cut-out picture of John Lennonâs head taped to the front. This, if nothing else, makes me feel at home: how many nights I lay there sleepless staring at John Lennon, whose face you could just make out in the clockâs glow.
âLast time you were living someplace different,â I say. A decent little bungalow in Altadena.
âI was house-sitting.â
His room doesnât smell exactly. It does smell, but of Gregg, a sweet-sweaty odor I remember from college. I try to see the charm in this place, as he gives me a tour. More frayed linoleum in the living room that needs scrubbing, a mopping with bleach. A smelly can of cat food on the kitchen counter with the fork still in it. I count exactly seven pieces of furniture (nine including Greggâs mattress and bureau): a dinette, a leather chair mostly robbed of its stuffing, an old TV with a wire hanger for an antenna, the beds of his roommates (musicians also, away on tour, Gregg says), and Greggâs piano, a Yamaha shiny as obsidian, the only thing cared for in this house, a can of Pledge on top of it and next to that two stacks of score sheets, one for the opera heâs working on, he says, and the other a stack of various pop songs heâs written.
âWill you excuse me?â I say. I go to the bathroom, sit on the john and bend over, holding my stomach, feeling wretched. It isnât that Gregg is poor; poor is okay, I like poor, looking back on my choices in men. Itâs rich men I donât trust. But Gregg is living like a college student still, and heâs thirty-six, and Iâve just slept with him. Iâm not simply here for the afternoon as I was four years ago, and this is Gregg, not a quickie one-night stand. This time Iâve made some kind of commitment, or a mistake; I canât say why this has happened except that I love him. I must. Who understands love? People can change, I tell myself, and itâs just a place, a rental, for Godâs sake, and itâs Greggâs character that mattersâbut what sort of person would live here? I could pretend itâs a fixer-upper, although Gregg wouldnât know which end of a hammer to use. But maybe heâs changed, maybe he tore up the linoleum himself and plans to refinish whatâs underneath. Fat chance. Whatâs really different now as opposed to four years ago is that weâre four years older, and that Iâm pregnant, looking for a nest to have my baby in. Why not admit it?
Some nest.
He seems a little anxious when I return, as though heâs guessed what Iâm thinking. Heâs always been sensitive on the subject on financial success or lack thereof. âI thought you were doing something,â he said.
âSomething?â
âYou know. We didnât use anything. Last time you had a diaphragm.â
âNot that we needed it.â We had changed our minds at the last minute. I changed my mind, and Gregg isnât the pushy sort. As if doing everything but made me more virtuous. I brought my diaphragm all the way from Colorado, leaving the case for it there, in the medicine cabinet, so Jackson wouldnât suspect. Actually what I did was put my old diaphragm in that case, because I feared he would check, and, being a man, he wouldnât know the difference between the old and new. Itâs not a happy memory. The sex part, yes, the subterfuge, no. Since I had the diaphragm, I felt compelled to use itâI mean, I wore it out to lunch, every so often catching a whiff of spermicidal jelly wafting up from under the tablecloth.
âI donât use a diaphragm anymore,â I say. On the drive over here, I nearly asked Gregg to stop for rubbers, old habitâan awareness I didnât have my diaphragm and we should use something âall the years of pregnancy prevention.
âYouâre on the pill?â he says.
âCan we not talk about this?â
âOr that shot? Or one of those deals they