A Minor Fall

by Price Ainsworth

Michelle couldn’t stop staring at the picture. “I wonder if he’ll have red hair like me or plain brown hair like you.”

  “Burnt sienna.” I said.

  Michelle ran a hand through my hair as she looked down at me. “Brown.” She said, matter-of-factly. “Burnt sienna has more of a reddish tint.”

  I looked at the picture, which was little more than an X-ray of shadows. I had the thought that it might be the only picture I ever got to see of Paul. I could make out the head and body, and arms and legs, but I couldn’t distinguish details like eyes or nose, much less the sex of the child.

  The receptionist looked at the photograph with us. “You know,” she said, “there are companies now that do three-dimensional sonograms that show greater detail. Some couples have one done as baby’s first picture. Dr. Nathan doesn’t do them because health insurance doesn’t pay for them. I could give you the address and phone number of a facility that does the 3-D version if you’d like.”

  “Please,” Michelle said. “I’d love to have one.” I knew it would only be a matter of days before the framed 3-D color version of the sonogram would be on Sullivan’s credenza behind his desk at the office. As Michelle and the receptionist walked over to the reception desk to write down the sonogram information for us, I sat in the chair looking at the black-and-white picture that I held in my hands, wondering if there was any way that the baby could have seen us when the transducer was on Michelle’s tummy.

  When I left the doctor’s office, I started back to the office and called Eileen from the car to see if anything was happening. It was already mid-afternoon and I thought that if nothing was going on at the office, I might try to find Sullivan at Damian’s or Brennan’s. But Eileen told me Sullivan had left that morning to arrange another press conference in Kentucky, and the office was very quiet.

  Since I felt like I needed to talk to someone, I changed directions and took a chance that I might catch Jonathan at his house over in the Heights. I don’t know why I didn’t try to call him before I showed up on his doorstep.

  It was probably about two o’clock when I pulled into Jonathan’s driveway. He lived in a beautiful “Arts and Crafts” style home in the Heights, an older neighborhood inside Loop 610 just northeast of downtown Houston. There were pockets of the Heights that demonstrated the worst of urban blight, but there were also leafy streets of homes built in the early part of the last century that had been lovingly restored to Victorian or Mission-style works of art. Although there were some crime problems, the yards were expansive and green, and there were large oak trees dressed in Spanish moss. Sullivan, the son of a construction superintendent, had grown up in a house only a few blocks from where his son, Jonathan, now lived.

  Jonathan’s American Craftsman bungalow was a partial two-story structure with a low-pitched roof and overhanging eaves that rested on exposed rafters. Four-over-one, double-hung windows graced the front of the house, and tapered, square columns supported the extension of the main roof which shaded the large front porch.

  I bounced up the steps to the porch and rang the doorbell. After a moment, I decided Jonathan was not at home and turned to go back down the steps and walkway to my car. Before I could get back in the car, Jonathan opened the front door and came outside onto the porch wearing only a sweatshirt and gym shorts. I imagined that he was about to go for a jog.

  “Hey, brother-in-law. What are you doing this afternoon?” Jonathan asked in a voice that was genuinely friendly.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I thought you might want to go over to the Blue Oyster Bar and have a beer.”

  “That’s a good idea,” he said, “although I’ll have to take a rain check this time. I’ve got company. But you can come in and have one with us, if you’d like.”

  I hesitated. In the entire time I’d known Jonathan, I’d never seen him date anyone seriously. The fact that I’d never seen him bring a woman to his parents’ house, coupled with the fact that he lived in an immaculate home in the Heights made me question whether my bursting in on him this afternoon was a prudent move on my part. However, in addition to being my wife’s brother, Jonathan was my friend. I thought to myself, how much weirder could things get anyway?

  “Sure,” I said, “if I’m not intruding. Have you got any cold beer?”

  “I don’t know about beer,” he said, “but I just opened a bottle of wine.” I followed him up the front steps and through the front door.

  We went through a small, Grueby green-tiled entryway into a quarter-sawn oak paneled family room that was perfectly furnished in reproduction Stickley mission oak furniture. In one corner was a spindle-sided Morris chair covered in burgundy leather with a matching ottoman. A heavy, copper-topped coffee table sat on a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed wool rug in front of a Coke-bottle green leather couch.

  Riza stood up from the couch as we walked into the room.

  “Hi, Davy,” she said. She was wearing a plush, cream-colored, terrycloth robe, monogrammed with a dark green “S” on the left breast pocket.

  “I thought you two might already know each other,” Jonathan said. “I’ll get that wine,” he shouted, as he disappeared into the kitchen.

  Riza obviously enjoyed the stunned look on my face.

  “You can pick your chin up,” she said, smiling. In one sentence, she had told me not to look so surprised, and to keep my mouth shut. She lowered her voice so that Jonathan couldn’t hear her from the kitchen.

  “Neither knows,” she whispered.

  “They won’t find out from me,” I replied in an equally soft whisper, and then called out to Jonathan, “Can you make mine a scotch?”

  “Sure,” he called back. “Tough day?”

  “I’m going to be a dad,” I said.

  Both Jonathan and Riza laughed.

  11

  MICHELLE WAS IN THE KITCHEN cooking when I got home a little while later. I came up behind her as she sliced peeled potatoes into a boiling pot of water. She made wonderful mashed potatoes. I don’t know if it was boiling the potatoes in salt water, the spoonful of sour cream, the chunks of butter, the minced garlic, or the grilled green chilies, but the girl could make mashed potatoes.

  I kissed her on the neck. She paused for a moment, and then resumed her slicing when I pulled away. “I thought you might fire up the grill and cook those little steaks that are marinating in the refrigerator,” she said. I noticed a colander of freshly washed asparagus by the sink.

  “What’s the occasion?” I asked.

  “I just thought we would have a nice, early dinner together at home—as a family,” she said. “Go change your clothes and fix yourself a scotch.”

  I did as I was told and then went out onto the back porch and lit the gas grill. After the grill had heated up, I took a wire brush and cleaned the grill surface. I went back inside and got the steaks, a pair of tongs, and a Famous Grouse on the rocks. I put the steaks on the fire, turned down the heat to medium-high, and closed the cover. I sat down at a small, French bistro table with my scotch in one hand and the tongs in the other. I knew I had to tell Michelle about the herpes—that she had been exposed—that she might already have the disease. I knew that telling her was the right thing to do. From what I had read on the Internet, I understood that there were real risks if a mother delivered a child vaginally while experiencing a herpes outbreak. The child could contract the disease in the birth canal, and because of his undeveloped immune system, he could develop blindness or a brain injury, or even die; not to mention the fact that, if he escaped horrible injury or disfigurement, he would have a chronic condition of herpes.

  Apparently, women with herpes delivered children all the time, and the key was for them to tell their obstetricians. If there was concern about an outbreak at the time of delivery, a Caesarean section was performed. With medication like what I had received from the STD clinic and no symptoms of an outbreak, even vaginal deliveries were routinely performed.

  The vital concern was that the doctor should know about the po
ssibility of an outbreak at the time she went into labor in order to take the proper precautions. Michelle had to know that I had exposed her to the disease. But I was still too ashamed to tell her. If I told her about the herpes, then I had to tell her about the affair. If I told her about the affair, I knew I would lose her. Of course, I would also be fired. I would probably be fired anyway when the Kentucky case imploded. I didn’t really care about the job. As long as I had my bar card and my license to practice law in Texas, I could figure out some way to make a living as a lawyer. I could try a case. There would always be rear-end collisions in which the insurance company refused to compensate the victim.

  The truth is that all of the secret keeping and covering up was wearing me out. I wondered how I could lift this weight off me and start over. But, I didn’t want to lose Michelle; it was not just because it would be a defeat for our marriage. I couldn’t imagine living without her.

  I had to tell her about the herpes. I tried to play out the conversation in my mind. How do I begin? Should I go to the ATM machine first? Where will I spend the night tomorrow night? Could I just tell Michelle that I needed some time alone and go back to Abilene? What could I tell my parents? Is there any way I could sit down alone with Dr. Nathan and convince him to deliver the child by C-section without telling Michelle the real reason he was doing it?

  I was scared, and I felt like my chest was going to explode. I flipped the steaks and sipped my scotch.

  No doctor was going to hide from his patient the fact that she had been exposed to a disease that could harm her unborn child. How could I have let this happen? How could I fix this? I thought to myself, “I have to tell her tonight. I can’t go on like this. I can’t keep this secret any longer. I have to tell Michelle tonight. She’s going to want to make love tonight. All the signs were there. I can’t keep exposing her to this without telling her.” At least Beth didn’t know she had it when she gave it to me. I might not have known I had it when I first exposed Michelle, but I knew I had done something I wasn’t supposed to have done; and somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that there was a risk that I might contract a sexually transmitted disease.

  If I had unprotected sex with Michelle now, I would be deliberately deceiving her and putting her at risk. How could I do that to someone I loved? Did I really love Michelle? If I did, why would I have slept with Beth? Was this God’s way of punishing me for having sex with Beth? What kind of God would punish people He loved?

  That was certainly the kind of God I had learned about growing up in Abilene. He was an authoritarian God, intimately involved in the day-to-day lives of everyone on the planet, and He meted out punishment on a regular basis to those who deserved it. His judgment was swift and certain, and it could come in the form of dropping cattle prices, below-average rainfall, or personal bankruptcies.

  The God of Lubbock, where I went to college at Texas Tech, was a more benevolent God than the God of Abilene. In Lubbock, I came to see God as more of a father figure, who, while still setting absolute standards of right and wrong, was the loving father of a prodigal son. He could forgive drinking a little trash can punch at the “Phi Delt” house after a game on Saturday night and maybe a minor dalliance with a “Pi Phi,” but only if I knelt before Him on Sunday, and sincerely expressed that, “I am working my way back to you, Babe.”

  In Austin, where I went to law school at The University of Texas, God was a bearded, long-tenured professor. He kept a grade book, although he didn’t take attendance. Some would pass and some would fail, but He was far too busy with the weightier issues of the day to be called upon to address anything other than the most exigent of circumstance (e.g., Black Plague, Hitler, pollution in the Edwards Aquifer, tort reform). Grades were recorded for pop quizzes, midterms, and final exams that tested a person’s ability to make choices when given a set of facts, not unlike a stated problem that had been sent down long before.

  The God of Houston was more distant. He may not have even lived in Houston. He probably commuted from from Sugar Land, Humble, or Kingwood. He was like some cosmic, professional bowler at the far end of the bowling lane that, at some moment when time began, sent the world hurtling toward a spare or a strike or a gutter that those of us on the globe tried desperately, and in vain, to control. Seeing that we couldn’t alter the course of the ball, we focused more and more on ourselves and less and less on the greater good or the direction the ball was rolling.

  I don’t think that I had ever given much thought to what the devil looked like at any point in my life. I guess that was because I thought evil could take on whatever form it chose. It could look like a serpent in the Garden of Eden, a sneering, bald-headed vice president, or like Jack Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick—or my own reflection in the mirror.

  I don’t think that I ever doubted that evil existed in the world. I’ve just always assumed that it moved in and out of people and situations without the constraints of time or physical embodiment. The name “devil” in my mind was just a contraction “de evil” or “of evil.” I didn’t know what caused evil to persist in the world, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with a little red guy with horns and a pitchfork. I understood from my Sunday Bible school classes as a kid that “Satan” was from the old Hebrew word for “adversary.” However, I never really understood the whole concept about how God could have a formidable adversary if God was all-knowing and all-powerful. Wouldn’t it be like the Globetrotters always playing the Washington Generals?

  I had been going over in my mind the question about what to do next since I had left Jonathan’s house. I felt the need to talk to someone, not so much for someone to give me the answers to my questions. Instead I needed someone to listen and advise me and be a nonjudgmental friend, somebody who would still care for me even after I had told him or her about how badly I had behaved. The problem was that all of the people in the world to whom I felt like I could talk were somehow involved in the complex web of secrets that were closing in on me. Alone with my questions and thoughts, I felt more and more isolated.

  After eight minutes, four per side, I took the steaks off the grill and went back inside. I put the steaks on the dining table in the breakfast room and set the places, while Michelle brought over the mashed potatoes and asparagus. I had to tell her. I had to tell her now. I fixed myself another scotch and sat at the place at the head of the table, where I always sat, except on those occasions when Michelle’s parents came over for lunch and Tim sat there.

  Michelle and I were both slicing into our steaks when the phone rang. She got up to answer it. After looking at the call screen to be sure that it was not a telemarketer call, she picked up the phone.

  “Hello, Dad. Where are you today? We had our first sonogram. You are going to have a grandson . . . In September . . . Yeah, he’s here . . . We just sat down to eat an early dinner. Tonight? Can’t that wait until tomorrow? No, you tell him. I’ll hand him the phone.” In the brief conversation her voice had gone from excited to crestfallen.

  Sullivan was calling from Kentucky. He had sent the plane back to pick Riza and me up. Michelle began putting the food in plastic containers and putting it away in the refrigerator, while I went upstairs to pack.

  12

  RIZA WAS ALREADY SITTING in the plane on the tarmac when I got there. She was listening to her iPod and reading an old copy of the Robb Report as I threw my bag in the back and took a seat across the aisle facing her. The pilot came to the back of the plane, shut the door, and told us how long the flight to Lexington would take. It would be pretty late before we would arrive. Both Riza and I nodded, resigned to our confinement on a private jet well-stocked with booze and salted cashews.

  A few months earlier, I would have seen this unscheduled trip as an unexpected adventure; now, I felt like I was being taken advantage of, and unnecessarily so. While I was somewhat relieved to have avoided once again the conversation that I knew I must have with Michelle, I felt like the opportunity had been pulled out from un
der me.

  After we were airborne, I went to the bar and made myself a Famous Grouse on the rocks. I figured that I probably wouldn’t even see Sullivan that night, but I should avoid getting too drunk, just in case. We would be getting to Kentucky in time for a late dinner, and if he wanted to go out, Sullivan would want me to accompany Riza and him. I told myself that pace was important.

  I motioned to Riza to get her attention, and, as she removed her earphones, I asked her if she would like a drink as well. She asked for a beer, and I opened a Corona Light for her. I took a small lime from the wooden bowl that sat on the bar and quartered it on the little cutting board beside the bowl. I wedged a lime slice into the opening of the beer bottle and handed it to Riza like I had seen Sullivan do a hundred times. I returned to my seat and watched as the reflection of the full moon off the plane sped across the ground below.

  “How fast do you think we’re going?” Riza asked.

  “Over four hundred miles per hour,” I said.

  “Do you know why we have to be in Lexington tonight?”

  “No,” I said shaking my head. “I was going to ask you the same question. Presumably, there is going to be some meeting on the case tomorrow morning that required we leave tonight, but I’m not sure. Michelle did most of the talking when Tim called.”

  Riza nodded.

  “I apologize for asking. I’m just curious. Where were you when you got the call?” I asked.

  “I was still at Jonathan’s. I checked my messages, and Tim had left one at my condo. I’m surprised I beat you to the plane. I assumed I would be the one holding us up.”

  “Does Jonathan know where you are going?”

  “Of course.” She replied. “He’s used to it. That doesn’t mean he likes it, but he’s used to it.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said.

  “Do you think either of them suspects that you are involved with the other one?” I asked. “I’m sorry. It’s not really any of my business. I just wondered.”