The Astronaut's Wife

by Robert Tine

  “Jillian, you are trembling.”

  “Am I?” Jillian said as lightly as she could. “I guess I’m just a little cold.”

  Spencer put his arms around her as if to warm her. “I have something here to cheer you up.”

  Spencer reached into his briefcase and pulled out a videocassette and waved it at her.

  “Follow the Fleet,” he said. “Fred, Ginger, me, you. What do you say? How about it?”

  Spencer went to the VCR and tried to load the tape. but he found the bay occupied. “You watching something?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at her.

  He popped out the tape of Sherman Reese’s expose. “No label,” he said. There was the faintest sound of suspicion in his voice. “What is this thing?”

  The lie came so easily, Jillian was astonished by herself. “It’s a pregnancy video,” she said. “Denise gave it to me. She thought it would make me feel better.”

  Spencer loaded Follow the Fleet. The he joined her on the couch, taking her in his arms. “You worry too much, Jilly.” He hit the play button and they waited while the feeder tape spooled through the VCR.

  “Why are you building that plane?” Jillian asked, trying to keep her voice light and casual.

  Spencer laughed. “What? What are you talking about, Jillian? I don’t get it.”

  “That plane… that terrible plane that you and Jackson and McLaren are so proud of… Why do you have to build it? Why does it have to exist at all?”

  Spencer shrugged. “It’s a contract, Jilly. And I didn’t add as much as Jackson said I did…They have a bunch of real smart engineers over there. They’re behind most of it,”

  The first notes of Follow the Fleet began to flow from the VCR, but neither of them were paying attention.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Spencer. “You’re worried about what kind of world we’ll be bringing the twins into. I think about it, too, believe me…

  They settled down to watch the movie. “Don’t worry,” he said reassuringly. “We won’t let anything happen to them. Will we? I know you won’t and you know I won’t. Follow the Fleet played on the television, but it played to no conscious audience. Both Jillian and Spencer had fallen asleep, entwined in each other’s arms.

  Jillian dreamed. A dream so real that even in her sleep she hated it. Those familiar words.

  “I’m going to rotate the panel forty-eight degrees. You got me, Alex?”

  “That’s good to go. I’ll need the 9c spanner as soon as…Spencer? You feel that?”

  “Alex? Jesus. Alex? What the—”

  Jillian awoke with a start, waking Spencer at the same time. Follow the Fleet was still on the television set.

  Spencer pulled Jillian into an embrace. “Must have dozed off,” he said.

  “Were you dreaming?” Jillian asked.

  said Spencer, “just sleeping.”

  “You weren’t dreaming?” Jillian pressed. “No, Jillian. I wasn’t dreaming,” he said. Jillian looked into his eyes. They were not loving, but black and cold.

  “Were you?” Spencer asked.

  Jillian looked down at the coffee table where Sherman Reese’s video cassette had been before they fell asleep. The tape was gone. Jillian felt her stomach lurch.

  “Were you?” Spencer repeated.

  Jillian looked over at the radio and closed her eyes. “No,” she said. “No dreams for me.”

  18

  There were any number of restaurants on Madison Avenue that catered to the rich women who constituted the New York corps known as “The Ladies who Lunch.” Shelley McLaren was known at all of them, but she favored one of them above all others. She was sure to get the best table no matter how late she called for a reservation, she was always welcome to order “off the menu”—asking for things not listed on the menu, that is—and for these privileges she was mercilessly overcharged, but because she was one of the few who had a house charge at the restaurant she had no idea how much money she actually paid for her microscopic lunches or how astronomically she tipped.

  Not that she would have cared all that much, but like all rich people she did not like being taken advantage of. Nevertheless, when Jillian Armacost called with a special request, Shelley had insisted that she treat to lunch at “her” place at Madison and Seventy-seventh. Jillian was on time and shown to the table immediately. Shelley walked through the door fewer than three minutes later, but it took her a full thirty minutes to make it to the table.

  Finally she plunked herself down in front of Jillian. “Sorry about that,” she said. “One knows so many people in places like this and you have to chitchat with all of them or the next thing you know they won’t support your charity and your tickets to the Costume Institute Reception at the Metropolitan suddenly go to some woman from Minneapolis that you’ve never heard of…”

  “I never knew lunch could be so complicated,.” said Jillian. “What if you just stayed home and had a sandwich?”

  “Social death,” said Shelly McLaren. She popped open her Judith Lieber purse and worked around in there for a moment. “Lunch may be complicated,” she said as she searched. “But strangely enough the most complicated things can be surprisingly simple.” She pulled a brown plastic vial filled with prescription pills from her purse and showed them to Jillian, passing them quickly across the table as a waiter glided up to them, smiling unctuously.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. McLaren,” he said. “It is so nice to see you again.”

  “Two glasses of muscadet, Charlie,” Shelly ordered. “Two of those nice salads and leave us alone.”

  “Very good, ma’am.” Charlie withdrew quickly. Shelley leaned forward and smiled at Jillian. Jillian was fingering the pill bottle under the table. “Now, about these things,” said Shelley. “My caterer gets them from someone in the French Caribbean. Martinique, I think. The French are so advanced in this sort of thing, don’t you think? RU486 was supposed to have been legal here years‘ ago, but it will never happen…

  The waiter named Charlie returned with the wine and Shelley clammed up as he placed the glasses in front of Them. They waited a couple of seconds before speaking again.

  “Are they safe?” Jillian asked.

  “Yes,” Shelley replied. “But there’s really something you should know before you—” She was silent again as the salads were delivered and Charlie withdrew.

  “What should I know?” Jillian asked. This was not a meeting she had relished, but she has thought about it hard and long and now she was determined to go through with it.

  “With these things, Jillian,” said Shelley, “all sales are final. You take them and you’ll abort. You have to ask yourself, do you want to go through with this?”

  Jillian nodded. “Yes. Absolutely. ”

  “Okay,” said Shelley. “Take both pills when you get home. Then go lie down for a while. Then there will be quite a bit of vile cramping, then once you start spotting it goes pretty fast.” Shelley took a slug of her wine. “Believe me, if I can get through it, anyone can. ”

  “You?” said Jillian.

  Shelley had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. “Jillian, we all have. It’s like there’s a secret club. There’s ‘the Pill’ and then, just in case, there’s ‘the Pills.’ ”

  “And Spencer won’t know?”

  Shelley picked up her wine glass again and waved off an imaginary Spencer. “If he’s anything like the rest of them… he’ll think it was a miscarriage and fly down to Van Cleefs to buy you a bracelet. If he feels really bad he’d go to Harry Winston’s.” Shelley extended her wrist and rattled a thick diamond bracelet on her wrist.

  “Unless he’s looking for it,” Shelley continued, “there will be no way to tell. And why should he be looking for it?”

  Neither of them had touched their salads and Jillian had not had her wine, but Shelley signaled for the check. Charlie brought it and Shelley signed it. The she looked over at Jillian who appeared to be on the verge of tears.

  Shell
ey put her hand on Jillian’s. “Don’t beat yourself up about this, sweetheart,” she said. “It’s not as if any of this means anything, you know. It’s all nonsense…” Jillian stood in the bright white of the bathroom connected to her bedroom and looked at the bottle of pills. Very slowly she unscrewed the top and shook the contents into her hand. The two tablets were very thick and dusty. They would be difficult to force down her dry throat. She ran the water in the sink and filled a glass with it—she was about to put the pills in her mouth when she began to hear her own heart beating, getting louder and louder until she could hear nothing else. But then there came another sound… a much faster thump. Two more heartbeats. The heart beats of the twin fetuses, pounding away so fast as if telegraphing a message to their mother, begging not to be killed.

  “Please…” Jillian whimpered. “Please.”

  She looked down at the pills in her palm and her hand trembled. The fast beating of the fetuses’ hearts seemed. to grown in volume and intensity. Jillian became even more fearful.

  “Be quiet,” she begged. “Be quiet, please… He’ll hear you. He’ll come in here.” She had no idea where Spencer was, but she had become convinced that there was some kind of psychic bond between the things in her belly and the man masquerading as her husband.

  But the twin hearts only beat louder and faster, and added to the disconcerting noise was the whoosh and whine of the amniotic fluid that surrounded and protected them.

  The pills were still in her hand and the glass of water was poised. Jillian was crying, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. “Please, I have to… It’s okay, it’s okay… it’ll be over soon…please ”

  But it wouldn’t be. The moment she spoke those words a terrible pain ripped through her body—it seemed to scorch her belly—driving her to her knees. She clutched the pills so tightly in her fist that they might have been ground to powder.

  From her knees Jillian gasped, “I’m sorry… I have to. It’ll be better this way. It will be, I promise.” She opened her hands and looked down at the pills.

  “I can’t,” she cried. “Oh God, I can’t do it…” Behind her the bathroom door flew open and Spencer charged into the room.

  “What were you going to do to them?” When Jillian turned and saw him, she screamed and forced herself to her feet.

  “What are those pills? What were you going to do with them?”

  “Oh God, you heard them,” Jillian cried, “didn’t you? They called out to you. ”

  Spencer forced calm into his voice and tried to take her in his arms. “Jillian…”

  “Oh Jesus, you heard them,” she wailed. She backed away from him then ran from the bathroom and through the bedroom. Spencer chased after her.

  “Jillian, it’s okay,” he shouted. “Really. It’s okay, Jillian, please stop.”

  She was headed for the front door—no idea in her head where she might be going except that she knew she had to get away from him—but when she reached it Spencer stood there, barring her flight.

  He put out his hands for her and moved slowly towards her. “Jilly, please,” he said soothingly. “It is going to be all right. You have to try and calm down. That’s all.”

  But Jillian wasn’t buying it. She backed away from him, shaking her head, desperate to think of what she might do next.

  “Jillian,” said Spencer. Then he reached for her as another spasm of that horrible pain ripped through her. She doubled over and fell hard, tumbling down the steps, hitting the bottom with sickening force. But she managed to stagger to her feet, a dazed and dreamy look on her face as she looked up the stairs at Spencer.

  “Jillian, please…” Then he got a very strange look on his face. And even in her dazed and pain-wracked state she noticed it.

  “Spencer? What is it?”

  Jillian followed the line of his gaze and saw that he was staring at the patch between her legs. The material of her clothing was sodden with blood and a long line of gore had trickled down her leg.

  She said, “Spencer?” She saw him coming down the stairs toward her, but she saw him as if in stop-motion, each blink an exposure bringing him a little closer. Then everything went black. And silent.

  .

  Then everything was noise and bright lights. Jillian had no idea how much time had passed, but she knew she was in a hospital. She could tell by the sound and the smells and the speed of the rolling gurney. There were doctors and, nurses surrounding the moving bed, looking down at her, talking about her. But no one was talking to her.

  “You must keep him away from me,” she managed to say. Those few words seem to exhaust her and she felt that terrible weakness of the helpless.

  “She’s still hemorrhaging,” a nurse announced.

  “Please,” Jillian gasped. “Please…please…”

  A doctor spoke, his tone matter-of-fact and dispassionate. “If she’s still hemorrhaging then she’s going to bleed out in a minute or two. Pure and simple.”

  Jillian thought she heard herself saying “Please… please…” But she couldn’t be sure if she was saying the words or merely thinking them. She tried to raise her hand to her lips but she cquld not find them. She did not know if she had been sedated or if she was dying. She heard someone say, “Is there an OR free?” Jillian was looking up as a surgical team prepared itself. There were lots of doctors and nurses in those scary green-colored scrubs. Bright lights were shone into her eyes. There seemed to be tons of equipment—monitors, lights, shiny tanks of oxygen and anesthetics. There was lots of noise and clatter.

  All faces were obscured by surgical masks; all she could see were their eyes. And there was only one set of eyes she recognized in all of them. Spencer’s.

  “Please…” she said. But no one paid any attention to her, the woman they were about to save.

  19

  Jillian had no idea how much time had passed. She knew she was in a hospital, she was sure of that if nothing else, and as she faded from consciousness to unconsciousness she saw faces she knew—Nan, Shelley McLaren and Spencer, always Spencer, hovering over her bed, his eyes fixed on hers, watching her, evaluating her the way a farmer looks over his brood stock.

  A variety of doctors attended her—she didn’t know one of them—and they poked and prodded her, and thrust needles into her arms, then retired to corners to discuss her as if she was not there lying in her bed in her darkened room.

  She heard them say things like, “Psychiatric…evaluations…her husband’s care…”

  Jillian heard Spencer’s voice and felt him take her hand. “The twins are fine,” he said soothingly. “They are still inside you, safe and sound, right where they should be. We are never going to mention what you tried to do… with those pills. It’s over now. It’s behind us. It didn’t happen, did it, Jilly?”

  She wanted to tell him that there had been a reason for those pills. That she was doing the right thing…But her voice…it just would not work. “Spencer…”

  “I’m here,” he said. “Don’t try to talk. I love you so much, you know that? You scared me. If anything had happened, I could not have gone on without with you. We have to be together, Jillian, you, me, the babies…we’re all one now. ”

  Jillian thrashed in the bed, but she could hardly move. She was tethered by a thicket of intravenous tubes. “No…” she said? “Spencer…”

  “Sssshhh,” said Spencer, as if talking to a child. “Don’t try to talk, Jillian. Don’t even try.”

  The first thing she noticed was that she was enveloped in a cloud of Chanel Number Five, and then she felt some lips on her cheek. And then Shelley McLaren’s voice in her ear.

  “I am so sorry, sweetheart.”

  Jillian knew exactly what she was talking about. For some reason, that lunch came back vividly, she remembered every detail, from the muscadet to the uneaten salads.… the waiter’s name had been Charlie, she recalled. And she had not forgotten that the luncheon had been arranged to arrange a pair of abortions.

  “I could
n’t do it…” Jillian told Shelley. “They are part of me. I can feel them in there. The blood that runs through my heart runs through their hearts. I couldn’t do it…”

  Shelley bent down and smiled at her. “If I had known…if I had known about your past I would never have given you those pills to you… never…” Shelley leaned down a bit more and kissed her cheek. “Let me open the shades in here, you need a little light in here, I think. Don’t you, darling?”

  Shelley left the bed and pulled on the cords and the blinds opened and the room was flooded with light.

  “They are mine,” said Jillian. “Not his. I want to keep them safe. I have to keep them safe.”

  The sunlight was blinding and Jillian could only make out the vague edges of Shelley McLaren’s body. “Shelley,” Jillian asked, “who told you about my past?”

  There was no answer.

  Seconds later, the blinds swept back and the room fell into darkness again. Jillian raised her head again from the bed and saw Spencer at the window.

  She could not be sure if Shelley McLaren had ever been there. She could still smell the Chanel Number Five. But she had no idea what that meant. Jillian smiled when she heard Denise’s voice. “You gave us a real scare, Jillian,” she said.

  “How long have I been here?” Jillian’s voice was cracked and doped up.

  “You have been unconscious for nearly two weeks,” Denise replied. She was staring at Jillian’s voluminous chart as she spoke. “Your bleeding was awful. You hemorrhaged quite severely. You lost a great deal of blood.”

  Jillian tried to sit up. but Denise gently pushed her back down on the mattress. “You have to remain calm now, Jillian,” Denise said solemnly. “One of the miracles of pregnancy is that your body took care of the babies, even putting their welfare ahead of its own needs. All through this, they got plenty of blood and more than enough nutrition. But I am prescribing bed rest for the term of your pregnancy. Your husband has arranged for a home nurse when you get out. You’ll be having complete, around the clock care.”