PREVIOUSLY: Janet, who had slept with Frank, Rocky, and Brad within a 24-hour period, found herself pregnant. She decided that telling Brad could destroy their relationship as well as their upcoming wedding plans. So, with the help of her mother, she came up with a plan: she would tell Brad she was going to Europe with her father for a few months. This way, he would never see her with a round pregnant stomach. In truth, she would travel to New York, and live with a friend throughout the pregnancy. The newborn baby's hair color would determine the child's father: Black for Frank, blonde for Rocky, and brown for Brad...
The camera shifts back to the Criminologist's
office, where we see Helen, the maid, flipping through pages of a thick
medical book. She stops on a particular page that catches her interest.
Although we cannot read the small text, we can make out a drawing - that
of a child, upside down, inside a mother's womb. Helen's finger scans
the text, before stopping at the end of the paragraph. She notices
us looking at her. She turns to face us, setting the book down, still
open to the selected pages.
"In Janet's desperation," she tells us, "she
had made a foolish decision. Although 1975's medical technology wasn't
as advanced as it will be in, let's say, year 2000, there were still scientific
ways to determine a child's father...and hair color is not one of them.
But Janet's heart was full of desperation and fear, so she acted with haste.
And off to New York she went, leaving Brad to believe she was heading to
Europe with her father."
The camera point-of-view switches scene to scene
as Helen tells the story. The scene we see now is a sky view of the
statue of liberty. Perhaps the view is from a plane window?
This is not evident. The scene switches to the busy streets of New
York City, focusing on an apartment building with some bums on the sidewalk
in front of it. The camera zooms towards the bums, past them, and
into the open doorway. It journeys up the stairs several floors and
then zooms INTO the key hole of one apartment. Inside the apartment,
it rests upon the image of a somewhat round bellied Janet sitting on the
couch, talking to her friend Neely.
Helen continues, "For months she lived in New
York City, keeping a very careful contact with Brad and her mother.
Brad would never find out she was really in New York. But most important,
he would never find out she was pregnant."
The camera shows a new scene: a New York Laundromat,
where Neely and Janet are doing their laundry. Janet is very pregnant,
seemingly in her last trimester, possibly her ninth month. She is
smiling and laughing during conversation, but ever so often, you can see
her smile fade as she thinks of Brad. It is obvious she misses him.
The camera switches to the outside of Neely's
apartment. It is night. Quick cut to the inside of it, where
Janet sits at her bedside, talking on the phone. We cannot hear her
conversation. Quick cut to Brad's apartment in Denton, where we see
him sitting on the couch, talking into the phone. It is obvious they
are speaking over the phone to each other. They are both excited
to hear from each other, but they both offer occasional worried frowns.
Quick cut to Janet, again, where she silently places her hand onto her
round stomach.
"Janet wanted only one thing," Helen continues
in a voice over, "for the baby to be born so she can deal with the situation
first hand. She longed to know who the baby's father was..."
Camera switches to the inside of a hospital room,
where Janet was having her baby. We can see the doctor and several
nurses standing around Janet's bed. She is breathing excessively,
forcing a "push" as the doctor ordered. Faintly, we can hear the
doctor tell Janet, "One more push, Janet. One more!"
The camera zooms in on Janet's face as she screams
out in massive pain...until suddenly the moment is over. The child
is born. We do not see the baby, but we can see the relief of pain
on Janet. She looks nervously towards the doctor.
"Let me hold my baby, please," she tells them,
with outreached arms, "I need to see it."
Suddenly, a wrapped baby is handed to her.
We cannot see it's skin or hair, only the blanket, which is loosely wrapped
around it. A nurse says, "Congratulations, you've got a beautiful
baby boy."
Janet seems to be crying happily, as she takes
the baby from the nurse's arms. The camera zooms into an extreme
close up onto Janet's face. We see her smile drop and turn into a
look of disappointment.
Helen continues the narrative voice-over: "But
to Janet's disappointment, the baby's hair color was not brown. The
baby was not Brad's."
The music switches to a very sad and ambient
instrumental version of the song "I'm Going Home." The camera switches
to Emily's kitchen, where the phone is ringing...
Emily answered the phone looking at the clock on
the wall, which revealed the time as late morning.
"Hello?" Emily said into the phone.
"Mom," Janet said, from her hospital bed, "It's
me, Janet."
"Janet, darling, how are you?"
"I'm fine, mama. I'm lying down."
Emily offered some advice, "That's good, honey.
You need to stay off your feet. You're gonna have a baby any day
now."
"That's why I called, mama."
"You're in labor?" Emily was suddenly very
excited.
"No, I'm not. The truth is, I already went
in labor."
"What?"
"Mama, I had the baby. A few days ago."
Emily found her heart racing, as she slowly sat
down into the kitchen chair nearby. After a second pause, she asked
Janet, "Are you alright? Is the baby alright?"
"Yes," Janet answered, "We're both fine. As
a matter of fact, I'm going to leave hospital today."
Emily seemed worried, "Honey, why didn't you call
me right after the baby was born?"
"Because I was upset."
Emily realized at that moment where the conversation
was going. She suggested, "The baby's not Brad's, is it?"
Janet wiped away a falling tear, as her eyes filled.
"No, it wasn't."
Emily was suddenly sad, "Oh, my poor baby.
I wish I was there to hold you right now. Tell me, what color was
the baby's hair?"
Janet couldn't answer. The tears were flowing
heavily again, and she lost grip of the phone. It fell into her lap.
Her palms went to her eyes, covering them as she cried heavily. In
the background, she could hear her mother's faint voice coming from the
telephone, saying, "Janet? Are you there? Who's the father?"
Janet wiped her eyes and tried to regain control.
She suddenly understood that at that moment on, she would have to teach
herself to be strong. She would no longer be a naive fragile child
needing the protection of a man in her life. She had to be a much
stronger woman that she had ever been before.
Janet picked up the phone and answered, "What does
it matter who's the father? The point is, it was not Brad's."
Emily found her own eyes starting to tear up.
She let a moment of silence pass before asking Janet, "What are you going
to do now?"
"I don't know, mama," she answered, "Neely's gonna
help me get the baby adopted, and then I'll be heading home."
Emily responded, "But honey, Brad thinks you're
with your father in Europe. Shouldn't you be returning the same time
as your father? That's not but a month away."
Janet was firm, "No I'm coming home before
daddy gets back. I can't chance Brad asking me how Europe was with
my father by my side."
"Oh, I see."
Janet continued, "I'll just tell Brad I returned
early. After all, we've got a wedding to plan."
Meanwhile, up in space, just outside earth's galaxy,
the spaceship / castle floats closer and closer to its destination.
Everything has been well over the past several months.
Riff Raff and Magenta have somehow managed to make their food supply last,
regardless of the fact that food was mysteriously vanishing from the pantries.
Riff Raff blamed Magenta's dogs for the food's disappearance, but Magenta
felt he was mistaken. In the back of her mind, she wondered if there
was someone else on board with them, eating their food and hiding
in the shadows. Ever so often, she would check the monitors to see
if she can catch the food eating culprit, but she never found him or her.
She had told her suspicions to her brother Riff Raff, but he merely passed
her suggestion off as paranoia brought on by cabin fever.
She anxiously awaited for the next couple of months
to pass, where she would be at home, on Transexual.
Little did Riff Raff or Magenta know...their ship
would land on Transexual the same day as Brad and Janet's wedding.
The ship's arrival, as well as Brad and Janet's wedding day, coincidentally
fell on the one year anniversary of the night where their lives had mistakenly
crossed: late November.
IN CHAPTER 7: The wedding day has arrived! But can they go through with it? Both Brad and Janet have wedding day jitters, and something about their wedding date seems haunting. Can they go through with it?