He walks to the bar and asks for one more shot. Lynn slides down next to him, off shift, a beer in front of her. “You know, some people judge a man by the company he keeps.”
Ed laughs. “Sorry about that, kid. My work requires it.”
She scoots closer, close enough for him to smell her—perfume and shampoo and food, maybe some sweat under it all. Though she’s not really his type, he can appreciate her looks. Tall and blond, rounded in the right places, big bright eyes. As classic an American beauty as they come, knocked up in high school and now waiting tables and fending off letches like Wiley Dussault. This close, he can see the lines working at the corners of her eyes, threads of age and exhaustion. She can’t be older than twenty-five.
“Just don’t let him rub off on you,” she says. “You’re too good a guy.” Her leg nudges his.
She’s flirting with him, but the idea of Lynn taking him somewhere offers no allure. He doesn’t need this lovely young thing, though he’s sure sex with Lynn would be nice—more than nice. Still, he doesn’t have time, not even for a quick fuck in the bathroom.
“You don’t have to worry about me becoming anything like that sonofabitch.” He shoots his drink, leaves a couple bills on the bar, kisses Lynn on the cheek, and stands. “Have Jason walk you to your car, all right? Just in case that asshole didn’t head straight to his hotel.”
“See what I’m saying? Too good a guy.”
His gentle rejection is probably a relief to her, or at least a validation in some way. Not all men are dogs.
Ed waves to Jason and pushes himself outside. He’s parked in the back lot, level with the second story of the building, and he takes the stairs along the side, treacherous with ice. The sky is clear, which will make for a colder night, but the stars are thick and gleaming, so brilliant he stands next to his car for a moment, head back, staring. He’s been so busy that he quit noticing the place around him, just like Dean said he would. He’ll take tomorrow off, he tells himself, let someone else buy those guys their drinks. He’ll tell Laura to dress warm and wear thick socks and hiking boots, and they’ll take to the south hills behind their home, climbing and climbing until they reach the top of Mount Ascension, and they’ll stand there and look out over the white-dusted fields of the Helena valley, the tall mountains ringing it, the creeks burbling past the ice shelves along their banks.
Chapter 10
— Laura —
I’ve taken to looping hair elastics through the buttonholes of my pants, an extra inch of waistband. I’m wearing the baby low and inward, a secret I cradle.
Ed curves his body against mine when he comes to bed, his bearded mouth against my neck. “It’s going to happen soon, love,” he says. Since the legislature ended, he’s been home a bit earlier—not every night, but a few of them, at least. He’s attentive and tender and quieter than usual.
But he still hasn’t noticed.
It’s a teaching day, and my car is in the shop, so Ed is driving me. Our cigarettes are lit, the radio on, a good excuse not to talk. He likes quiet in the morning.
If we speak at all, we speak of insignificance in its many forms—how ready we are for summer, the camping trips we’ll take, the upcoming dinner with Pete and Bonnie.
Ed kisses me in the parking lot, barely brushing my lips, and tries to rush off. But I grab hold of him. “Walk me to my classroom?”
“Laura, you know how busy I am. Come on.”
“Please,” I say. “I just want a little more time with you.” I can see how much he wants to say no. “Just a few more minutes?”
He recognizes something in his brain, and his face warms—bright eyes and that winning Edmund Malinowski smile that gets him nearly anything he wants. What tool has he found in there? What psychological detail? Small bits of attention can outweigh years of neglect.
He holds my hand as we climb the stairs, and at the door of my classroom, he kisses me the way he does in our bedroom.
“I’m part of this place now,” I whisper against his mouth. “I don’t disappear just because we’re here.”
“Laura.”
I need him to acknowledge me. I need him to hold me and want me—more than he does this place. I pull him inside, close and bolt the door behind us. The glass pane is frosted, the exterior windows high. No one can see us. I will steal his attention back from this institution. I will transcend the lines he’s drawn, muddy his boundaries. He wants me in our shared bed, in our shared home, and I will make him want me here, too. I will cloud out my competition.
I push him against the closest table, hands on his belt, button, then fly. His admonishments are a weak match for his body’s reaction. Always so easy, my Edmund. My mouth quiets him, but he is quick to take control, his hands turning me around, bending my body before him, pausing only briefly and inattentively at the improvised fastener. His fingers are sharp enough to leave red behind, tiny bruises in this new form I’ve taken. One part growing while the rest wastes away. I have no appetite, and the weight keeps going off. Ed presses against me. I can taste paint under my mouth. My belly grazes the table.
I’ve been to the doctor once. He insisted I should eat more and assured me sex was fine. “Comforting to the baby, in fact.”
Ed stays frozen afterward, his stomach against my back. Frozen save for the hand he brings to my belly, a question in its fingers.
“Yes,” I say.
It has taken him fucking me in my classroom in his filthy institution to notice I am pregnant.
Can you see me now, Edmund?
“Love.” He wraps himself against me. “Oh, love.” He turns me around. Our pants are still open. “How long?”
“Four months.”
The compassion in his face shifts to anger. “Why the hell did you keep it from me for so long?”
I’ve practiced this moment, recited it in the mirror, his line nearly identical to the one in the script I’ve written. Sometimes I’m indignant, flashy and bold. Other times I’m timid, shy, sorry. Faced with the real Ed, with words from his own mouth rather than mine, I can only meet his anger. “Why the hell did it take you so long to notice?”
In my imaginings, he stayed angry, and I gave him other lines. You didn’t notice that I’m off food? Or that I’m throwing up in the morning? Or that I’m carrying around this fucking belly?
In my imaginings, I stayed angry, too.
But here, Ed is crestfallen. He kneels and presses his cheek against my belly. “I’m so sorry.”
I’d expected injured pride to win over remorse. It has in the past, and if Ed has taught me anything about human behavior, it’s that we repeat what we have previously done. “And if someone changes their behavior,” he told me once, “it’s because they’ve been forced to. Something has happened to make them alter their habits, and whatever it is, it’s big. Great loss, usually, or the threat of great loss.”
Can he feel the threat?
He’s still kneeling, like the little boy in all those photos his mother once showed me. “Here is Edmund—castle-building, is that how you say it? Here is Edmund with sand. Here is Edmund—tree-climbing, you say? And there”—her rough hand pointing to a smiling boy version of Ed, shirtless, a wide smile just about to spill into laughter, hands raised over his head in triumph—“how do you say, race-winning? Against his cousins. Always fast, my boy.” I can imagine her chiding him now: Slow boy. How could you not—what is the word—perceive?
The Ed at my feet has only the troubles he’s sought out, a career helping broken people and broken places—broken things that do not include him. He has always been on the outside of suffering. He has surrounded himself with it, but he hasn’t internalized it.
The Ed at my feet doesn’t know what to do with grief that’s his own.
I run my hands through his thick hair. He is a child, and I will comfort him. We have played these roles before. Ed’s shoulders shake just the slightest bit, and I feel damp against the skin of my stomach. Tears. I am more delighted than sa
d.
I pull him to standing and button his pants, then my own. I tuck in his shirt, smooth out the wrinkles. I straighten his collar.
He wipes his eyes. “I’m just so happy, Laura,” he says, and then I’m angry again. My wife has been pregnant for four months and didn’t tell me? Hooray! My wife has been pregnant for four months and I didn’t notice? How about that!
“So happy,” he says.
It’s all I’ll get now, this elated version of Ed. Where has the weeping boy gone? Elated Ed is still talking, filling the room with his chatter, and I look over his shoulder to my students’ artwork on the wall. Chip’s sketch of Griffin Hall, Karen’s horse in full gallop, George’s grasses. It’s wonderful to see George at the grocery store, but I miss him in class.
Ed is still talking: “. . . can’t wait to tell my parents. And Pete and Bonnie! They’ll be so thrilled!”
I interrupt him. “I need to get ready for class.”
“Right, of course.” Ed cups my belly again, smiles grandly, a king proudly claiming his domain. No, not that bad A proud father? Maybe that’s all. “Oh, Laura, it’s just so—”
“Exciting, I know.”
He pauses. “You okay?”
“Really, Ed? You’re asking that? It’s been four months—we’re nearly halfway through.”
He looks devastated again, and I nearly want to take it back. But I don’t.
“Just go, all right? I need to get set up. My students will be here soon.” I kiss him so he’ll stop looking so damn wounded. “We’ll talk about it on the ride home.”
“We’ll celebrate tonight.” He kisses me back, and I want it to be enough to heal us, to make these last few years go away and leave only the future before us, wide as these godforsaken meadows Ed so desperately wants me to love.
He heads toward the door. He is Dr. Malinowski again, ready to lead, nothing broken but his institution. No more tears. Of course not. What is there to be sad about? All that matters is the baby. A baby is coming—his baby! Hurrah!
He turns at the door and waves. “I’m so happy, Laura.”
“Me, too.”
Protection is an innate behavior as well. If lies will protect us, we won’t hesitate to use them.
He’s gone. But his scent lingers, that aftershave rubbed into my skin. The hint of sex, too, and I’m worried for a moment about my students. But they won’t know. Penelope might, but I’d welcome that. Smell that, you little bitch? That’s sex I just had with my husband. If the others sense anything, they won’t know to ask, and if they do, I can easily lie. That? That’s just the smell of our new paints.
I prepare each student’s place. They’ll paint a stormy ocean scene today, inspired by Gustave Courbet’s The Wave. I’ll show them the print I’ve brought from home, talking them through the textures of the great storm clouds, gray and plump and—of course—foreboding.
Chapter 11
The day after Ed finds out Laura is pregnant, he brings home a dozen roses and a bottle of champagne. Laura puts the roses in water and allows him to fill a glass for her, but she won’t raise it with him. “I don’t need roses and champagne, Ed.” She takes her glass to her studio.
— —
The next day, Ed gets home at five and tells her to put on a fancy dress. He takes her to Dorothy’s and insists she order the most expensive steak on the menu. “You’re growing a baby! You need all the protein and iron you can get.” He orders an expensive red and tries again to toast their fortune.
But she keeps her glass on the table, her fingers wrapped around the stem.
“What’s your plan, Ed?” she asks.
“To treat you like a queen while you grow our son.”
“Son?”
“Of course.”
She smiles a bit, at least.
— —
Three days later, Ed arrives home at six-thirty, but he brings soup and sandwiches from their favorite sandwich shop.
“I have a doctor’s appointment next Thursday at nine. Can you make it?”
“Of course!” Ed makes a point of writing it in his calendar for Laura to see. “Maybe I’ll take the whole day off. We could go see a matinee and take in an early dinner.”
Laura smiles. “That’d be great, Ed.”
— —
A week later, he goes drinking with Pete and the boys. Pete’s son, Hank, is three and they’re trying for a second. Henry has two girls. Gerald has a five-year-old boy.
“To reproduction!” they shout.
Ed gets home around nine and finds Laura sewing.
He rubs her shoulders and whispers, “Come have a drink with me.”
“Maybe,” she says.
He builds a fire in the woodstove to ward off the last of spring’s chill and opens a beer. He hears the electric chugging of Laura’s sewing machine, a tiny train gaining steam and then letting off. He’s high on the dream of his son, and he pulls his guitar off its stand, playing the songs he’ll sing to the baby. He sings “Lemon Tree” and “If I Had a Hammer.” He sings “April Come She Will,” one of Laura’s favorites. It will bring her out, he is sure. May, she will stay / Resting in my arms again. He sings, and she doesn’t come.
— —
There is an emergency at the institution the morning of Laura’s doctor’s appointment. Ed is out of the house before she even wakes, a rushed letter left behind on the table. So sorry, love. Emergency in Boulder. Will make up for it tonight.
But he’s late getting home, and Laura is asleep, a note in her handwriting next to his. I am seventeen weeks pregnant. The baby’s heartbeat is strong.
Chapter 12
There is plenty about the institution Ed isn’t proud of, but he’s at least been able to boast that there’ve been no accidental deaths under his watch. That’s over now.
Last night, a twenty-six-year-old man named Phillip choked to death on a green bean. His mangled gargling alerted no orderlies because there was only one staff person for both floors of cottage 3, and that one person had been dealing with a tiresome patient on the first floor who refused to get into bed. Phillip was ambulatory but low-functioning. The man in the bed next to his said Phillip always took green beans from the dining hall to eat through the night—something no one had addressed. By the time another patient alerted the orderly downstairs, Phillip was gone.
Ed remembers telling Dean he’d make no guarantees. “Not a threat, but I can’t protect them all on my own.” The words haunt him. What haunts him even more is the insidious hope he feels. Like Dean said at the beginning, get enough bad press, and the state has to start making changes.
But the problems don’t stop with Phillip, and they’re not all capable of being fixed by funding.
Jack Haller, the damn gubernatorial hopeful in Great Falls, is again demanding a full investigation into the institution, and the man has found a handful of former patients to talk to the press about their mistreatment at Boulder. A man from Billings is claiming he was given massive overdoses of Thorazine the entire time he was institutionalized; a higher-functioning Missoula woman claims she was “manhandled” constantly; and an eighteen-year-old girl’s parents are saying the hospital coerced her into a sterilization operation as a condition of her release. Worse still, Nurse Sheila recently informed Ed that a nonambulatory woman in the custodial care ward is pregnant.
“How long has she been here?”
“Eight years. The—well, the act, so to speak—it happened on our watch, Ed.”
Ed went to see the poor bed-bound woman, Caroline, embarrassed that he’d not been to her ward since the fall. Her belly is noticeable in her small body. Her eyes stare blankly, comatose. She has no speech, no understanding. No ability to give consent. The act, as Sheila called it, was rape. Ed alerted the sheriff. The rapist whom the hospital mistakenly employed and intentionally fired was questioned and released.
“He’s got a sound alibi, Ed.”
“How? The man’s a convicted rapist, and he was working here wh
en this woman was impregnated.”
“He didn’t work with the woman, never set foot in that ward. I know we don’t have specific dates, but it seems he was let go before the woman was—” The sheriff couldn’t finish.
“Jesus Christ.”
“It’s a damn shame, Ed. That’s for sure. You let me know if you need me.”
The case is closed as far as the sheriff’s office is concerned, and there’s little Ed can do at the hospital. They’ve questioned the higher-functioning patients, but no one saw or heard anything. It could’ve been one of the staff or one of the patients, impossible to know.
The hospital’s physician has taken the woman into his care. She’s due in about four months, close to Ed’s own child.
He thinks he should quit. Move back to Michigan with Laura, get his job back at Howell. Raise their son near his parents.
But then he comes to the common room, where Penelope is just wrapping up her reading group, and his hope returns. Penelope makes him hopeful. She will be his greatest poster child—healed and strong out there in the world—and they’ll take these recent tragedies and use them to their advantage.
Ed approaches. “Did you hear what Chip said about Yeats’s ‘Long-Legged Fly’?” Penelope asks. “ ‘We are all long-legged flies.’ ”
“He did not.”
“He did! I thought you were spying to learn something. Sheesh.” Together, they put the chairs away.
“Is Caesar the fly?” Ed asks.
“You’re hopeless. His mind is the fly, moving upon silence.”
“Take a walk with me?”
She smiles. “Of course.”
Outside, they find twenty patients in the yard and no aides. Margaret and Barbara are headed toward the river. Those two, always seeking their deaths.
“Jesus.”
“I’ll get the ladies,” Penelope says. “Maybe you could deal with Karen?”
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