Tracy sat behind the wheel of her Nissan GTR in the lot of Babies Is Us, once again steeling herself to go inside. This time she had a list compiled from a smattering of sources, What to Expect When You’re Expecting and the highly opinionated opinions of the Boobs among them.
She took a deep breath and heaved herself out from behind the steering wheel into the muggy putrid air. Darn flight restrictions, she thought to herself. How she would love to be sitting in a café in Stockholm right now, waiting for Nigel to finish work and join her. Well, if he were actually talking to her. Or visiting her parents’ home in Rochester, being fawned over by her mother and plied with fresh peach pies. Not that she needed any more home-baking. But anything would be better than being trapped, virtually friendless, in Dubai.
The cool air of Babies Is Us washed over Tracy as she stepped inside and grabbed a cart. She held the list, her pen ready to tick the items as she found them. If Nigel could approach their new life with a baby with businesslike detachment, so could she.
Tracy placed a six-pack of bottles in the cart, along with a microwave sterilizer, a manual breast pump and a bag of both silicon and natural rubber nipples, just to be on the safe side. She crossed them off her list and moved down the aisle with more confidence.
Despite the frequent kicks and prods Junior kept giving her, she still couldn’t quite imagine the thing inside her as a real person. Although she couldn’t wait to have the giant watermelon that was wedged under her ribcage gone, she was starting to look forward to her due date with a feeling that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Nervousness? Maybe. Fear? Not quite. Trepidation? Perhaps.
If only there was someone I could talk to about what I’m feeling, she thought. Nigel didn’t want to hear about any emotion that conflicted with his picture-perfect image of their new life with Junior. And Max and Caroline? Well, Caroline had wanted to be a mother from the time she could rock a plastic doll in her arms. She wouldn’t understand Tracy’s ambivalence, while Max was at the other end of the spectrum. Besides, all three of them were in different time zones.
Tracy turned the corner and saw a woman with long, curly dark hair who looked instantly familiar. It was a weekday morning and the vast warehouse of a store was not busy. There was a pair of Emirati women, cloaked head to toe in black, their Filipino nannies pushing their shopping carts while the mothers bounced newborns in elaborate lacy sleeping bags. An Indian woman, bright as a butterfly in her intricately wrapped sari, was giving instructions to her husband in rapid-fire Hindi while their infant daughter sat complacently in the trolley seat, sucking on a lollypop. There were also a few expat-Arabs, hair concealed behind scarves color-coordinated to their stylish outfits. But as far as she could tell, Tracy was the only Western woman in the shop, except for this curly-haired woman making soothing noises to the baby strapped in its removable car seat.
Tracy approached her with a smile on her face, trying to remember where she’d seen her before.
“Oh, what a cute t-shirt.” She pointed to the baby’s tie-dyed top. “Did you get it here?”
The woman looked up at her, and smiled back. “Oh, thanks,” she said in a British accent. “No, one of me friends from home sent it.”
“That’s it!” Tracy said.“That’s where I’ve seen you before. You’ve been to Boo-Boo’s at Tamasin’s, right?”
“Yeah,” the woman answered, her smile faltering.
“I think I saw you there just the one time,” Tracy continued. She remembered seeing the woman slip out the door, her baby tucked into a sling.
The woman laughed uncomfortably and fiddled with the straps on her baby’s car seat. “Yeah. Not exactly my scene, if you know what I mean.”
“Totally!” Tracy enthused.
The woman looked at her, surprised. “Really?” she said.
Tracy glanced down at her Boob-approved uniform of dark maternity jeans, floaty floral top and neatly pedicured toes peeping out of Kenneth Cole sandals. She hid her Coach handbag behind her back.
“I mean, I have gone back a few times,” she continued, “but honestly, only because I quit my job, my friends are busy with their non-baby lives, my husband is always out of town, and I’m going out of my mind with boredom. Besides, I don’t have a clue what this whole baby thing is about, and I’m trying to, you know, prepare myself for it by hanging out with babies, hoping to absorb some maternal instinct by osmosis. And if I don’t get out of my house I’m going to eat myself into gestational diabetes or something.”
The woman laughed.
“Sorry,” Tracy said, “I’m not normally like this.”
“Like what?” she smiled. “Funny?”
“Yeah. No,” Tracy, corrected. “I’m not usually so socially retarded. Or politically incorrect. It’s just that I haven’t spoken to an actually human being, in oh, two days or so.”
The woman gestured to Tracy’s belly. “Don’t worry. When I was at that stage, I was a danger to meself and everyone I ran into. Literally.” She pushed her belly out and mimed bumping into someone. “Hormones!”
Tracy smiled, relieved. “Exactly!” she said.
“Well, I’ve better get on with this before the little man wants feeding.” The woman started pushing her cart down the aisle. “Best of luck, um…”
“Tracy,” she said, following the woman, list forgotten for the moment.
“Teresa. Good luck with the shopping.” She started to walk away again.
“Wait, let me give you my details,” Tracy called after her. “We should get together for coffee sometime. Decaf, of course.”
“Ah, sure.” Teresa answered, looking a bit taken aback. She got her cell phone out of one of the side pockets of her black nylon diaper bag and entered Tracy’s name and number. Her baby started to make little grimaces and sighs of displeasure, squirming in his seat.
“Alright, alright, mister,” she cooed to her son. “Tracy, I really must be off. I’ll call you, yeah?” Teresa smiled at her, then turned and walked toward the cashiers, talking softly to her little boy.
As Tracy watched Teresa walk away, she felt strangely buoyed by their chance meeting. With a light heart, she began filling her cart with the items on her list, consciously engaging in an internal dialogue with the little person who was kicking her bladder to the beat of the song playing over the Muzak.
Tracy’s purchases filled the entire trunk of the sports car. When she pulled into the underground parking lot of her building, she called Shadi, her favorite doorman on her cell to help her.
Tracy chattered away to the natour as they rode up to her apartment in the elevator, asking him about his wife and children back in India, complaining about the heat, talking about the upcoming Muslim holy month of Ramadan. As Shadi put her bags just inside the entryway, Tracy tipped him, but he didn’t move.
“Thank you, Shadi,” Tracy said, anxious for him to leave so she could put her aching feet up.
“Madam there is delivery for you downside,” he said.
“Oh?” Tracy said, surprised. “Great.” She had ordered a few things online from the States. She hadn’t expected them to arrive so soon.
“I will bring it?” He smiled, wiggling his head from side to side in the affirmative.
“Yes, thanks, Shadi. I might be sleeping.” She mimed taking a nap. “So just leave it outside the door.”
“Yes, madam.”
She shut the door behind him and, leaving the bags and boxes in the entryway, waddled into the living room. There was no denying she was definitely waddling now, despite her best intentions not to. She would move the bags into the study later, she decided. As the packers and movers would be coming in a few days, she wouldn’t even bother with unpacking her purchases. She sank down onto the cool leather of the sofa and put her feet up on the coffee table, grateful that, for once, the urge to go into the kitchen and whip up a batch of double chocolate brownies was not as strong as the urge to remain immobile.
Tracy looked around the spare, white living room, realizing that it would be for one of the last times. The search for a villa had been suspiciously easy. In fact, she had found their new home on her first day of looking. She credited her efficient if mercenary realtor, Jo, who had called the morning after her blow-up with Nigel.
“Hallo, is this Treecy?” she’d said in her perky South African accent.
“Yes, it is,” Tracy answered. She was reclining on the sofa, watching her 3rd hour of daytime TV, trying not to think about Nigel, or the baby, or her barely started novel, or vanilla sponge cake with butter-cream icing.
“Yis, this is Jo, from Al Dirham Real Estate. Ah’ve got a couple of lovely villas Ah’d lack to shew you.”
Tracy glanced at the numberless sunburst clock on the wall. It was only 9 o’clock. She’d been up since before 6. She didn’t have any appointments or plans for the day, so she knew she’d eventually succumb to her butter-cream craving if she didn’t get out of the house.
“Sure. I can be ready by ten.”
“Great! Ah’ll peek you up.”
She had planned to make Jo work for her commission, but when the bottle-blond realtor had shown her the first place, a modern, open plan villa in Oasis Gardens, Tracy couldn’t help herself. “I love it. It is perfect,” she gushed. She ran her hand lovingly over the cool marble-topped island. “I want to move in tomorrow!”
A rustling sound outside the front door of the flat brought Tracy back to the present. Tracy knew it must be Shadi with the delivery, and she waited a few minutes to make sure he had gone before she hauled herself off of the sofa and shuffled down the hall to get it.
When she opened the door, she didn’t find the cardboard box of baby gear from Amazon that she had ordered. Instead, she was greeted with an enormous bouquet of flowers that came nearly to her chin. Her first thought was that it was from Jo. In this city, where word of mouth was law and high turnover a fact of life, it paid to be grateful to clients who could send more business your way.
But as Tracy bent down to pick up the flowers, she gasped. The arrangement of white roses, fragrant jasmine and feathery ferns was held in a cylindrical crystal vase that Tracy recognized from her last issue of Modern Homes. She remembered pointing it out to Nigel.
She detached the card, smiling in anticipation.
It read, “Tracy, my love, I’ve been a first class git. I’ll be home tonight to apologize properly. Love, Nigel.”
Tracy ran her hands over the delicate blossoms, a soft smile on her lips. She knew it was nearly lunchtime, but for once she didn’t feel the slightest bit hungry.
Welcome to Dubai, Baby 