The Doctor's Wife

by Elizabeth Brundage

  “You can’t get better if you don’t play,” Michael said. “I don’t like that he makes you sit out.”

  “Only the good people get to play.”

  “Maybe you and Daddy can practice together this weekend,” Annie said.

  “Okay, Dad?” Henry squinted up at him hopefully.

  “Sure, Hen,” he said, but it was a lie. He knew he wouldn’t have any time with his son this weekend.

  “You’re not hungry?” Annie noticed his full plate.

  “Had a big lunch.” This was as good a time as any, he thought. “Lombardo’s.”

  “One of the drug reps?”

  “Someone from Harvard.” He explained how he’d gotten the call from Celina James.

  Annie grimaced. “I remember her. She’s the one who had the hots for you.”

  To his knowledge, Annie knew nothing of his relationship with Celina before their marriage. “What are you talking about?” he said casually, but he was intensely curious.

  “She was always flirting with you.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “Yes, right in front of me. We were engaged, for Christ’s sake, and she’d come over and flirt with you. It was humiliating.”

  “What’s humiliating?” Rosie said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I hardly even knew her.”

  “Well,” Annie said ruefully, “she knew you.”

  “Mommy?” Rosie pulled on Annie’s sleeve, her face the spitting image of her mother’s. “What’s humiliating?”

  Annie looked at him, her eyes spoonfuls of regret. “It’s when somebody makes you feel like shit.” She waited a moment, then added, “Excuse the language.”

  “Oh,” Rosie said, trying to decide how she felt about it. “That’s not very nice.”

  “No it isn’t, sweetie.” Annie narrowed her eyes on him. “Well, how is she after all these years? She’s an OB?”

  “She started a clinic down on South Pearl Street. I hear it’s a pretty controversial spot.”

  “Oh, yes, I read about that place. That’s her?”

  “Yup.”

  Henry looked confused. “What’s a clinic?”

  Annie shot Michael a look and he shot it right back. Take it, his eyes told her. “It’s like a small hospital. For women, honey,” Annie answered softly. “Family planning, stuff like that.”

  “Family what?” That wasn’t going to do it.

  “When women get pregnant and they need help,” Michael said.

  “Why can’t they just go to the hospital?” Henry asked.

  “Sometimes women get pregnant,” Annie explained, “and they’re not able to go through with the pregnancy.”

  “Why not?” Rosie frowned.

  Annie met Michael’s eyes. “How did we get onto this subject, anyway?”

  “Celina James. I should have known better.”

  “You should have. You see that? She’s already causing trouble.”

  Michael cleared his throat and wished he hadn’t mentioned seeing Celina at all. He should have waited till the kids went to bed. The children were staring at him, waiting for more information. “Sometimes women have a baby growing inside them at the wrong time in their lives.”

  Rosie shook her head. “Why?”

  “Well, they might not have enough money,” Annie said. “Or maybe they’re not married. Maybe they’re very young. Maybe they don’t feel ready to be a mommy.”

  “I’m only six,” Rosie argued, “but if I had a baby in my tummy I’d be its mommy.”

  “When you get older you’ll understand better,” Michael said.

  “No I won’t,” Rosie insisted. “It’s mean not to take care of your baby.”

  “You’re right, Rosie,” Annie said gently. “It is mean. But people can be mean to their children, too. Not everybody should become a mommy. And sometimes those women decide not to and they have what’s called an abortion.”

  Henry made a face like he was grossed out. “Well, what is it?”

  “It’s a procedure we do to remove the fetus.”

  “What’s a fetus?” Rosie said.

  “It’s a baby, stupid,” Henry said.

  “Technically, no, Henry,” Michael said. “It takes several months for a fetus to become a baby. That’s a medical perspective, anyway.” Michael glanced at his wife. “Other people argue that life begins at conception.”

  “Well, does it or doesn’t it?” Henry asked, suddenly impatient.

  “Life is present in the womb, cells are multiplying just like mold on a sandwich. It’s not like you can put Pampers on a six-week-old fetus.”

  “So, then, it’s okay to kill it?”

  Michael shook his head. “I don’t know, Henry. I don’t know if it’s okay.”

  Henry shrugged and shook his head and brought his plate over to the sink, humming the famous tune to The Twilight Zone. “Well,” Annie said, getting up to clear the table, “I guess we covered that subject. Who wants dessert?”

  Over ice cream, Henry described his science fair project. “It’s a windmill. I rigged up a fan to make it spin.”

  “It’s really cool,” Rosie said importantly.

  “It’s an amazing windmill, Henry,” Annie said. “I’m really proud of you.”

  “You’re coming tomorrow, right, Dad?” Henry’s face froze expectantly.

  Michael detected a change in Henry, a chiseled solemnity in his jaw. He’d never noticed it before. Or had it just happened, as if overnight? It came to him that the distance between them was widening and he had no one to blame but himself.

  “Tomorrow?” Michael searched Annie’s face.

  Annie scowled at him. “Don’t tell me you forgot.”

  “Yeah, Dad, it’s tomorrow. And let me guess, you’re not coming.” Henry backed out of his chair and tramped down the stairs.

  “Henry, wait!” Rosie went after him, loyal soldier, but stopped first to let in the dog. Then she skipped after her brother, down to the cellar, with Molly right beside her.

  Annie got up and started to clear the table. “So, what is it this time?”

  “Actually, this happens to be important.” It came out sounding like a confession. He told her about his conversation with Celina. “They’ve got appointments scheduled and nobody to do the procedure. I told her I’d show up on Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays.” He hesitated and tried to look apologetic. “Starting tomorrow.”

  “Saturdays, Michael? You’re never home as it is and now we have to lose you on Saturdays?”

  “I’m all they’ve got, Annie. There isn’t anyone else.”

  She turned away from him at the counter, scraping the plates into the sink, then setting them noisily onto the counter. “I don’t know what to say. I know it’s an important cause. You know how I feel about the issue. And I do think you should do it. It’s just hard for me, sometimes.”

  “I know.”

  “When it comes to the rest of the world you’re right there. When it comes to us, it’s take a number and get in line.”

  Michael put his arms around her. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

  “It’s true,” she whispered. “I do.”

  “I’ll call her and tell her I can’t make it,” he said, knowing that Annie would never make him do it. Annie had a fundamentally magnanimous nature. She wasn’t the type to deny anyone who needed help.

  “No. That’s not the right thing either. She needs your help. I understand that.” She turned and looked at him. “Give it a try and see how it goes. Maybe it won’t be so bad. But you’d better go explain it to Henry.”

  Michael had given Henry a science kit for his tenth birthday, and since that day the cellar had been renamed the laboratory. Henry had already decided that he was going to be a scientist and not, as he often reminded his father, a doctor. Doctors were never home, he would lecture Michael, whereas scientists needed to look no farther than straight down their noses into a microscope. Henry spent mo
st of his afternoons down here, immersed in some new experiment, and Rosie, who was just a first grader, was often his loyal assistant. Rosie, too, had an interest in science, it seemed, and had concocted a few experiments of her own. Her latest, she excitedly informed Michael, was a new dog-hair dye for Molly made from crushed-up watercolor paints and condensed milk, mixed together and set on the radiator for an hour or two to “cook.” Molly languished away the hours on the cellar floor like a proud mother, and hadn’t seemed terribly concerned when Rosie painted the awful brown mixture onto her fur.

  Tonight his kids were sitting side by side on stools, fine-tuning Henry’s extraordinary windmill. Michael went over and toyed with the contraption—the tower had been constructed out of Popsicle sticks, the wheel out of tongue depressors and a wire hanger. Henry had set up a small fan to keep the wheel spinning. “Wind-generated energy,” Henry explained, launching into a lengthy description of the project. “When I grow up I’m going to change things,” he said seriously.

  “I believe you will, Henry,” Michael said. “I wish you were running for president.”

  Henry looked up at Michael cautiously. “You’re not coming tomorrow, are you?”

  “Well, actually, Hen—”

  Henry cut him off. “Actually what?”

  “Remember I told you about Dr. James and her clinic? She needs my help tomorrow. It’s important. I told her I’d help her out.”

  “Doing what?”

  Michael considered lying to him, but then admitted, “Doing what we were talking about before, at dinner.”

  “I don’t think it’s right,” Henry said directly.

  This information astonished Michael. “You don’t?”

  “No, I don’t.” Henry went to the stairs and for a moment Michael grappled for a rationalization to offer him, a way of making abortion seem okay. But then Henry said, “I don’t think it’s right for a father to miss his son’s science fair.”

  “I know, Henry,” Michael said, relieved. “But sometimes it’s difficult.”

  “You never come to my school. You never do anything for me.”

  “That’s not true and you know it.”

  “Forget it. I don’t want you to come anyway.” He charged upstairs to the second floor and slammed the door to his room.

  “That’s not nice, Daddy,” Rosie admonished. She crossed her arms over her chest and marched upstairs. “Come on, Molly.”

  Molly cocked her head and stared at him, then slowly, with her tail between her legs, climbed the stairs.

  Henry lectured Michael for twenty minutes about parental responsibility. Michael promised his son that he’d try harder to be home more, but it was such a lie that he had trouble saying the words out loud. His work kept him away from the people he loved most, and there seemed a bitter irony in that. It was like an elaborate knot, and he could not seem to yank it out, no matter how much he believed that he wanted to.

  When the children were quiet, he found his wife at the sink, her hands full of suds. His heart felt heavy in his chest. He regretted the thoughts he’d had earlier about Celina. It was Annie he loved, from the moment he’d first seen her, and he would never betray her. He went up behind her and kissed her neck, her back, sliding the soapy water over her arms, her hands, her fingers. “Annie,” he whispered. She turned in his arms and they kissed some more, giggling in the now silent kitchen, their lips meeting and breaking apart with their laughter, and then they started upstairs, giggling even more, tiptoeing mischievously past the doors of their sleeping children, the sound of the wind rushing through the attic eaves. Even the way she looked now, all wet from the dishes, her hair tangled down her back, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen and, although he had enjoyed other women in the past, women like Celina, he knew that Annie was his true mate.

  They stumbled down the hall, into their room at the end of it, and found their way to the bed and made love across the old crazy quilt her mother had given them on their wedding day. He could hear the windows trembling, rattling in their cold frames like the applause of ghosts, and he wondered distantly about the weather, the cool air of autumn, the change it would bring.

  13

  THE FREE WOMEN’S HEALTH and Wellness Center inhabited a nondescript brick building with a glass double door. To Michael’s surprise, a small crowd of protestors, maybe twenty in all, had already convened out front, picketing behind police barricades. They held up signs: STOP THE MURDER, and GENOCIDE, and IT’S A CHILD NOT A CHOICE. A sense of dread filled his heart as he pulled into the parking lot and took the space next to Celina’s old red Blazer, the back of which was affixed with pro-choice bumper stickers. As he parked, two of the protestors came out of nowhere holding large wooden crosses and tried to swarm his car, but a police officer grabbed them and held them back. They were chanting at him, “Murderer! Murderer!” It was the first time he regretted having MD plates. He got out of the car, shielding his head with his canvas bag as if, any minute, something heavy would fall out of the sky and hit him. Once inside the building, it was business as usual. “Well, now, that was a festive welcome,” he said to the receptionist.

  “You’ll get used to it,” she answered in broken Russian. “I’m Anya. You need something you just ask, okay?”

  “Thanks, Anya.”

  “We have pastry here.” She nudged him with a plate of cheese Danish. “You want?”

  “Maybe later.”

  “You’ll feel better if you eat,” she told him with certainty.

  “Maybe you’re right.” He took a bite and smiled his thanks.

  “Good morning, Michael.” Celina appeared in her pink scrubs, happy to see him. “We are so grateful that you’re here. Come on, I’ll give you the fifty-cent tour.” She took his hand and led him down the hall, introducing him to various members of staff they encountered on their way. They were an earthy bunch of women in scrubs and white clogs and long silver earrings. The demonstration outside the windows didn’t seem to faze them. Celina showed him her office, a tiny room crammed with plants. The walls had been painted yellow and were covered with photographs of women: her grandmother, several patients and friends, and a host of women she admired, some of whom he recognized—Emma Goldman, Rosa Parks, Bella Abzug, Simone de Beauvoir, Ella Fitzgerald—and many more that he did not. A large Calderesque mobile hung from the ceiling. She sat him down and gave him a cup of coffee. “You’ll need to sign that W2 form. You get paid once a month. It’s not a lot; it’s the best we can do.”

  “It’s not like I’m doing it for the money.” The truth was, he’d do it for free.

  “I know.” She handed him the form and he filled it out. “I want to show you something.” She turned on the VCR. The video had been distributed by the group outside the windows, Life Force, and supplied inaccurate pictures and descriptions of the abortion procedure. First, there were images of motherhood under the very best of circumstances. Pretty pregnant women contemplating their bellies, pretty women holding newborn infants. Little black and white children in parochial school outfits, frolicking in the autumn leaves. The narrator was an older man with a kind, caring voice. “Believe in yourself,” he said at the end. “Choose life.”