightly scandalized admonishment. "As a new mother, must you really inundate the little one with such coarse--"
"Mom. Please. Let's take a moment to remember that I've been lugging this thing around in utero for months and months, and not drinking. I think we'll be lucky to call it even if baby's first words aren't Dicksmack or Fu--"
"Honestly," Sharon hissed. "Could we have, oh, five minutes of family togetherness before you have to--" Yvette set a soft hand on Sharon's back and Sharon let it go, flashing Yvette a slightly guilty smile.
"Ladies, ladies," Mr. T called genially, "This is family togetherness, the very best kind we could wish for, and I for one would like to congratulate my youngest daughter on the birth of her--"
Eric appeared, towing a bouquet of balloons so extravagant that he was having trouble getting in the door.
"Hey, Mahandra," he said, giving her a quick little one armed hug before turning to Jaye to offer her the balloons, almost shyly, with his arm fully extended. Jaye gazed up at him from under her lashes and gave him a slim, secretive little smile, and he beamed at her so hard that tears stood in his eyes. They were the most adorable couple she had ever even heard of, probably the most adorable couple that had ever existed and if they hadn't happened to have been two of her best friends in the whole goddamned world, or at least the tri-state area, she would have doused them both in gasoline.
"See, now they're just bragging," Mahandra whispered, and Aaron threw her a puzzled look before slapping at his jacket, reaching into his coat pocket and producing a small orange wax lion with a smooshed-up face.
"You asked for this, when you called before." He held it out to her. "In between the screams," he added helpfully.
Jaye went very still, her eyebrows tipping up, her little pearly teeth grinding into her lower lip.
Everyone in the room knew her well enough to hold their breath in awkward expectation.
But after a few moments, Jaye relaxed, and stroked the back of her finger down her baby's cheek. Eric sat down on the bed beside her and kissed her long dark hair, gently, and she looked up at Aaron and chirped, positively chirped: "You know what? Keep it."
Oh, no she didn't. Mahandra knew bad juju when she saw it, and she knew good and well that little wax lion was no kind of good luck charm. What did Jaye think she was playing at? She plucked at Aaron's sleeve and smiled at him, all teeth.
"Honey, can I see you a moment? In the hall?"
He followed her out and she spun on him.
"We are not taking that thing home. I mean, you have four of them already and don't you think I don't know about that little shrine you have in the tool shed, because it is one thing to sneak, it is another thing to lie, and if you lie to me? So help you God."
She was reassured by the appropriately guilty look on his face and relaxed enough to take a deep breath, leaning her forehead against Aaron's chest before sighing it out.
"Look," he said. "I know enough to tell that something's wrong, but not enough to, you know, actually do anything about it. So until they invent an Aquanet that makes your hair broadcast your secret thoughts, you're gonna have to help me out here."
"Have his baby," someone said.
Mahandra froze; the voice was almost familiar. She screwed her eyes shut for a long moment, and then opened them very slowly.
The wax lion, still held in Aaron's hand, smirked at her and shook its little wax ruff.
"Have his baby," it said again. Then it waggled its eyebrows at her, and she felt a wave of nausea splash her from the top of her braids to the soles of her Kenneth Coles. Her knees buckled, and she felt Aaron's hands catch at her arms before she slid to the floor, the wax lion digging into her biceps.
"Oh my god, are you all right?" Aaron hauled her over to a convenient waiting room couch. "Did you skip breakfast again? Do you really want another one of Dad's lectures on blood sugar?"
"No. I really don't. I'm fine." She considered a moment. "But I would not refuse a donut. If one was offered." She snuck a peek up at him and he bent down to slip one hand under her hair, and kiss her cheek.
"Then I'll be right back," he promised. He set the lion on the coffee table heaped with dog-eared magazines and made for the cafeteria. Mahandra made a point of keeping her head down so it was out of her line of sight.
While he was gone, Mahandra dug in her purse for her datebook and confirmed her own new and alarming suspicions with a certain sinking sensation.
"Have his baby," the wax lion said brightly.
"You can just shut right the hell up."
If she really thought about it, she could probably even reconstruct the day of conception, a lazy Sunday, end of term, Aaron without any classes to prepare for, naked in bed with the Times and a cheese Danish. The sun had picked out every one of the freckles on his lean arms and shoulders and the glaze from the Danish had made his pretty lower lip shine and just beg to be licked. Were pastries her new sworn enemy? She had never thought she'd miss Gretchen Speck with such poignancy.
She hadn't realized that she'd closed her eyes again until the sweet smell of fried dough wafted towards her; when she opened them, she was staring into the hole of a donut. A glazed donut.
Oh, yeah. Pastries were on her shit list from now on.
Ignoring the donut, she looked up at Aaron and asked, "You remember last Thanksgiving when we found out about your sister and Yvette and we couldn't decide if it was an Oedipal thing or an Electra complex?"
"Well, when you get right down to it, Yvette's only two years older than she is, so we finally agreed to go with lesbian pseudo-incest." He broke the donut in half when she made no move to take it, and took an absent bite. Glaze made his lower lip gleam softly. "But either way, it was really more like Marcia sleeping with Greg than it was Hamlet or House of Usher, so." He shrugged.
Oh my god, Mahandra thought. I'm Marcia!
"Okay. You're gonna need to sit down for this, because it is gonna rock your world."
Aaron dropped into one of the blue vinyl chairs and leaned forward, his heavy brows hunched up with interest or worry or maybe just patronization.
"The lion," she said carefully. She wasn't sure if she could really say it, but Aaron nodded encouragingly and she was able to complete the sentence. "Spoke to me."
"Damn it!" Aaron surged up out of the chair and paced anxiously for a few lengths of carpet before he sat down beside her and clutched her hand.
"What did it say to you? Did it tell you why it won't talk to me?"
"Hey, hey, hey, can we deal with one crazy at a time, please?"
"Oh, sure. Of course." He curved an arm around her and gently kneaded at her shoulder. They were quiet for a while, until he finally asked, "So, what did it say?"
"And that matters why? Let us focus, Aaron, on the fact that I even think it said anything to me. That is reason enough to freak right the fuck out, so don't even ask me to try to remember what lame-ass story it tried to feed me, just--tell me I'm not crazy and that this is not the beginning of some sort of brain thing that gets turned into a case study that is later made a movie of the week on the mother fuckin' Lifetime network, okay?"
"Mahandra! Calm down! I swear to you that whatever this is, we'll get through it. I promise."
And he took her hand and looked so genuinely concerned that she gave him a suspicious glare at first, but eventually she actually said it: "It wants me to have your baby, okay?"
He laughed.
It wasn't his usual sardonic, over-educated, smug but somehow sexy laugh, it was the much rarer, much sexier ripple of actual delighted amusement that she usually heard only in bed.
"You know what? Call me old fashioned, but I think I'd really like it if you married me, first."
She stared at him for a full minute before she remembered what she was supposed to say to that.
"Oh no, there will be no marriage and there will no way in HELL be any baby, because this whole family is a V.C. Andrews novel waiting to happen, because I'm Marcia and you're Greg and Sharon is--" She waved a hand in eloquent frustration. "Some-damn-body from Shakespeare anyway, and if we had a baby he'd be French kissing his cousin in no time, and that is so wrong. Do you hear me? I am NOT having your baby!"
A nurse walked past and Mahandra gave her a quick, nervous "nothing to see here" kind of smile that made the nurse give her a funny look before she hurried on her way.
Aaron's hands found her hips and tugged her closer to him on the couch.
"Well then," he said softly, his eyes all huge and dark, "I'd really like it if you married me anyway."
And at that point, Mahandra was required by law to crawl into his lap and kiss him until he nearly passed out.
The lion had no comment.
END
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