Amanda Bright @ Home

by Danielle Crittenden

  Amanda could not remember Bob being so furious with her; and yet the argument that ensued—as explosive as any the two had ever engaged in—lacked the heat of the others, as if all the sparring and fighting of the previous weeks had brought them to the critical final round, but neither had the strength to deliver the knockout blow.

  Instead, Amanda struck out at him wildly—“I do think that—in fact, I’m surprised you haven’t left us. I’m surprised that you haven’t left us … for Grace Bertelli.”

  The moment she said the woman’s name she saw that she had miscalculated: rather than crumpling, every fiber of Bob’s body seemed to rebound. He stood up from the table in the kitchen—for that’s where the fight took place, after Amanda had put the children to bed, without so much as a good night to their father—and crossed the room to the doorway, moving, it seemed, with great effort to control the anger coursing through his limbs.

  He fixed her with a look of such disgust that Amanda wished desperately to recall the words out of the air. She could not, though, so she blundered on, hoping to justify herself. “Well, why wouldn’t you? She feels free to call here.”

  “And why wouldn’t she—unless she had something to hide?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “Okay, I will. She provided expert testimony for our case, and she had a question. I couldn’t talk to her when she called me at the office, so I told her to call me later at home, when it would be quiet. Anything else?”

  Amanda could not refute the devastating logic of Bob’s answer so she tried swinging from another angle. “Okay, maybe not Grace—maybe not anybody. But you’ve been so angry with me I am surprised you haven’t walked out. Really—what’s stopping you?”

  “This, for one, is stopping me, Amanda,” he said, holding up his left hand and pointing to his wedding band. “I don’t know about you, but I plan to honor the promise I made.”

  “That’s what men always say,” she said, more bitterly than she felt, for the truth was, she was weary of fighting, she was weary of everything, she just wanted this whole damn business to end. “And then they change their minds.”

  “I’m sorry you think I’m like that.”

  “I’m not saying you’re like that. I’m saying that people don’t always know—look at Hochmayer—”

  “I’m going to take a shower,” he said curtly.

  Amanda did not follow him upstairs. She didn’t know what to do. She knew, simply, that she had begun the evening in the right and had ended it feeling miserably in the wrong. And as she lay there the next morning, the sunlight spilling onto her spare set of floral sheets, the sheets she had bought for their first double bed together, that feeling of wrongness had not gone away.

  She would have to begin her day conceding this much to Bob—that her accusations last night had been unfair. But how much would he be willing to concede to her? And as she churned this over, and all the other things she had to make right (I’ll make those calls about finding work in September; I will restart my life!), Amanda remembered something else, something that had been pressing at the edges of her mind, something that she had kept pushing away during the turmoil of the past few days, something she should not put off any longer …

  No one else was up yet. Amanda was able to dress, slip out of the house, and return less than half an hour later from her errand. By the time she heard the first stirrings of the others, she was locked securely in the bathroom, grasping a slim litmus wand and following the progress of a spreading stain.

  According to the instructions on the box, the liquid would reach first an “indicator” line, then a “test” line. If this latter line turned pink, however faintly, she was “to assume that you are pregnant and contact a medical professional as soon as possible.” The result could take as long as three minutes.

  Amanda had held these wands many times before. She had even saved the tests that had offered the first scientific proof of the existences of Ben and Sophie, putting them in a keepsake box along with other odd mementos that were not exactly “album” material and yet she could not throw away: their locks of baby hair, their first teeth, the tiny woven caps the midwife had pulled on their heads within moments of their emergence from the womb.

  This test she approached in quite a different frame of mind. She held the wand away from her, her whole body tensed.

  After a few seconds, there was no doubt. From the very instant the liquid touched the strip, the pink raced forward. The first line was crossed and reddish tinges almost immediately revealed the second line.

  Amanda sat upon the closed toilet and cradled her face in her hands.

  When she came downstairs, Bob was in the kitchen, reading the newspaper. It was him Amanda had heard rising; the children, apparently, were still asleep.

  If Bob remained angry with her, he did not show it. He was absorbed in whatever article he was reading but not so absorbed as to avoid looking up when Amanda entered. He greeted her with a mixed expression—one that could easily swing between friendliness, if she were to encourage it, or hauteur, if she decided she was not speaking to him. She knew Bob well enough to see that he was praying for the former, but a slight stiffening of his jaw told her he was also preparing himself for any fresh blow Amanda might land.

  She placed the wand on the table and sat down opposite him, saying nothing. He folded down the edge of his newspaper, glanced at her again and then at the little stick. His eyes returned to hers, inquiringly.

  “Look at it,” she said hoarsely.

  Bob knew what it was, but he seemed unable to fathom it. He picked up the stick and examined it carefully. Then, like an expert witness about to pronounce himself baffled by Exhibit A, he placed it back on the table and began to say, “I’m not sure what—”

  “It is what. It’s exactly what. I’m—” She found she couldn’t say pregnant. “—it’s … positive.”

  “You’re?…”

  “Yes. Seems so.”

  “But we haven’t … in ages!” he managed to say, and Amanda was grateful that he restrained any hint of resentment. “I don’t understand—how could it have happened?”

  “I don’t understand either.”

  “Sophie took four months of trying,” he added, almost wistfully. “And I just assumed you were using your—”

  “I must have forgot. Don’t ask me how I could forget. I’m not like that—but maybe that time, when you just …”

  “Yes.”

  “… it’s possible I forgot then. I’ve been so distracted with everything.” Amanda rubbed her eyes. “Dammit! Why don’t I use the pill?”

  “You hate the pill.”

  “I know, but—”

  “It makes you sick.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And moody.”

  “I feel so stupid! Like a goddamn teenager—” Amanda wiped away a tear and rose to pour herself a cup of coffee. She did not want to fall apart in front of Bob—the fight of last night still hovered between them, and if only out of pride she wanted to hang on to her composure—but the moment she stood up, Amanda burst into tears.

  She felt his arms around her immediately, and she sobbed and sobbed, clutching him back, crying out, “It’s so awful! It’s just so awful!”

  “Shh. There we go. Let’s sit down.”

  Bob guided Amanda back into her chair. When her crying had subsided, he got a cup of coffee for her. The shoulder of his robe was soaked.

  “So what do you want to do?” Bob asked gently, sitting down with her and refilling his own cup.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “It doesn’t really matter what I want to do.”

  “Why do you say that?” Amanda said, looking up with surprise. “Of course it matters. Three children to support—and God, this Megabyte business.”

  “That at least is all over.”

  “What, the scandal? Yes, I suppose there can’t be much more of that now that the hearings are over.”

  “I d
on’t mean the scandal. I mean everything.”

  “I thought you still had the whole antitrust case to pursue—”

  “Not me.”

  Amanda stared at him. Bob reacted by returning his attention to his collapsed newspaper, which he’d thrust down when she’d fallen apart. He folded it up carefully, smoothed it, and pushed it aside. The stick still lay on the table, radiating its two irrefutable bright pink lines.

  “Look, I didn’t want to tell you this,” he said, “and it sure isn’t the moment to tell you—I was waiting to see what Frank was going to do. But basically, before Frank sent me on this little ‘vacation,’ he told me that it was possible he would have to call in the division’s ethics officer.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That someone would be brought in to investigate my relationship with Hochmayer and, you know, to determine whether I had acted improperly.”

  “Does this mean you’ve been fired?” Amanda asked, stunned.

  “No—not yet. They don’t fire you until you’ve been found guilty. I’d probably be transferred or suspended while the investigation was taking place. But even if they find me innocent, my career at Justice—well, it’s pretty much over.”

  “Bob, I had no idea. I had no idea it was this bad.”

  “I know.” He got up and wandered over to the counter, mostly, she sensed, because he felt too ashamed to face her directly. “And I know I’ve been acting like a jerk. I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to do.”

  “And now … this,” Amanda replied sadly.

  “We have a little time, right, to think about that?”

  “I guess so. I was planning to go back to work next month. I could have helped us—I could have taken some of the load off you. But if I go ahead—if we go ahead—with this …”

  She let the sentence die.

  The morning turned into one of those August days in which it was too hot to go outside but too stuffy to stay in. The gray sky was bloated with moisture, but for all its threatening rumbles, it didn’t rain, and the air grew heavier each hour. Their window units choked and gurgled, and their house felt cast in funereal gloom. Bob was too preoccupied to do anything but sit on the sofa with a magazine, halfheartedly supervising the children and replying to their constant questions with a distracted, “Sorry—what did you say?” Amanda absorbed herself in housework and tried to take comfort in the fleeting satisfaction provided by a swept floor and freshly wiped counters; yet everywhere she looked she envisioned a baby—eating in a high chair, plopped down in the hallway, napping in a crib in their bedroom. When Amanda was not imagining a baby, she was visualizing Bob testifying in a government committee room before a tribunal that included Frank Sussman. What would the punishment be if Bob were found guilty? Amanda was afraid to ask. She passed by the living room on her way upstairs with a basket of clean laundry.

  “Would you like anything?”

  “No, thanks. You?”

  “No, thanks.”

  The anger, at least, was gone.

  In Ben’s room Amanda knelt to collect a mess of plastic figures and blocks before running the vacuum over the floor. She rearranged them in a little city upon one of his shelves, something for him to come across as a surprise. For all Ben’s “issues,” Amanda found her son much easier to deal with at five than as a baby. She had not been much good with babies. She could not decipher the language of their cries, nor did she ever master the schedules of their sleep. At ten months old, Ben had still awoken two and three times a night. Amanda consulted an array of child development manuals and did what they told her to do. She took Ben for walks, she dangled new objects—mixing spoons, black-and-white shapes—over his crib, she played classical music while he slept, she charted his month-by-month progress. But she rarely felt confident she was doing the right thing, and it had been a great relief when her maternity leave ended.

  When Sophie came along, things went a little easier. Amanda might not know how to amuse her, but Ben did, and Sophie was one of those babies who figure out how to sleep through the night on their own.

  It was only recently that Amanda had begun to enjoy her children. The pleasure of their company was gradually exceeding the labor they exacted. When they left the house together, they no longer resembled a Himalayan expedition, bulging with knapsacks, water bottles, and emergency food supplies. But, Amanda told herself, switching on the vacuum, if she were to proceed with—with this—she would be yanked back to those burdened, sleepless days. They had all advanced so far up the ladder. Now she was about to be sent plunging down the chute.

  Amanda did a quick calculation. The baby would be due sometime next spring, after she turned thirty-six. She would be forty-one by the time the child would be ready to start school full-time, forty-nine when it entered high school. It would not be ready for college until Amanda was … fifty-four! She and Bob had hoped to travel. They had hoped to do so many things. Would it really be another decade before they would be able to enjoy even a night out without racing home to a sitter …

  Amanda stopped cleaning and hunted for one of the old pregnancy books she stored on a high shelf in her bedroom. She sat on the edge of the footstool and thumbed through it. Gosh, how it all came back to her! And the book—it was so relentlessly upbeat, illustrated with drawings of earthy mothers cradling their wrinkly newborns. Amanda turned to the diagram that showed the growth of a fetus during the first trimester. “By the end of the first month,” it read, “your baby is a tiny, tadpolelike embryo, smaller than a grain of rice.”

  This grain of rice had the power to upend her whole life.

  Amanda stroked her abdomen and returned to the vacuum.

  Later in the afternoon, Bob volunteered to take the children to fetch milk. The moment they left, Amanda phoned her friend Liz.

  Liz had her mouth full of nails. “I think it’s fantastic news.” Actually, this came out more like, “I thimk ith vamtathtic newth.”

  “Hold on a second.” (“Helld un unthecond.”)

  Amanda heard banging, and Liz returned to the receiver with her mouth empty. “Fixed it. It was a loose step on the back porch. I had to get to it before one of the kids broke their necks.”

  “I’m just miserable, Liz. I don’t know what to do.”

  “What can you do?”

  “I—I don’t have to go through with it.”

  Amanda waited for Liz’s usual outburst of advice, but it did not come. Instead Liz asked, with uncharacteristic diplomacy, “What does Bob think?”

  “I’m not sure. I think he’d support whatever I decided to do.”

  “Huh.” It was a noncommittal huh and Amanda grew vexed.

  “Well, what would you do?”

  This elicited a chortle. “You know what I’d do. That’s why I have four of them.”

  “That’s why you have one of them,” Amanda corrected. “The other three were by choice—or so that’s always been my understanding.”

  “Yeah, I suppose.”

  “Look, I really need help figuring out what to do. I need your help. Talk to me, Liz! God knows you used to be so outspoken about this—”

  Boy, had she. A dozen or so years ago, Amanda and Liz had stood outside a clinic near their college, linked arm-in-arm with hundreds of other students before a tiny knot of anti-abortion protesters. She remembered the protesters’ inflamed eyes and the way their mouths twisted as they yelled their slogans, “It’s a child not a choice!” and “Murder!” and the gruesome pictures of dead fetuses they held aloft, cardboard crucifixions stapled to plywood. Liz had grabbed the bullhorn and shouted back, “Get your laws off my body!”

  “I don’t know,” Liz said. “I guess I’ve gotten older.”

  “That hasn’t stopped you from having opinions.”

  “True, but this is different.”

  “Why does it have to be different?” Amanda prodded. “Can’t you just look at the situation objectively for a minute—or at least from my point of view? Let me spell it out.
Liz, I am pregnant. I don’t know how pregnant, but probably just a week or two. All I know is that it couldn’t happen at a worse time. Bob may be out of a job thanks to this Susie business—”

  “Shit. Really?”

  “Yes.” At last Liz seemed to be getting the seriousness of the situation. “That makes the need for me to find some sort of job in the fall more urgent.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So it really doesn’t make sense, does it, for me to go ahead with—this?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Is that a yes ‘uh-huh’?”

  “Oh, Amanda, please, don’t ask me to decide this for you.”

  “Objectively speaking, what is the right thing to do?”

  “I can’t speak objectively about this,” Liz said. “It wouldn’t matter what else was going on in my life. I’d have the baby.”

  “You would?” Amanda was astonished.

  “I would.”

  “Even if—you didn’t want it?”

  “Even if I didn’t want it.”

  “Well, that’s a hell of a change. What happened to all that ‘every child a wanted child’ business we used to chant?”

  “I’m not saying, you know, there aren’t circumstances when a woman might need an abortion—should have one,” Liz said, uncomfortably. “I’m not saying what other women should do. But come on, Amanda, let’s be honest. You and I—we’re not twenty years old anymore. We don’t sleep around. We’re married. We’ve been through pregnancy. And frankly, I can’t regard it as blithely as I used to.”

  “Blithely? No woman undergoes an abortion blithely. We always understood that it wasn’t an easy choice.”

  “No—no we didn’t. We said we did, but how could we possibly know? Having a baby—it was so abstract. We couldn’t even imagine getting ourselves knocked up. We were so bloody knowledgeable. Hell, my own mother got me the pill when I turned sixteen.”

  “Mine took me to Planned Parenthood at fifteen. You’d think I would have learned something by now.”

  “So you’ve been stressed lately. You forgot. It happens. But what happens if you don’t go ahead with it?” Liz continued. “Let’s say you do have an abortion. Are you certain you will feel afterward that it was the right decision? Years from now, will you look back and feel confident that you did the right thing?”