The Woman Next Door

by Barbara Delinsky

  Malcolm O’Leary came to her rescue the second time. “Sorry, Mother, but I’m stealing my sister-in-law away. Joseph,” he called to one of the nephews, “come talk to your grandmother.” Putting a large arm around Amanda’s shoulder, he steered her off.

  “Where’s Graham?” she asked. She had barely seen him all afternoon.

  “Playing volleyball out back. Good thing Mother has a big yard. We needed it when we were kids, and we sure need it now. How are you?”

  “Great,” Amanda said with a smile.

  “That’s not what Gray says. He says you’re taking this last setback hard. We all feel terrible, Amanda. I know how much you want a baby. I can imagine the frustration you’re feeling.”

  Amanda doubted that. “Well, it’ll come in time.”

  “I heard about a great guy in D.C. He works with women who can’t get pregnant. I’m told he’s booked solid, but we did the screens for his sister in Hartford. One call from her, and you’d be in quick. What do you say?”

  Controlling herself, Amanda said, “Did you run this past Graham?”

  “Yeah. He said I shouldn’t mention it, but hell, Amanda, if they can’t figure out what the problem is, maybe you should see someone else. I’d be glad to make a call.”

  “Thanks, Malcolm, but we’re working with someone good.”

  “Well, let me know if you change your mind. Graham is dying to be a father.”

  A short time later, she heard the same words, this time from Megan Donovan, Graham’s first wife. One of only a handful of outsiders invited to the party, she knew all of the O’Learys and was treated like one of them.

  To her credit, Megan was sensitive to the situation. She always came late, left early, and kept a low profile out of deference to Amanda. This day, she gave Amanda a warm hug, told her she looked beautiful, asked about her work as Dorothy hadn’t. In turn, Amanda asked about Megan’s business, a small bookshop that was struggling to survive against the competition of large chains and on-line stores. Megan answered freely, knowledgeably interestingly enough to make Amanda think—and not for the first time—that she liked Megan a lot. That was before Megan lowered her voice and raised the issue of children.

  “Gray says nothing’s happening.”

  “Not yet,” Amanda said with a smile and a hopefully final, “but it will.”

  Megan didn’t let it go. “It must be hard on you. I know how much Gray wants kids. That was the one thing that marked the beginning of the end for us. I kept putting it off. I kept giving him one reason after another why we should wait. I finally ran out of excuses.”

  “The situation is different with us.”

  “Can I help?” Megan said.

  Amanda frowned in amusement. “I don’t think so.”

  “I mean, if it’s a question of donating eggs or renting a uterus for nine months ...”

  ***

  Amanda was silent in the car. She had a splitting headache, a knot in her stomach, an ache from having produced so many unwilling smiles, and a bad taste in her mouth.

  Graham was as silent, but simmering. She could feel it the minute he turned off his mother’s street. They hadn’t gone two blocks when he said, “Do you hate my family?”

  Her eyes flew to his. “No. Why?”

  “You were struggling to be pleasant. Anyone could see that.”

  Amanda stared out the windshield. There were so many things she wanted to say. So many things she wanted to yell. She didn’t know where to begin.

  “What’s wrong with my family Amanda?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why do you have so much trouble being with them? You have a headache. I can see it in your eyes. Why does my family give you a headache? Noise? Commotion? Laughter? I thought you liked all that.”

  “I love it. I just feel different from them.”

  “Look, I know my mother isn’t the warmest person in the world—”

  “She is,” Amanda interrupted. “She’s warm to everyone but me.”

  “You’re upset because she didn’t thank you for the trifle.”

  Amanda turned to him then. “I’m upset about lots of things. Probably the least is that she didn’t thank me, because I made that trifle while there were far more serious things on my mind, and it was just plain rude of her. I mean, don’t you think it was rude?”

  He brushed the question aside. “My mother is old. She isn’t modern and isn’t adaptable. We knew before we married that she wouldn’t be easy. She’s no worse now than she ever was.”

  “My needs have changed. I need more from her. I need her to be supportive.”

  “About the baby? She can’t be supportive, Amanda.”

  “Maybe not. But you can.” She grew beseechful. “Where were you all afternoon? You left me on my own to deal with the subject of why we can’t have a baby and whose fault it is and what we’re doing about it. Do you know that Megan offered to be a surrogate mother?”

  “That was sweet,” Graham remarked.

  “She’s your ex-wife!” Amanda cried. “What kind of soap opera would it be if we let her do that? It’s one thing if a woman’s sister does it, or even her mother, but an ex-wife? But back up a step. What makes her think my uterus is the problem? Why do they all think I’m the problem? Emily doesn’t. She says it might just as well be you as me. Did you tell them that? Or did you just tell them that I keep losing babies—like I’m the shortstop you got in a trade, and I keep dropping the ball in the family baseball game?”

  Shocked by the ugly sound of her voice, she went still.

  They drove on in silence for a while.

  When she felt she was in control again, she said more slowly and quietly, “I don’t hate your family. It’s just that when I’m with them, I lose you.”

  “You don’t lose me,” he scoffed.

  “You’re never with me. We’re not connected. You’re always talking with a brother or playing with a nephew or giving a sister or a sister-in-law garden advice. Or talking with Megan.”

  “I wondered when we’d get to that,” he muttered. “Christ, Amanda, Megan is my oldest friend. I’ve known her all my life. We parted on the best of terms. I like seeing her. And I like seeing my family.”

  Amanda grew silent again.

  “Do you want me to go see them by myself from now on?”

  She closed her eyes. He was missing the point. “No.”

  “What do you want?”

  She wanted him to make her pregnant, that was what she wanted. She wanted him to look at her like she was the center of his universe. He used to do that. At the party today, he hadn’t looked at her at all.

  “Tell me, Amanda.”

  “I want you to help me with them. Help me feel less isolated.

  Stand with me, not somewhere else like you’re ashamed to be with me. You be the one to tell Malcolm that the man he heard about that’s so great with infertile women may not be appropriate for us, since I am not infertile. Take my side. Help me. Support me.” She took a quick breath and looked at him. “Better still, tell them to mind their own business. Having a baby is between you and me. They shouldn’t be involved at all—and don’t say that they care, because I know they do, but it isn’t making things easier for me. They’re all telling me how much you want a baby, like I can snap my fingers and make it happen. I know you want a baby. I don’t need them telling me. What happened to respecting people’s privacy? What happened to not discussing personal things in public?”

  “Your family worked that way,” Graham said. “Mine never has.”

  “Maybe they should. Maybe you need to let them know that I come first in your life. Unless I don’t.”

  He shot her an angry look. “Is this a race now? To see who comes first?”

  Amanda shook her head. His look had chilled her. She had never thought to be on the receiving end of something like that.

  “It is,” he decided. “You want me to choose—my family or you.”

  “Never. I just want
you to act like a husband.”

  “I’m trying. I’m trying. I’m doing the best I can in a bad situation. But your being jealous of Megan and my family doesn’t help. Your being jealous of Gretchen doesn’t help, either. You want me to act like a husband? Then act like a wife. Trust me.”

  ***

  Naturally, when they returned to the cul-de-sac, Gretchen was in her front yard directing a misty stream of water toward the tulips.

  With the last rays of the sun putting a rainbow in the mist, making the entire picture idyllic, the widow suddenly seemed the embodiment of everything that was wrong with their lives.

  How to discuss that without fighting? Graham didn’t know. So he followed Amanda into the house and respected her apparent desire for silence.

  ***

  Amanda awoke Monday morning with a lingering headache and a sense of dread. She tried to drum up positive thoughts, but there weren’t many to be had on the morning of a teenager’s funeral. She took Graham up on his offer that she shower first and thanked him when he was waiting with her towel at its end. She appreciated the fact that he didn’t leer at her body, but kept his eyes on her face, and she wasn’t so immersed in thoughts of what the day would hold not to see his concern. He asked what he could do to help, and, when she suggested it, he readily agreed to drop off several dozen doughnuts in the teachers’ lounge for those arriving early.

  Then he put on a suit.

  “Do you have a meeting?” she asked. He occasionally dressed for a client, but he hadn’t done it in a while.

  “A funeral,” he said. “I want you to know I’m there in the back.”

  It was a minute before she understood what he was saying and then, without intending to, she burst into tears.

  “Ah, Christ,” he murmured, drawing her close. “That was supposed to make you feel better.”

  It did. She had been stoic and strong through the whole ordeal with Quinn, keeping a stiff upper lip even during gut-wrenching times of self-doubt when she felt that she could have single-handedly prevented his death if she had only collared him in the hall and dragged him into her office, or pushed a little harder with his parents. She had been strong for everyone at school, bearing the brunt of people leaning on her. Now Graham was giving her someone to lean on. In doing that, she let down her guard, and when that happened, the tears came.

  She didn’t fight them. Rather, she slid her arms around his neck and held on until the agony waned. Then, drawing back, she looked up into eyes that were a fathomless green.

  “Thank you,” she said and put a soft kiss on his lips. Feeling the first tingle of true arousal that she had felt in months and having neither the time nor the know-how to deal with it, she stepped back, gave the mirror a dismayed look, and returned to the bathroom to redo her face.

  ***

  The funeral was held in the white-steepled church in the center of town, and if anyone thought twice about the fact that the deceased had taken his own life, it didn’t show. The flowers were lavish, the photographs of Quinn plentiful. Students sat with students, though many of their parents were there. Obligated to sit with the faculty, Amanda spotted Graham only once. He was gone by the time she left the church.

  She held the image of him with her during the day, and it was a comfort. Though the atmosphere in the school corridors was subdued, there was only a handful of teary-eyed students dropping into Amanda’s office. Quinn’s closest friends had forgone school entirely and returned to the Davis house after the burial. Sports practices and a lacrosse game had been canceled out of respect for Quinn.

  By three, the school buses had left and the grounds were eerily quiet. What few stragglers remained sat on the ground in small groups. Amanda sat at the bottom of the tall front stone steps for a while, and two girls did come over to talk. They didn’t say much, just seemed to want to be near an adult who might be more comfortable with death than they were.

  Amanda stayed with them until they left. Returning to her office, she sat there a while. Fred Edlin dropped by to thank her, and to compliment her on how well the crisis team approach had worked. “Write it up,” he advised. “Every school system in the country ought to have something like this.”

  Amanda thanked him, but the fact was that with recent school tragedies having been highly publicized, many school systems did have crisis teams. It wasn’t a new concept, and what she had done wasn’t worth documenting.

  Besides, she didn’t want acclaim. She simply wanted to help the students she had been hired to help. The fact that the team had worked this time gave her a deep sense of relief. Quinn’s death was still too raw—and too personal for the counselor in Amanda—for her to feel much satisfaction.

  “Good job,” Maddie crowed as soon as the principal had left.

  “Thank you,” Amanda said and removed a treat from the bag under the cage. It was snatched from her hand the instant she offered it.

  “Sweet treat.”

  Amanda smiled sadly. “It’s so simple to please you. I think that’s the delight in having a pet. Easy to please. Uncomplicated. What you see is what you get.” She turned at the sound of footsteps in the hall.

  “Heeeere’s Johnny,” said Maddie and, sure enough, Mr. Dubcek appeared at the door. He had been at the funeral wearing a baggy brown suit, and had changed back into his usual green work pants and shirt, but his face was dolorous.

  “How was things today, Mrs. O’Leary?” he asked in his rusty voice.

  “All right. The shock is wearing off. It’ll be a while before the reality sets in—the finality of death.” She would continue to work with the faculty to look for warning signs in those students having the most trouble coping. They were keeping a list. Everyone agreed that being proactive would be better this time.

  The old man’s furrowed brow grew even more so. “Fifty years of working here, and this never happened to me. We had kids getting sick and fainting dead away on the floor. We had seizures. You know, epileptic. We had kids die in cars and one in a plane crash. We had kids kill themselves at home. But never here before. I shouldn’t’a let him stay here. I should’a sent him home.”

  Amanda smiled kindly. She understood the guilt. Indeed, she did. “If Quinn was determined to kill himself, he’d have found another way. If you’d sent him home, he might have gone out into the woods and done it there. It would have been a lot longer before anyone found him.”

  “But if I’d come back right after he did it, he could have been saved. The paramedics said so.”

  “Believe me, I’ve been asking myself many of the same questions. If I’d gone out and dragged him in here, instead of sending him an e-mail—if I’d shared my concerns with the administration or with his coach—if I’d told his parents that he was in enough pain to hurt himself—but none of us knew that. We had no idea what he planned. It was the last thing any of us expected from a boy with so much going for him.”

  The janitor pressed his mouth shut and shook his head. “Waste. A terrible waste.” He returned to the hall.

  “Fuck it,” Maddie said.

  “Oh yes,” Amanda replied with a sigh.

  ***

  She stayed at school until five, mostly answering the phone and talking with parents who were worried about their own children and unsure of how to deal with them. One of Quinn’s teachers stopped by. He, too, was thinking back, looking for signs, wondering what he might have done differently.

  In time, she locked up and headed home. The sight of Graham’s truck in the driveway was warming, as was what she saw when she crossed the breezeway on her way to the kitchen. There in the backyard, on a carpet of grass, against a background of hemlocks and pines, stood the wrought-iron table with its two pretty chairs. The table was set with linen mats and napkins, wineglasses, and candlesticks.

  Touched, she went into the kitchen. Graham was reading the directions on a box of rice pilaf. On the counter were the steaks they were to have eaten Friday night.

  “I thought we’d try again,” h
e said. Setting down the rice box, he opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of wine, filled two waiting goblets, and handed her one. “It’s been a while.”

  She nodded. In recent months, when she had been so frantic to conceive that she had taken to reading stories on the Internet, she had refused to take so much as a sip of anything remotely alcoholic. “For what good that did,” she murmured and held her glass out to his.

  “To life,” he said.

  Given the few days it had been, given the few years it had been, Amanda couldn’t have said it better. “To life.” They touched glasses. She sipped hers and let the wine linger on her taste buds while she inhaled the bouquet from the glass.

  “You look better,” Graham said.

  “I don’t feel so raw.”

  “Any major problems after the funeral?”

  Still somewhat pensive, she said, “No. Not with kids. I worry about some of these parents. They’re so bright and so opinionated. One mother stopped me at the funeral and had nothing good to say about Quinn’s parents. She insisted that no child of hers would ever self-injure. When I said that children who come from all kinds of homes do it, she denied it. I’m sure she’ll be all closed up if her daughter needs to talk about Quinn. So the girl will go to friends, who don’t have any more answers than she does.”

  “But they’ll get comfort from each other, won’t they?”

  “Yes. Knowing other people feel the same is a help. I like to think it’s a help when people like me are available. Not that I have answers, either. But I’m an adult. They can lean on me.”

  Graham frowned. “You need a break.”

  “I’ll get one next weekend. But being there for the kids helps me, too. I’m feeling just as bad as they are.”

  “You need to draw lines, stay a little bit apart.”

  “That’s hard, with something like this. I can’t begin to imagine what Quinn’s parents are feeling.”

  “I can,” Graham remarked, sounding suddenly desperate. “It must be something like what I felt when you got your period last week. We lost a baby. All the hopes and dreams and plans we’d had went right down the tubes.”