Hotel Vendome

Chapter 21

WHEN HUGUES CAME up from work the evening Natalie took the test, he saw that she’d been crying. She’d been crying on and off all afternoon, totally overwhelmed by what had happened and thrilled beyond belief. The moment he walked in, she burst into tears again, feeling stupid, and he rushed toward her. He knew immediately what the result was or thought he did. He assumed she had taken the test, since he knew this was the day, it had been negative, and she was bitterly disappointed. He rushed to the couch where she was lying and took her in his arms immediately and held her as he consoled her.

“Darling, we’ll do it again. I promise. Remember what they told us. Some people have to try three or four times. The next one will be the right one,” he said, saying anything he could think of to comfort her, and she kept shaking her head, which he thought meant she didn’t believe him. And then suddenly she was laughing through her tears. She looked hysterical to him, and he was getting worried. “Natalie? Are you all right?” And then she nodded.

“Yes, I am. I’m pregnant!” She squealed with delight and hugged him, as he looked stunned.

“You are. I thought…”

“I don’t know why. I’ve been crying all afternoon. I’m so happy, I think I’m crazy.” She had never been so emotional in her life, and he was shaking when he held her and kissed her. He hadn’t thought it would mean that much to him, but suddenly it did.

“My God, it worked the first time. When do we go for the sonogram?” He wanted to know how many babies there were and how careful she had to be. He was going to guard her and their babies with his life.

“Next week. We won’t see much. Just the number of embryos and sacs.” It would show them how many babies had held.

He held her in his arms like blown glass, and they dreamed and talked late into the night, as he ran a gentle hand across her still-flat belly. All they could talk about were the babies they were going to have. And they had never loved each other more.

The blood test she had confirmed that she was pregnant. And the sonogram showed them what they wanted to know: three embryos in three sacs. She was pregnant with triplets. Hugues looked shell-shocked when they left the clinic. Three babies. He was going to be the father of four children. And Natalie looked equally stunned. They still couldn’t believe it had worked so easily and so quickly, but they’d been working on it for months. She had started taking the hormones in June. And their babies were due on the first of June, if they held that long. With triplets, it was almost a given that they would come early, or she could lose them long before that. The doctor had warned her that if she remained pregnant, she would probably be on bedrest. The next three months would be telling. And they had offered to reduce the number to twins or a single child, and she and Hugues had refused. It was all or nothing.

They both looked thunderstruck on the way home in the cab, and they had already agreed that they weren’t going to tell anyone until they knew the pregnancy was solid at the end of the first trimester. So they weren’t going to tell Heloise about it until December. Hugues hoped that she would be happy for them, now that she had accepted Natalie, but she would undoubtedly be stunned too, just as they were.

For the next three months, Hugues was busy averting a threatened strike of his kitchen staff, which took most of his attention and energy and some serious diplomacy to handle it, with advice from his lawyers. He dealt with other more ordinary employee problems too, and the occasional guest crisis. Heloise was busy at the front desk and wherever she was needed, and her romance with Brad was thriving. The hotel was extremely busy between September and Christmas, and they were fully sold out for Thanksgiving. And in their quiet moments, Hugues and Natalie talked about their triplets. So far, the pregnancy was holding. They had gone to the sonograms together, and seen all three babies and three heartbeats. She had the photographs they’d given her in a little folder on her desk, and she looked at them often, telling them to stay in there. And two weeks before Christmas, she had reached the magical three-month mark. Officially the babies were safe, but because there were three of them it was delicate, and whether or not she had them prematurely, and how much so, would be key. She was trying to work less and less at her office and relying more on her assistants, and she had wound up as many projects as she could and refused to take on new ones. All she cared about now were their babies.

Natalie didn’t want to wait another minute to tell Heloise and wanted to share the news with her. She’d been wearing loose shirts and tunics for the past month, but with triplets she was already starting to show.

They invited Heloise upstairs to dinner Saturday night, but she was seeing Brad that night, so she came up for lunch instead. He was studying for finals that day. And after talking to Hugues, he was getting interested in labor law.

Heloise looked great in tight black pants, tall black riding boots, and a soft white cashmere turtleneck sweater. She hugged her father and Natalie when she got there. She had noticed recently that Natalie was putting on weight, but she looked pretty anyway. She assumed it was due to the great hotel food and too much room service at night.

They talked about hotel business for a minute, and then Natalie couldn’t stand it any longer and broke into the conversation. Hugues was smiling proudly as Natalie told her.

“Hang on to your hat,” she said to Heloise with a big smile. “I’m pregnant. It’s triplets.” She got it all out in few words as Heloise stared at them in disbelief. She stood up as though she wanted to get away from them, and she looked horrified by the news.

“Are you kidding? Triplets? How did that happen? What were you thinking? Don’t you know enough to use birth control at your age?” She looked stunned. They had had three months to get used to it. She had had three minutes and felt like she’d been hit on the head with a hammer.

“We want them,” Natalie said, looking disappointed. “This wasn’t a mistake.”

“Why?” Heloise asked, as she paced nervously around the room.

“Why would you want to have babies at your age?” She looked from Natalie to her father and included them both in the question.

“Because I’ve never had them. And I wanted at least one before I was too old,” Natalie said honestly.

“You are too old,” Heloise said harshly. They had just turned her life upside down again with their shocking news. “You’ll be sixty years old when your kids go to college, and you’ll be seventy,” she said, looking at her father. Natalie answered her gently but firmly.

“A lot of parents are these days. Women older than I am are having babies.”

Heloise collapsed on the couch and stared at them miserably. She made no comment. She had just gotten used to their being married, and now they were hitting her with three babies. “I don’t know what to say.”

“How about ‘Congratulations’?” her father said quietly. “This is going to be hard enough, particularly on Natalie, without having you beating us up too. Could you be happy for us? They’re going to be part of your life too.” He spoke to her very gently. He wanted her as an ally this time, not an enemy again.

“I don’t know what to think,” she said honestly. She didn’t know if she was jealous, angry, hurt, or just shocked. It seemed like a crazy idea to her.

“Neither did we at first. Three babies is a lot to wrap your mind around,” Natalie said, looking at her, “and I have to have them. If anyone should be freaked out, it’s me.”

“Are you?” Heloise looked at her curiously, as though she had suddenly grown two heads.

“Sometimes. I’m happy, sad, scared, thrilled, terrified, the happiest woman in the world, and all of the above. But bottom line I’m really excited, and I want this more than anything in life.” She reached out and touched Hugues’s hand as she said it, and Heloise felt shoved aside again. First by his wife, and now by their three babies. It was a lot to take in.

“Did this just happen, or is it something you planned?” Heloise asked her.

“We had them by IVF, in vitro fertilization. We worked hard at this. It didn’t just happen. It was our dream.” Heloise looked at her father as Natalie said it. She couldn’t imagine this being his dream too. It was obviously her idea. Her father had never said he wanted more children, quite the reverse. He always said that he was happy with the one he had and that was enough for him. And now they were having three of their own. It reminded her of her mother having two babies with Greg, after she abandoned her. It made Heloise feel a little sick. She stood up then and looked at them both.

“I think I need to think about this. Give me a little while to absorb it. I can’t deal with it right now.” It was better than her reaction the year before, when they told her they were in love. It was beginning to feel like every Christmas they hit her with another atom bomb. And this one was really big. She left their apartment quietly and went downstairs to her own. And then she called Brad. He could hear instantly that she was upset.

“What’s up?”

“Umm… it’s complicated to explain. I’m feeling kind of weird.”

He sounded instantly worried. “Are you sick?”

“No. I just need to talk to you. Can you come down as soon as you finish studying?”

“Sure. I should be done in half an hour. I can come now if you want, and finish later. Is something really wrong?”

“Yes… no… I don’t know… I’m just upset. I’m probably being stupid.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No, of course not.” And then she started crying. She was very upset, and she needed a reality check from him. Maybe she was crazy. But she wasn’t happy about their babies. And her mother’s two children had never made her happy either. She didn’t even like them. And why would she like these any better?

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said seriously. He wasn’t going to be able to study now anyway, while he was worrying about her.

He was at the door to her apartment in twenty minutes, and she was sitting on the couch crying. She folded silently into his arms the moment he walked in, and it took her another five minutes to regain her composure. He was staring at her intently then.

“Tell me what happened.”

She blew her nose in a tissue she’d been holding and looked at him. “This probably sounds stupid to you. But Natalie is pregnant. She’s having triplets. They knocked themselves out to have them by IVF.” She started crying again then as he listened. “So now they have each other. They’re madly in love and they have three babies. They’re suddenly the perfect family overnight. And I have a mother who hates me and never remembers I’m alive, and she had two new kids too, after she dumped me. So where am I now in all this? Who am I to all of them? Where do I fit in? I feel like I’ve been fired. I’m the old model. Now they have three new ones.” He didn’t say a word to her at first, he just held her as tightly as he could and listened to her as he stroked her hair. He was just glad that she could articulate what she was feeling. And he could see how painful it was for her and why it would be. Her mother had abandoned her, and now her father was in love and having three more children. It would have hurt anyone’s feelings.

“First of all-” he pulled away to look at her as tears slid down her cheeks and she hiccupped- “I don’t think you’re stupid. I would feel exactly the same way. It’s gotta be a strange feeling. But I don’t think you’ve been replaced. They can’t replace you. You’re you. And your father loves you. And I know Natalie really likes you. She’s never had kids, and she’s probably desperate for them before it’s too late, so they did the science project thing and had three test-tube babies, which probably feels a little crazy to all of you. But I don’t think in a million years your father thinks they’re going to replace you.”

“What if he likes them better than he does me? Old guys like having babies. It makes them feel young. Half our sixty-five-year-old hotel guests have twenty-year-old wives and two-year-old children.” It was only a slight exaggeration and a phenomenon of modern times. Just this year one of their fifty-year-old female clients had had a baby, and an eighty-six-year-old retired diplomat from Europe had married a twenty-two-year-old and had twins.

“He’s still not going to forget you. You have twenty-one years of history, just the two of you. No one can ever take that away,” Brad said, and put his arms around her again and held her. “To tell you the truth, I feel sorry for them. That’s a hell of a lot to take on at their age. It would freak me out too.”

“Yeah, and I’m not going to babysit for three screaming babies. I’ve got enough to do in this hotel without that.” Brad laughed at the image.

“I’ll help you. Or better yet, we could really freak them out and have one of our own, and we wouldn’t need a test tube to do it.” She smiled at him. She almost liked the idea, but not to annoy her father. But she also didn’t want a baby. She was just head over heels in love with him and not with the idea of babies yet. She sighed as she looked at him and snuggled into his arms.

“Thank you for understanding. I’m sorry I got so crazy. I just feel like I have no place in their family, not if they have three new kids.” It made her sad to say it to him. But she’d already had that experience with her mother and Greg.

“Yes, you do have a place, and one day you’ll have a family of your own. It’s just weird with all these old people now who decide they want kids when they’re in their forties and fifties.” She nodded.

“Thanks for coming over and talking to me.” They went for a walk, and he said to her that if his parents divorced and remarried, he’d be pissed if they had more kids too. He remembered how furious he had been when his brother was born when he was eight, and his twin sisters when he was four, and he’d like it even less now. Afterward she called Natalie and apologized for getting upset. There was no war this time. There was no point. It wouldn’t change anything. And Brad had helped a lot.

Natalie was relieved to hear from her and thanked her for her call. Heloise told her Brad was there, and she invited them to come up, but Heloise said they were both tired. She needed some space. Her father came down to see her later on; he was worried about her. He had seen the shock and hurt on her face when she heard the news, and it made his heart ache for her. He chatted with Brad and her for a little while, and then he hugged his daughter and went back upstairs. Brad had brought his books with him and did some studying, and he spent the night, which was comforting for her. He was staying with her more and more often, and they were comfortable with each other. Everything worked better and made more sense when they were together.

It was a strange Christmas for Heloise after Natalie’s announcement. Everything felt surreal. She watched the big Christmas tree go up in the lobby and supervised the installation of it, and everyone commented on how exciting it was that her father and Natalie were having triplets. Jennifer was already planning a shower. It made Heloise feel left out again, but she forced herself to ignore it and not react. Her father had a new wife and family, and all she could hope was that he still loved her. Time would tell.

And she had Brad now. They went out whenever they had time, or he came over. But privately she was down about the triplets. It was hard to know where she fit in now. She was part of history for her father. The triplets were his future. And if she wanted to be part of a family, she knew she’d have to make her own one day, and she wasn’t ready to yet.

Brad went home to his family in Philadelphia for Christmas, and Natalie convinced Hugues to go to Philadelphia with her for two days, while she could still travel. But Heloise didn’t want to go. She told her father she’d keep an eye on the hotel, and he felt badly about it, but Natalie was insistent that she wanted to go home, and he felt torn. Heloise was staying in New York. And Natalie was so emotional now that she was pregnant and she cried about everything constantly. In the end he agreed to go, and Heloise signed up for all the Christmas shifts. Her father called her as soon as they got there, and first thing on Christmas morning. She was already at the front desk by then. And for the first time, but not surprisingly, her mother didn’t call her at all.