The Answer

 

“Shine on me, sunshine, walk with me, world; it's a skip-a-dee-doo-dah day.

I'm the happiest girl in the whole USA.”+

Marian's first thought upon waking was that it was extremely ironic that the song playing on her alarm clock was a song about an alarm clock. She laughed out loud and reached over to her bedside table to shut off the alarm. She rolled over, her bangs falling in her eyes, looking for Jacob. He wasn't in the bed. His half of the bed had been neatly made, the blankets tucked tidily up against the fluffed pillows. Marian scrunched her brow confusedly. Why had he left? Was there a note?

“Jacob?” Marian's voice trembled, and it was far quieter than she had intended. She didn't really call for him; she merely said his name. She sat up, tucked her knees to her chest, and pulled the blanket around her. A moment later, she heard a creaking sound from out in the hallway and soft, pattering footsteps. Her heart pounded until, to her immense relief, Jacob's figure appeared in the bedroom doorway.

He put a hand on either side of the door jamb and leaned into the room, smiling gently.

“Morning,” he said serenely. He was wearing a very pale green shirt and khaki pants, different clothes than he'd been wearing the day before. Marian furrowed her brow. She hadn't noticed a pack or bag; where had he gotten a change of clothes?

“Hi,” she said absentmindedly. “I... thought you'd left.”

Jacob raised his eyebrows. “Without saying goodbye?”

“Don't you ever sleep?” Marian asked, giving him an odd look.

“Yes.”

“Not that I've seen,” she insisted, and he grinned at her.

“You should really eat some cereal or something,” Jacob said. “I know you don't like breakfast, but you need the nutrition.”

“Thanks, Doctor. I'm gaining plenty of weight. More than enough.” She frowned.

“Why don't you talk to Juliet today? See if she'll do a scan?”

Marian flopped backward onto her pillow and sighed loudly. “Please stop fretting over me,” she said plaintively.

Jacob walked silently from the doorway to the side of the bed and rubbed his forehead, looking down at Marian. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I just love you, is all. Both of you.”

Marian put her hand on her stomach and frowned. She nodded at Jacob and heaved herself out of bed. She crossed the room and the hallway and entered the bathroom, flicking on the light and staring at herself in the mirror. What was there to love? Her auburn braids were messy. Her skin was pale despite being constantly exposed to the island sun. It was chapped from being consistently burned. It never tanned. Freckles dusted across her nose and cheeks. Her green hazel eyes stared back at her, not nearly as piercingly exquisite as Jacob's sapphire gaze. She sighed and squeezed toothpaste onto the head of her toothbrush, wondering if he'd kiss her goodbye before he left.

After her mouth felt clean, she brushed out her hair and put it into a ballerina's bun on the back of her head, leaving small pieces hanging around her face. She put on mascara, rouge, and lip gloss, looking rather satisfied at herself since she'd never worn makeup for Jacob. She resolved to get dressed in something nice and crossed back into her bedroom.

He'd made her side of the bed and returned to the living room. Marian sighed and shook her head, stalking to her closet. She pawed through the items hanging on the rack, pausing when she reached a sage green paisley sun dress. That would do, she thought, pulling it off its hanger and putting it on. It was a little snug since she'd gained weight with the pregnancy. Where and when was she going to get new clothes? Soon nothing would fit! The dress zipped, though, and she surveyed herself in the full-length mirror, glad that even after becoming pregnant, the slim little dress still fit. She slipped on white sandals and padded down the hallway into the living room, smiling warmly at Jacob, who sat on the couch with his hands on his knees.

“You look lovely,” he said instantly, flashing her a grin. “What's the occasion?”

“No occasion,” Marian said, shaking her head and smoothing her skirt. “I always look so sloppy for you.”

Jacob laughed. “Are you meant to wear dresses for hiking through the jungle?”

Marian shrugged. “Are you leaving?”

He nodded. “I'm sorry, but I do have to go, and so do you. Juliet will be at her house; she's not going to want to go in to work today. Not after what happened with Laura yesterday. Ask her to do an ultrasound for you; for some reason, I just feel like you should have one now. I think you qualify as a high-risk pregnancy. You also need to explain to her that you're not working anymore, at my behest. Carrying this child is your job now. If she, or Ben, or anyone else has a problem with that, tell them to take it to Richard.”

Marian raised her eyebrows. It was extremely sexy, seeing him get so authoritative and administrative.

“Can I have a kiss, please?” she asked, her voice wavering a little as she rather swooned.

Jacob stood and crossed the room to where Marian stood and rested his warm hands on her bare shoulders. She tipped her head up and stood on her tiptoes, leaning up to his face. He very carefully kissed her, brushing his soft lips against hers. One hand snaked down her back and pulled her in closer to him as his other hand trailed up her neck to brace her head against his mouth.

When at last he broke their kiss, he pulled back and sighed.

“Have a good day,” he said, squeezing Marian's hands. “Let me know when you want me to come back... or come see me.”

“Bye, Jacob,” she whispered, and he turned to grab a canvas rucksack Marian hadn't noticed before. He slung it over his shoulder and brazenly walked out the door. Marian watched him stride across the lawn. All around him, people ignored him, seemingly unaware of the blonde stranger stalking through their midst. As he vanished behind the farthest house, Marian furrowed her brow and shook her head, thoroughly mystified as to how he'd escaped detection.

She stepped out the door into the warm morning sunlight and padded across the grass, past several yellow houses, until she reached Juliet's residence. Rather nervously, she walked up the steps to the chipping white front door and knocked several times. She could hear music playing inside the house, and the volume turned down a few seconds after Marian knocked.

The door opened and Juliet stood in the threshold, looking tired.

“Good morning, Marian,” Juliet said, looking rather surprised to see Marian dressed up with makeup on. “Feeling any better?”

“Can we talk, Juliet?”

“Come on in.” Juliet stood aside and gestured for Marian to enter the little house. It was identical in layout to Marian's own small bungalow. “What's up?” She sat at the kitchen table, and Marian pulled out a chair to join her. Juliet didn't offer her anything to eat or drink.

“Jacob doesn't want me working anymore,” Marian said bluntly. “He says my job is to be pregnant.”

Juliet was silent for a moment, her face expressionless. “Have you told that to Ben?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, as no one else besides you is pregnant – that we know of, anyway – and I have Ethan and Goodwin, I see no need for you to work. It's probably best for you not to get so upset by it all, anyway. I can see his point.” She chewed on her lip. “You'll get awfully bored, just sitting around the house.”

“Maybe I'll start a garden,” Marian said, half-jokingly.

“Did you come here just to tell me that you're not working anymore?” Juliet asked, furrowing her brow.

“No,” Marian admitted. “Jacob – I mean, I – was wondering... if you would please do an ultrasound. I know it's very early for that, but -”

“Well, at six weeks, sometimes we can get a heartbeat,” Juliet said. “And we can get a pretty accurate gestational age to the day. The machine is in the Staff. Unfortunately, the P.O.S. I've got is not exactly high definition, so we may or may not get a heartbeat this early. We'll be able to get a fetal pole measurement, though.”

Marian grinned. “Great,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

“Are you ready to go now?” Juliet asked. “In that?” She looked at Marian's ensemble of a sun dress and sandals, cognizant of the several mile walk between the Barracks and the Staff Station.

“I'll be fine,” Marian insisted. “Let's go.”

They set off, stopping at Goodwin's house first to let him know they were going. That was rather awkward, Marian thought, because it reminded her that he knew about her pregnancy. He was gracious, however, and told them to be safe.

When the two women reached the sonic fence, Juliet bent to enter the code in the keypad, then turned to Marian.

“Do you love him?” she asked abruptly, and Marian knew she meant Jacob.

“Very much,” Marian said simply. Juliet just smiled gently and nodded, rose, and turned to walk through the fence. She didn't say much to Marian the rest of the way to the Staff.

They reached the station and heaved open the doors, walking down the long white hallway into a room on the left. Juliet gestured for Marian to sit on a faux-leather exam chair beside an ultrasound machine and wheeled office chair. Juliet stepped over to a set of cabinets and began taking out supplies: latex gloves, a modesty blanket, and a washcloth, among a few other things. She returned to where Marian nervously sat and looked rather confoundedly at her.

“Poor wardrobe choice for this procedure,” Juliet said, smiling. Marian looked down at her sundress and realized that was true. Nevertheless, she hiked the hem of the dress up to her chest, baring her abdomen, and Juliet placed the blanket over her lap. The doctor started up the machine and waited for it to get ready. While it was booting up, she squeezed gel onto Marian's abdomen and used the ultrasound wand to spread it around. “Okay. Here we go,” she said at last, and Marian took a deep, shaking breath. For a few minutes, they both looked at the black-and-white screen as Juliet moved the wand about on Marian's abdomen, though Marian had absolutely no idea what she was looking at. She thought she was looking at an amoeba of some kind, fluttering away. Then, suddenly, another amoeba appeared. Juliet froze.

“Juliet, is that -”

“Um... hold on a second... let me see...” Juliet's voice trembled and she frantically began moving the wand to get a better look. The two blobs came more clearly into view and Juliet held the wand steady. She looked into Marian's eyes and gulped. “Twins.”

Marian's blood went icy cold and she felt the color drain from her face. Twins. Jacob had been wrong. Well, half-wrong, at least. Maybe one of them was a boy, but he had missed a whole child! There were two babies, just like Jacob and his brother.

“Do you know if they're identical or fraternal?” Marian finally asked, after a very long moment of silence.

“We won't know that until they're... born...” Juliet said, looking back at the ultrasound picture.

“Are they healthy?” Marian felt hot tears coming to her eyes, and she quickly wiped them away.

Juliet resumed moving the wand around and began punching some buttons on the machine. After a while she said, “They're both very good size for twins. 5 millimeters each. That dates them to six weeks and five days. I've got two heartbeats: 115 beats per minute on Twin A, and 116 beats per minute on Twin B. Both of those are very healthy heartbeats. I wish I could be a normal ultrasound technician and print you out a keepsake, but I don't have the equipment for that here.”

Marian nodded numbly. Juliet shut off the machine and wiped off Marian's abdomen. Marian pulled her dress down and stood.

“Are you going to tell him?” Juliet asked curiously, when they had emerged back out into the blazing sunlight and were walking back to the Barracks.

Again, Marian thought she meant Jacob, but this time she wasn't as sure. “Who?” she asked.

“Ben,” Juliet said.

“Oh,” Marian sighed. “Will you tell him, please? You're the doctor.”

“Of course I will. I'll tell Ben and Richard.”

Richard. That meant Marian didn't have to tell Jacob. Richard would tell him. Richard had told Jacob that Marian was pregnant; he would tell Jacob that there were twins. Then Jacob would come swooping in again, show up at Marian's door full of sympathy and love and affection.

But he didn't come. For days Marian read books and knitted in the house, waiting for him to come. She cleaned the house from top to bottom until there wasn't a speck of dust in the entire domicile. She really started a garden. Ben delivered her what must have been a thousand dollars' worth of new clothes that would fit her expanding body. Still, Jacob did not come. Three weeks passed. It was the longest she'd gone without seeing him since the day she met him. Convinced that he had heard the news and had decided that for some reason, he didn't want to see her anymore, Marian curled up in her bed one evening and sobbed until she ran out of tears. She was so tired from crying that she was drifting off to sleep when she heard knocking on the front door.

She had completely given up hope that Jacob would ever come again, so she figured it must be someone else – Ben, or Richard, or Juliet, or even Beatrice Klugh from next door. Wearily, sniffling away the last of her tears, and aware that her face was very red and puffy, Marian meandered to the door and slowly opened it.

Her reaction when she saw Jacob was not what she expected it to be. Perhaps she expected to burst into tears again and collapse into his arms. Perhaps she expected to laugh and embrace and kiss him in a fit of passion. Neither of those things happened, though, and instead, a look of rage filled her eyes and she slammed the door in his face. She hadn't locked it, though, and as she huffed down the hallway back toward her bedroom, she heard it quietly open behind her. She whirled around in anger and saw Jacob standing in the threshold.

“Get out of my house!” she yelled.

“Marian, please keep your voice down,” Jacob said calmly. He wore a cream-colored shirt in a burlap-like material, primitive-looking brown pants, and twine sandals. Marian confusedly took in his crude, archaic clothing and unkempt hair, staring at him with her hands on her hips and her eyes narrowed.

“You finally decide to show up, and when you do you look like it's 1700. Did you just time travel or something? Don't answer that. Answer this instead – do I matter so little to you – do your children matter so little to you – that you just can't be bothered?”

Jacob looked thoroughly confused. “I told you to let me know when you wanted me to come back, or to come see me. I haven't heard anything from you for three weeks. I thought you suddenly hated me. And... wait... did you just say 'children'?”

Marian bit her lip. “Richard didn't tell you? He didn't come see you?”

“I haven't seen Richard in a month. Is there something you'd like to tell me, Marian?”

She gulped. “I thought you'd abandoned us,” she sad morosely. “I'm sorry. When Juliet did the ultrasound at six weeks, she found... twins.”

For the first time since she'd met him, Jacob was speechless. He looked genuinely surprised, taken completely aback and white-faced. He seemed to be thinking hard for a moment, staring intently at the ground, and then looked back up at Marian.

“What does it mean?” she asked frantically. “You were wrong, weren't you? You said there was one baby, a boy.”

“I wasn't wrong,” Jacob insisted. “It means... you may be pregnant with two children... but we're only supposed to end up with one.”

 

+ Lyrics taken from "The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A." by Donna Fargo (1972)