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“It’s not the hormones or the pregnancy. My hormones or pregnancy don’t give you the right to reject our child.”
“Reject our child?” I looked at Eleanor’s exhausted face.
“You don’t want our baby girl.” She again pulled up the covers over her head. She was mummified again. Maybe emotionally, too, she was mummified. I felt unable to get through to Eleanor.
“What, I—”
It was true that I was scared of raising a girl. And it was true that when I heard about Eleanor’s pregnancy, I always thought the baby would be a boy.
“I feel like an idiot,” Eleanor said from under the blankets. Then she uncovered herself again. A drizzle of tears rained down her face. “I wanted a family and a baby so badly. I spent my retirement savings on it. I left my job for it. And now it’s like I made a big mistake.”
“It’s not a mistake.” I squeezed her foot again through the blankets.
“It. Now our baby is an it?” She wiped a tear from her eye.
“Eleanor. I’m really sorry.” I lay on the bed, side-by-side with her. I embraced her and spooned her through the blankets. I didn’t want to be right, even if in my mind I was right, kind of. I just wanted to relieve Eleanor’s pain and comfort her.
“Sorry about what?” she asked quietly, biting her lower lip.
“Sorry about saying the wrong words sometimes and upsetting you.”
“So, you were reacting like that to our baby being a girl, that was just saying the wrong words? What are the right words for that?”
“I’m sorry.” I knew that was the first thing to say. “I was just suddenly terrified of how real it all was. Becoming a father.”
“What was it before? A movie?” Eleanor shook her head.
“No. I mean. Just thinking about raising a girl. I don’t know anything about girls.” I shrugged and shook my head right back at her. “Eleanor, I’ve been a man all my life.”
“Isn’t that normally how being a man works?” She cracked a small smile through her tears.
“I mean, yeah, but I mean, I was raised by my dad and my older brother. I never even knew my mother. I didn’t have any sisters. And there aren’t exactly a ton of women driving UPS trucks.”
“Ok, so you could have said I don’t know many women instead of freaking out like that when I told you the baby is a girl.”
“See, that’s my lack of communication skills.”
“Mister English Literature Ph.D., lacking communication skills?” Eleanor rubbed my thigh with her toe through the blanket.
“They teach us, you know, literature stuff. Not how to talk to your pregnant girlfriend.”
I thought back to graduate school. There was definitely no graduate seminar on how to talk to one’s pregnant girlfriend. Or how to talk to anyone, pregnant or not, girlfriend or not. Grad school in English literature wasn’t the place to learn everyday communication skills.
“I just reacted like that because it just hit me in the face when I thought about us raising a little girl.” Somehow the tidbit of information from Eleanor that the baby was a girl has intensified the feeling of the upcoming task being a severe challenge for me. I didn’t know anything about babies, much less about girl babies. “We’re, like, two idiots, two idiots with no idea about raising a little baby.”
“Aiden. This isn’t gonna be a sitcom.” Eleanor grinned as if she had a movie playing in her mind. “We have time to prepare.”
“I mean, I guess, I guess we could learn?” I didn’t know how to drive a UPS truck either when I’d finished my English literature Ph.D. I’d somehow learned, even become very good at it. Maybe raising a daughter would also be learnable. More difficult than driving a truck but learnable.
“You know, Aiden, there’s this building with lots of books that you can borrow.” Eleanor’s grin was definitely back on her face. She was feeling better.
“I’m afraid I’m just an uneducated UPS deliveryman.” I shrugged theatrically. “Can you tell me more about this building, please?”
“The library. We have a huge parenting section. We even have a new parents’ reading group. And parenting classes.”
“You know your stuff.”
“Well, I know the parenting stuff, especially because I watched it for years, wishing it could be me, wishing I could be a parent.” Eleanor patted her pregnant belly. “I also think it’s difficult being a parent, for anybody, especially for two first-time parents. But I think we can do it.”
“I think so. I hope so. Actually, I’m sure we can.”
“It’s a challenge. I just didn’t like how you sounded like you didn’t want a baby girl.” Eleanor looked down at her knees.
“You know that’s not what I meant. I just meant it was going to be really difficult.”
“I know. I now know why. Pregnancy hormones got hold of me and took me for a ride for a few hours. You know by now how that goes for me.” She looked down at her hands, face full of compunction.
