Chapter 41: Camera Shy
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Rachel spent the next few weeks visiting Dr. Evers one-on-one. He continued to supply her with helpful ways to cope with her trauma, but she still had not summoned the courage to be completely transparent with Frank about everything. Having to explain about Fletcher's father was one thing, but sharing her anxieties about being a target of violence again was entirely another. She felt it would be more productive in a relationship if one partner were to carry that burden. Frank carried it so well on his capable shoulders, despite having paranoid tendencies that drove her absolutely insane sometimes. She had considered it an endearing quality, like many others he possessed, that just happened to get on her nerves.
One morning, however, while lying half-asleep in bed beside him, she felt the effects of that trauma firsthand. He had turned on his side to face away from her so that she was facing his back as he slept. And that one gesture, as innocent as it had been, had thrown her body into a full-blown, bone-rattling panic. Because it was the same. The same as the night he'd saved her life. All she had been able to see was his back, blocking out her view of everything else around her. Her throat closed up and her brain began to fog and it was impossible to take a deep breath.
He had woken up to the sound of her gasping, and cradled her against his chest until her lungs began to follow his steady stream of commands. "Breathe. Just breathe. Breathe with me. Breathe."
It was more of a problem than she thought. And Frank's presence was somehow simultaneously making it better and worse.
Things were complicated between them the rest of that day. He had tried to talk her into rescheduling her anatomy scan so they could go on a day when she was feeling better, but she'd refused. Frank knew very well the times he was welcome to try convincing her, and the times when he would regret it. This was one of those times he would regret it, so he shut his mouth and ordered one of Ms. Pentecost's cars.
Ricky's eyes were concerned as he looked at them through the rear-view mirror. Scott pretended not to notice the obvious distress that Rachel was in, but she knew they were all aware. It was almost to a point now where she was insulted by their coddling. Had she conditioned everyone around her into such a state? She didn't want anyone to walk on eggshells around her anymore. The old Rachel would have demanded it, but Rachel today would not have it. All she wanted was to be normal. Like everyone else. Like the other women she watched enter the building with their varying sizes of baby bumps, with their enviable anonymity and their quiet, uninteresting lives.
She thought that Frank would take advantage of the subdued setting and stop feeling the need to scan the room like a fucking terminator, but he didn't. He stared at those innocent pregnant women like they were all secret snipers about to converge on him when he least expected it. Rachel wanted to laugh at him, but her own anxiety was so consuming that she could hardly breathe, much less laugh.
He didn't speak to her when they were taken back to the exam room. He watched her with an emotionless stare as the nurse weighed her, took her blood pressure, and drew her blood. They were redirected into the ultrasound room and waited in silence until the tech entered cheerfully, asking Rachel all sorts of questions about how she'd been feeling, what symptoms have been like, how she's been sleeping. Rachel ensured that her answers were vague and to the point; the best way to do that was to answer them in the way Farmer would have.
She finally felt the cold, slick motion of the transducer over her belly, and then without warning, an image appeared on the screen – the stunning black-and-white silhouette of their baby, looking so real, so utterly complete that she immediately felt the tears prickling in her eyes.
"Oh my, someone's jumpy!" the tech laughed as she had to move the wand in several directions to get the baby to cooperate.
Rachel's tears spilled over as she turned to look at Frank. "Camera shy," she giggled through her tears, "sounds like someone else I know."
Rachel watched in wonder as the baby flinched and twitched about in its safe little bubble, occasionally drawing its tiny hands up to its head as if it were trying to hide. She was fascinated by every detail – its perfect button nose, the delicate line of its spine, the jittery dance of its limbs as it tried to evade each poke and prod. The tech made silly small talk with the baby as she attempted to make her measurements for the exam. "How are you so smart?" and "You can't hide from me!" and "Look at that leg action, wow! You're gonna be a runner, aren't you?" Rachel ate it all up, completely enamored with her sweet little black-and-white button of a baby.
"You've got a very bashful little baby here," the tech said with a chuckle as she nudged the wand several times against Rachel's left side. The image on the screen shifted to show a vague bundle of limbs, then a brief white flash as a screen-capture was taken. "So are we waiting until the birth, or would you like to find out the gender today?"
It took every ounce of effort for Rachel to tear her eyes away from the screen to look over at Frank.
Having not said one word the entire time, she was stunned when he replied softly, "I don't think I can wait any longer."
How uncharacteristic of him.
Rachel grinned over at the tech. "Tell us."
"It's a girl."
Rachel immediately began to sob as she stared back at the screen. That same image now looked so much more familiar, so crystal clear, it seemed so obvious that she wondered how they didn't know the gender instantly at first sight. "Oh, my God…"
"And she has some mean reflexes for a little fetus," the tech said with a laugh.
Rachel looked over at Frank to find his hand covering his mouth, face flush, and pale eyes brimming with tears.
"Everything looks perfect," the tech continued brightly. "Plenty of amniotic fluid for her to swim around in, her heartbeat is strong, she's extremely active, and she's actually measuring slightly ahead in head circumference and leg length."
They stared in awe at their tiny miracle moving about on the screen until the end of the exam when the tech shut down the monitor.
"I just can't believe how much she was moving in there," Rachel marveled, her hand cradling her belly. "I haven't felt her yet at all."
"I noticed that you have an anterior placenta," the tech explained. "That's most likely why you haven't felt her yet. But you will soon! I'm going to go print some pictures for you."
As soon as the woman left the room, Frank reached over to grab hold of Rachel's hand. Her eyes began to well up again when she felt the faintest tremble in his fingers.
"I can't believe we're having a daughter," he whispered, looking so overwhelmed with joy, she wondered if his premonitory dream had been a window to the longings of his heart.
Rachel smiled. "And one day she'll bring home a boyfriend to meet her daddy, and the poor sucker will be scared shitless."
They laughed, and for that brief moment, in that tiny room, all was right in the world.
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Rachel did not waste any time before showing Fletcher the pictures from their ultrasound. Despite his begging from the second they came through the door, she made him guess the gender before she revealed it.
"It's a girl?"
Rachel felt herself start to cry again as she nodded.
"I knew it!" Fletcher cheered, tackling them both with a hug. "Frank said he had a feeling, too."
Rachel sighed as she settled into the sitting room sofa with her son, prepared to spend the next hour gushing over the same three fuzzy photos of their baby's profile in utero.
"Look, she has legs! And hands!"
Rachel laughed loudly at her son's obvious observations. "Well, she is human."
He laughed and shook his head in awe. "I guess I just didn't realize how . . . real she would look."
"She's beautiful, isn't she?"
Fletcher nodded as he flipped through the images with stars in his eyes. "I can't wait to see what she'll look like when she's born."
"Don't try to draw a Punnett Square for that one," the all-knowing voice of Julie Pentecost said as she entered the room, "it'll make you dizzy."
Rachel looked back as the woman came up behind them where they sat. "I gotta see these." Rachel heard the jingle of ice cubes in Julie's whiskey glass as she leaned onto the back of the sofa. "Oh, she's a sweet little jellybean, isn't she? And look at those legs! Daddy's gonna have to beat the boys away with a stick," she chortled.
"I'll beat 'em, too," Fletcher said with a proud grin.
Rachel groaned. "At the rate we're going, she'd be better off joining a convent."
Julie laughed broadly. "You feel her kicking yet?"
"Not yet, they told me the placenta was in the way," Rachel explained.
Julie's voice echoed into her whiskey glass, "I remember when I was carrying Laura, she kept me up all night from week sixteen on."
Rachel and Fletcher exchanged an amused glance.
"Did I keep you up all night kicking, Mom?" Fletcher asked.
"No, I don't remember you being all that active actually…"
"Oh, it's a treat the first few times you feel it, though, isn't it?" Julie said reassuringly as she patted Rachel's shoulder with one bejeweled hand.
That night in bed, Rachel found it difficult to fall asleep. Except this time, she didn't owe her insomnia to anxiety, but rather to the entertaining plethora of possibilities of what her baby could look like. She had previously given no thought at all to the tone of her baby's skin or the color of her baby's eyes, but now that she knew it was a girl, she couldn't help but draw up pictures in her mind. There was still something surreal about the concept – it seemed like it should have been a scientific impossibility for the DNA of Frank Farmer to coincide peacefully enough with her own in order to produce human life. The idea was actually rather amusing, but it perpetuated a greater sense of mystery than anything else. As individuals, they looked nothing alike, which made it that much harder for her to imagine what their offspring would look like.
She turned over to face Frank where he lay sleeping, her fingers tracing the features of his face in fascination as she continued to ponder.
His eyes opened slowly in response to her touch. "You okay?"
"Yeah."
He closed his eyes again before asking, "Something on your mind?"
Rachel bit her lip, quiet for a moment while her fingers drifted down to play with the collar of his shirt. "Who do you think she'll look like?"
He answered without hesitation. "You."
"Why do you say that?"
He shrugged against the pillow. "Because she's a girl. You're a girl."
What a guy thing to say.
"That doesn't mean anything," Rachel said. "She might look more like you."
He gave a rough sort of chuckle as he pushed his hair back with one hand. "Oh, God, I hope so. Then I wouldn't have to worry about the guys going after her."
Rachel struggled to contain her laughter. She laid still beside him for a few moments, allowing the peace of oncoming sleep to claim her. Just before she could drift off, she murmured, "I'm so excited."
His quiet voice was the last thing she heard. "I am, too."
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The next morning, Rachel woke at an uncharacteristically early time of day. She was shocked that Frank was still asleep, being that he was almost always awake well before her. His face was so smooth and calm under a veil of fragile blue daylight, his breathing barely audible. He was lying on his back, with one hand on his chest and the other in between their bodies, palm up, as if she had been holding it last night. She leaned down to place a light kiss on the center of his palm before she slipped out of bed.
The vast mansion was quiet this early in the morning, the thick exterior walls blocking out the expected symphony of birds outside. Rachel tiptoed down the staircase to find Julie alone in the dining hall, grapefruit mimosa in hand, rings shimmering under the dim light of the chandelier. She turned from the windows to welcome her intruder with a surprisingly warm smile. "Did she kick you awake?"
Rachel smiled back wanly as she shuffled over to the table. "No. I think I've just got a lot on my mind."
"Coffee's over here," Julie gestured to the table by the window, but before Rachel could come over, she shooed her away. "Go on and sit down, I'll bring you some."
Rachel sat herself down at the end of the table, for the first time noticing that her belly kept her from being able to tuck herself in all the way.
Julie brought over a teacup of coffee and sat herself down at the head of the table beside Rachel. "Thanks," Rachel sighed, "I'm trying to cut back, so this is just the right amount."
"Back in my day, the doctors never gave a shit what you put in your body while you were pregnant," Julie said. "Of course, those three cigarettes I had while I was pregnant with Laura might have something to do with the defects in her attitude."
Rachel desperately tried to conceal her smirk behind her cup of coffee.
"You seem happy," Julie observed. Rachel looked up in surprise. "It's a lot, preparing for a baby while you're in the public eye. I've lived it, too."
"I'm just doing my best to stay positive," Rachel said with a shrug.
"You have good support from your son. And from him," Julie said warmly. "It's hard to find a man who will stick around in this town, especially when fatherhood comes into play."
Rachel straightened up in her chair. "Frank told me he's always wanted a child."
Julie raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow. "He probably never expected it would be with a celebrity, though."
Rachel stared blankly at the woman for a beat, wondering if there was some hidden meaning behind her words. "No, probably not."
"Are you two thinking about marriage at all?"
There wasn't any reason it should be such a difficult question to answer. The answer was easy enough. No. They hadn't talked about marriage. But Rachel found herself using words in excess to avoid saying the one syllable that was required.
"I mean, we're building a house together. We're having a child. We're not seeing anyone else."
Julie leaned a bit closer from her spot at the table. "Do you want to get married?"
Rachel took a deep breath and answered truthfully. "I never did. It always scared me."
"Even after my fifth attempt, it still scared me," Julie chuckled darkly.
"I don't know, though . . . I've changed in a lot of ways over the past few years," Rachel considered, turning the teacup in her hands. "Knowing I'm going to have a second child has changed me, too."
"Marriage doesn't work well in Hollywood," Julie said, a roughness to her voice. "It's like that one piece of spaghetti you just can't get to stick on the wall."
"I know that," Rachel said quietly. "But when I think about marrying him . . . it seems different."
Julie's eyes squinted slightly as she inspected Rachel's face. "He's a strange man, that Farmer," she said suddenly. "I like him, don't get me wrong, but I can't say he's like any other man I've met before."
Rachel laughed lightly. "Yes, he is sort of strange."
"I can tell you're in love," Julie said. If it hadn't been for the plastic surgery, Rachel was certain there would have been a crinkle of crow's feet around her eyes as she smiled.
Rachel blushed, looking down at her coffee.
Julie continued, "So I mean this with the best of intentions when I say, if I were in your shoes, I don't know if I'd marry him."
The smile melted from Rachel's face. "Not to be rude, Ms. Pentecost, but I'm sure if I'd been married five times I would try to talk someone else out of it, too."
Julie gave a hardy laugh. "I appreciate your candidness, dear. But this doesn't have anything to do with marriage as an institution, but the person you'd be marrying."
Rachel narrowed her eyes in confusion.
"That man clearly wants nothing to do with your lifestyle. He seems very devoted and I'm sure he'll make an excellent father," Julie said with sincerity, "but I doubt he'll last another year in this relationship if you continue to stay relevant out here."
Rachel pursed her lips. "The goal is for me to not stay relevant."
"And how are you planning to control that?"
"We're moving five hours away from L.A.," she explained, "I wouldn't even be attending events anymore. All I want to do is write music."
"If you write music, it'll sell. If it sells, you get attention. You can't escape that."
It was all of the same warnings she'd heard from Frank, all the warnings she'd heard from that little nagging voice in the back of her head. And now, in the solid voice of Julie Pentecost, it was unignorable.
"But there is hope," Julie said swiftly. "I'm sure he'll remain a part of your life, even if you don't have a ring on that finger."
Rachel didn't doubt that this would be true. So why did it hurt worse than hearing the words "he'd be better off without you?"