Life settled into a comfortable routine for the young married couple. To her surprise, Joan did not get pregnant on their honeymoon, as she thought she would. As she hoped she would, really.
Bud was fine with that. He wanted a family as badly as Joan did, but also knew that it would mean big changes in their life. He hadn’t fully gotten used to their new life, as it was. That adjustment would come in its own time. And there was the whole matter of buying a house. The accountant in him wanted the write-off. The man in him wanted to provide an actual home for his wife and baby to come home to, not an apartment at the Alamo Arms.
Nonetheless, Bud and Joan were both surprised when their first anniversary came and went and there was still no sign of pregnancy. “Sometime it just takes a while,” Doc Brown had told Joan, attempting to reassure her. It did not. At some point during that first year things shifted somewhat regarding the frequency and voraciousness of their coupling. Sensing that it was all a numbers game, Joan felt responsible to up the odds. “More times at the plate has got to increase the odds of getting a hit,” she told Bud one night.
While he never thought he’d find himself in such a situation, Bud felt a pressure to perform after a while. Rather than looking forward to each occurrence, he tended to hope he was up to the task. ‘I need an in-park home run soon to keep the fans happy,’ he thought to himself. He made the mistake of mentioning the situation to an old unmarried friend from high school at the Lucky Lady one evening after they’d gone to see a Mud Hens game.
“Yeah, I feel for you,” his buddy said. “It’s got to be tough having an attractive young wife expecting you to come home every day, drop your pants, and perform at the drop of a hat. I don’t know how you put up with it.” That comment helped put things in perspective, at least for a while.
The delay in conception enabled them to save more money, though. By their second anniversary they were moving out of the Alamo Arms and into their own slice of the American Dream, a new tract home in Road Runner Estates. Joan quickly denoted which of the small three bedrooms would be the baby’s room, and pointed it out to everyone who’d come over to see the place. They were one of the few young families on the block that didn’t have at least one child; some seemingly had more than they could keep up with. More than once a neighbor would offer up one of her own. It was usually the one covered in peanut butter, or with snot running out of his nose. Joan was always quick to decline.
By their third anniversary Bud had decided they should probably both go in to get tested and see if there was anything that could be done to help the process along. Joan had always rejected such suggestions in the past. As fate would have it, it was a conversation Bud didn’t have to broach. At the Silver Slipper Supper Club for their anniversary dinner, a beaming Joan couldn’t contain the news any longer. She’d been to the doctor the previous afternoon. It was confirmed. She was expecting. Their prayers had been answered.
There was a sense of relief on Bud’s part that the conception hurdle had been jumped. He’d been worried secretly about his ability to perform what he thought was the most basic of manly duties. Knowing that there weren’t blanks being fired added a heightened sense to pulling the trigger. Now that the mission had been accomplished, however, Joan felt it best if he kept his pistol holstered.
Having secured the real estate required for the American Dream and successfully put a bun in the oven, Bud felt the time was right to make a trip back to Frontier Ford-Mercury and trade in the ’50 Mercury coupe for something more in line with their upcoming family status. The original plan had been to get a new sedan. Something easier to load kids and all that goes along with them than in the back of the old coupe. “Nothing says ‘family man’ more than a four door wagon festooned with fake wood,” Roger, the salesman at Frontier, told Bud.
Bud, not one to usually fall for a sales pitch, was hooked and reeled in when he saw the cream over turquoise model on the showroom floor. The accountant in him quickly figured the difference in payment for the top-of-the-line model. The look on Joan’s face as she sat inside justified the upgrade. Well, that and the discounted financing rate Bud got from the bank as an employee.
As they drove the new wagon home from the dealership that night, numbers were rolling around in both their heads. Joan was thinking about either 3 or 4 kids in the back of the wagon on family trips to the Grand Canyon, Disneyland, or Mount Rushmore. Bud was wondering whether he should have gone with 36 month financing instead of 24 to make the payments more affordable. He had no idea how much to actually budget for a new baby, having never done it before.
Two months later, Bud came home from work and found Joan in a panic. She was bleeding. “I called the doctor’s office. The nurse said not to worry, but to come into the office. She sounded worried when she said it. We need to go. Now.”
“You’re going to need bedrest. Off your feet at all times. This is a critical stage of the pregnancy.” Doc Brown seemed concerned, but put up a hopeful front. Joan committed herself to doing anything required. Bud was resolved, but hopeful.
Three weeks later, Joan lost the baby. Doc Brown said they could start trying again in a month or two. Bud saw that as a double edged sword. Joan eventually saw it as a challenge. A renewed mission, one layered with a hopefulness for the outcome of pregnancy, but new fears that would come with that hurdle being jumped. Joan was more emotional than ever. Bud was more cautious. He wished they’d have waited to buy the Monterey wagon.
They went on about their lives as they tried to get pregnant again. Ten months later Bud left Prairie View State Bank and opened his own CPA firm. It was a risky move, but one he calculated would be better to attempt before they had a child. Some of his first customers laughed about letting “the greasy haired kid in a leather jacket from high school” do their taxes. Fort Stockton has a long memory and a short attention span. A year later, the business was firmly on its feet and Joan was pregnant again.
Bud, Joan, and Doc Brown all breathed a sigh of relief when the end of the first trimester came and went and everything seemed to be progressing on schedule. Bud had closed the office early to take Joan to the doctor for the scheduled visit. “Take it easy. Take the vitamins I’ve prescribed. As a precaution, you might want to forgo ‘relations’ till after the baby comes,” Doc Brown said. Bud noted how ‘relations’ seemed to fall into one category or another: on the race track at 100 MPH or in the garage with the door closed and locked.
“Of course,” he replied. Joan blushed at the mention of ‘relations’.
Joan was nearly at the four and a half month mark when she lost the second baby, a boy. She’d been in the hospital for several days recuperating when Doc Brown came into the room. He’d asked Bud to be there, so Bud had a sense of what was coming. Joan did not, and was in disbelief when Doc Brown told her she would not be able to conceive again. She did not take it well.
Later, out in the hallway, Doc was more honest with Bud than he had been inside the room. “She’s going to struggle with this. She’s just lost a child and been told she can’t have another. She’ll be grieving. There are a hundred different hormonal changes she’ll be going through. It’s going to take time.”
Bud was at a loss, himself. But of course buried those feelings deep inside so they didn’t have to be dealt with.
After visiting Joan in her room again later that afternoon, Bud drove the Monterey wagon over to Frontier Ford-Mercury and traded it in on a brand new 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser hardtop sedan. All the bells and whistles. Pink and white. He was a little worried about driving a pink car in Fort Stockton, but pink was Joan’s favorite color. All the manufacturers were offering cars in that color. “I’m betting when Joanie sees this, it’ll lift her spirits,” he told the salesman as they completed the paperwork.
Roger assured him it would. “Any woman would be thrilled to have this!”
When Bud picked her up from the hospital two days later and she saw the Monterey wagon was gone, she bawled all the way home.
4 responses to “MERCURY MAN, Chapter II”
Two lost babies, two strikes. Trading in the Merc, strike three. OUCH!
Amazingly Bud probably got it right for the incorrect reason. Joan cried because the wagon, which was symbolic of children was gone, but because it was gone, the T’Pike Cruiser will help here get through the emotional changes because the other symbol is not there as a daily reminder
Folks with attempt to console, or say “I know how you feel”,
But unless you’ve been there yourself , …..
Tough times