A/N: Short story it is ;-) Not many people left feedback, but that's okay, I wanted to write anyway haha.
Also, please keep in mind that if anyone has any other prompts they'd like to provide, I'm always interested in hearing them! I had a prompt to write about the road trip of aught-six once, and another about what made them "go for three" (as in Jason). I enjoyed writing and exploring those.
Hope you enjoy this! Let me know how you're liking it?
April 30, 1970
"Elizabeth, honey," her mom's voice called from behind her.
She tucked the baby doll into her arm and turned around, looking for her mother. She found her quickly over by the house, whereas Elizabeth was by the barn. She'd been down there playing with her baby doll, letting it "ride the horses" (putting her doll up on the saddle) and pretending to play house in the tack room. She knew to not go too close to the horses without her mom or dad, they'd warned her too many times that even her almost-three-year-old mind knew to not go near them alone.
The fresh rain had made everything muddy, and Elizabeth's boots were covered in it up to her ankles, and even splatters reached up above that. As she watched her mother walk toward her, she caught a glimpse of the mud splashing up on her own boots and stared for a moment. Something about it fascinated her momentarily, but then her mother was nearing closer.
"Hi mommy," Elizabeth said, nestling her baby into her side, "Did you come to play with me?"
Suzanne smiled down at her daughter, putting her hands on her hips and looking at the baby before looking at the saddles, "Are you letting your baby ride the horse?" She asked, meaning the saddle.
Elizabeth nodded and tromped over to her basket of toys, pulling another baby doll from it. She turned around and reached it out to her mother, "Here," she said, "You can have this one."
Suzanne walked closer and kneeled down, taking her hands and placing them on each side of Elizabeth's ribs. She smiled at her mother, feeling her fingers give her an almost-ticklish squeeze from on top of her jacket. "Elizabeth," her mother cooed, and the way she was smiling at her made her intrigued. Her mother was almost always happy—she rarely saw her sad—but this was something that looked exciting.
Excitement flashed in front of her own eyes when she imagined she might be getting her own horse.
"How would you like a real, live baby?" Suzanne asked instead, crushing Elizabeth's hopes of a horse of her own.
She stared at her mom for a moment, then furrowed her brows and puckered her lip as she thought about it. "No thanks," she said, shoving the extra baby doll toward Suzanne again.
Her mother smiled as she looked down, the baby doll's head brushing her chest. She took it, but her other hand remained on Elizabeth, and she pulled Elizabeth's hat down around her ears with it. "You don't want a baby brother or sister?" She asked.
She shook her head, "No thanks, Mommy." She cooed, dropping her eyes down to the baby doll and back up at her mom, expecting her any moment to drop this subject and start playing with her. When there's no more talking, Elizabeth just takes Suzanne's hand and starts walking toward the barn again to play.
Suzanne stumbles back to her feet, walking after her daughter, "Honey," she said, her voice more serious this time.
Elizabeth looked around at her with curious eyes, using her palm to brush her hair from her eyes. "What Mommy?" She asked.
Her mom laid the baby doll on the saddle and Elizabeth watched carefully, intrigued at what was happening. "Your dad and I are having another baby," Suzanne finally said, looking at Elizabeth. "You're going to have a little brother or sister."
Elizabeth just stared at her, finally shrugging and turning back to her baby doll. "This one's name is Jenny," she said, showing her the baby that had been in her arms.
August 4, 1991
She's stared at the same spot on the ceiling for some time now, her blanket pulled up to her chest, her hands resting at the top of it. She hasn't moved—mostly because she's scared to. The nausea woke her up around 5:20, so she crawled pitifully back into the bed after throwing up the little bit of liquid she hadn't thrown up from yesterday and just stayed as still as possible.
Sleeping was impossible—she's not sure how she managed to fall asleep last night even. Her mind had been going everywhere, worrying about everything. She wondered how she would possibly get through this pregnancy on her own for the next six months while Henry was away. Her mind also panicked at the thought of his deployment getting extended, which they both knew was a possibility at the beginning of this. He's only been gone just two days less than a month, but it's already been long enough her mind. She missed him like crazy before, but now she's desperate—she needs her best friend, her one and only friend who can help her through this.
The one person she wants to strangle for getting her pregnant while also be held in his arms. A strange dichotomy.
A rumble in her tummy makes her realize she might actually be hungry, even though she's scared to move and scared to eat, too. She knows she should get up and eat, but there's too many factors that can cause her to throw up again, and right now, she just wants to not throw up. The nausea hit hard when it came, and she didn't know how to stop it, or even help it at the very least.
She slowly moves her head to glance over at the clock on her nightstand, seeing that it's now 7:42. Typically, she would sleep in 'til around this time on a Sunday morning, and it's when her internal alarm clock would wake her. After they'd gotten married, she and Henry would spend their Sunday mornings in bed for as long as possible—sometimes just snuggling, sometimes doing things that would petrify priests. Sometimes they would go to mass, sometimes they would make breakfast, sometimes they would go out to eat. They just took Sundays to be lazy, typically, and she missed that more than she'd ever thought she would.
So today, she's just going to lay here until she can't anymore. Until something forces her to get up, she'll be here in this spot, thinking about everything there is to think about: POIs, a baby, her mother, and of course, Henry—the subject always on her mind for the past weeks.
At some point, she must've fallen asleep, because when she opens her eyes again it's 9:58, and her stomach is rumbling so hard that she feels like it's yelling at her. Slowly, she reaches her arms underneath her and pushes herself upright, closing her eyes just in case as though she would get dizzy or something—much like one does with the flu. She has no idea how different it is, she just knows that she's trying to keep herself from getting sick again as much as she possibly can.
Once she's upright, she slowly moves her leg to drape over the edge of the bed, then follows it with the other and sits there for a moment. Her eyes open lazily, looking immediately out the window at the other apartment buildings outside. She sighs when she sees them, wondering what Henry was looking at in this very moment. He's eight hours ahead of her—he's already probably about to eat dinner, maybe, as long as they're not doing active work right now. A pang shoots through her heart at the thought of that, instead, being what he's doing. She gets a vision of him flying in that damned F-18 in full gear with people shooting at him, trying to get one more American Marine under their belt.
When she finally comes back to her own reality, she looks at the clock and sees it's 10:08—she wonders how she zoned out for so long, but she'd spent all that time thinking about her husband.
Finally, she stands to her feet carefully, pausing for a moment to make sure she wasn't going to have another puking spell, and then cautiously walks to the kitchen just down the hall.
She stops when she gets to the countertops, reaching up into the cabinet for the loaf of bread and the jar of peanut butter. This has to be safe, she thinks to herself as she unscrews the lid. She lays it down and reaches into the bread bag, grabbing a slice and laying it on the counter—no paper towel, no plate, just raw-dogging this bread. Mentally, that's where she's landed. She takes a knife from the drawer and scoops out peanut butter on it, the bread in her left hand now as she smooths it on with her right.
Taking one deeper breath in, she immediately stops putting the peanut butter on and drops the bread, dropping the knife, too, back into the peanut butter jar. Her hand flies up to her mouth as she gags, staring at the peanut butter as though it grew hands and reached them out to choke her. No, she thinks, It's the smell. She quickly caps the jar and throws the knife in the sink, turning the water on while she lifts her shirt over her nose to keep from getting another whiff. She's too scared to breathe, though, until the peanut butter is all off the spoon and down the drain.
When she turns back to the bread, she scoops it up and tosses it in the trash, then hides the jar up underneath the bottom cabinets, hoping one day she can revisit that. For now, though, peanut butter is so far out of her diet that she doesn't even want to think about it—no more throwing up for her if she can help it. At least for today.
She eyes the bread cautiously, the slices still left in the bag, wondering if she should dare try again with something more mild like just a little butter. She finally decides it's worth it to try, but soon finds that they—she's out of butter.
With a growl, she puts the twisty tie back on the bread and tosses it back into its spot in the corner of the counter, then scrounges around for something else to eat. She hadn't been to the grocery since the week after Henry left, though, and nothing was really around. The rumble in her stomach had subsided anyway, being replaced momentarily by nausea, and then nothing at all after. Instead of searching for food she wouldn't find in the kitchen, she decided to just go try to unpack boxes again—something to hopefully take her mind off everything else.
When she gets to the hall, she sees the box that she'd been working on yesterday just sitting in the spare room now—the stuff from her childhood, the stuff that had her mom and dad written all throughout it, photographed and engraved into everything some way or another in that box. She eyes it suspiciously, then decides to just break into another box and work on it.
More things from her childhood. She sighs when she sees it, closing her eyes and just deciding to sit down to work on this one. She slides it off the top of the other boxes onto the floor, then straddles her legs to each side of the box as she digs in from the carpet.
The first thing she touches when she reaches in is a baby doll, pulling it out to see its face. Elizabeth admires it for a moment, almost getting a smile out of her before she gives a huff of laughter, shaking her head, "I sure got a lot of use out of you, Jenny." She whispers, setting the slightly ratty baby doll down to her side.
She leans over and digs in again, her fingers finding something cold with a handle. She takes it from the cardboard box and sets it on her lap—a metal toolbox. She frowns a little, finding the latches a bit rusted and complicated to open since they were stuck. With a good push, the most force she has in her, it pops open and smacks her knuckle on its way up. "Shit," she hisses, bringing her knuckle up to her mouth and sucking on it immediately in a knee-jerk reaction as though that will somehow help it. She takes it from her mouth and shakes it a little, examining the nothingness on her finger except the red mark, and goes back to the contents of the toolbox.
Fingering through the pile of books within, she furrows her brows—she's not sure she's ever seen these before. They don't have anything on the outside of them, so she picks the first one up off the top and thumbs through the pages quickly, but then soon recognizes that it's her mother's handwriting. She stops flipping somewhere in the middle of the book, seeing three dates on the two pages. The first was December 22, 1967, the second was December 26, 1967, and the third was on the very bottom, right page, January 2, 1968.
The first date took up the entire left page, and the second date took up the entire right page with the exception of one line of text from January 2nd that year. Elizabeth brings her eyes up to the first entry:
"Ben has pampered me, of course. He's pampered me the entire time, but now that I'm becoming miserable and big and tired (more tired), he's really given me the works. I'm still working at the bank, but not for much longer because my feet swell up to look like giant balloons. The doctor said no more standing for that long, so I'm going to have to leave for a while here soon. But feeling the baby move means so much to me…it moves a lot when I'm working, and I think it's because it knows that I'm tired. It's like a little pick-me-up. With Christmas coming up soon, we're off a few days here and there anyway, so I will hold out until after the New Year comes along. I'll really miss working at the bank, but I know I want to be a mom more."
Elizabeth stops reading there for a moment, remembering back to when her mom got a job at a bank when Elizabeth was around ten or so. It was a big ordeal—her parents had called an impromptu family meeting, even, and she and Will didn't have an opinion. They were in school anyway while she would be at work—what did it matter to them?
She brings her eyes back to that last bit of text she'd read: "I'll really miss working at the bank, but I know I want to be a mom more." A wave of guilt washes over Elizabeth, making her feel very faint. She just stares at those words, no longer reading them, but completely becoming lost in thought. She doesn't want to be a mom more than be a CIA agent. Not right now. This was not what she and Henry had planned at all. Sure, times had changed since 1968 when her mother was pregnant with her, but how would she ever balance a job so serious and sometimes-exhausting as intelligence-work with motherhood? First-time motherhood, at that. She doesn't think it's possible, not in the slightest.
Her eyes drift past those words she'd been staring at finally, reading on:
"We talked about it last night and decided we had names picked. At least I think these are going to be the names…we can't ever make a final decision. Maybe we'll keep changing it until the baby is born. Anywho…we chose Amy Lynn for a girl and are still sticking with William Benjamin for a boy—the family name. I still hope for a girl."
To conclude, Suzanne had drawn a little heart at the end of the sentence before switching to the next page to talk about Christmas spent with Ben's family and then Suzanne's family. She details some more about the baby kicking and moving, and Elizabeth shuddered when she read this:
"And of course the baby was really moving a lot when Ben and I got home and…relaxed…on the couch."
She wants to take her eyeballs out and clean them, then bury this journal and never see it again. But something about it is pulling her back, even with the grossness of hints of her parents' sex life. She skips a few pages, still feeling a bit scarred from what she'd read, and finds an entry from February 15th, 1968, just ten days before her birthday:
"The baby is starting to get active, and the doctor says it has turned head down now." Elizabeth pauses her reading, thinking back to her high school biology and her college classes, too, wondering if they ever taught her anything about labor. She's not sure she recalls any part of this. Of course it only makes sense for the baby to come out head down—her body shudders at the thought of just a foot hanging out, and she has to stop thinking about it. She continues to read:
"So it can be any day now that our little baby is here. Ben is getting restless, and I'm getting tired. I've cleaned the nursery until it shines, and the kitchen has been cleaned so much that I started scraping the paint off the walls by accident while cleaning the light switch panels. I know it's silly…the baby can't reach any of that, of course, but I want everything to be clean when we bring it home. I want it to know it's safe, I guess."
Elizabeth's heart swells, her vision becoming blurry again. She did always feel safe at home, but she knows it's because her parents made her feel safe, not because of how clean or dirty the light switches were.
"I think it's a girl, too. I've been wanting a girl, so I might just be talking myself into it, but I believe it's a girl. Everyone says so, too, all the old wives' tales say it's a girl. Aunt Betty always says that because I have been so sick, that it's probably a girl. I also carry high, and Aunt Harri says boys you carry low. So we'll see soon, I guess, because this little one is ready to make its debut any day now."
Elizabeth finds herself smiling, knowing that she would actually be making her mother wait ten more days after writing this to officially make her appearance. And thank God Suzanne didn't go with Amy—she couldn't imagine being an Amy. She had a great friend in elementary school named Amy, but then she went to high school with another Amy who she couldn't stand. No, she quite liked Elizabeth Marie. Amy Adams? Who names their kid that anyway?
She lays the journal down to the side, curiosity getting the best of her as she wonders what else is in here. The other journals are similar day-to-day entries, but one is just like this journal, except she was pregnant with Will. Elizabeth flips through the pages of it, too, smirking as she hopes she'll be able to read about how terrible Will made her feel all the time. Elizabeth was much too young to remember it fully, but she remembers her mother being tired and too cranky to play with her much.
"April 30, 1970—
I told Elizabeth today that she was having a little sibling, and I don't think she quite understood the concept. She was playing with her baby dolls and kept asking me to play, too, but she just didn't seem to understand that it was me who was actually having a baby. She said "no thanks" when I asked her if she wanted a little brother or sister, and my heart sank. What if she hates being a sister? What if she wanted to be an only child her whole life? What I thought would be a much easier pregnancy without all the morning sickness from last time has turned into one of heartbreak. I just hope she doesn't hate us both."
Elizabeth's heart sank. She could never hate her mother, even when she said she did as a young teen. Not genuinely, she couldn't hate her. And she didn't hate Will, although she does know she asked to send him back when she was in the hospital visiting her mom and dad and new brother. Her aunt Betty had brought her—and that wasn't long before she passed away—and Elizabeth was not amused. But as he grew older and more fun to play with, he became way more interesting and easier to control, too. Elizabeth liked having a kid brother.
She picks up the other journal again, feeling soured that her mother complained of morning sickness with Elizabeth and said it was great with Will. Of course he would be the good pregnancy—he was the problem child, and Elizabeth was the good one after a rough pregnancy. Sounded fair, really.
She looks through another of the journals, the last page ending in the summer of 1967. She glances down the pages a bit and flips through, finding one entry that was very short:
"June 30, 1967—
I went to the doctor today and it's confirmed. I'm pregnant." A few lines were skipped, and Elizabeth's pretty sure she sees a very old tear stain—but maybe it's just a drink or something Suzanne had. "I'm really scared. Mom's not here anymore and Dad doesn't know the first thing about mothering, of course. I'm just scared. I don't know if I know how to be a mom."
Elizabeth swallows the lump in her throat, or tries to and fails, and sets the book down on the carpet between her legs. She just stares at the page, focusing in on those words—she was scared, too. How did Elizabeth never know her own mother was scared to be a mother, too? She always seemed so good at it, so well-prepared and as though she knew everything there was about being a mom. There were times when Elizabeth was a teenager that she felt her mother didn't know anything, but now as an adult, she realizes that was just her own body experiencing puberty.
Something tells her to look up at the picture she'd hung of she and Henry on the wall yesterday—the picture that they took outside the courthouse when they got married a few years back. Henry's friend took the picture for them, their one witness, and she thought it was one of the worst pictures ever taken. Elizabeth's eyes were squinty because it was so bright outside, and she and Henry were both freezing and very visibly cold in the picture. They were holding onto one another for dear life, but they look excited—hopeful for the future and everything life had to offer them.
Is this what life had to offer them? A pregnancy he wasn't here to experience? A pregnancy she didn't really want yet? A job that she loves just to be ripped away because of an accident? Is this what that young couple envisioned? Certainly not.
She blinks away tears as she takes a deep breath in, wishing once more that he were here to hold her and tell her it would all be alright. She just wants someone to do that for her, but mostly Henry. Her mom hasn't been alive for years, but her heart wants her here, too. From one scared mother to another petrified mother, she could give some sort of advice, at least, about what to do for newborn babies. Elizabeth was clueless. Her friends spent their high school free time babysitting, but Elizabeth spent her free time studying and made money by doing other people's homework. She didn't have all the baby experience they had—and they're all mothers now, anyway.
Her eyes fall back to those words on the paper: "I'm scared."
She swallows hard, brushing her fingers over the paper, "Me too." She whispers into the silent hallway.