Page 95 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
Some might have said she couldn’t bear children because God would never allow someone with such a wicked, lustful appetite to become a mother.
But I know the real reason—it’s our curse, which always brings us together, yet holds us at arm’s length. Like the original Romeo and Juliet, we were never permitted to advance beyond nascent potential. Instead, we were frozen in time, doomed to start and fail, start and fail.
When Cosmina dies with nothing in her womb, I am not surprised.
I am numb. Because I have learned to stop dreaming.
HELENE
“You’re having a baby!” Katyshrieks over video.
“I’m having a baby!” We do the ridiculous victory routine that we invented when she was six and I was eight, involving jazz hands, twirls, and full-body shimmies. In the background, Trevor joins in, giggling at his mama’s dancing, and that just encourages us to do it some more.
Mom looks on fondly. “I’m going to be a nana again. And how fitting that you found out in Dad’s city.”
I stop my victory shimmy for a second and nod vigorously at the screen, happy tears in my eyes. “I know. I can feel him smiling down on me.”
“I feel it, too.”
We all look up at the sky and smile back at him. I rest his watch against the tiny bulge of my belly and say, “You’re gonna be a grandpa again, Daddy.”
But then Trevor shouts, “Don’t stop dancing!” and the sentimentality breaks. Katy and I laugh. And then we oblige, starting up our victory jazz hands once more.
—
Maybe it’s the joy ofknowing that I’m finally going to be a mom after all these years, but Koningsdag is even more spectacular than I thought it would be. All of Amsterdam pours out into the streets and canals to celebrate King’s Day. Bridges overflow with people clad in orange, tossing orange confetti at the boats full of more orange. Children wear crowns fashioned from orange balloons. Adults run around wearing orange wigs, hats with flashing orange lights, and even orange traffic cones. And everywhere, people have set up folding tables on the sidewalks, selling random knickknacks from their homes—Koningsdag is not only the celebration of the king, it’s also, oddly enough, the biggest Dutch flea market of the year.
“Ooh, how about this one?” I say to Sebastien, picking up an adorable porcelain figurine of a little boy wearing clogs. “It could be the first gift I buy for our baby.”
“I think we should see the doctor before we start outfitting a nursery.” Sebastien plucks the figurine from my fingers and sets it back down on the card table without meeting my eyes. “Come on, if you want to catch the king giving his birthday speech, we’d better get going.”
I give the porcelain figure a final glance but leave it behind. I know Sebastien is terrified that this pregnancy is going to kill me. Wanting a baby has killed Juliets before, and I understand why he doesn’t want me getting too attached to this one either. For all we know, the baby is only a few weeks old and I could easily miscarry. But because of the Koningsdag holiday, the earliest doctor’s appointment we could get is tomorrow.
And yet, I feel with my whole heart that this is how the curse ends. Maybe it’s the pregnancy hormones that have me so bullish, or maybe it’s just my underlying optimism, generally. But also, knowing there’s a little life growing in my belly is a triumph I can’t suppress. I’m already in love with this baby and the idea that it represents a new beginning, whether that’s a rational sentiment or not.
“Hold on to my hand tightly,” I say to Sebastien. If we get split up, we won’t be able to find each other in this crowd. When wefirst landed at the airport, I’d suggested he rent a cellphone, but he’d shrugged it off. He’s gotten by just fine for close to seven hundred years without one and doesn’t see a reason to start now. I have to admit I’m a little envious; sometimes I feel like I don’t know how to survive anymore without an electronic device attached to my fingers.
We weave through the canal-side celebrations. Music blasts from old-fashioned boom boxes as well as high-tech portable speakers, changing from block to block: hip-hop, classical, jazz, the Dutch national anthem. Every single person, young and old, is celebrating with us today.
We pass by a carnival with a Ferris wheel, Tilt-A-Whirl, and other rides. A group of shirtless, orange spray-painted frat boys jog down the middle of the street, whooping and shouting “Lang leve de koning! Hoera, hoera, hoera!” Long live the king! Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah! I shoot videos of them for Katy and Mom.
Sebastien and I find our way to the square where the king is going to make his birthday speech. Sebastien asks a couple on a bench if I can sit. Upon hearing that I’m pregnant, they jump up to offer me their seats and clasp Sebastien’s hands, congratulating us profusely. For a brief moment, he looks happy. But it’s fleeting, and wariness over the pregnancy sets back in as soon as the couple is gone.
Later, the streets and canals grow rowdier as the celebrations continue. I want to stay out and experience it all, but a curtain of fatigue falls over me.
“Would it be wimpy to go back to the houseboat this early?” I ask. Earlier, Sebastien had picked up some ginger candies from the pharmacy for seasickness when the water rocks the boat.
“Not at all,” he says. “It’d probably be more fun, given that we’re just going to get jostled around out here as the crowds get drunker.”
So we retreat, except I think of it less as retreat than a new vantage point, and I spend the rest of Koningsdag blissfully sitting on our deck, watching the floating parties sail by.
SEBASTIEN
“Congratulations, both Mom and thefetus look very healthy,” Dr. De Vries says as she runs an ultrasound wand over Helene’s stomach. I, however, am not as ecstatic. I stare at the three-dimensional ultrasound on the staticky screen, not sure how the doctor can draw that conclusion from such a small picture.
Shouldn’t there be more tests? More time, more opinions, more certainty? I’ve had centuries of experience watching Juliet and many, many others die, and I know there are myriad ways it can happen.
Helene, on the other hand, coos at the ultrasound. “Oh, it’s beautiful! Can we find out the baby’s sex?”
