No Such Thing as a Free Ride Read Free Page B

to you about it. You should give him a call.” (I know. I’m a terrible sister. Even buying him a car won’t square me away on this one.)
    My mother pondered this a moment. “Isn’t that a Jewish dating service?” Devout Catholic, Lorraine Alexander was none the less thrilled to hear that at least one of her children wouldn’t die alone. She hung up on me and called Paul.
    *****
     
    Fran sat on the floor and leaned forward. Her feet were planted on the ground, legs spread, knees up. I sat behind her, supporting her considerable weight. Swelled beyond all reasonable proportion, Fran’s normally slender, five foot nine-inch body looked like she’d swallowed a zeppelin. I held her steady while she exhaled.
    The Lamaze instructor, a serene, soft spoken woman in her early thirties walked around the room bestowing smiles of encouragement upon poor, unsuspecting mothers-to-be. I counted the breaths between imagined contractions and sighed. “Are you sure you want to go ‘natural,’ Fran? My mom tells me it really hurts.”
    The instructor cut me a dirty look and patted Fran on the shoulder.
    Fran grunted as she struggled to turn and look at me. “Brandy, I want my baby to come into this world knowing her mother suffered horribly for her, so that I can throw it back in her face when she’s an adolescent and she’s going through those obnoxious teen years.” The ever efficient Franny always planning ahead.
    “Do you know what really pisses me off?” she added, and being on a roll she didn’t bother to wait for a response. “While I’m here, spending my Sunday afternoon preparing to bring precious life into the world, where’s my husband? Off having a great time camping with his buddies!”
    “Uh, Fran, Eddie’s in the Reserves. I don’t think—”
    She cut me off. “How much did your mom say it hurts?”
    “Well, it’s been twenty-eight years and she’s still talking about it.”
    Fran pondered this. “I’m hungry,” she said at last. “Let’s go get pancakes.”
    “Fine by me,” I shrugged. I stood and helped her to her feet. “Um, we’ll be right back,” I told the instructor.
    “No, we won’t.” Franny interjected. “I’m getting an epidural and don’t anyone try and stop me.”
    We left amid a chorus of “Take me with you’s,” punctuated by an “Amen to that, sistah!”
    I drove us over to the IHOP, but Franny couldn’t fit in the booth, so we ordered the breakfast special “to go” and scarfed our food down in the car. In an effort to eat healthy, I’d traded in my hash browns for fruit and then picked the crispy ones out of Franny’s container.
    “I love breakfast food,” Franny announced, stuffing a strip of bacon into her mouth.
    “Me too,” I agreed. “That’s what’s so great about being an adult. We can eat pancakes for dinner and our mothers can’t tell us not to.”
    “Bran,” Fran said, suddenly, a note of panic in her voice. “What if after the baby comes, I turn into my mother?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Don’t get me wrong, Bran. I love my mom. But I can’t help but think that she was once young and fun, and then she had me and Janine and suddenly she became this thoroughly responsible person who would never dream of allowing her kids to eat pancakes at eight o’clock at night. Is that going to happen to me too?”
    “Franny, stop worrying. You’re going to make a wonderful mom.”
    Fran eyed me seriously. Well, as seriously as she could with maple syrup dribbling down her chin. “How do you know, Bran? Eddie and I didn’t plan this pregnancy. What if I totally screw it up and my kid ends up hating me?”
    “That’s never going to happen, Franny.” But as the words came out of my mouth I flashed on the teens at the 7-Eleven. Had their parents worried about this too?
    I dropped Fran off at Eddie’s mom’s house and headed over to Carla’s beauty salon. I’d gotten gum stuck in my hair earlier in the day, and I was hoping Carla had