by Heidi Pitlor
“You are no such thing.” Ellen knew Vera preferred whole but pulled out a carton of skim. “You want something low in fat,” she said in her wife-and-mother voice. She remembered Vera mentioning his high cholesterol a few months back, and that she’d been plying him with red wine every night, but Ellen couldn’t imagine all that alcohol would do him any good. She led him through the store, filling his cart with oats and organic vegetables and eggs, deli meat and freshly baked bread—there was no need to bargain-shop for him—and in the health aisle, she picked out several bottles of vitamins and aspirin. One should never go, she always said, without aspirin.
“Let me thank you with tea,” MacNeil said in the parking lot as they filled the trunk of his car. She stood beside him, carrying a large plastic bag with a couple of Vidalias inside.
“I should probably be getting home.”
MacNeil nodded.
But Joe wasn’t at home. He was out with his friend Bill Dooley pricing new air conditioners, not that either would ever buy one. Joe loved to price things. New houses for them and the kids, kitchen sinks, new cages for Babe. “You know, why not? I’ll come for one cup of tea. I’ll follow you.”
He drove badly—slowly, drifting toward the lines on the road—and Ellen thought it was sweet. She drove at a distance behind him, careful not to crowd him. A few of his bags in her hands, she followed him inside his house at a distance too. The place was eerily quiet and immaculate, the floors shiny and smelling of ammonia. He must have hired a cleaning person. Vera’d always been a mess. She’d been far more concerned with her gardens outside than cleanliness within her house, and her kitchen had always surprised Ellen, the dishes piled in the sink like old books, the empty food boxes strewn across the counter. “Life’s too short to worry about dishes,” Vera once said.
Ellen began to set the groceries on the counter as MacNeil filled the kettle and set out cups and saucers. Before long, the kettle shrieked and he served them. “You’re the first guest I’ve had in days,” he said. “Except a Moonie trying to sell me books.”
“Maybe it’s good for you to have people here,” Ellen said.
“Good, bad, I’m sure there’s some way you’re supposed to go about this, some way the doctors prescribe.”
Ellen tried to smile and took a seat at the table. She wondered if it had been where Vera used to sit.
MacNeil began talking about the approaching presidential election and the two men running for office, one a child, the other a ghost. As she lifted the tea bag from her cup, Ellen thought she and Joe never had conversations about such weighty subjects as politics. They planned, they talked about their days and their children and neighbors, but rarely, anymore, did they discuss anything else.
*
Joe had left the room now and Ellen looked down at the sofa, its green fabric worn but its cushions still firm. The sofa had lasted thirty years—a minor miracle. She went to the bedroom for the yellow Samsonite, which she’d packed last night, and lifted it, careful to use her knees. Soft blankets of clouds kept the heat away today, and she felt a chill as she carried the suitcase outside to the car and hefted it into the trunk. For one of Joe’s birthdays, before Hilary was born, they brought the boys to Maine—was it Great Salt Island? Her memories were so specific, too specific. She could never recall the basics—the wheres (was it this island?), the whens (which birthday was it?), and it made her want to pull off her head right now. How could she not remember where they went? At any rate, she did remember that they found their way to the motel with the huge clam-shaped sign, and she did remember feeling somehow significant with two sons and a husband, a house outside the city. I am very much an adult now, she thought as she unpacked their bags and unfolded the cots for the boys. She and Jake played their game—What would you do with a million dollars?—and later that afternoon, when the boys were kicking a ball around outside the room, she and Joe made love quickly and feverishly, careful not to let them hear. Afterward, she curled up beside him and he said, “I’m happy. I really think this is happiness.” She nodded drowsily, gratefully, knowing Joe’s one dream in life had been to start a family.
Now she wondered what her one dream in life had been. To start a family? She’d certainly wanted one, and she was certainly grateful for hers, but she supposed she’d just always assumed she’d have one. To win a million dollars, as she and Jake used to fantasize? This seemed to approximate a small part of the dream, but it had been more than just this. Perhaps she’d wanted the side effects of money, the deep comfort and pride and sense of fulfillment of a person endowed in some way. With money, yes, or perhaps talent or brilliance or luck. Not just money. Maybe not even money. She looked up at the bleached sky. She couldn’t remember really having one unified dream, just the sensation of moving forward and following Joe’s lead. Trying in some aimless manner, when she thought of it, to achieve the buzz of happiness.
In some respects, she was more adult then than now, she thought as she pushed the suitcase to the side of the trunk. She had gotten the responsibility of raising children out of the way, and now she was preoccupied with indulgences like Mac-Neil and museums, especially the Gardner, where Vera had taken her just before she died, and MacNeil a few times since then. It was one of his favorite places. Just a couple of weeks ago, the two stood under one of the stone archways that framed the courtyard and admired the new orchids. The sunlight filtered in from the skylights above and gave the place an almost holy glow. It was breathtaking, the beauty there. The flowers in the courtyard were changed seasonally: in the spring were nasturtium, freesia, jasmine and azaleas; lilies and cineraria at Easter; chrysanthemums in the autumn; and of course poinsettias at Christmas. MacNeil said this courtyard could have been what Eden looked like, and though at first the sentiment struck Ellen as too much, she chided herself for her reaction. She was not used to a man expressing such feeling, and so poetically. She was used to men keeping such things to themselves, experiencing happiness (with books, gadgets, cars, all the predictable tangibles) in the privacy of their own minds. The light above softened, then strengthened, and she let her own emotions take hold and form words in her mind. It would be all right to pass away here. She pictured her whole body falling in a sigh onto this stone floor. Perhaps in a moment of profound empathy MacNeil would fold too, and one of the guards would find them, two spent bodies lying flat, their eyes open to the heavens. But what about Joe? He would die alone. She pushed the thought from her mind. The guard would page another guard, and the two would carry her and MacNeil into the Blue Room, the closest room, where paintings of Henry James and Madame Auguste Manet and friendly letters from Henry Adams and T. S. Eliot and Oliver Wendell Holmes would welcome them into their own long-sleeping world.
How noble Isabella Gardner was to have left so much to the public—her house, her art, her most personal letters. MacNeil had read all about the woman, and had given Ellen a biography. At the elementary school where Ellen was a librarian, she often tried to interest the children in the anecdotes she’d been reading. Her favorite was the one about Isabella bringing home a lion from a nearby zoo. Passersby gaped as this regal woman, pearls in triple strands around her neck, strode toward them down Beacon Street—one of the richest streets in all of Boston, Ellen explained—her hand resting on the plush yellow mane of the ferocious beast. Some said she even tried to ride him. The children sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her, their eyes bright. She was not a particularly friendly woman, she said, but rarely are the most influential people. And anyway, she had something more valuable than a sunny disposition. She had character and good taste.
Ellen left the trunk open for Joe and went back inside. She hadn’t returned to Maine in years, since that visit with the boys. She thought a moment—was that in fact the last time? No, they went again with the boys a couple of years later. And she went to an art show on Great Salt, a benefit three years ago for her friend Emma’s cousin’s organization that raised money for Alzheimer’s. She’d stayed at an inn,
one she could barely afford. Jake kept saying he’d have them up once they’d redone the house, but they’d only just finished. Ellen still remembered the two-lane road from the ferry landing that wound through the small town and out to a steep rise where the ocean ahead looked like what she pictured it to look like in Ireland—tossing, endless and alive like a storm. The road then traced the circle of the island, leading through the hippie commune on the north end where a few run-down houses huddled close to each other, on past the clusters of artists’ bungalows to the east, the tall, grassy dunes and narrow beaches to the south and finally back to the ferry slip and the few stores, the health clinic, the post office. Just after the ferry slip stood an inconspicuous little diner where the fishermen went. Here, Ellen, Emma and Vera had eaten fried cod sandwiches and whispered giddily like teenagers about all the handsome men around them. These fishermen were throwbacks from history, Ellen thought now, these men who worked out at sea. They exuded physicality and bravery and masculinity. And their wives beside them were weathered and pretty, deeply tanned and ragged, and seemed to her to possess some sort of ancient wisdom. The weekend was like a happy dream in hindsight.
She’d have liked to bring MacNeil there, as she imagined the brisk sea air and slow pace would do a mourning man good. And was he still mourning? It had been seven months: of course he was. One never stopped. This thought weighed on her. She had an urge to call him and make sure he was feeling all right, but she saw Joe heading toward her, struggling to carry their suitcases. She would call later, once she had a moment to herself, if she could get one.
“Be careful there,” she said.
“I’m trying to impress you.” He dumped the bags at her feet. He smiled up at her and turned to go inside again. When he came back, he held the large cage in his hands and a plastic bag of carrots in his mouth for Babe.
“Tell me you’re not bringing him,” she said.
“It’s my birthday.”
“Is your family not enough for you? You absolutely need that thing too?”
“You’ve got Jake’s phone number?” Joe set the cage in the back seat of the car and stood, his legs apart.
“Jake will faint when he sees this.”
“Here are the keys, right in my pocket. I’ve been looking all over the place for them.”
Too often they talked at each other. Each heard at most fragments of what the other said, and she wondered if it had always been this way, this selective hearing.
He took his seat at the wheel and she went back inside to make sure they hadn’t forgotten anything. Standing alone in their living room, even Babe out of the house now, she felt a swell of nostalgia for something she couldn’t quite pinpoint. She made her way through the rooms, checking under the beds—so many things like wallets and socks and shoes were forgotten under beds—and turning off the lights, then headed to the front hallway and pulled the door shut. From behind the steering wheel, Joe gazed at her. She started, for it had been some time since they’d looked each other directly in the eyes.
—
Jake Miller followed his wife into their kitchen, where she’d arranged the food for the weekend by meals. Next to a carton of eggs on the counter sat a brick of cheddar, a red onion, a bag of mushrooms, a package of sausages. The canister of coffee sat beside the bag of sugar; the baguette beside the raspberry jam; the cantaloupe beside the blueberries. He loved when she arranged items this way, by theme or function—he supposed it gave him a sense of peace and of being tended to. Other men might not have appreciated this, he often thought. She even took the time to arrange their shampoo and conditioner alternately on the shelf in the shower: his, hers, his, hers. She kept the whole house orderly and clean (and he helped, but he didn’t need to do that much when it came down to it). They certainly could have afforded a maid or a housekeeper, but Liz wouldn’t have been comfortable with that. When Jake was promoted to CFO, vice president and partner of his investment firm and paid a much larger salary, Liz had made him promise that their lifestyle wouldn’t change all that much. She continued to teach art at a public high school in the city. She continued to volunteer at a nursing home once a month, and hadn’t bought any new clothing or art supplies or anything, really, since the promotion. She even still drove her beat-up Volkswagen. Jake didn’t know anyone quite as virtuous, deeply virtuous, as his wife, and when he told her so once, she blanched. “I’m not doing this stuff to be honorable. It’s just that I like my job and my car. I like my clothes.” “That’s one of the great things about you. It comes so naturally, virtue,” and she’d said, “Sometimes you give me too much credit.” She was a difficult person to compliment—she was uncomfortable with overt praise. And the more she squirmed about it, the more she insisted that he was putting her on a pedestal she didn’t deserve, the harder Jake tried to convince her that she was wrong. She deserved every syllable of what he said, he insisted, and the only thing wrong with the pedestal was that it wasn’t high enough. “You can’t love your wife too much,” he told her, and she responded, “I’m not a hundred percent sure about that.” His face sank, and she added, “Oh, sweetie. Maybe ninety-nine percent,” and reached over to touch his cheek.
Her ultrasound had shown two embryos the other day. They’d gone to her doctor before their first scheduled exam because she’d bled on her way home from work—quite a bit at first, which was beyond alarming to both her and Jake. When they reached the doctor’s office early that evening, both shaky, as she was still bleeding, he led them into a small examining room and turned down the lights. A man—the ultrasound technician—stood by a desk typing on a laptop. Liz unbuttoned her skirt and lay on the table as instructed while the ultrasound technician closed his laptop, turned and slipped something that looked like a condom over a plastic vaginal probe. Jake stood close beside Liz and watched the man, tall and stooped with curly red hair, squirt lubricant over the probe. The doctor briefly introduced him as Claude, and Claude murmured, “Careful, cold,” and inserted the probe. “You’re going to be fine,” said the doctor. “No cramping, and you’re not passing any tissue. These are good signs.” This immediatly made Jake breathe easier. The screen next to Liz’s head lit up and swam with blurry gray images. Claude turned his wrist, shifted the probe and pushed it farther inside. Jake looked at him and was sure he saw the man glance down at her breasts. Did he find her sexy? Liz squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. But Claude couldn’t have been thinking about sex—it was all business to him. Vaginas were his clients. Ovaries his spreadsheets. Claude moved the probe left and right and finally stopped, and an image of what had to be Liz’s uterus appeared on the screen beside her. Jake noted a couple of tiny black swirls inside a patchy gray cloud. Maybe Claude had incredible sex with women since he knew where and what every little thing was. Jake looked down to see whether he wore a wedding ring on the hand that was not between Liz’s legs. He did not. The man wasn’t exactly attractive. His eyes bulged beneath heavy lids, his red hair was frizzy and thinning on top. Still, he touched women like this every day. Slid his hand right inside.
“Hold on, we’re getting there,” Claude said.
Jake hadn’t gotten his wife pregnant. Well, technically his sperm had. Locked in a closet-sized room with only a TV, an old VCR and two videotapes hand-labeled “The Firm” and “Mean Girls” (whether these were the actual movies or porn knockoffs he didn’t know, since he couldn’t get the damned VCR to work), Jake had encouraged his sperm out of his body and into a blue plastic cup, which he handed to an obese young male nurse standing behind a desk. The next stop for the tiny fish was a petri dish, where Liz’s drug-stimulated eggs were waiting. Once the sperm swam into the eggs, the mixture sat inside an incubator while it fertilized, and two days later got injected into Liz’s womb. Jake’s body hadn’t gotten her pregnant, or more specifically, more accurately he supposed, sex hadn’t. Love hadn’t. He hadn’t even been present for the embryo transfer—he’d been at a meeting in Minneapolis. He and Liz had unsuccessfully tried IVF several
times before, so Liz had told him just to go to his meeting and not to worry about it. He hadn’t wanted to leave her—he’d told her he could skip the meeting, or at least try to postpone it, but she insisted that they’d given up enough of their lives to infertility. This IVF might be no different from their earlier ones, and she would be fine, absolutely, positively fine doing it on her own. “You don’t want me there?” he asked.
“Jake.”
“It wouldn’t be such a big deal for me not to go to the meeting.”
“Jake. End of discussion. Go to Minneapolis.”
It seemed to him as if she didn’t, for whatever reason, really want him there, but he wouldn’t press the point. He was aware of his tendency to misread her signals, and he often had to keep himself in check.
Now, in the exam room, he refocused on the task at hand and searched for something that might be a heartbeat. Suddenly Dr. Mancowicz said, “I think we’ve got ourselves twins!” Claude shifted the probe again and Dr. M. pressed his thick finger to the screen. “There’s one heartbeat. And,” he said as he moved his finger to the second black blob and the tiny flickering mass inside it, “there’s the second.”
Jake swallowed a pocket of air.
Liz laughed nervously. “Can we see them again?” she asked.
Claude pointed more slowly to each pulsing dot. He then removed the probe and its condom, casually tossed it in the trash and dropped the probe on a side table with a small thud.
“Congratulations, you two! Let’s go to my office and talk about this good news,” Dr. M. said. “Meet me there when you’re ready.”
Claude pulled the door shut behind him and Jake worried for a second that he’d said all his thoughts about him aloud.
“Hurray!” Liz sang. “We’ll have our two children all at once! No more treatments! Hurray!”