by Robert Tine
Shelley McLaren giggled and looked over at Jillian. “It sounds so naughty when he talks about money, doesn’t it? The pornography of big numbers, you know.”
Jackson McLaren went back to his usual habit of ignoring his wife’s remarks. “You want to build a plane, ask a pilot. You want to build a plane that’s out of this world, ask an astronaut. So that’s what we did. And look what we got.”
Spencer smiled modestly.
“Recite the specs for us, Spencer,” said McLaren. It was almost—but not quite—an order, as if he was asking Spencer to more or less sing for his supper.
“Come on, Spencer,” McLaren urged with a laugh. “For me. Just once. It’s so beautiful when you say it. It’s like poetry or something. Hell, it’s better than poetry… and it sure as hell pays better. Don’t you think, Spencer.”
Spencer nodded. “Two McLaren engines pumping twenty-five thousand pounds of thrust,” he recited smoothly and easily. “Ninety feet long. It stands thirty feet off the hardstand. It has a wingspan of seventy-five feet.”
“Fully extended,” Jackson McLaren put in, as if the two women were actually wondering about it.
Spencer nodded, as if allowing himself to be corrected. “Fully extended. It will have a top speed of eighteen hundred miles per hour. A ceiling of fifty-five thousand feet. A range of three thousand miles. And a crew … a crew of two…”
Jillian was staring intently at her husband. She was not mesmerized by this litany of facts and figures, but at the way Spencer reeled them off. It was as if she was not quite sure who he was, as if he had become a completely different person… a stranger to her.
“Just two?” Jillian asked.
This time Jackson ignored Spencer’s wife for a change. “But the best part’ the best part is that the computer system that runs the whole shebang is at least fifteen years down the road. It’s out there in the future somewhere but…, we start getting our dollars today.” Jackson McLaren smiled broadly. “Don’t you just love the way democracy works? God knows I do.” He guffawed heartily.
Shelley McLaren feigned innocence. “I’ve forgotten, Jackson,” she said, “who’s the enemy now that we need your marvelous new plane to defend us from?”
“The enemy?” McLaren replied without missing a beat. “At this moment? You are, my dear, you are.”
“That’s very funny,” said Shelley deadpan. “You just wait until I pitch my electronic blizzard…”
“And we don’t say ‘plane,’ sweet,” said McLaren. “We say ‘airborne electronic warfare platform.’ ”
“How poetic.” Shelley and Jackson blew each other a kiss, just to show each other they were just kidding.
“Can I ask a question?” said Jillian diffidently. Something had just occurred to her.
“Of course,” said McLaren expansively. “Ask us anything you want.”
“The sound…” said Jillian. “The signal it sends out. What will it sound like?”
“Oh,” said Jackson, “humans can’t hear it, dove, humans can’t hear it at all.”
One of the McLaren servants entered and whispered something in Shelley’s ear. She stood up and gestured to her husband. “Come, Jackson,” he said. “Our darling daughter Augusta has summoned us to her bedside.”
Jackson stood up, too. “Ah, the goodnight kiss. After forking over her allowance, the most important moment of the day.” He started for the door with his wife. “Behold the glorious joys of parenthood,” he said sardonically.
Once they had left the room, Spencer leaned over, moving closer to his wife. He took one of her hands in both of his and stroked it softly and gently.
“You are so far away tonight,” he said. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“I’m here,” said Jillian hesitantly.
Spencer moved his chair a little closer. “Come on, Jilly… I know you. There’s something… tell me. What is it? There’s something on your mind.”
Jillian shrugged. “I don’t understand any of this,” she said bleakly. “I don’t understand any of these people. I don’t understand anything they’re saying. It’s like they’re speaking in some kind of code I can’t break.”
“Even me?” Spencer asked.
Jillian looked sad as she nodded. “Yes… Spencer, I feel,” she shrugged as if not sure of what to say next.
“Lost?” He filled in the word for her. “I know. I do, too. But if we’re together we’re not lost, are we? We have each other, Jill. Always. You know that.”
“Why do you have to build that plane?” She could feel a bubble of anger burst inside her. “The way he talks about it, the way you talk about it. It’s not—”
“Not what?”
Jillian looked him square in the eye. “It’s not you, Spencer. It’s not you.”
This time it was Spencer who shrugged. “I’ve told you. It’s just business, Jilly.”
“You used to say you’d fly forever” she said sadly, as if mourning the Spencer she used to know. “You used to say they would have to bury you in the sky.”
“They almost did,” he replied. “I never want to be that far away from you. I never want to be away from you at all.” He moved closer to her and looked into her eyes, deep and searching.
“What are you looking for when you do that?” Jillian asked. “It’s like you’re trying to read something faint and far off.”
Spencer whispered, “What are you hiding?”
“How do you know I’m hiding anything?” Jillian shifted uncomfortably.
Spencer leaned forward and kissed her. “How do I know?” he said. “Because I know you.”
Slowly, Jillian took his hand and placed it on his belly. She did not have to say anything. Spencer’s dark eyes lit up.
“Yes?”
Jillian nodded. “Yes.”
Silently a waiter entered the room and began clearing the table. He was as unobtrusive as possible, but the spell between Jillian and Spencer was broken.
The waiter reached for Jillian’s plate and then stopped. Nothing on it had been eaten.
“Did you find your dish unsatisfactory, ma’am?” the servant asked diffidently.
“It was fine,” Jillian replied. “I just was not terribly hungry, thank you.”
Just then Jackson McLaren returned to the room in time to hear the exchange between Jillian and the waiter. His wife was right behind him.
“Are you sure, dove? Howard usually makes quite a cunning langoustino.”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
The waiter cleared the plate, the uneaten crustaceans staring up at her like big orange bugs.
“Brandy anyone?” Jackson asked. “Oh hell… let’s all have one, shall we?”
Shelley looked at Spencer and Jillian. They were still sitting close to one another, they were still hand in hand.
“Jackson,” Shelley said softly, “remember when we used to sit close like that?”
“No,” said Jackson.
12
“This is going to feel a little chilly at first,” the doctor said. She squirted a thick snake of clear gooey gel on to Jillian’s exposed, swelling belly. The doctor swirled her gloved fingers through the mound of viscous stuff, spreading it in a circular motion in a specific area on her abdomen. The stuff was a little cold and she shivered under it.
Jillian was lying on a gurney in a curtain-enclosed examining room, the doctor, a precise and thoughtful young woman not long out of medical school, standing over her. Like a good and dutiful husband, Spencer had taken time out from his busy day to attend his wife’s ultrasound examination— it was the first of several and he felt that he should be there for it. He stood off to one side, feeling a little like an outsider in a particularly feminine ritual.
Standing next to the gurney was a large gray machine topped by a black-and-white video monitor. The screen was blank but the machine hummed, ready for use.
The doctor picked up the sound wand from its rest and turned it on. “Well,” she said, sm
iling down at Jillian. “Let’s have a look in there, shall we?”
She put the wand on Jillian’s belly and navigated her way around her body by watching the image on the screen. The gray and black images that the sound waves outlined inside of Jillian’s belly did not look like much to either Spencer or Jillian. but to their physician it was as clear as if reading a roadmap.
She stopped the wand over a confused mixture of colors. “There it is. Let’s take a measurement.”
“There’s what?” ask Jillian peering at the monitor. “I can’t make out what it is.”
The doctor smiled. “It will come clear in a minute.” With one hand she kept the wand on Jillian’s belly. With her other she punched a few action codes into the keyboard mounted on the front part of the ultrasound machine. A graph appeared on the monitor image of Jillian’s insides and the doctor peered at it.
“Well,” she said, “based on the size here I would say six weeks, give or take a few days. Everything looks fine. Embryo is a good size… well positioned.” She focused the wand a little and the distinct outline of a head came into view.
“There,” said the doctor. “There’s something that looks like something. There’s plenty of amniotic fluid. And it has everything it is entitled to at this point.” She pointed to a spot on the monitor. “See this here?” She was indicating a wavering spot on the monitor screen. “See this flickering?”
Spencer leaned in and pointed at the monitor. “This place here?” he asked.
The doctor nodded. “Yes,” she said. “You’re looking at the heartbeat of your baby.”
Jillian looked at that blurred little spot and felt a great surge of emotion, of love. Tears sprung into her eyes. She could not believe that this little thing was living and growing inside of her. She had never experienced anything like it.
Spencer seemed a little put out, though, unwilling to join his wife in her happiness. “That’s the heartbeat?” he said. “Is it supposed to be that fast?”
The doctor smiled. “Let me put it this way… I’d be worried if it weren’t going that fast.” She moved the wand around again, bombarding her insides with sound waves from a number of angles. The images would blur and settle as the wand moved and stopped. “I have to say, Jillian, everything looks just fine.”
She was just about to shut down the machine when she stopped and peered at the monitor. “Oh,” she said. “That’s something. That’s very interesting.”
She kept one hand on the wand and then began to work the keyboard, her fingers flying.
“What is it?” Spencer asked.
Jillian felt her heart clench as she felt a bolt of fear pierce her. “Is there something wrong?”
“Wait… no, nothing wrong. I’m just not sure…” She looked closely at the monitor. “Yes. Look here.” She jabbed at the screen. “See this? Here? Next to the heartbeat?”
Jillian and Spencer looked at the screen, but could not see what the doctor was getting at.
“Here,” she said. “It’s a second heartbeat. See? Two heartbeats.” She sounded quite excited by the discovery. “Two heartbeats. It’s twins, Mrs. Armacost…,”
“Twins,” said Spencer, as if tasting the word.
“Of course,” said the doctor with a laugh, “you know this means that I’ll have to double my fee.” She laughed a little more and then looked down at Jillian.
Jillian wasn’t laughing. Jillian and the doctor retreated to her office and had a little chat, Spencer waiting in the waiting room.
“I couldn’t help but notice that you weren’t overjoyed when you discovered you were carrying twins,” she said. “In fact, you looked quite distressed.”
“I… can’t say that I wasn’t. It was such a shock,” she said. “I didn’t know what to think.” Jillian spoke quickly, but she felt that she was coming off sounding like an idiot.
“Mixed feelings during pregnancy are perfectly normal, Jillian,” the doctor said soothingly. “And they are particularly normal when you’re talking about twins.” She grabbed a piece of paper from a pad and wrote something on it in her careful handwriting. She pushed the paper across the desk toward Jillian.
‘This may help,” she said.
“What is it?” Jillian asked.
“It’s the telephone number of a support group for women who are expecting twins.”
Jillian took the paper and looked at it, but the number seemed meaningless. She felt as if she was beyond sitting around with a bunch of women with distended bellies complaining about swollen feet and midnight food cravings.
But she felt the need to confide in someone, even if it was in this doctor whom she had only met a couple of times before today.
“I’ve felt so odd lately,” she said quietly. “Bad dreams, terrible thoughts… loneliness.”
The doctor leaned back in her chair, a kindly smile on her face. “Your body is undergoing a tremendous change,” she said. “It has been for nearly six weeks now. Massive amounts of hormones have flooded into your bloodstream.”
“And that could cause this kind of… distress? The strange feelings I’ve been having?”
The doctor nodded. “It could cause nightmares, depression, anxiety, food aversions, giddiness, even disturbances in your hearing. You understand what’s going on with you, don’t you? It’s quite dramatic, you know.”
Jillian sounded a little uncertain. “Well, I know’ that my body is undergoing changes…
The doctor laughed again. “Undergoing changes? Basically, Jillian, you are mutating completely. But don’t worry about it, women have been doing it for millions of years, your body will know what to do… even if you think that you don’t.”
Jillian shifted slightly in her chair, wondering if she should go on, telling her doctor everything. It took her only a second or two to realize that she had to say more.
“There’s something I didn’t tell you, something that should be on my chart. I know I should have, I know you should have known but I just couldn’t.”
The doctor’s laughter was gone and she looked very serious now. “What should I have known?”
Even after years had passed it was still not easy for Jillian to talk about this subject. “A few years ago,” she said hesitantly, “after my mother and my father died, I had a… I had a bad time of it. The whole thing was just awful.”
“How bad?” the doctor asked. “How awful?”
“It was really strange. I would see people I knew… friends of mine, my sister, people I worked with… I couldn’t help myself. When I saw them I would see them—” She stopped, not sure she could bring herself to say anymore.
But the woman facing her across the desk seemed to be able to read her mind. “You imagined they were dead?” She opened Jillian’s file and clicked her ballpoint pen.
It was hard for Jillian to admit, but she nodded yes. “That’s exactly what happened.”
“Did you seek treatment?” She took notes as she asked the questions and that unnerved Jillian slightly.
Jillian nodded again.
“Were you hospitalized?” More notes.
Jillian nodded once again and then looked down at the floor, as if ashamed of her troubled past.
The doctor nodded toward the waiting room, indicating Spencer who was pacing back and forth in an imitation of the classic expectant father mode.
“Does your husband know?” the doctor asked. “Or was it before you met him?”
Jillian smiled. “Oh no, Spencer was in my life then. He knew all about it. But he was the one who got me through it.” She was silent a moment. “My husband saved me,” she said solemnly. “Spencer saved my life.”
“And you’re afraid your pregnancy is going to bring all that back? Is that it?”
Jillian nodded again. “I’m terrified of that happening,” she said. “It can’t happen again. I wouldn’t be able to stand it. I don’t think Spencer could get me through it again. Not even Spencer could do it and he can do just about anything.”
&
nbsp; The doctor sighed, stood up, and walked around her desk and put her hand on Jillian’s shoulder. “Go to the support group, Jillian,” she said. “Spend time with Spencer. Make sure you go through this together. Now that you know these feelings you’ve been having are caused by the life growing inside of you, by your body adapting to carrying that life… cherish it.” She hugged Jillian. “And if you need to, call me, Jillian, any time of the day or night, okay?”
Jillian nodded. “Okay,” she said with a nod.
“And if I don’t hear from you, I’ll see you in a month for your next checkup. Eat well, rest, exercise, and…” She cocked her chin at Spencer. “Let him spoil you. Get it while you can— they’re lambs on the first one. They want to spoil you rotten now. Wait until it’s just an old-hat third pregnancy.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” said Jillian, feeling a little better. The doctor said to exercise so Jillian was determined to exercise. Too much rich food and alcohol consumed since arriving in New York City had made her feel fat and out of shape. She was determined to be as healthy as possible for her twins.
It is a little-known fact that many of New York’s older buildings—doorman-attended buildings built before the Second World War were deemed the most desirable in a hot real estate market—were equipped with swimming pools. Up and down Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue were apartment houses that were the last word in luxury when they were put up in the twenties, and that meant that they had to have mosaic-encrusted gyms and pools in their basements. Few were in use now—the basement pool and fitness rooms were dank and dark compared to the modern health club.
It happened, however, that the swimming pool in the basement of Spencer and Jillian’s building was still there and well maintained, even though it was little used by the tenants. Many newly pregnant women are self-conscious about their bodies and Jillian was no exception. She decided to use the private pool conveniently located in the basement of her own home.
There was no one down there that morning and she was happy about that. There was an observation deck overlooking the pool and that was deserted, too. She stood on the edge of the pool for a moment, took a breath, and then dove into the water. It was just cool enough to be exhilarating, tinged with enough warmth to make the water comfortable. Jillian didn’t overdo it, but she swam easily, arm over arm, cutting through the water, swimming the first couple of laps with ease. As she swam she felt good, better than she had in some days—she was calm in the water, listening to her own easy breathing and the regular splash of her feet.