Elizabeth had trouble making out the scrawl on the exterior of the envelope. She marveled at the Post Office’s ability to discern its intended destination. The only thing she could tell for sure was the aerogramme’s country of origin. She went into the kitchen to get a knife and, holding her breath, carefully sliced through the folds on the single sheet that served as both letter and envelope, all the while under Gina’s intent gaze.
“It’s not from Declan,” she said, ending the suspense. “It’s from Brian. The goofy young guy I told you about. The one I met on the boat going over from France. His handwriting is impossible. The nuns in Lisburn must have been way less persnickety than the nuns in Milwaukee.” She shook her head. “I just remembered he’s a Protestant. Not the nuns’ fault.” She bent over the paper, laughed, then read, then laughed again. “He’s describing a ceremony his sister put the family through. A goodbye to his mother. His dead mother. Recently deceased.” She laughed again.
“Hilarious,” Gina said disapprovingly.
“They made these solemn speeches and released balloons into the air, a symbolic letting go of her soul, I guess. From what I can make out, it seems it started raining and all the balloons massed over Brian’s head. You’ll have to read it. You’ll have to try to read it,” she amended. “Not only is the writing difficult but it’s minuscule. To fit it all onto the one page.” Elizabeth returned her attention to the thin blue paper. “Oh, dear God. Oh, no. Poor Brian. His brother has been shot. In a riot in the North. He says by the I.R.A.”
Gina was confused. “Not by—what did you call the police?—the Gardai?”
“Brian and his family are Protestant Northerners. Irish Brits, I guess, is another way of putting it. They’d be supporters of the Gardai.” She looked down again. “Brian says his brother’s in critical condition. He wrote this from the hospital.” She stood up. “I’m going to the Post Office to buy a couple of these aerogrammes. I’ve decided to take your advice. I’m going to send a letter to Declan care of the theater.”
Three weeks later another flimsy blue rectangle made its way into the incoming mail basket. This one was postmarked Dublin. Elizabeth’s hand shook as she lifted it from the basket.
Dear Lizzie,
I was glad to get your letter and hear that you’re settling in to your new job. Your sister and her husband sound like great sorts.
I’ve been meaning to write to you, but this is not the letter I thought I would be writing when I left you at the airport.
My wife returned to Dublin two days after you flew out and we decided to give our marriage another try. And I was failing badly. In bed and elsewhere. After I received your letter, I saw it was the guilt I was feeling that had built a wall between her and me. I told Agnes about you and about our night in the park. And after that, we started over.
I never meant to deceive you about being married. We had given up our flat four months before that day on Merrion Street. We had both agreed the split was permanent. Agnes left on tour—she’s an actress—and I moved in with my mother. I didn’t want to bring up the separation. As I recall, you didn’t want to talk about your separation or divorce either.
Remember when I told you that contraception isn’t legal in Ireland? Rubber sheaths aren’t the only things you can’t get here legally—there is also no divorce. If things went on as they were, I would never be free and I would no longer be wed. I’d be sitting on the sharp edge between the two. It all seemed final and yet endless. Like eternal damnation.
It wasn’t my plan to make love to you. You reminded me of my wife in some ways, but different too. It was like having her back and having someone new, which is what I suppose most men dream of, gits that we are. And I was feeling happy for the first time in a long while. Despite the Troubles, despite my marriage. You seemed happy as well. I didn’t want to spoil it all.
If Agnes hadn’t come back, I would have written sooner and I would have written different. But she left the tour and came home and we are trying.
I won’t ask you to forgive me and I won’t blame you if you hate me. I promise that, no matter how things work out, I won’t bother you again.
I wish you all the best. You deserve nothing less
Declan
Over the weeks since her return, she had continued to let herself fall more deeply in love even without any provocation from him. Now the falling was over. It was not bottomless. She had crashed. She felt a wave of nausea as she read and reread the words.
Gina came to the doorway expecting to see her sister beaming, not clutching her stomach. “What’s the matter?” she said.
“I guess this is what they call lovesickness,” Elizabeth said on her way to the bathroom.
When she returned, her sister was holding the letter and staring off into space.
“Gina, what are you thinking?”
Sheepishly, she confessed, “I was wondering how good an actress his Agnes is. And if she gave up much of a role in the show that was touring.”
That night, when Elizabeth emerged from her room, she joined Gina and Matt at the kitchen table. Gina had just finished showing the letter from Declan to Matt. Elizabeth watched him watching a spot on the table.
“What is it?” she said. “What are you thinking, Matt?” She grabbed the edge of the table with both hands and leaned forward. “That I was a fool, right?”
“I was thinking about your whole trip,” Matt said. “There you were, rejecting all these married men—there was the French businessman on the train, and then there was the American husband of the woman with the broken foot or ankle or whatever, and then there was the hotel owner on Lake Como. And the guy you fall for turns out to be another married man. It just seems so ironic.”
“Why would you say that?” Gina demanded. “To upset her even more?”
Matt shook his head at his wife, who knew better. “Because she asked me what I was thinking. I didn’t want her to believe I was sitting here thinking she’s a fool. What I was thinking is that she has integrity even if the men she met didn’t.”
“Well, I’m glad you said it,” Elizabeth slumped back in her chair. “First, because I do care what you think of me. And second, because you’ve made me realize I don’t put Declan in the same category as the others, and that’s some comfort.”
Elizabeth complained that she was waking up tired.
Gina said, “I’m worried about you. You haven’t been yourself since that letter from Declan. I wish you could just stop thinking about that rat.”
“Not a rat,” Elizabeth shrugged. “At worst, a mouse.”
“You aren’t angry?”
“I felt like he hadn’t written because he didn’t care. That I didn’t mean anything to him. But everything makes sense now. You can’t be really angry when everything makes sense.”
“But he made love to you while he was still married and he told you he was single.”
“Not exactly. He didn’t say anything one way or the other and I didn’t ask.”
“That’s not the point.”
“You’re thinking that I’m thinking that Declan is like Greg. Or like one of those other guys that I met over there. But I’m not. What I maybe didn’t make clear when I told you about that night is that I went after him, not the other way around. He was . . . reluctant. I see it now, but I didn’t then. Or didn’t want to. I don’t think he had any intention of having sex with me.” Her eyes widened as she said, “I honestly think he just wanted to take me on a picnic.”
“Come on.”
“No, I’m serious. It’s true he didn’t tell me he was married, but he was separated and I was leaving the next day. I can see why he didn’t think there was any reason to go into it all.” She fell silent. Gina sat down on the floor to wait for her sister to harvest more thoughts.
“But more than all that,” Elizabeth resumed after several minutes, “I really think
his intentions were entirely honorable. And Declan is too gentlemanly to point out that I was the one who pursued him. I remember feeling annoyed that, after we picked up groceries, he stopped at his mother’s and loaded up on all the other stuff he thought we might need, but he didn’t include a condom. I felt disappointed that having sex with me was not on his agenda. Of course I didn’t know that condoms weren’t readily available. Can you believe contraception is still illegal in Ireland? In this day and age?” She shook off the digression. “Even though I didn’t have to worry about getting pregnant, I was ticked off. I even complained to him about it!” she marveled. “Anyway, he made up for it once I overcame his resistance. But I think it’s fairer to say I had my way with him rather than he had his way with me. You know, I think he was still trying to be faithful to his vows.” She was thinking that she didn’t know how to explain to her sister that she was thankful that she hadn’t allowed Declan to happen to her, that she had made a choice. And the opposite had been true for Declan.
Elizabeth shook her head as if to order the jumble of thoughts bouncing around in it. “I was so caught up in the intensity of the day. The last day of my trip. The flying bricks and bottles. The Gardai juggernaut. And my dashing Declan. Lord, it was exhilarating. Just try to imagine being swept up and carried to safety. By someone with that accent! And then indulged—Declan taking me to see where Oscar Wilde had lived. It was so sweet and silly and generous after everything that had happened. I think that’s when I decided to love him. I honestly don’t know what I would have done if he’d asked me to stay. Back in Archbishop Ryan Park I couldn’t predict exactly what our future together would look like, but I was sure we would have some kind of future together.” She shook her head again.
“Are you miserable?”
Elizabeth considered the question and was surprised by the answer. “Not anymore. I was a wreck right after his letter came. I felt stupid and . . . used. But I’ve had time to sort through it all and it’s just nice to be able to remember what passed between us and appreciate it for what it was.”
Gina said, “If I ever go through anything like what you’ve gone through, which I promise you I will not, you will be my role model. I’ve been afraid you were sinking into a depression. I was going to suggest you go back to that therapist. But if you’re not brooding about Declan, I think you should see a doctor. Even Matt has said you seem to be dragging yourself around. I think you’d like our new G.P.” She smiled wickedly. “The boys are terrified of her.”
White-blond hair skinned back into a bun on the top of her head, steely gray eyes, and impressive girth, Gina and Matt’s general practitioner studied Elizabeth’s test results and then peered over her rimless glasses at her patient.
Determined not to be cowed, Elizabeth spoke up, “Do you think I might have hypothyroidism? I’ve done some research. That would account for a change in my metabolism which, in turn, could account for my weight gain and fatigue. According to the medical texts, I could also be looking forward to constipation, thinning hair, muscle weakness, heart disease, and impaired memory,” she rattled off. “Hypothyroidism could even be the reason for my god-awful semi-annual menstrual periods. Maybe my traitorous thyroid is not putting out enough thyroxine.”
“Your thyroid is fine.” Dr. Genitis said.
“Are you sure?”
Dr. Genitis looked like one of those physicians who are sure of everything.
“I don’t see how that can be. My symptoms keep getting worse. I can barely stay awake past six p.m. And none of my clothes fit. My metabolism is shot.”
“We have your blood test results—the T4 and TSH both fall in the normal range. What does your OB-GYN say?”
“You think my problem is gynecological? God knows I’ve had gynecological problems since I started having—or rather, mostly not having—periods when I was a teenager. And once I did start menstruating, they’ve been crazy irregular ever since. So you think it’s some kind of hormonal imbalance that’s making me so tired and making me gain weight?”
“I’ve never thought of your condition in quite that way,” the physician raised her precisely penciled eyebrows.
Elizabeth frowned. “My condition?” Then her eyes opened wide. “Oh! God. Are you saying I have an STD?” She was suddenly rethinking her perspective on her interlude with Declan.
“Sexually transmitted, definitely. Disease, absolutely not.”
“What are you talking about?” Elizabeth realized she had raised her voice above an acceptable level when a nurse came down the hall and shut the office door.
“Your pregnancy,” Dr. Genitis said.
“What?”
“Though I guess you could regard it as a hormonal imbalance.”
“Are you saying you think I’m pregnant? That can’t be.”
“Your urine test says otherwise. When you had the blood drawn, we also ran a urinalysis, remember? You’ve got a positive result for pregnancy.”
“That’s not possible. Not. Possible. I’m infertile. For eight of our ten years together, I tried to conceive with my ex-husband.”
“Well, that suggests that if there was an infertile partner in your marriage, it wasn’t you.”
Elizabeth sat open-mouthed.
“When was your last menses?”
“Trick question. I think about six months ago but, before you decide I’m an idiot, remember I’ve always been incredibly irregular. That’s not the longest I’ve gone between periods. I didn’t have a single period during the year I was sixteen.”
“And when did you last have unprotected intercourse?”
“Seriously? The only time I’ve had sex in more than two years was four and a half months ago.”
“Then I think we can safely say you are eighteen weeks pregnant. The weight gain, the fatigue, the nausea, every symptom you describe is attributable to your pregnancy. You’re far enough along that a pelvic exam would be conclusive, but I think you’re better off having that exam with an obstetrician. You need to be under the regular care of an O.B.”
When Elizabeth arrived home, Gina met her at the door. She was flushed and fluttery.
“What is it?” Elizabeth asked. “Are the boys okay?”
Gina bobbled her head up and down.
“It’s not another letter from Ireland?” Elizabeth asked warily. Wearily.
“I heard back from The Rep! I’ve got the lead! You’re looking at Hedda Gabler.”
“That’s wonderful, Gina. Really, really wonderful.”
The sisters hugged.
“I’ve got big news too.”
“Yes?”
“I’m pregnant.”
Gina took an involuntary step backwards. “You just had to go and top me, didn’t you?”
Matt made popcorn. “Gina ate buckets of popcorn when she was pregnant with the boys,” he said, pouring the popped corn into two equal bowls, keeping one for himself and Gina and handing the other to Elizabeth.
“This is all going to work out,” Gina said. “You’ll have to forget about moving out now. My play will be over before your due date so I’ll be around to help when the baby comes. If you want me in the delivery room, just say the word. Oh! I could partner you for the birthing classes! This is going to be great.”
“Have you picked out names too?” Elizabeth asked. “I think it does make sense for me to stay, if it’s still okay with both of you, until after the baby is born. I’d like to wait until I’m on maternity leave to move.”
“That will give me and the twins plenty of time to get you to change your mind,” Gina said.
Matt and Elizabeth both rolled their eyes.
Undaunted, Gina continued, “Well, if you think you’re tired now . . . You know, I can’t wait to see Mom’s face when she finds out her grandchild is going to be half Irish.”
“Actually, a quarter Irish,” Elizabeth correc
ted. “But she’ll never know.”
“What?” Gina squawked. “You’re not going to tell her who the father is?”
“No.”
“Well, I don’t think you’re going to get away with an Immaculate Conception. You’ll have to tell her something.”
“I’ve been researching artificial insemination the last couple weeks. I’m going to tell Mom and Dad and anyone who asks that the father is an anonymous sperm donor. It’s not so far from the truth.”
“Seriously?” Gina said. “Who is going to believe that?”
“After not getting pregnant for all those years, who is going to believe some kind of medical intervention wasn’t required for me to conceive? Everyone knows I was trying to have a baby practically my entire marriage. No one we know is going to suspect that this is the result of a roll in the park with a virtual stranger.”
“But you’re not married. Artificial insemination wouldn’t be legal. Who would treat you?”
“I’ll say I found a sympathetic doctor whom I’ll decline to name.”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know. A turkey-baster baby might be harder for Mom and Dad to swallow than a roll in the park.”
“I expect there will be more choking than swallowing at first. But when the baby arrives, they’ll adjust. I mean, they’ll just have to.” She squelched the feeling of panic that threatened to undermine her determination. “I’ve decided to tell them and everybody else—except you two—that I planned my trip as a last fling before a last try at motherhood. I’ll say that I had set up the appointment for my insemination to take place right after my return, and that I’ve firmly decided to ‘spare everyone the technical details.’ And I’ll tell them I’m unshakeable in my resolve to protect the identity of the doctor who treated me. I’ll also say that, given my gynecological history, I was waiting to share the joyous news until I was far enough along to feel reasonably secure in the pregnancy. Mom and Dad might not like it, but I think they’ll believe it. It’s slightly less improbable than a virgin birth.”
The Opposite of Chance Page 21