Thursday, March 21, 2002.
Amy's Current Bra Size: 37 C ?!?! ... and growing....
Number of Times We've Had Sex This Pregnancy: About 5 times (in 6 months).
Hot
green-eyed hapas galore at: The New Rice
Bowl Hapa Forum. (Psst! We need more hapas!)
NAP TIME
"Do you remember when we used to fight?" I ask Amy leaning back in an extra chair in her office.
"Yeah, haha … HAHAHA!" She obviously remembers.
"What's so funny, baby?" I say swiveling her chair towards mine.
"We were so stupid. Hahaha!" Amy thinks people who fight or argue in public look stupid.
She laughs like Snoopy does. Her head back and teeth shining and feet stomping. One of the effects of her pregnancy is that she laughs louder and more often at the slightest things sometimes.
Some days when I have time I'll go visit Amy's office during my lunch break. Other days, I'll just call while the other half of my brain is doing something else. Amy's gotten used to my sexually harassing "What's going on, babies?" calls. Once when I hadn't called her, she even paged me asking why I hadn't called yet.
"Hahaha!! Do you remember when I got so mad in the parking lot that I threw my Subway (sandwich) down on the ground!! Hahaha!" she recalls with another laughing fit.
"Yeah, you were in your car. You told me to get out, and then you opened the door, chucked your sub on the pavement and drove off," I rest my head on Amy's head as our chair armrests kiss.
"I was so mad that I wasn't hungry anymore," she says. I was mad too, but I still ate mine.
I don't remember what we were fighting about, but I do remember there were three or four times our arguing became yelling matches so severe I thought our relationship would end.
"I'M YELLING BECAUSE YOU'RE YELLING!" is what the argument would boil down to after that point of no return.
"I threw that Subway down just like my dad threw the money down when I was born," Amy smiled.
She's told me that story a dozen times. When Amy was born, her father was hoping for a boy. Upon learning she was a girl, according to her relatives, he was so mad he threw the money for the hospital fees down on the counter in disgust. Amy's family teases her about that story because they think it's funny. And Amy tells it in a self-disparagingly funny way. But I think deep down she doesn't really think it's very funny.
"What made you think of us arguing?" she asks.
"Because we almost never argue anymore. And your friend said the first year of marriage is the hardest, but ours was easy and always has been," I answer.
Our relationship was never "work" like some couples' are, I guess. I do remember we had our share of fights in the beginning. Mostly because of me being too sensitive and Amy being too … well, cold, actually.
"You wouldn't even hold my hand when you saw other Korean people around. What was up with that?" I ask.
"Baby, that was a long time ago. I was immature then. I didn't want people to know our business. Now I don't care," she slides up next to me in a very caring way.
"Do you remember how I made you park across the street so my parents wouldn't know you were over?" she laughs again.
Amy used to live in the basement of her parents' house. At night I would park at the strip mall across the street, run across a five-lane highway after dark, and then sneak into her basement and spend the night. The next morning I would try to sneak out before her parents or granny saw me.
But her parents did see me a couple times and Amy would say I either got there very late or very early. Amy's grandma saw me too. She would just stand there like the Shadow of Death in Amy's doorway staring at us disapprovingly with her little beady eyes, muttering barely audible damnations in Korean.
After we declared we were engaged, I think Amy's dad asked where my car always was when I was over. When we told him I parked at the mall across the street, he suggested that I just park in the driveway from now on. I didn't make such an effort to sneak out after that.
Back in her office, Amy tells me more inside gossip about the surgeons and oncologists she works with.
"You know Dr. Zees has a sleeping mat in her office. I think she shuts the door and takes naps, now that she's pregnant," Amy giggles at the thought of it.
"We can do that too," I say and get up, throwing Amy's winter coat on the carpeted floor.
"I'm not going to lie on the floor," she hesitates.
"Come on, just a few minutes."
She turns the light off.
"Won't people out there be able to see the lights are off under the door?" I ask.
"Who cares?" she replies and locks the door.
We lie down. I forget what we talk about. I remember seeing the curve of Amy's forehead, putting my arm around her soft baby flank, and smelling her hair. We drift off again. This time without the shadow of her disapproving granny staring daggers at us.
Fifteen minutes later, we drift back awake. I put my whitecoat back on. Amy fixes the chairs. We say bye for now.
As I walk quickly out of the oncology center, I have the vague feeling that I should be listening for creaky floorboards (although her granny never made a sound) and ducking past doors and windows.
But her colleagues probably know I am there anyways.
