TGS Chapter 94 Overlapping Months (Patreon)

The television was on at low volume, and Wyatt wasn't looking at what was happening on the screen, but at the ceiling, with his left arm folded under his head and his right hand resting on the bump of Blaire, who was curled up on her side against him. They had been like that for a while without saying anything, because the day had ended the way days end when they contain more than any conversation can summarize, and there was no need to try.

Wyatt had his phone on the nightstand with the ultrasound photo still in his camera roll. The first thing he had done when they reached the car in the parking lot wasn't starting the engine, but sending the image to his parents, Susan, and Matty without text, because the image was explicit enough, and he had waited with the engine running for the replies to come in.

Elena had answered first in record time with three consecutive messages that came so fast the phone buzzed three times in sequence. The first was just emojis, the second said WYATT in all caps, and the third asked if they could call right now. Wyatt had typed that they were still in the car and that he would call them that night, and Elena had replied that she loved him, that she loved Blaire, that she was crying in the kitchen, and that his father was right beside her, completely unable to understand what was going on.

Susan had taken longer, and when her message arrived, it said it was the prettiest thing she had seen in her life, that Matty had just returned from work, and that she was going to show him the photo right now. Blaire, who had been watching the phone from the passenger seat, had read that message, closed her eyes for a second, and said softly that her aunt was unbearable—though a smile on her face betrayed what she was actually feeling.

The video call that night had lasted an hour and twenty minutes, with Elena and Ed on one phone and Susan and Matty on another. At some point, all four were on the screen at the same time, talking over each other with the overlap of calls when too many people have things to say. Elena had cried twice, and the second time Ed had put his arm around her without saying a word. Wyatt had seen it and thought of something that didn't have words yet.

Blaire, who Wyatt thought was asleep, opened her eyes and said without changing position that she was thinking about whether she was going to need a crib or a bassinet.

"The functional difference is that one is more portable," Wyatt said.

"The size of the place where we live makes portability a secondary factor."

"We still don't know where we're going to live."

"We're going to live somewhere in Los Angeles, Wyatt. Not in a studio."

Wyatt said nothing, because that was an argument with no counterargument. Blaire looked back up at the ceiling with the expression of someone making calculations about things that haven't happened yet, but are going to happen, and that are better off made before they happen.

"It's going to need its own room," Blaire said.

"Yeah."

"And us ours."

"Yeah."

"Wyatt, the season starts in September."

"I know."

He said nothing else, because that conversation had threads that had no answers yet, and both of them knew it. Blaire didn't push further; instead, she kept watching the television, where something was playing that neither of them had followed all night. Wyatt kissed her on the head, and Blaire didn't tell him to stop.

They stayed like that until Blaire said she was going to fall asleep if they stayed in that position. Wyatt said that was the goal, and Blaire said she hadn't gotten around to brushing her teeth yet. Both got up, and in the bathroom, Wyatt watched her brush her teeth in the mirror. She saw him watching her and said, without spitting yet, for him to stop. He said no. Blaire said, "Wyatt," with toothpaste in her mouth, and he brushed his teeth too without adding anything. When they finished, Blaire got into bed, Wyatt turned off the television, got in as well, placed his hand on her bump in the exact same spot, gave her a brief kiss, and Blaire said good night, and Wyatt said good night.

July 26, 2014

The months that followed had the quality of periods when many things happen at the same time without any of them being discrete, but rather overlapping. Wyatt would remember them later not as a sequence, but as something simultaneous, even if in reality they had taken place on different days, with weeks or months between one thing and the next.

There was the search for the apartment that began in April, which followed Blaire's specific logic: research first with clear criteria, then execute, with no intermediate phase of doubt. In the end, they arrived at The Landmark in Westwood, with its 34 floors, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a view that on clear days reached the ocean. Blaire had stood on the balcony on the first day, looking toward Santa Monica, and said it was acceptable—and Wyatt had understood that this was the closest thing to an unconditional compliment the place was going to receive from Blaire in the short term. The 5.5 million that the place cost had come from Wyatt's signing bonus without him having fully managed to process that number in a concrete way, even though Rosenhaus had explained every part of the contract with patience, and Wyatt had signed. He had called Ed that night and told him he was proud, paused, and then said to hire someone to manage the money, and Wyatt had told him he already had.

During that time, Blaire's bump grew week by week with the precision that the obstetrician recorded at every visit. Wyatt went to every appointment that didn't fall on a practice day, and Blaire sent him photos of the baby's size compared to fruits that some app had decided was the most intuitive way to communicate fetal development—which Blaire followed with the irony of someone who finds the system absurd, but checks it anyway. At 22 weeks, she had sent a photo of a mango with the text that read, this big, and Wyatt had replied that it was a very big mango. Blaire had said that wasn't technically an answer, Wyatt had said it was an observation, and Blaire had stopped responding.

There was the conversion of the guest room in June, when Blaire had come to the conclusion that it was time. Wyatt had returned to find the room with furniture he didn't recognize and an assembled crib in the corner. Blaire had said from the kitchen that the delivery had arrived that day and that it had seemed reasonable to assemble it before someone arrived to do it, and Wyatt had looked at the crib for a moment and said it looked nice, and Blaire had said it was functional rather than nice.

And there was a night in July when Blaire had suffered severe back pain, and Wyatt had stayed up until two in the morning researching what to do in such cases, trying three things with varying degrees of success, until Blaire had said it was enough and thank you, and Wyatt had said it was nothing.

In this concrete moment, Wyatt was opening his suitcase on the bed in the master bedroom, beginning to fold t-shirts using the space-saving method he had learned at Clemson. Blaire was sitting on her side of the bed with her legs crossed and her phone in hand, though she wasn't looking at it.

"How many days?" Blaire asked.

"Until August third. Eight days."

"Eight days."

"I'll have my phone," Wyatt said.

"Wyatt, the phone isn't going to help me if something happens with the baby."

"The obstetrician said there's no reason for anything to happen."

"The obstetrician said it's unlikely," Blaire said. "He didn't say there was no reason."

Wyatt folded a t-shirt and put it into the suitcase. "You're 30 weeks, Blaire."

Blaire looked at him for a second, made the decision to let it go, and went back to her phone. Wyatt continued with the t-shirts, the workout pants, and the socks that had to be folded a certain way to make them all fit. The space in the suitcase had a logic of its own that Wyatt had developed over years of team travel, and which by now was almost automatic.

From the balcony, the silver expanse of Santa Monica was framed between the Westwood buildings, with the palm trees, traffic, and the July Los Angeles sky—the same sky Blaire had cataloged on her first day arriving from Clemson, and which by now Wyatt also recognized as his own, though it still felt novel when he wasn't thinking about something else. Blaire had built her knowledge of the neighborhood with the systematization that was her way of doing things, identifying first the useful places and then the pleasant ones: the Trader Joe's, the pharmacy, and the café on Glendon Avenue that made the cortado Blaire had decided was the best within a ten-minute radius, though she hadn't yet broadened her sample size enough to extend the verdict to all of Westwood.

"I'm going to be fine," Blaire said without looking up.

"I know."

"I don't need to be taken care of."

"I know," Wyatt said.

Four seconds of silence.

"Wyatt."

"Yeah."

"Someone's ringing the doorbell."

Wyatt had been expecting that at some point in the afternoon since confirming the flight three weeks earlier. He set the t-shirt on the bed and went to the intercom. Front desk said there was a Mrs. Sterling downstairs, and Wyatt said she could come up. Blaire, who had heard, called his name from the bed in the tone of someone reformulating a hypothesis about what was occurring, and Wyatt went back to the suitcase.

"It's your mother," Blaire said.

"Could be."

"Wyatt."

"Blaire."

Blaire looked at the apartment door, then at Wyatt, then at the door again, opening her mouth to say something. In that moment, the doorbell rang. Wyatt said he'd get it and walked into the hallway while Blaire remained on the edge of the bed, processing the situation with the new available information. Wyatt opened the door and saw his mother, who was standing in the hall with a medium-sized suitcase, her coat over her arm, and the smile of someone who had spent the entire flight anticipating this moment. She entered the apartment without waiting for an invitation, set her suitcase by the entrance, looked at Wyatt, gave him a quick hug, and then looked toward the bedroom, where Blaire had appeared in the doorway with the face of someone who didn't know exactly what expression to adopt.

"Blaire," Elena said, moving toward her before Blaire could say anything. The hug was the kind of hug that leaves no room for negotiation over whether one is having that hug or not. Blaire had her arms at her sides a second before returning it, and Elena looked down at her bump with the smile a person has when looking at something they've been waiting months to see. Then she started with the questions at the speed she applied to things that generated excitement—questions following one another with no space in between: about the last doctor visit, if the baby was moving a lot, if Blaire was sleeping well, and if they had decided on a name. Blaire, who had started to answer the first, found herself on the second realizing the first hadn't finished, and on the third realizing the second hadn't either. At some point, she gave up trying to keep order and simply waited.

Wyatt picked up his suitcase, grabbed his duffel bag from the entryway, and slung it over his shoulder. Blaire, who had the exact angle to see him, looked at him. Wyatt raised a hand in a parting gesture, and Blaire looked at him with eyes that were exactly the eyes Wyatt had anticipated when he had called his mother three weeks earlier and explained the plan—and Elena had said of course and that she would book the flight that very afternoon.

"I'm leaving," Wyatt said from the entrance.

Elena turned around. "Take care, sweetheart."

"Blaire," Wyatt said.

Blaire looked at him from the hallway with her arms crossed as best as her bump allowed. She said nothing, but her eyes followed Wyatt until the door closed.

In the garage, Wyatt loaded the suitcase into the trunk of the Jeep, sat behind the wheel, and stayed a moment with the engine off before starting it.

The highway from Westwood to Irvine was the 10 East to the 5 South, and Tuesday traffic at five in the afternoon had its own logic that required a Plan B. Something was playing on the radio that Wyatt couldn't identify, because his mind was on the calendar: training camp for the preseason, then September 8th for the season opener, and the window between August 3rd and the start of the season.

Traffic on the 10 moved slowly, and Wyatt shifted lanes while Orange County began appearing outside. Wyatt rested his arm on the window ledge as the warm July air blew in, thinking about the crib in the corner, about Blaire saying that night that they were going to manage anyway, and about how that was probably true—even if the coming weeks were not going to be easy for either of them.

The phone buzzed before he reached the Irvine exit. He pulled it out at a red light. It was a three-word text from Blaire.

It read: She'll be fine.

Wyatt put the phone away and took the exit.