Tempted

by Megan Hart

  I ordered Chinese delivery for dinner and left it on the counter for James to find when he got home. I went to bed early, exhausted by a day I’d spent scrubbing the floors on my hands and knees, bleaching the mold from the deck, cleaning out the fridge. I’d sought to occupy myself with tasks I’d been putting off for weeks. It hadn’t worked.

  I couldn’t sleep. James came to bed sometime later, slipping in beside me onto fresh sheets that smelled of nothing but fabric softener. He was damp from the shower. He put his arm around me, tentatively, and I rolled toward him to press my face to the comfort of his bare chest.

  “What happened last night?” he whispered, like he was afraid something might break if he spoke too loudly.

  “I told him he had to go.” The lie was as easy as any I’d ever told. “And he left.”

  I wondered if he’d question me. Or argue. He sighed, instead, and drew me tighter against him. We said nothing more. After a few minutes his touch became less tentative, more possessive. The familiar strokes and caresses seemed foreign to me now. With only one set of hands, one mouth, one body next to mine, something seemed missing.

  We made love more awkwardly than we ever had. Nothing fancy or complicated, no exotic positions, and still we fumbled. His mouth sought mine and I turned my face. James thrust inside me so long it began to rub me to rawness. My involuntary sounds could have been mistaken for pleasure, but they came through gritted teeth, and when I raked my nails down his back it was not from passion. He came inside me with a grunt and collapsed and I waited half a moment to push him off me.

  I waited until I heard the pattern of his breathing tell me he was asleep before I rolled away from him to stare into the night and wish I had been the one to tell Alex to go.

  Claire looked around the waiting room as I took a seat. She twirled the rack containing various pamphlets about local social services, adoption, tests during pregnancy and other related subjects. Her fingers played with the creased white brochure from Lamb’s Wool Adoptions, and she plucked it out.

  She sat next to me and opened it. “How come most adoption organizations are religious?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because they’re the ones who don’t believe in abortion, and they want to offer women an alternative.” I’d picked up a months-out-of-date gossip rag, but the articles inside held little appeal.

  Claire snorted, flipping the page. “This one says they’ll place your ‘little blessing in disguise’ with a local ‘Christ-oriented family.’ What about the non-Christ-oriented families? Don’t they deserve the right to adopt kids?”

  I put down the magazine and shifted in my chair to look at her. “I thought you were going to keep the baby. What do you care about adoption services?”

  “I don’t.” She put the pamphlet back. “I’m just making conversation.”

  She was nervous, I realized, and trying not to show it. Her eyes flicked around the room, but nobody else was paying any attention to her. She put her hands on her belly, a gesture that seemed unconscious but was very telling.

  “You’ll come in with me, won’t you?”

  “If you want me to.”

  She’d had care already, from the free clinic, but I’d convinced her to come to Dr. Heinz. This was her first visit. There were, I supposed, going to be tests of some sort, and possibly an ultrasound. I’d have wanted someone with me, too.

  When they called her name, Claire looked up. For a second, I thought she wasn’t going to move. I tugged her sleeve as I got up. “C’mon, Claire. You’ll like Dr. Heinz.”

  Even bravado couldn’t hide the fact Claire’s answering chuckle was nervous. “You go on. I’ll ketchup.”

  “That joke is so bad it makes my stomach hurt,” I told her. “C’mon.”

  Together we followed the medical assistant back to the same room I’d been in just over two months before. The posters on the wall had been updated with new ones, from a different drug company. The magazines were the same. Claire undressed and took her place on the paper-covered table while I waited behind the drawn curtain until she was done.

  “What do you think?” she asked, pointing to the front of the flowered gown. “Is it me?”

  “It’s a new look.” I smiled to reassure her. “Relax.”

  She took a deep breath, in and out. “Do you know how many things can go wrong in a pregnancy?”

  I didn’t, not from experience at least. “You’ll be fine, Claire.”

  “Before I found out I was pregnant, I kept drinking. And smoking. That can really mess up a baby.”

  Telling her it would be all right felt like a lie, but I said it anyway. She took another deep breath, looking younger than she was. I was reminded of her as a toddler in a sagging diaper, following me around our backyard. She’d stopped dying her hair and an inch of strawberry-blond roots had crept out.

  She saw me looking and put a self-conscious hand to her part. “I look like a skunk.”

  “It’s not bad. It’s kind of punk, actually.”

  She smiled and looked across the room into the mirrored cabinet on the wall. “You think so? It’s better than dark roots and blond hair, I guess. At least this looks almost like I did it on purpose.”

  A discreet tap-tap on the door interrupted our discussion. Dr. Heinz waited for Claire to tell her to come in, then stuck in her head before entering the room all the way. She smiled and held out her hand for Claire to shake.

  “Miss Byrne?”

  I don’t suppose it occurred to Dr. Heinz that Claire was my sister. She has a lot of patients, after all, and my name’s not Byrne anymore. So when she did a double take at seeing me sitting to the side, we all laughed.

  “Anne’s my sister. She recommended you.” Claire’s voice didn’t betray whatever nervousness she’d felt before. She sounded mature. Focused. She shook Dr. Heinz’s hand firmly.

  “It’s good to see you, Anne.” Dr. Heinz smiled warmly and turned her attention back to my sister. “Now. Let’s see what we can do with you.”

  I didn’t have much of a role to play aside from providing moral support. I listened quietly from my spot in the corner as Dr. Heinz went over the things Claire could expect from pregnancy and childbirth, about the tests and changes her body was going through. Claire asked intelligent questions that showed she’d done her research. I was proud of her. She might not have intended to get pregnant, but her answers to Dr. Heinz clearly showed she was taking full responsibility for it now.

  I’d seen ultrasound pictures from when Patricia was pregnant with Callie and Tristan, but everything changes including technology. The picture that showed on the screen of the little creature swimming inside Claire’s tummy made a small noise bubble up from my throat.

  “That’s amazing,” I said.

  Dr. Heinz moved the wand over Claire’s bared bump. “You can see the head, here. Arms. Legs.”

  Claire oohed. “It’s got fingers!”

  Tiny webbed digits, but fingers nevertheless. And eyes. Ears. A nose, mouth…it was a baby. A real baby, even this small.

  I’d been less than three months along when I’d wished away my child. I’d been happy at the time. Overjoyed, in fact. Immensely relieved. I’d been glad to see the blood and know the life inside me had ended without my having to take it. I hadn’t mourned the loss of my baby then.

  Confronted with the truth of what I’d lost, I mourned it now.

  I excused myself to use the bathroom, where I splashed cold water on my face over and over until my cheeks stung. I gripped the cold porcelain sink and contemplated being sick, but nothing in my stomach wanted to come up. I wet a paper towel for the back of my neck and closed my eyes until the dizziness went away.

  How might my life have changed had I not lost the baby? If I’d have found the money and the courage to terminate the pregnancy, or if I’d decided to have the baby. If, one way or another, I’d found the strength to actually make a decision instead of fate stepping in to make it for me.

  If I’d had a child
ten years ago, would I have met and married James? Unlikely. The path my life took would surely have been different had my child been born. Even if I’d given it to someone else to raise, my life would have changed. I’d never have married James.

  I’d never have met Alex.

  And it came back to that. My sense of loss doubled in an instant, the feeling that somehow, the choice had been taken from me. Fate had determined the course of my relationship with Alex the way it had determined what happened with my one and only pregnancy. It had given me what I wanted but then taken it away.

  Alone in the washroom I didn’t have to fake the shiny. Didn’t have to put on a happy face to keep anyone from knowing the truth of how I felt. I was torn up, shattered and battered, my bruises on the inside but no less painful than if I’d worn them on my skin.

  The woman in the mirror tried to smile. “I love him,” she mouthed.

  “I know you do,” I whispered in return.

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “I hate him,” I said and closed my eyes so I didn’t have to look at my own face.

  “No,” she whispered, “you don’t.”

  I got it together, of course. I always did. I pushed away what shamed me and made me unhappy, and I smoothed out the rest to make a pretty, perfect surface. It was getting harder and harder to do.

  Claire looked much more relaxed when I came back into the room. She’d dressed and had a handful of papers as well as a cute diaper bag covered with bunnies and ducks.

  “Look, Anne!” She held up the bag, which bulged with goodies. “I got swag!”

  “Nice.” I peeked in the bag. “Binkies, diapers…you’re all set.”

  She laughed, looking into the bag. “Oh, sure. If only.”

  “Are you all done? You ready to go?”

  She nodded, then patted her stomach. “I’m starting to show. I asked Dr. Heinz if she thought it was baby or if it was the hot fudge sundaes I’ve been eating.”

  I stepped back to look at her. Claire had been the thinnest of all of us, the sister with the body closest to the male idea of bodacious. “Your boobs are even bigger, too.”

  She hefted one. “Hell, yeah.”

  I managed a laugh that sounded natural. “Your belly’s not that big.”

  She stood, keeping her back straight and turning to the side so I’d be sure to see the bump. “Look at it.”

  “Hot fudge sundaes,” I told her, just to tease.

  She gave me the finger. “You’re just jealous.”

  I broke the moment of awkward silence that followed her statement by saying, “Tell me that when you’re in labor and I’m not.”

  Claire gave me a real smile, not a smirk, and patted my shoulder. “C’mon, big sissy. I’m taking you out to lunch.”

  “We can go to lunch. But you don’t have to treat me.” I followed her from the room.

  She glanced over her shoulder at me. “No worries. I’ve got some cash from—” She probably meant to call him by the names she’d given him before, but there were a lot of people in the hall. “Him. I can cover a burger and fries.”

  “Fine.” As I sidled past a medical assistant carrying a pile of folders, Dr. Heinz called my name. I turned. “Yes?”

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” She gestured, and we ducked into a small exam room. “Since you were here with your sister, I took a quick look at your file. I can give you your shot today so you don’t have to come back in, if you like.”

  It was considerate of her to offer, and I meant to say yes. But after a pause that felt like an eternity, I shook my head. “No, thanks. I’m going to stop taking it.”

  She smiled. “Do we need to set up an appointment to get you started on something else?”

  I returned her smile. “No. My husband and I are going to start trying for a baby.”

  “Ah.” She nodded. “I’ll write you a script for prenatals, pick them up at any drugstore, okay?”

  I was. We shook hands. She wished me luck. Claire and I went to lunch, where she paid the tab and talked on and on about many things, none of which I could later recall.

  For the next two weeks, James and I talked but said nothing. Not about Alex, who might as well never have existed as far as our household seemed concerned. Not about much else. Our conversations were brief, pleasant, neutral. I couldn’t remember much of what we talked about, probably because I wasn’t paying attention. Looking at James reminded me too much of betrayal, though I couldn’t quite figure out who’d done the betraying and which of us had been betrayed.

  Every night I made love to James with a fierceness that had nothing to do with longing. We fucked fast and hard. I came every time. I knew why I was doing it. I didn’t ask James why he responded the way he did, why he branded me with his mouth and cock and the imprints of his hands. Our fucking left me bruised and aching. I meant for it to fill me, but it left me empty, too.

  I don’t know how Evelyn found out Alex had gone, but she started her thrice-weekly habit of phone calls again. I let James answer. If he wasn’t home, I let the answering machine take her call, and I erased the message without listening to what she’d said. When he asked me if I minded if his parents came to dinner, I said I didn’t, but when they came I pleaded a headache and stayed in my room until they’d gone.

  “Maybe Anne ought to see a doctor,” I heard her saying the second time they came for dinner and I used the same excuse. Her voice carried from the kitchen down the hall, like a drill in my ear. “She’s been sick a lot, lately.”

  I didn’t wait to hear James’s answer. I locked myself in the bathroom and stood under the shower for as long as the hot water lasted. By the time I came out, they’d gone.

  He caught me the next day as I stood at the sink, wrist-deep in soapy water and washing the dishes he’d left undone from the night before.

  “Anne.”

  I turned only halfway, gave him half my attention. Half of myself.

  “Are you ever going to be happy again?”

  It took a long, quiet moment for me to answer, and when I did it was with a shrug. I turned back to the dishes. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He sighed. “Are you ever going to smile again?”

  I shook my hands free of suds and dried them. I took my time doing it, getting each individual finger. I faced him. I smiled, hard and sharp.

  “You mean like this?”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He looked smaller to me than he had a few minutes ago.

  I did it again, the way I’d done so many times. Tilting lips, crinkles at the corners of the eyes. Slow and easy. A smile.

  “Like this?”

  Feeling flickered in his eyes, a stream of emotions passing over him so fast I couldn’t have determined them all even if I’d been trying.

  “That looks more like you. Yes.”

  I turned back to the sink. From behind me I heard him move closer. I tensed, waiting for his touch.

  “Are you ever going to smile at me like that again?”

  “I just did, James.”

  “Are you ever going to mean it again?”

  My fingers slid through soap and grease and found the sponge. I circled it in the pan, over and over, hypnotizing myself with repetition. “I don’t know.”

  When he put his hands on my shoulders, I went stiff. “I wish you did.”

  I wanted to let myself melt back against him, to let him ease me with his touch the way he was trying. I didn’t. “I do, too.”

  He kissed the part of my shoulder exposed by the neckline of my T-shirt. My hands stung from the hot water, and I lifted them out to put one on each side of the sink. The scents of lemons and last night’s dinner bathed my face. I closed my eyes against it. I waited for James to put his arms around me and pull me close, to force me to forgive him so I could forgive myself.

  “I’m going to run out to get a new pair of work boots. Do you want me to pick up anything for you?”

 
“No.”

  He squeezed me with gentle fingers and withdrew. I scrubbed the dishes until my fingers ached. James came home much, much later, smelling of beer and cigarettes.

  I didn’t ask him where he’d been.

  With only two weeks to go until the anniversary party, I expected life to feel a little hectic. Certainly it seemed to affect my sisters that way. There were plenty of calls back and forth about the caterer, the decorations, who was going to pick up what. A few months before I might have been as hyped up and stressed out as the three of them, no matter if I didn’t show it, but now I was genuinely calm about the entire affair.

  “It’s fine,” I assured Patricia, who was almost in tears about the scrapbook, because she couldn’t decide whether or not to include a place for guests to write congratulations. “Put the pages in.”

  “But then I’ll have to put the book out where people can get to it, and you know someone will splash barbecue sauce on it!” she cried. “It will look awful!”

  I cradled the phone against my shoulder while I stirred a pot of chicken soup. I didn’t have much appetite. James had called to tell me he was going to be late. I hadn’t asked him why.

  She sounded tired, but she’d told me things with Sean were getting better. He’d come up with the cash for the mortgage, though she hadn’t said from where. He was coming home earlier, not missing work, not going to the track. He’d agreed to counseling, though they hadn’t yet gone.

  “Just put out one page at a time near the drinks table,” I told her. “Check them during the party and when they get filled, put out another. That way you’ll only add the ones that have all the messages on them, you won’t have any blank pages and you can keep the scrapbook someplace out of the way so nobody spills something on it.”

  “I guess that will work.” She sighed. “I will be so glad when this party’s over.”