‘What’s so dangerous about your car?’ I asked.
‘The driver,’ he said.
His car was a two-seater, soft-top Alfa-Romeo, in bright tomato red. I did a double-take when he pulled up in it outside my house that Saturday morning.
‘Aren’t you a bit young for a mid-life crisis?’ I asked, sliding into one of the low bucket seats.
‘Believe it or not, it was a gift from my father.’
‘Your dad, Mr Indianapolis Insurance King? I don’t believe it.’
‘I think it was his way of applauding my decision to return home and take the job here.’
‘Oh, I get it. It’s a variation on How You Gonna Keep ‘Em Down On the Farm After They’ve Seen Paree? With a sports car, naturally.’
‘A heavily insured sport scar.’
‘Surprise, surprise.’
We spent the day zooming north on Route 1. Past Bath. Past splendidly atmospheric small towns like Wiscasset and Damriscotta and Rockland, eventually reaching Camden around lunchtime. We killed an hour or so in a wonderful used bookshop on Bayview Street. Then we walked down to a little waterfront joint, and ate steamers, washed down with beer. Afterwards, Jim lit up a Gauloise. I declined his offer of a cigarette.
‘Good God,’ he said. ‘A low alcohol tolerance, and an aversion to cigarettes. You must be a secret Mormon in disguise.’
‘I tried to be a smoker in college. I failed. I don’t think I ever got the knack of inhaling.’
‘It’s an easy knack to master.’
‘One of my many lapses in talent. But answer me this: how the hell can you smoke those Frenchie butts? They smell like an exhaust pipe.’
‘Ah, but they taste like …’
‘… a French exhaust pipe. I bet you’re the only guy in Maine who smokes them.’
‘Should I take that as a compliment?’ he asked.
Jim was great fun. We kept up an entertaining banter all day. He had wit. He was ferociously literate. He could also mock himself. I liked him enormously … as a pal, a chum, un bon copain. Nothing more. Even if I’d been in the market for romance, he wouldn’t have fit the bill. Too gawky. Too doting. Too needy. I wanted his company, but I didn’t want to fuel his hopes that this might lead to anything more than camaraderie. So - when he suggested a date a few days later - I pleaded work.
‘Oh, come on,’ he said lightly. ‘Surely you could manage a movie and a cheeseburger one night this week.’
‘I’m really trying to focus on my column,’ I said, and instantly hated myself for sounding like a precious prig. To his credit, Jim laughed. And said,
‘You know, as kiss-off lines go, that stinks.’
‘You’re right. It does stink. What’s the movie?’
‘Ace in the Hole, directed by the very great Billy Wilder.’
‘I saw it last year in Manhattan.’
‘Any good?’
‘The nastiest movie about journalism ever made.’
‘Then you’ll see it again.’
‘Yeah. I guess I will.’
So much for trying to put Jim off. But, to his infinite credit, he never hinted at a romantic subtext to our nights out. Like me, he was new in Brunswick. He craved company. And - though I didn’t like admitting it - so did I. Which made it very hard to refuse his offer of a movie, or a chamber music concert in Portland, or an evening with a few of his faculty friends (yes, I was finally becoming sociable). Even after a month of seeing each other, the goodnight kiss was always planted on my cheek. There was (dare I say it) a part of me that wondered: why the hell isn’t he making a move? Even though I sensed that his reticence in that department came from the fact that he knew I wasn’t interested.
I also knew that, eventually, I would have to own up about my pregnancy. Because - now nearly five months on - I was beginning to develop a telltale bulge in my belly. But I kept putting off this revelation. Because, coward that I am, I feared the effect it might have on our friendship. I so liked him. So wanted him to continue being my pal … and sensed that it would all fall apart when he discovered my news.
I resolved to tell him, however, after one of my weekly appointments with Dr Bolduck.
‘Once again, everything seems to be going according to the usual pregnancy plan,’ he said.
‘I am following your orders to the letter, Doc.’
‘But I hear you’re at least getting out and about a bit … which is a good thing.’
‘How did you hear that?’
‘It’s a small town, remember?’
‘And what else did you hear?’
‘Just that you’d been seen around at a couple of Bowdoin faculty dinners.’
‘In the company of Jim Carpenter, right?’
‘Yes, I did hear that. But …’
‘He’s just a friend.’
‘Fine.’
‘I mean that. I am not stringing him along.’
‘Hold on here. No one’s saying you’re stringing him along. Or that you’re an item. Or anything like that.’
‘But people have noted we’ve been seeing each other. Well, haven’t they?’
‘Welcome to Brunswick, Maine. Where everyone knows everyone else’s business. In a non-malicious way, of course. Don’t let it bother you.’
But it did - because I knew that Jim would publicly look like a fool as soon as my pregnancy became around-town news. So I resolved to tell him the next day.
It was a Saturday. We had arranged to drive out to Reid State Park for the afternoon. But that morning I woke up feeling a little nauseous: a condition I blamed on some tinned salmon I had eaten the night before. So I called up Jim and begged off the afternoon. When he heard I was feeling poorly, he instantly offered to call a doctor, rush to my bedside, and play Florence Nightingale …
‘It’s just an upset stomach,’ I said.
‘That could mean a variety of things.’
‘It means I ate a can of bad Canadian fish last night, and now I am paying for it.’
‘At least let me drop by later on and check in on you.’
‘Fine, fine,’ I said, suddenly too weary to argue.
Moments after I put down the phone, the nausea actually hit. I raced to the bathroom. I became very sick. When the worst was over, I rinsed out my mouth and staggered back to bed. My nightgown was soaked with sweat. I felt chilled. But, at least, the vomiting had stopped.
It started again five minutes later. This time there was nothing to come up. I hung over the toilet, retching wildly, suddenly feeling ill beyond belief. After this bout of the dry heaves, I made it back to bed … and was up a few moments later, hugging the toilet bowl for ballast.
On and on this went for an hour. Finally, my stomach could heave no more. I collapsed into bed. My body finally surrendered to exhaustion. I passed out.
In Brunswick during the 1950s, nobody ever locked their doors. Initially when I moved into my apartment, I always threw the latch. Until the woman who cleaned the place left me a note saying that I didn’t need to maintain this security-conscious habit - as the last house robbery in town was around four years ago … and the guy was drunk at the time.
I hadn’t locked my front door since then. Without question the fact that my door was left open that Saturday afternoon saved my life. Because, around three p.m., Jim showed up at my apartment and knocked on the door for five minutes. I didn’t hear his persistent knocking, as I was unconscious at the time. Knowing I was unwell, he decided to enter the apartment. He kept calling out my name. He got no response. Then he entered my bedroom. As he later told me:
‘I thought you were dead.’
Because he found me in a pool of blood.
The sheets were crimson, sodden. I was insensible. Jim couldn’t get a word out of me. He dashed to the phone. He called an ambulance.
I briefly came round in the hospital. I was on a gurney, surrounded by doctors and nurses. I heard one of the doctors speaking to Jim.
‘How long has your wife been pregnant?’ he asked
.
‘She’s pregnant?’
‘Yes. Didn’t you know … ?’
‘She’s not my wife.’
‘What’s her first name?’
‘Sara.’
The doctor began to snap his fingers in front of my face. ‘Sara, Sara … are you there? Can you hear me?’ I managed to mutter three words: ‘The baby is …’ Then the world went dark again.
When it came back into focus, it was the middle of the night. I was alone in a small empty ward. I had drips and tubes in my arms. My vision was blurred. My head had been cleaved by an ax. But it was nothing compared to the pain in my abdomen. I felt splayed, eviscerated. My flesh was raw, on fire. I wanted to scream. I couldn’t scream. My vocal cords appeared frozen. I fumbled for the call button dangling by my side. I held it down for a very long time. I heard brisk footsteps down the corridor. A nurse approached my bedside. She looked down at me. Again I tried to speak. Again I failed. But my face told her everything.
‘The pain … ?’ she asked.
I nodded my head wildly. She put a small plunger in my hand.
‘You’re on a morphine drip,’ she said.
Morphine? Oh God …
‘So every time the pain gets too much, just press down on this plunger. And …’
She demonstrated it for me. Immediately a surge of narcotic warmth spread across my body. And I vanished from consciousness.
Then it was light again. Another nurse was standing over me. The bedclothes had been pulled down. My hospital nightgown was over my belly. A bloody bandage was being yanked off my skin. I shuddered in pain.
‘I wouldn’t look at that, if I was you,’ the nurse said to me.
But I did look - and shuddered again when I saw the horrendous railroad track of stitches across my abdomen. I managed a word:
‘What … ?’
The pain kicked in again. I fumbled for the plunger. The nurse put it in my hand. I pressed down on it. Darkness.
Light again. Now I saw a familiar face above me: Dr Bolduck. He had a stethoscope on my chest. His finger was on my left wrist, checking my pulse.
‘Hi there,’ he said. His voice was quiet, subdued. I knew immediately what had happened. ‘How’s the pain?’
‘Bad.’
‘I bet. But this is the worst you should experience.’
‘I lost it, didn’t I?’
‘Yes. You did. I am so sorry.’
‘What happened?’
‘You were suffering from a clinical condition known as an “incompetent cervix”; a condition which is virtually impossible to diagnose until it’s too late. Essentially, your cervix couldn’t handle the weight of the baby once it passed the five-month mark. So, when the cervix failed, you hemorrhaged. You’re lucky your friend Jim found you. You would have died.’
‘You operated?’
‘We had no choice. Your womb was ruptured. Irreparably. If we hadn’t operated …’
‘I’ve had a hysterectomy?’
Silence. Then, ‘Yes, Sara. A hysterectomy.’
I fumbled for the plunger. I pushed it down. I went under.
Then it was night. The overhead lights were off. It was raining outside. A major thunderstorm. Howling winds. Rattling glass. Celestial tympani. The occasional flash of lightning. It took a few minutes for the morphine fog to lift. The pain was still there, but it was no longer acute. It had become a dull, persistent ache. I stared out the window. I thought back to five years ago in Greenwich. How I buried my head in Eric’s arms and fell apart. How - at the time - it seemed like the world had ended. Six months ago in New York - staring at the bloodstains in my brother’s apartment - I too thought that life could not go on.
And then Jack. And now this.
I swallowed hard. I resisted the temptations of the morphine plunger. The rain was now splattering across the window, like liquid buckshot. I wanted to cry. I could not. All I could do was look out into the dark, blank night. And think: so this is what happened. Maybe it was the residue of the narcotics. Maybe it was post-operative shock. Or maybe there comes a point when you simply can no longer grieve for everything that life throws at you. It’s not that you suddenly accept your fate. Rather, that you now understand a central truth: there is a thing called tragedy, and it shadows us all. We live in fear of it. We try to keep it at bay. But, like death, it is omnipresent. It permeates everything we do. We spend a lifetime building a fortress against its onslaught. But it still triumphs. Because tragedy is so casual, aimless, indiscriminate. When it does hit us, we look for reasons, justifications, messages from on high. I get pregnant. I lose the baby. I am told I will never have another. I get pregnant again. I lose the baby again. What does this mean? Is somebody trying to tell me something? Or is this just how things are?
Later that day, Jim showed up. He was looking uneasy. He carried a small bouquet of flowers. They were already half-wilted.
‘I brought you these,’ he said, putting them on the little table by my bed. As soon as he set them down, he immediately backed away to the other side of the room. Either he didn’t want to crowd me, or he was uneasy about being within my close proximity.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
He positioned himself against the wall near the door. ‘How are you feeling now?’ he asked.
‘I really recommend morphine.’
‘You must have been in agony.’
‘Nothing a hysterectomy can’t cure.’
The color was bleached from his face.
‘I didn’t know. I’m so …’
‘I am the one who should apologize. I should have told you about this from the start. But I was a coward …’
He held his hand up. ‘No need to explain,’ he said.
‘The doctor said that if you hadn’t found me …’
There was an awkward pause.
‘I’d better go,’ he said.
‘Thank you for the visit. Thank you for …’
‘May I ask you something?’ he said, cutting me off.
I nodded.
‘The guy who got you pregnant … are you in love with him?’
‘Was. Very deeply.’
‘It’s over?’
‘Completely.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s not.’
I had no answer to that. Except something lame like: ‘Let’s talk when I finally get out of here.’
‘Uh, sure,’ he said.
‘I am sorry, Jim. Very sorry.’
‘That’s okay.’
But I knew that it wasn’t okay. Just as I also realized that news of my hospitalization would disseminate quickly through Brunswick. Certainly, Duncan Howell knew that I had been rushed to the Brunswick Hospital - as a big floral arrangement arrived that same afternoon. It was accompanied by a card:
The Pursuit of Happiness (2001) Page 63