Shatter My Rock

by Greta Nelsen

  Shatter

  My

  Rock

  A Novel

  GRETA NELSEN

  Copyright © 2012 by Tara Nelsen-Yeackel.

  Cover Photo © iStockphoto.com/realPHOTO and used by license.

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is coincidental and unintended.

  A portion of the proceeds of this novel will be donated annually toward the research of rare childhood diseases.

  For Andrew

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  A previous version of this book referenced a real terminal illness. Out of sensitivity to those affected by the disease, its portrayal has since been fictionalized. The storyline is unchanged. If you are moved by this book, please consider donating to a rare-disease charity. Thank you.

  Contents

  BEFORE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  DURING

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  AFTER

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  BEFORE

  Chapter 1

  I should have known it was an omen. Bob Evans had never been sick a day in his life, and suddenly he contracts a violent case of salmonella from a farm stand cantaloupe? Now I have to hop a plane to Cincinnati? Schmooze every bigwig in sight? Pitch our new point-of-sale system to a cadre of wannabe VPs who’d rather be off screwing their assistants, but who will nonetheless hang on my every word with the rapt attention of nuns in church?

  And this I must accomplish with Eric Blair at my side? The alpha stud? The high man on the belt-notch totem pole? If the ending weren’t so dire, my story might be comical, in a dark sort of way. But I get ahead of myself.

  * * *

  The U.S. offices of the multinational grocery conglomerate Hazelton United inhabit a sprawling complex of brick buildings that in a previous incarnation housed mental patients. We don’t make food at Hazelton; we sell it. Four-hundred and thirty-nine retail outlets, from Maine to Virginia and as far west as Colorado. I started bagging groceries at the Hazelton-owned Food Mart when I was sixteen, the proceeds of which I poured into slinky outfits, rock concerts, and blow.

  Thirty years and two master’s degrees later, I am the U.S. Vice President of Human Resources, responsible for ninety-thousand associates in fourteen states. But this week I’m pinch-hitting for Bob Evans, High Priest of Information Technology.

  “Did you remember to sign Ally’s permission slip?” I ask my husband, Tim, through a wireless headset, my indestructible L.L. Bean suitcase rolling along behind me at top speed.

  The airport seems bigger today. Uglier. Bright and dirty.

  Tim sighs. “I’ve got this, Claire. How many times do I have to tell you…?”

  “You knew this when you married me,” I say. “You knew I was…” A crashing sound on Tim’s end of the line stops me. “What was that?”

  “Muffin knocked something over. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Not the fertility idol. Please don’t tell me your horse of a dog just… I swear to God, Tim, if that dog…”

  He interrupts, urgency in his voice. “I’ve gotta go. Call me from Cincinnati. Have a safe flight.”

  The call drops just in time for me to spot Eric Blair, as perfectly coiffed and cocky as ever, oozing in my direction.

  I want to spit on him.

  Eric tips his specialty brew—not just Starbucks but something more high-end and exotic—to his Botoxed lips and leers at me. “Ready to rock ‘n roll, Claire-bear?”

  This level of familiarity is inappropriate; he is my subordinate. I should call him out but don’t. “They’re predicting two feet of snow,” I say.

  His gaze lingers on my cleavage, toys with it. “Really?” he says, his neon-white teeth glinting in the sun.

  I can tell he is imagining my nipples erect in the cold, so I tug the zipper of my coat, thwarting him. “We’d better get going.”

  * * *

  I have stayed at some of the finest hotels on earth: Claridge’s, Villa d’Este, Paris’s Hotel de Crillon, the evidence of which withers in yellowing photographs and the recesses of my mind. I was too young then to appreciate such decadence, its merits lost on my ice cream-obsessed, Barbie doll-coveting five-year-old brain.

  My brother, Ricky, would have loved Paris. The soul of it. Ancient and wise, like his. I try to imagine him there, skipping along the Champs-Élysées, the light of a thousand stars reflecting in his carefree eyes.

  But Ricky never saw Paris, and even when I take him there, part of him refuses to go, remains frozen in that upstairs bedroom of a Rhode Island carriage house with a tiny pane of glass and a death sentence. His window on the world.

  * * *

  Eric hands the front desk clerk our corporate credit card and waits, leans on the counter as if it’s the bar of his Saturday night watering hole.

  “You’re here for the Eastern Grocers Conference, I see,” the clerk says with more enthusiasm than is required.

  I step up and say, “I’m presenting.”

  She winces. “Sorry.”

  I study Eric’s reaction as if I’m examining an alien life form. Soulless. Mechanical. His approximation of a human being so polished it induces envy.

  His tongue darts out and makes a smooth sweep across his lips, which slowly utter, “I’m the arm candy.”

  The clerk giggles uncertainly and passes him the key cards. “Welcome to Cincinnati.”

  * * *

  The hotel we are booked at is a step above a Motel 6. Gone are the days of megawatt expense accounts and first-rate ass kissing. Corporate austerity, they call it.

  Eric’s room is beside mine, a favor I neither requested nor appreciate. “This is you,” he says, pausing to slip the key into the lock. “Two fourteen.”

  I push ahead of him and roll my suitcase to the closet. “I’ll take that,” I say, noticing how he eyes that little plastic card. His expression simulates hurt but fails to move me. “Meet me in the lobby at eight.”

  A coy grin advances from his mouth to his eyes. “Lighten up, Claire-bear.” He dangles the card over my head, as if I’m a playful dog he aims to rile. “I don’t bite.”

  I wish I could pluck a witty comment from the air, something that would muzzle Eric Blair’s sexually-charged, overblown ego. But such power fails me. “I do.”

  * * *

  It’s past Tim’s bedtime, but I call anyway.

  “Hello?” His voice touches something primal in me.

  “Hi,” I say. “You up?”

  He spends a few minutes briefing me on the day’s events, while I take my best stab at lounging on the hotel’s commercial-grade mattress, painting my toenails electric-blue. In a soft voice, he asks, “How are you feeling?”

  “I think I’m getting a migraine,” I say, missing the subtext of the question. “This must have been a smoking room before.” It dawns on me that he wants to know if I have pregnancy symptoms. “Other than that, I’m pretty normal.”

  “Normal?”

  “Yup.” This is code for the fact that the in vitro fertilization is a bus
t. Again.

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t tell Ally,” I say. “I want to wait a bit longer.”

  “Is it snowing?” he asks.

  I ignore the change of subject. “This might not work, you know. It’s been ten years since Ally. Forty-six is pushing it.”

  Tim feels like a failure and so do I, a well-worn secret that binds us. “There are eleven viable embryos left,” he reminds me. “That’s two or three more cycles, depending on how many we transfer.”

  I could not be more acutely aware of this. “Then we’re done,” I say. “It’s over.”

  Because of what happened to Ricky, I never wanted children. Spent my youth tripled up on birth control: spermicides; condoms; the pill. The holy trinity.

  Then Tim and I got tested for Dukate Disease, the beast that devoured Ricky before granting him sweet release on his ninth birthday. And for a moment there was a flicker of hope that our union may bear fruit, after all. But the results were grim: Tim and I are both carriers, the probability of which is so infinitesimally small as to convince me I was selected by fate for special punishment. Not the kind of punishment Ricky endured, but the kind that drove our mother to a nervous breakdown and a life of institutionalization.

  If we were to conceive naturally, Tim and I would have a one in four chance of producing a child with Dukate Disease. The embryos are Dukate-free. And so is Ally.

  Tim sighs. “We should go on vacation.”

  This is plan B: flush the embryos and sail the globe. Only I can’t do it to Ally.

  “We still have a chance,” I say, forcing an optimistic tone. “I think we should roll the dice.”

  * * *

  I wish I’d packed the goddamn Imitrex. After twelve years of relative calm, my migraines have returned with the vengeance of a Mongol horde. Hormone fluctuations, my doctor says. Peri-menopause. I’d sooner blame it on the drop in barometric pressure accompanying this ill-timed snowstorm or the lingering stench of Pall Malls in room two fourteen.

  I dig to the bottom of my purse, unearth a questionable-looking sample packet of Tylenol and pop the pills without even a sip of water. Then I summon my professional façade, tuck my portfolio under my arm, and waltz into the hotel lobby, where Eric Blair is already hard at work angling for a promotion.

  “That’s right up my alley,” I hear him say to Chuck Noble, the Bob Evans of Price Slasher, our fiercest competitor. “Just the kind of project I’ve been looking for.”

  The continental breakfast beckons, something to blunt the impact of the Tylenol on my stomach. I smile at one new face after another as I slather a gob of cream cheese across an English muffin and settle on a seat by the window with a prime view of the ten-inch snow cover that has accumulated overnight.

  I try staring outside, but it’s too white. Blinding. Instead, I cast subversive glances around the lobby, observing that almost everyone sports a giant slice of cantaloupe on their plate.

  Eric notices me and saunters over to my table, launching my headache into orbit. “I had the hotel print a hundred of these,” he says.

  The stack of papers he holds looks expertly arranged, down to the shiny silver staples that punctuate at regular intervals.

  “I didn’t ask for these,” I point out, as he hands them to me.

  He preens, fluffs his feathers. “You’re welcome.”

  I should be happy that he’s done this, but I don’t want to be. Yet the hardcopies will come in handy. “Thank you,” I say.

  * * *

  The conference center is a short walk from the hotel through a slushy back lot. Eric offers to carry the papers under the umbrella he has scrounged up, but I decline, opting to clasp them to my chest instead, their sole protection an out-of-season trench coat that matches my smart navy-blue business suit.

  My presentation is scheduled for two o’clock, which means I have five hours to run through Bob’s PowerPoint a sufficient number of times to commit it to memory, while feigning a level of interest in marketing technology that escapes me. I am in human resources for a reason: People are messy; they keep me up at night. But a B.A. in Business with a minor in Computer Science has me pegged as Bob Evans Jr.

  I zero in on a seat at the back of the amphitheater, and Eric follows. “Don’t you want to sit over there?” he asks, nodding at a roped-off pit flanking the stage, where VIPs and presenters rub elbows.

  He can’t sit there without me, and I don’t want to. Too much inbreeding. “No.”

  With half an hour to go before the conference begins, most everyone is still milling around, burning off that last bit of restless energy.

  Eric glances about longingly, as if I’m the evil stepmother who has forbidden him from attending the ball. “You’re free to move about the cabin,” I say.

  “Are you sure?”

  I hold up the sheaf of papers and smile. “I’ve got to study.”

  Without further encouragement, he makes a beeline for the nosebleed seats, where there’s a miniscule chance some CEO may dribble coffee on his Armani blazer.

  And before I can slog through the first page of Bob’s jargon-filled opus, a buxom blonde lays claim to the seat Eric has vacated. “Hey there,” she says, as if she knows me, more than a hint of a southern drawl infecting her voice. She jostles the undersized chair with her robust frame as she settles. “I’m Becky.”

  I clasp her outstretched fingers and mumble, “Hi.” Then I resume staring at my lap, determined not to make a fool of myself on Bob Evans’s account.

  “I’m with Piggly Wiggly. How about you?”

  I can’t help but think fate is toying with me. Not only does Becky seem hell-bent on demolishing my concentration, but the flowery scent she’s bathed in flips the nausea switch on my migraine. I now feel as if I may vomit.

  “I’m just filling in,” I say, wishing she would somehow divine the status of my swiftly deteriorating health and leave me be. “Our IT guy has food poisoning.”

  She cringes. “My Aunt Beverly once…”

  A sudden hot flash drives the final spike through my coffin. “Excuse me,” I blurt, not at all sure that a stream of vomit won’t be the next thing out of my mouth, “but I have to…”

  I have been sick like this before, the kind of sick that turns respectable, well-meaning humans into incoherent puddles of bio-sludge that crave nothing more than the solitary stillness of a black hole.

  Becky must have seen the color in my face morph from white to red, then back to white again, because my abrupt departure elicits nothing more than a mild shrug.

  I need Eric Blair desperately and immediately, but he has vanished in a sea of polyester. The only thing that might save me now is the brutal cold of this Ohio winter.

  I swim against the tide for the door and slip out. There is no awning to protect me, so I shuffle away from the entrance, enormous snowflakes dissolving as they slap my face. The cold feels good. I draw a full breath that penetrates all the way to my gut. Then another. Slowly the nausea loosens its grip but refuses to surrender. It wants me.

  I cannot think, the chaos in my body overriding all else. I glance ahead at the hotel and then back at the conference center, barely registering the consequences of what I am about to do. This presentation is a big deal; they’ve trusted me. But all I can focus on is the saggy mattress in room two fourteen.

  My feet seem to turn on their own, deciding for me.

  But then I hear it. “Claire-bear!”

  I have not been so glad at the sound of something so noxious in my life. I will my feet to turn back, embrace the enemy. “I’m sick,” I tell Eric bluntly. “You’re going to have to take over.” I shove the soggy hardcopies at him, but he resists, the cigarette between his manicured fingers struggling to stay lit.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks sincerely, and for the first time, I believe him.

  “Migraine.” I force the papers into his free hand. “We’ll go over everything later. Good luck.”

  * * *

  I have been asleep
for a sufficient number of hours as to lose track of my orientation in time and space, my very identity in question. That’s what headaches like this do: wipe the slate clean; reboot things.

  My eyelids peel apart to reveal nothing more than the blood-red glow of an LCD clock. Eleven fifty-nine. It must be p.m., because the dark is deep; it suffocates.

  I search my mind for whatever it may offer: A name? A place? Someone’s phone number? Synapse by synapse, the details spark, slow to fire but as ever-present as the hand of God.

  The marketing presentation.

  An irrational wave of panic rolls from my scalp to the soles of my feet. It’s that dream where you’ve forgotten to study for the big test or shown up for church in your underpants.

  I feel my way along a wallpapered surface in the direction of what I believe to be the hotel bathroom. This much has begun to gel. But before I can cast my suspicions in stone, a door swings open, drowning the entryway in artificial light.

  It’s Eric.

  “Oh, good,” he says. “You’re up.”

  I am too disoriented to know if he has entered my room just now or has been here all along. “What are you…?”

  He toggles the switch of a wall lantern, blanketing half of the room in a warm glow. “I was worried about you.”

  Something is off in the way he speaks to me. Too personal. I fear for a moment that Claire Fowler is but a product of my desperate imagination, a frantic escape from my life as Mrs. Eric Blair.

  He tilts his head and smiles. “I talked to Tim.”

  It’s as if some kind soul has strapped an oxygen mask to my blue lips. “Tim?”

  He advances on me, and I retreat, stopping when the backs of my knees hit the bed. “I told him you’re mine now.”

  I can’t tell if he’s serious, so I say nothing.