By the time the sound registered through her sleep as the telephone ringing, Maggie heard the machine pick it up. She'd slept through six rings. 

"Mag, it's Charles. I called yesterday, but you never returned my call. I thought maybe we could have lunch today? Have you thought any more about the classes? Well. You can call me at work. You know the number. Give me a call, Mag. Okay. Bye."

Childbirth classes with her cousin. How could he even think she'd want that. She didn't even want the classes. She sighed and rolled over on her side. Her back hurt again. She needed to pee. She didn't want to get up. Didn't need to, other than to feed the cat. She looked at the clock. 8:48. She groaned audibly and half rocked and half lifted herself out of bed.

Before she'd even flushed the toilet the phone was ringing again. When would this stop, she wondered blandly. This steady parade of people who felt the need to check in on her?  To call her every day? To get her out of bed every morning? To ask her what she was doing today? How was she feeling? To ask her out to lunch and offer to sub for childbirth classes? Why did they all feel so obligated?  

She went over the list of people who'd call today. Her father. Sandra from work. Her sister. The neighbors up the street (whom she hardly even knew but who'd suddenly come with casseroles and offers to change her front porch light). And Charles. He'd call twice, maybe three times if she didn't call him back.

Would the phone calls and visits still be pouring in after the baby is born, she wondered? Would there be a steady list of people to call after she was up all night and couldn't face the prospect of another endless day alone with a baby who needed constant attention and love she couldn't muster? When she was ready to rip her hair out and run screaming from the house rather than utter one more heartless coo, would there be a neighbor waiting with clean diapers and a smile?

Probably, she admitted. But somehow she didn't like that thought. Sometimes when she pictured herself in the future --just eight weeks now -- she always hoped she'd be left alone. Guiltily, she knew it would be easier that way, so she wouldn't have to fake the bliss of motherhood. She didn't look forward to having to pretend to be happy. Fake it at loving this baby. She couldn't stand the idea of the awkward silence when people noticed, maybe, that the baby had Randy's eyes. She didn't want this baby to have Randy's eyes! But if it did she wanted people to be able to say it. To be able to say it herself. But these things would never be uttered.

She wanted honesty so badly. She wanted to tell someone that she felt totally unconnected and uncommitted now to this baby inside her. Angry that she'd have to bring it into the world and raise it alone. Without Randy. She wanted to scream these things. But she couldn't even whisper them.

She listened to her father's voice trailing off on the machine. 

"...so give me a call when you get a minute."

A minute. All she had was minutes. An endless, awful, lifetime of minutes lay ahead of her. And not one of them would ever be an honest minute.

She looked at her tired face in the mirror. She resolved then to begin today. If she had to start pretending, maybe sooner was better. Maybe then, after a while, the phone wold stop ringing. The offers to help would lessen, and she could at least be alone with her lies. 

Ophelia mewed and pawed lightly at the bathroom door. Demands to be fed were, if nothing else, entirely honest. There was something to be admired in that, and envied.