by Nancy Thayer
David took her to lunch. They had champagne. He told her about the condominiums he was designing and the wing for the university. She told him, at length, about Jenny’s Book. He asked her if she would like to come see his new apartment. She said she would.
His apartment was as sleekly modern as his office. There were pictures of a beautiful brunette all over the apartment, by his desk, by his bed, on the kitchen wall. David told her that her name was Cynthia and he thought they would be married. Sara thought, Good, a challenge. She needed a challenge, she needed to win a contest, she needed more proof that she existed, that her body worked.
“You’ve changed,” David told Sara as they sank down into his dark leather sofa. He had brewed strong coffee for them, insisting that they had both had more than enough champagne for the day. “You’re quite different.”
“Oh?” Sara laughed. “Does that mean you don’t like me?” She had taken off the jacket to her suit. She was aware of the way her breasts moved against the red silk of her blouse, and her perfume filled the air.
“Oh, Sara,” David said, a gentle chiding tone in his voice, “you know I could never not like you. But I don’t understand you. Perhaps it’s just that it’s been so long since I’ve seen you. Seven years? At least seven years.”
Yes, it had been seven years since they had been together. They had been lovers. They had almost married. They would have had a good marriage, two ambitious professional people with their work centered in Boston; they would have been chic and clever and successful together. Sara had broken off the relationship; she had stopped loving him. She had not stopped caring for him, but she had stopped loving him, and after she met Steve she realized she had never been wild for him, not in the way she was wild for Steve. She had always liked David, though, and had liked having him in love with her, for he was an intelligent, thoughtful, handsome man, compact and well dressed, and as kind as he was brilliant.
Now, looking at him, she saw signs of age—inevitable, of course. She was certain he could see them in her. His black hair was thinning, his immaculately clothed body had thickened slightly, and there were crow’s-feet around his eyes. The skin on his hands had roughened. But still he had beautiful hands, supple, long-fingered pliant hands. And there were other parts of his body that were beautiful, that she had loved. Looking at him, she could easily remember his naked body. As she knew he could remember hers.
They had done things in bed with each other that all lovers do with one another. They had loved each other, but she had left him, unsatisfied. It had not been the right love for her. Still he was a desirable man, one of the most desirable men she had ever met. It mattered to her a great deal that he desire her, too, now, still, that he desire her enough to betray the brown-haired Cynthia.
Sara moved closer to David on the sofa. “Sometimes it’s easier to remember what happened seven years ago than it is to remember yesterday,” she said, smiling. “The good memories last.” She reached out her hand. She touched his cheek.
David reached up and took her hand in his. “Sara,” he said, “what are you doing?”
“What do you think I’m doing?” she said, moving closer to him. Her breasts touched his arm.
“Is this what you want?” David asked, and put his arms around her, and kissed her.
She replied by putting her arms around him and kissing him back with a real but deflected passion, which like the light of the day around them came glancing off something else. She kissed him with great need.
“Oh, sweet Sara, you’re still so sweet,” David murmured.
His hands were on her breasts, her waist, her stomach, her hips. He took off her clothes. He took off his clothes. He was lying on her on the sofa, both of them naked, his erect penis stabbing against her thigh as they maneuvered together. She remembered how she had once teased him about being a gorilla because of the hair that ran down his back and his chest and stomach.
But when he tried to enter her, she twisted away with a cry. “No, David. I can’t!” she said.
“Sara,” David said. His voice was angry. “For Christ’s sake.”
“Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” Sara said, and to her surprise as much as his, burst into body-racking sobs.
David, always the gentleman, drew back immediately. The leather sofa squeaked vulgarly with their movements. “Sara?” he asked.
And Sara, her white flesh vulnerable against the dark leather, pulled herself into a sitting position and looked at David with her wrecked tear-streaked face. “Oh, David, would you hold me, please?” she begged. “Would you help me?”
Puzzled, but kind—David was always so kind—he pulled her to him. He put his arms around her and pulled her over so that she sat on his lap, childlike, and he leaned back against the sofa and held her as if he were her father and she were his child. He held her and loved her as she was, naked, singular Sara. And at this kindness, Sara’s heart burst through the cold walls that had entrapped it. She cried and cried, her tears and mascara streaking down David’s naked shoulder, leaving trails of black. He held her, and smoothed her hair, and stroked her arm, and said nothing. Finally she was able to speak.
“Oh, David,” she said, “I’m so sorry. I’m such a bitch. I’m such a failure. I’m a horrid bitch failure. I’m nothing. I’m not even a woman, you are so lucky I didn’t marry you, I would only bring you misery, David, I’m cursed, or I am a curse, David, I wish I could die. I want to die.”
“Sssh, sssh,” David said. “Don’t say such things, Sara. They’re not true.”
“David, I can’t make a baby,” Sara said. She said this to his shoulder because it was too painful a thing to say while looking him in the face. “I can’t get pregnant. There’s something wrong with me. I feel like such a piece of trash. I feel so worthless. As if fate and God scorn me, disdain me, as if I don’t matter to whatever force it is that brings life into the world. And I’m making everyone close to me miserable. Steve, his mother, his father—how they must secretly pity me and hate me and wish they could be free of me. David, I can’t get a grasp on anything anymore. I can’t see myself. I can’t think straight. I don’t feel like a woman. I don’t feel feminine, female.”
“Oh, Sara, oh, sweet,” David said, soothing her. “Sara, you are beautiful, you are a beautiful woman.”
“No,” Sara went on, “you don’t understand. I’m nothing. I am useless. And I’m so fucking helpless in all this! And it’s all so unfair! David, I need a Kleenex.”
David rose, went into the other room, came back wearing a robe and carrying a box of tissues and a soft blanket. He waited until she had wiped her nose and eyes, then wrapped the blanket around her. He went into the kitchen, came back with hot coffee, which he had made sweet and strong and creamy.
Sara drank it, and the warmth of the blanket and the coffee soothed her. She leaned against a corner of the sofa and looked at David, whose dark eyes were sad and kind.
“I’ve got to go into the hospital,” she said, her voice calmer now. “I’ve got to have an operation. A laparoscopy, possible laparotomy. They’ll put needles in my veins and tubes in my mouth and drugs in my body. General anesthesia. They’ll cut my stomach open with a knife. I’m terrified.”
“You never were good with blood, I recall,” David said lightly. “Remember the night I sliced open my thumb when I was cooking you stir-fry?”
She smiled. “No, I never was good with blood.” She sipped her coffee. “David, do you know the worst thing about me? The very worst thing? Not just that I’m sterile, barren, useless. But I’m so full of anger, so full of a desire for revenge I can’t believe it’s me. David, I wake up in the middle of the night, thinking: I’m going to have this fucking operation, and I’m going to die on the operating table, and then Steve will be free, and his old girlfriend Mary will be there to console him in an instant, and they’ll be in bed together within hours, poor Steve, he’ll need solace, and then they’ll get married and have children together. Sometimes I want to say to Steve
, to scream at Steve, ‘Why don’t we just get divorced? Then you can marry Mary and have kids and I won’t have to die.’ ”
“That’s a horrible thing to think, Sara,” David said. “You should be ashamed of yourself. I don’t know Steve, but I can assure you that if you died his life would be ruined. If he lost you, his life would be absolutely ruined.”
Sara burst into fresh tears at David’s words. “Oh, David,” she sobbed. “What am I going to do? This thing is taking over my life. It’s warping everything.”
“Have you talked to Steve about all this?”
“I’ve tried. He won’t talk. He keeps on being so fucking cheerful about it all, he won’t admit he’s feeling any strain, and yet I know he is. I can feel it. Things are different between us. And if I tell him how afraid I am of this operation, he’ll tell me not to have it. But if I don’t have it, I may not ever have a child. Hell, if I do have it, I may not ever have a child.”
“But you’ll still have Steve. And he’ll have you. And, Sara, that’s a lot. If you love each other, it’s really everything.”
Sara looked at David. “Not everything,” she said.
“Well, close enough,” he told her, smiling.
“You’re such a nice man,” Sara said.
“Oh, yes, that’s true, I am,” David said. His face took on a slightly angry cast, his voice became bitter. “And I hope I’ve proved to you that you are feminine and desirable and … that your sexuality functions well enough to drive me crazy, even after all these years.”
“I’m sorry, David,” Sara said. “I didn’t mean to be—oh, I don’t know. I need so much now, and don’t know how to get it. But you’ve helped me, in a lot of ways. I wish I could thank you.”
“Just give your poor husband a break,” David said. “Just believe him. If he seems happy even if you don’t have kids, then he probably is. You’re a lot for any man, Sara. You’re enough for any man, all by yourself. You don’t need any attachments to make yourself worthwhile. To make yourself loved.”
Sara’s eyes met David’s and she smiled. “You are so wonderful,” she said. “You always were so wonderful.”
“I think you’d better get dressed,” David said, smiling back. “I don’t think you can trust my ‘wonderfulness’ too far when you’re sitting around wearing nothing but a blanket.”
Sara rose, pulling the blanket around her. “Where did you say your bathroom was?” she asked. Gathering up her clothes, clutching the blanket to her, suddenly shy and embarrassed, she went across the room, down the hall, and into the bathroom to get dressed. When she came out, she found that David had dressed again, too, and was standing by the front door, jiggling his car keys in his hand.
“Where can I drop you?” he asked.
“You’re angry with me, aren’t you?” Sara said.
“I feel used,” David told her. “I feel humiliated, like a naive little sophomore who’s just made a fool of himself.”
“Oh, David, I never meant to make you feel that way. I never meant, I never thought … well, that’s it, isn’t it, I didn’t think of you, I was so selfish, I only thought of myself. But if it’s any comfort, I don’t feel like you’ve made a fool of yourself. I think you’ve been—”
“I know: wonderful,” David said. “Sara, do me a favor? Don’t come at me again like that unless you mean it. Unless you want me.”
He drove to the art gallery on Newberry Street where Julia worked, and Julia, surprised and delighted to see Sara, invited her to spend the night. They took wine and quiche Lorraine and fruit to Julia’s apartment, got into their robes, and curled up on the couch to talk. Sara called Steve, told him she had had a good visit with Fanny Anderson, and that she would be home tomorrow. It was the first time in their marriage that she had really lied to him, and she felt sick with guilt. But Steve sounded his normal cheerful self, and she both loved him and felt irritated at him for that.
Sara told Julia everything: about Mary being pregnant again, effortlessly, about her motherin-law’s urging her to stop working, about her fear of the operation, about feeling more and more unreal, unworthy. She had woken up this morning knowing she must find someone who saw her for herself, not as a failed baby-making machine. She told Julia about her afternoon with David, and about his kindnesses. She felt so pressured and hurt by it all that she just wanted to escape, to run away somewhere—but where? And how could she, when she loved Steve?
Julia wore a heavy black silk Oriental robe embroidered with crimson birds, azure flowers, emerald leaves. Her thick red hair swirled around her head and over her shoulders. She was strangely silent when Sara finished, then got up and walked across the room, looked out the window, and came back and sat down.
“That’s a shitty thing you did to David,” she said at last. “Leading him on that way. I bet he felt like a fool.”
“Oh, Julia …” Sara began.
“Well, think how you would have felt if he had suddenly showed up to use you as an ego-testing ground. And Steve. What a thing to do to Steve! How would you like it if he went to his old girlfriend with his troubles?”
“He probably does, in his mind, at least!” Sara said. “You think I don’t imagine that he wishes he had married Mary, that he thinks about her when he sees her with her children?”
“Oh, shit, Sara,” Julia said. “Steve loves you. And if he says he’s not upset about having kids yet, then he’s not. Steve’s always told you the truth. You don’t have any right to think such things about him. Listen. I think I’m getting mad at you. I love you, but I’m getting mad at you, too. I just can’t stand to see you getting so soggy about everything. You aren’t the tragic case you’re building yourself up to be. You’ve got a fabulous husband who loves you. Do you have any idea how many women there are who would give all their teeth for what you have? Sara, you are really lucky. And you have work that you love and that has a good amount of glamour—how many women have that and someone they love who loves them? Maybe you won’t get to have a baby instantly, or ever, maybe you won’t get every single thing you want, but who does? That doesn’t give you the right to get so fucking maudlin or to screw Steve around by going off and sexing up with your old lover. You would be in a fury if he did that to you. I can’t believe you did it, I just can’t. You’re letting yourself get too spooked about this operation; everyone’s told you you’ll be fine, statistically you don’t have a chance of not being fine. Be a big girl. No one’s making you do it, you want to do it, you aren’t going to die, you’ll come out of it just fine, and you might get a nice little baby Steve or Sara out of it. So why not do it with some grace? And if you don’t get pregnant, do that with some grace, too. For God’s sake. Get your shit together.”
Julia was silent then, glaring at Sara. Sara glared back at Julia, amazed. Then both women grinned at each other.
“You look like an oracle in that robe,” Sara said at last. “You look like, if I don’t take your advice, you’ll clap your hands and lightning and thunder will streak out from your fingers.”
“They will, too,” Julia said. She raised her hands dramatically, then let them fall in her lap. “Oh, honey, what do I know?” She sighed. “I just had to tell you how I feel about all this. But you know I am sorry you haven’t gotten pregnant yet.”
“Well, I think what you said is right.” Sara stretched on the sofa. “I am lucky. Sometimes it’s easy to forget just how lucky I am. I think I’ll feel luckier when I wake up from the operation—and even luckier when my in-laws go back to Florida and I don’t have to get a daily neighborhood pregnancy report from Caroline. But you are right, Julia, I have been getting obsessed. It’s just that not being obsessed when it’s something that’s going on with your own body is so hard. It’s sort of like trying not to be in love with someone you’re in love with who doesn’t love you.”
“Or like being in love with a married man,” Julia said, smiling wryly.
“How is Perry?” Sara asked.
“How is he? He’s
with his wife tonight, that’s how he is.” Julia sighed. “Maybe I should go see David Larkin.”
“He’s got the brown-haired Cynthia,” Sara said. “And you’re too tall for him.”
“No, I’m not. We’re the same height. You just don’t want me to have him.” Julia grinned. “Oh, balls, Sara. In five years I’ll be married to Perry and you’ll be pushing three kids in a baby carriage, right? But for now we’d better go to bed. It’s after midnight and I have to work tomorrow even if you don’t.”
Sara watched Julia swank off in her opulent robe, her red hair swirling behind her. Julia had such energy, such force. Sara wished her friend were an oracle, a magician, a witch, and could use her powers for Sara’s sake. Although perhaps it was enough simply to have Julia as a friend; perhaps that was magic enough.
Sara arrived home the next morning to find Steve off at work, a note on the table telling her he loved her, and a packet from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital lying in wait with the rest of the mail.
The packet held a preadmission guide, complete with maps of the city and surrounding area, floor plans of the hospital, and pictures of healthy patients smiling as they sat with needles in their veins and blood pressure cuffs around their upper arms.
A special sheet for day surgery patients had been included for Sara. She was not to eat or drink anything from midnight on the night before surgery, not to wear any makeup, hairpins, or fingernail polish (Fingernail polish! Sara thought. Why ever not? How could it cause a problem?), not to wear any jewelry, including rings. She looked down at her wedding ring. She had never taken it off. Would they make her take it off for surgery?
As she read the information about surgery, certain words jumped out at her and held her captive: “anesthesia,” “intravenous,” “mask”—“sleep.” She could almost smell the acrid antiseptics she had inhaled as a child visiting the gruff and fractious doctor with his piercing needles, his total control over her helpless body.