Before baby number one was conceived and miscarried, Janelle took some kind of strange pleasure in attempting to gain sympathy from her husband’s side of the family by claiming she had a miscarriage. Who knows, though? Maybe Janelle really believed she had. Maybe she was simply late for her period and Janelle had gotten the wrong idea. No one knows exactly what went through her mind at the time, but based on Janelle's journals and what others had been told, it was incredibly unlikely Janelle ever conceived by her husband.
Janelle was partially right by accusing Steven of not totally being into the idea and only saying he was to please her but it was more than that. More than Janelle could ever see. It was her husband coming to see her true colors and not wanting to subject a child to those vivid shades.
Yet Janelle felt it was her place to take a young woman's confession of a miscarriage as her queue to join in on the grief and garner a little attention and sympathy for herself. Or at least try to.
Janelle and Steven went over to Steven’s mother’s house one day. She lived with Steven’s sister and her husband Spencer. Steven left shortly afterward with Spencer to look at some cars since Spencer was in the market to buy a new car. This left Janelle alone with Deanna and a distant cousin of Deanna's husband who was visiting. Her name was Naomi.
The threesome sat in the living room. Naomi was in her late twenties and had suffered a miscarriage recently. Janelle sat next to her on the couch while Deanna sat across from them in an easy chair.
Janelle appeared to be sad for the woman as she spoke openly with Deanna about her ordeal and Janelle eventually inserted herself into the conversation, saying that she too, had recently suffered an early-on miscarriage.
Of course, Deanna didn't utter a single word of sympathy but instead kept her gaze on the large TV screen on which a game show was playing.
Naomi, however, looked at her with sympathy, and then a flash of surprise crossed her features as she scrutinized Janelle and realized she looked too old to get pregnant.
“Did the doctor give you any reason as to why he thought it might have happened?” Deanna asked Naomi while Janelle was looking at the TV.
“Probably my age,” Janelle said, not averting her eyes from the TV.
“Naomi?” Deanna asked with annoyance in her voice.
Naomi glanced back and forth between the two in confusion and then answered. “Not anything specifically. I guess it's rather common.”
“Yeah, sometimes it is,” Deanna replied in a tone as if to remind people that that rule didn't apply to everybody. As in responsible people like Janelle's husband and therefore Janelle.
Janelle pretended not to notice that whenever she would speak, Deanna would turn her attention to the TV. Even so, she made a point of copying this by placing her gaze on the TV whenever Deanna spoke, which was mostly to Naomi who was now able to sense that something was amiss between Deanna and Janelle.
Janelle tried to hold off because she knew the two would start talking about her but her cigarette break was soon more important than whatever inevitable gossip was to come between the two women, so she excused herself to go out back for a smoke.
When she stepped out of view, she stopped for a moment to catch what she could hear.
A few inaudible words and then, “Well, obviously she's too old,” she heard Naomi say.
“It isn't that. She's a lot younger than she looks,” Deanna replied.
“Is something wrong then?”
“Yeah, with her.”
“Oh, that's sad. To not be able to have children.”
“No, that's not quite what I meant,” Deanna said with a faint chuckle.
“Oh. Oh, I get it now. Hubby not on the same wavelength?”
“Not exactly.”
“This may be too personal and I'm guessing you probably don't even know the answer to this but how does he manage to keep her from conceiving and why did they get married in the first place?”
A sarcastic laugh from Deanna, then, “You don't know Janelle. Let's just say she hasn't exactly been what he thought she would be.”
“So he insists on birth control then?”
“Uh-uh. He could never get her to take it. I'm sure he’s just careful of when they get together and what they do and all that.”
“I see. It's still sad, though, if she's in denial or not smart enough to catch on. Whichever one it may be.”
“Probably a mix of both,” she heard Deanna say.
Janelle had heard enough, she went out back to have her smoke, shaking with rage and thinking of all the torturous things she would love to do to her big-mouthed sister-in-law.
After getting her nicotine fix and calming down a bit, Janelle rejoined Deanna and Naomi in the living room. Just a few minutes later, Steven and Spencer returned. He and Spencer went back outside to discuss something about his current vehicle while Janelle and Naomi got up to head outside. As Deanna opened the door for them, she gave Naomi an encouraging pep talk about not giving up. Yes, Naomi. She gazed directly at Naomi and not Janelle. Yet Janelle managed to squeeze in close to Naomi and nod in agreement, as if she too, was being told to remain positive and not to give up.
“We’ve got to remember Deanna's words,” Janelle said as they stepped outside, aware that Deanna slammed the door in frustration behind them but not willing to show it.
The following weekend, after complaining yet again about having to spend too much of their free time on weekends at his mother's place “doing for her for free,” Stephanie, who was also visiting, couldn't resist cracking a comment when they were leaving a few hours later.
“What are you going to do now?” she said with a sarcastic and amused expression, “Have a string of miscarriages?”
Janelle's jaw dropped as her head snapped in her direction to stare at her incredulously. “I hope not.” Then she stalked out of the house leaving the others to snicker behind her.
From there on out, whenever Janelle was teased with questions about how getting pregnant was going, she went from “we're working on it” to not answering to saying she was “no longer sure she wanted a child and besides, the world was overpopulated anyway,” not that anyone could be led to believe that Janelle was suddenly concerned with the world population of course.
“Are you okay?” Steven asked after they hit the road and Janelle had been silent for several minutes.
This time it was he who got an incredulous look. “I'll let you figure that out. I mean, come on. That was mean. To ask if we’re going to have a string of miscarriages of all things?”
“Well, what can I say? When you tell people things you never know how they're going to react.”
“You tell them my business and personal things all the time,” Janelle said, missing the point. “That's it, though. Always defend the other party.”
“There's no one to defend.”
“Yeah, I know that's what you think and that's the problem. You don't see people's rudeness.”
“What would you like me to say?”
“Something like hey, that's not very nice would have been nice to say.”
“Okay, that's not nice.”
“Not to me, you dimwitted goofball. That should have been said to Stephanie.”
“Can you not call me names?”
“Could you be a little smarter? Not only are their worse names to be called but sometimes I wonder if maybe you're not quite as smart as I thought you were just because you know a lot about computers and things like that.”
“Whatever. I'm a stupid idiot then, okay?”
“You're not a stupid idiot. It would just be nice if you’d stick up for me at times. You don't have to go all batshit on the person but just defend me a little here and there.”
Janelle still hadn't been back to his mother’s house when baby number two was conceived by a random stranger picked up in a club. This time, Janelle had gotten well into the fifth month and was showing beautifully when she was hanging out front waiting for the mailman one day. Steven sat silently in the living room, something that unnerved Janelle, staring at his wife through the window with a mix of anger, disgust, embarrassment, and regret.
He noticed an old dusty pick-up full of Mexicans slowly round the corner by their house eyeing his wife with curiosity. He figured it was just because they were doing a double-take at what they were seeing, believing they were looking at a pregnant woman well into her 50s who was really 39.
A few days later, Janelle and Steven were sitting in their living room talking about the part-time cleaning job Janelle had taken to support the other guy’s child she thought she was going to have when there was a knock on the door.
Janelle glanced at her husband curiously but when he didn't move, she walked up to the door and called out, “Who is it?”
“UPS!”
Janelle glanced at her husband again right before she placed a hand on the door handle. “Oh my God, you mean someone in our family finally cares enough to send baby stuff?”
But instead of a big box full of onesies, diapers, bottles, powder, bubble baths, and rattles, came the leg of a Hispanic man dressed in the same chocolate brown color UPS wore. Janelle was struck hard in the gut.
Janelle began screaming in fear and pain. “Call 911!” she screamed at her husband as she tried to charge outside after the guy. But she was in too much pain to catch him. She barely made it out the front door when the guy jumped into the back of the pickup which sped off with its tires squealing.
Janelle lost the baby and left the hospital whiny and teary-eyed with Steven not the least bit sympathetic. “I can’t believe this is happening,” Janelle moaned.
“Yeah, but it’s just a matter of time before you get pregnant again,” Steven told his wife who mistook his complaint of the inevitable misfortune to come for encouragement.
“Yeah, but I don’t want to talk about that now,” Janelle said entering the bedroom and closing the door behind her.
Neither did Steven.
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