“Really? Wow—people in small towns really are nice,” he said, and then stopped in his tracks at the sight of my lobster-red cheeks and nose. “Yikes, that looks painful.” When he noticed the large mixing bowl on the counter filled with about thirty jalapeños, he said: “Is this your way of telling me you want a ten-gallon vat of salsa for dinner?”
He didn’t mention my one-time confession of dreaming about Oliver, and I wondered if he even remembered. Maybe I should have said more—but to what end? Remember how I told you I dream about him? Yep, still happening.
Harrison turns a page now and it catches my attention, drawing my gaze to his hands. He has surgeon hands, his fingers long and capable, nails neatly trimmed. I’d know them anywhere. If there were a game show where you had to pick your husband’s hands out of a lineup, I’d never lose.
“Do you want to have sex?” I say.
His eyes shift from the book to me, his studious eyebrows rising in surprise behind his square glasses. We haven’t had sex since losing the baby, which is normal for us. I don’t know about Harrison, but it takes time for me to be emotionally ready, and I never am, but eventually I just have to do it to get the first time over with. I hate that I know what’s normal for us after a miscarriage.
“Yeah.” He smiles and dog-ears the corner of the page he’s on.
Though it was my idea, I have trouble getting into it. Harrison is going through all the right motions, the things I like, but when he tries to slip a finger inside me, I’m still dry. I know it’s because I’m afraid to let go. He’s being so sweet and attentive, and all I can think is this is the love we poured into making our baby—all three of our babies—and it wasn’t enough to keep them here, and I’m holding the heartache in so tight, because if I don’t, I’m afraid it will never stop pouring out of me.
But I want to have sex with my husband—I need to have sex with him. So I shut my eyes tight and try to clear my mind, while Harrison weaves his hand in my hair, kisses my neck, slowly makes his way down to my breasts.
Don’t think of babies.
Don’t think of Harrison.
Don’t think of elephants.
I think of elephants.
I think of Oliver.
“Jesus,” Harrison breathes in my ear. And suddenly we’re having sex with wild abandon, like the early days of our relationship, with no agenda for baby making, all familiar routines put aside. “Whoa,” he says after, when he’s flat on his back, ruddy cheeked and sweating. The clock blinks 10:43 p.m. “What was that?”
I shrug, out of breath, a pang of guilt seizing my gut. “You didn’t like it?”
“No, God no. I did. I just want to know exactly what I did to cause that, so I can make it happen again,” he says, grinning. I stare at my beautiful husband, his neatly trimmed beard, his kind eyes, and even though he didn’t exactly cause it, all thoughts of Oliver are gone from my mind as quickly as they came.
I think of Harrison.
I think of babies.
And I feel myself splitting open like the seam of a too-tight dress. I burst into tears. Harrison gathers me in his arms and I lay my cheek against his warm, damp chest, my tears mixing with his sweat, creating a river of love and sorrow. The first time is done and I know the next time will be easier because this is what we do after we lose a baby.
* * *
The next morning, I’m eating a banana in the kitchen when Harrison bangs in the back door, breathing heavily, the top half of his shirt soaked through.
“Is it raining?” I ask, looking out the window to see for myself.
“Yeah,” he says. “Started a few minutes ago.” He strides to the refrigerator, grabbing a glass out of the cabinet to the right of it and filling it with water from the spout in the door. He gulps it down and fills it up again. “You’re up early.”
It’s true—I’m rarely awake before Harrison leaves for work, but this morning my eyes popped open at 5:50 and I was up, not just because my skin was on fire from where the sun had broiled it, but because with each tiny movement of my body, it seemed as though every single muscle screamed out in rebellion. Gardening is apparently a full-body workout. But despite the soreness—or maybe partly because of it—I felt refreshed. Renewed in some way. And I realized, for the first time in at least four or five nights, I didn’t dream of Oliver. I didn’t dream at all.
“I had a good night’s sleep,” I say.
“Good,” he says, kissing me on the end of my burnt nose and stealing a bite of my banana as he passes me by.
“You’re running late, though,” I say, noticing the time on the microwave: 6:13. Harrison’s usually showered and out of the house by now.
“I know. I ran longer than I meant to.”
“Really?” Harrison is a by-the-book kind of guy. He runs three miles, no more, no less, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and has for as long as I’ve known him—even when he was a resident, he found a way to squeeze it in. It’s unlike him to lose track of time.
“I’m gonna grab a shower,” he says.
“I’m gonna go to the studio,” I say. And then: “Don’t forget—our appointment is at two today.”
He looks at me blankly.
“The fertility specialist?”
“Right,” he says.
“Do you want to come pick me up or meet there?”
“Uh . . . meet, I guess.” He closes the gap between us and kisses me on the lips. “Have a good day painting.”
“Have a good day saving lives,” I call after him. I finish my banana and run the short distance between the house and the studio, the rain pelting me like tiny pebbles all the way.
When I enter my studio, I’m greeted by my work in progress: a large panorama of a carnival at night—a carousel, a fishbowl game, a blur of flashing electric lights as the mechanical seats of a ride whip round and round in a frenzy. For all the weirdness of my life the past few weeks, the bright side is that I’ve been sketching and painting prolifically—faster and more than I ever have before. I’ve been re-creating the details from my dreams, like snippets from the set of a movie—first the chicken, then an apple tree in bloom, ducks in flight . . . I even sketched out that weird paper bag full of teeth. It’s felt like important work, to capture these images that feel so real in the middle of the night and fade by the light of day. For some reason, I’ve felt compelled to make them tangible, to give them permanence.
Maybe it has nothing to do with the dreams and everything to do with the babies I keep losing. Maybe I just want to hold on to something. To prove that I actually can.
As I round out the wooden nostrils of a carousel horse, I think back to the dream, how weird it was. Like a nightmare, really. As if Oliver and I were stuck in a zombie apocalypse movie. The amusement park we were in felt desolate, but all the rides were moving, their bright lights blinking and spinning, nearly blinding against the dark sky. One of my hands clutched his; the other held a cloud of blue cotton candy. I ripped off tufts of it with my mouth, laughing at nothing. I turned away from him for a second, and when I turned back, there were suddenly floods of people everywhere. We were getting jostled by the influx of bodies surrounding us. Then my hand slipped from his and he was gone, swallowed by the crowd. But I could still hear him, shouting for me over and over until his throat was hoarse. I didn’t understand—he was right there—why was he panicking? But it was contagious, in the way panic often is, and I woke up, fright filled, heart racing and confused.
I stand back from the large canvas and squint, taking in the painting as a whole, and then start contouring the edge of a Tilt-A-Whirl, trying to get the proper angle of it in midtwirl. I take it slow, really settling into the process and getting lost in my work in a way it doesn’t feel like I’ve done since college.
I’m so absorbed that I don’t even think about time, until a glance at my phone informs me it’s 1:45. Shit. I�
��m going to be late to my appointment.
It’s 2:13 when I fly into the waiting room of Dr. Hobbes’s office in my paint-splattered T-shirt, my hands still covered in the colors of the amusement park. My eyes dart around the room, frantically searching for Harrison, an apology already formed in my mouth, ready to escape. But he’s not there. I check in at the front desk and ask if my husband has come in—maybe he’s in the bathroom. But a woman with braids and gold hoop earrings tells me she doesn’t think she’s seen him. I sit down and wait, thinking he must have gotten held up at work and will rush through the door any second.
But he doesn’t. And halfway through the appointment—when my legs are up in stirrups and the nurse is firing a million questions at me about my lifestyle, family medical history, menstrual cycle—I realize he’s not going to.
* * *
The downside of being a surgeon’s wife isn’t just the long hours, but that strangers’ misfortunes can impact you so greatly. It’s one of the things Vivian warned me about when I told her Harrison and I were getting married (well, right after she ribbed me for the many years I said I was never getting married). “It’s a tough life, Mia. You have to accept that you are always going to come second.” It’s not that she didn’t adore Harrison, it was just her pragmatic, big-sister way of making sure I had thought everything through.
“Of course I know that,” I said, slightly annoyed. After all, I was the one who had been living with it already, through his first year of residency. What I didn’t know was how the resentment would build up over time, along with the surprising added emotion of self-loathing. Because what kind of terrible person gets angry at her husband for missing a birthday party, an anniversary dinner—or a reproductive endocrinologist appointment—when he is literally saving someone else’s life.
I’m folding laundry when Harrison walks in the front door, throwing his keys on the upturned cardboard box in the foyer, taking a deep breath as he slowly crosses the threshold into the den. “I’m sorry about the appointment,” he says. I got his text when I was in the car on the way home, that a Mack truck had T-boned a church bus full of kids twenty miles north of Fordham and he had been pulled in to the ER to help with the influx of patients. I knew he couldn’t help it—that this was his job—but that knowledge didn’t keep me from pounding the steering wheel with the heel of my palm and primal grunting through my teeth in frustration.
“How did it go?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say, picking up a pair of his boxer shorts and snapping them with my wrists to straighten them out. “I filled out a lot of forms, answered a bunch of questions. They took some blood. Should get the results back soon.
“What happened with the accident? Was everyone OK?”
“No,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face. “Three fatalities. All at the scene, though. None at the hospital. So far.” He knocks his knuckles gently on the back of the couch. “Craziest thing—these twin sisters, thirteen-year-olds, were sitting next to each other on the bus right in the middle of it where the truck rammed them. The one closest to the window had a punctured lung, diaphragmatic rupture, possible spinal injury, bleeding all over; I mean the works. But her sister was perfectly fine. Not a scratch on her. I checked her out myself.”
It’s something I’ve heard Harrison marvel at before—the mind-boggling randomness of life. Of death. But I don’t feel like getting deep into some existential discussion right now.
“That is crazy.” I feel another ping of guilt that here I was annoyed at Harrison missing a doctor appointment, while some parent was about to be dealt the worst news of their life. “Will the sister be OK? The one that got injured.”
“I think so,” he says. “They got her into surgery in time.”
He walks around the couch and tugs at the sock that’s currently in my hand. He lays it down on the cushion. Then he puts his hands on my shoulders and waits until I look at him. “Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I say.
“I’m sorry about the appointment.”
The way he’s standing there, it’s like he’s holding me together, and forgiveness really does begin to pulse through my veins, melting the tension out of my muscles. “I know.” I lean into him, laying my head on his chest. After a minute of listening to my husband’s heart thud in my ear, I feel even better. “Good news is, the nurse said you can go by anytime this week to drop your sample. Dr. Hobbes says your swimmers are probably fine, since I keep getting pregnant, but it’s protocol.”
“Drop my sample? Doesn’t that sound like fun,” he deadpans.
“Could be,” I say, lifting my head. “They might even give you a fresh magazine, if you ask nicely. Ooh! Or maybe a picture of Whoopi Goldberg.” A few vodkas into a late night early in our relationship, Harrison confessed he had a high school fantasy involving her in the movie Sister Act.
He dips his chin and sighs a dramatic, tortured sigh. “For the thousandth time, it was the whole nun thing. Not her, specifically. And I’m never telling you anything ever again.” Then he palms my face between his hands and kisses the top of my nose, like he’s done a thousand times, mostly in the early mornings, when he has to get out of bed and he thinks I’m still asleep.
“Come on,” he says, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “I’ll scrounge us up something to eat.”
Later, as I’m sitting on the lone barstool and he’s standing across from me spearing a carrot from the chicken stir-fry with his fork, he says: “Two things.”
I stuff a piece of soy-drenched broccoli in my mouth and watch his face, waiting.
“Foster mentioned something about one of those continuing education art classes his wife attends at the community college needing a teacher starting in August, I think. Current teacher is moving or retiring or something.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“I know, I know. You think teaching is like giving up, but still, thought I’d pass it along.”
“OK, thanks,” I say. “Second thing?”
He grabs a glass from the cabinet and fills it with water at the sink. Takes a sip. “Caroline came in today for her follow-up.”
I still. “Yeah? How is she?”
“Good. Incision’s all healed. Everything’s fine.”
“Oh. OK.” I’m wondering why on earth he’s brought her up. He rarely talks about his patients unless something unusual happened.
“Anyway, I was telling her how Oliver helped you with the garden and all of that, and one thing led to another, I guess, and she asked if we’d come for dinner.”
“Oh. That was nice,” I say, knowing Harrison said no. It’s an occupational hazard—the doctor-patient relationship can feel so intimate at times that some patients mistake it for a real friendship, often inviting Harrison to bat mitzvahs or birthday parties or fiftieth anniversary celebrations. While he’ll attend big celebrations, where he’s one in a crowd of people, he eschews the smaller, more intimate ones—coffee, lunch, dinner. Those, he feels, are crossing a boundary of sorts, creating a more personal connection that could compromise future care.
“Did you turn her down kindly?” I ask.
He hesitates. “We’re going over there a week from Saturday.”
“What?” There’s no way to hide my shock. “Why?”
He takes a deep breath and another sip of water. “Babe, it’s just—we’ve been here what, two months? And you haven’t really—” He pauses. “I think it would be good for us. To get out. Make friends. Feel more settled.”
I stare at him, trying to excavate the subtext of what he’s saying. “We have friends.”
“In Philly. Hard to borrow a cup of sugar from someone an hour and a half away.”
“What do I need sugar for? I don’t bake.”
He looks down his nose at me, pointedly. “You know what I mean. Anyway, you already know Oliver. And I think you’ll like her. She’s funny.”<
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As I scrape up the last few bits of brown rice from my plate, I gnaw the inside of my cheek, to keep myself from telling my husband that it’s not her I’m worried about.
Chapter 9
Sometimes, I’ll work furiously on a painting, finish it in two days and be done—never to paint another stroke on it again. But then there are the ones that take me weeks, months even, and every time I look at it, I’ll still see more I can add, angles or shadows to be tweaked, sections that need to be completely painted over and redone. The carnival painting is the latter. I’m not sure if it’s because I keep remembering details from that dream—a man on stilts with red circles on his cheeks and striped pants, or the moon dangling in the sky like a slivered almond—or because I want to stay living in it, like an actor clinging to a favorite movie set, long after production has ceased. Or maybe I’m trying to get lost in something other than my thoughts.
Like how Harrison still hasn’t gone to the fertility clinic, even though it’s been a week since he missed the first appointment and the clinic is only ten minutes away from the hospital and he can’t really be that busy. I reminded him about it on Monday evening and then asked once more on Tuesday and he snapped at me: I said I’ll go and I will, Mia. Give me a freakin’ break.
Or how I’m going to see Oliver again in two days, when I wasn’t sure that I’d see him again ever. It feels a little dangerous. Not deadly dangerous, like swimming with sharks, but mildly dangerous, like touching a candle flame on a dare. Although, sometimes, I guess, it only takes a tiny flicker to burn an entire house straight to the ground.
* * *
On Saturday night, Harrison pulls into the driveway of a blue clapboard Colonial with white trim in downtown Hope Springs. I’m jittery, like I drank three cups of coffee in a row on an empty stomach, and I swallow, trying to calm my nerves. I considered begging off. If I had feigned illness or exhaustion, Harrison would have easily canceled. But honestly, Oliver’s just a man. He has no idea that I’ve dreamt about him—or what we’ve done in those dreams.
You Were There Too Page 9