by Nancy Thayer
“There,” she said to her reflection in the mirror, “your body might be hopeless, but it still looks good.”
Steve whistled when he saw Sara. And he paid her his ultimate compliment, using the word she allowed herself to interpret in many ways, as “gorgeous” or “beautiful” or “sexy.” He said, “Hey, you look really nice.”
Sara smiled and kissed him, secretly wondering if he would ever in his life tell her she looked anything but nice.
Steve looked nice, too, after he had showered and put on chinos and a button-down shirt and a sweater. The heavy physical work he did kept him in great condition; his stomach was flat, his arms and legs were shapely with muscles. Sara loved the contrast of his civilized clothes on his prize-animal body. And he was so pleasant to be with these days, fun, relaxed, optimistic, and easygoing. She was more in love with her husband now, she knew, than she had been when they were married.
Wade Danforth had brought out all his old 1960s records and before long Wade and Annie were laughing and doing the old hand-jive to Bo Diddley. Sara took off her shoes and danced barefoot. She was glad to see that all the other women had worn dresses or sweaters and skirts. All except The Virgin, who was wearing her usual tight jeans and tighter sweater. The outfit looked strange on her now that she was four months pregnant and her tummy swelled outward just enough to make her look pudgy. Mary sat in the corner most of the evening, talking to friends, shaking her head when asked to dance. Sara noticed that Bill Bennett was paying no attention to his wife; but actually he seemed to be in one of his black moods, avoiding everyone and everything except the kitchen counter where the booze was. Now and then Sara thought about talking to him—after all, she was an editor and he was a writer—but he had never approached her on the subject. No, she wouldn’t approach him; he was too scary, his dark moods emanating from him like a fog. She forgot about him and enjoyed herself, dancing with Steve and the other men, laughing and joking with the women, dancing again with Steve, drinking the champagne that had been brought for the birthdays.
She had enjoyed herself so much—and had had so much to drink—that when she went to the bathroom and saw that her pants were stained with a heavy flow of blood she felt only impatient, unreal. This hadn’t really happened, her period hadn’t really started, she didn’t even believe it. She was at a party, everyone was happy, she was having fun. She wouldn’t believe it, she wouldn’t let it be. She left the bathroom without taking any precautions against getting blood on her clothing.
Coming down the hall from the bathroom, she was given a tunnel view of Mary Bennett, who was still seated in her corner of the living room, snuggled against the sofa.
Steve was sitting on the arm of the sofa, looking down at Mary. As Sara watched, Mary took Steve’s hand and put it on her rounded stomach. She said something to him. Steve said something to her and smiled. With her hand, Mary moved Steve’s hand upward so that while the greater part of it touched her stomach, part of his hand touched her large swollen breast.
Immediately Steve took his hand away.
Mary smiled at Steve, and Sara, still in the hallway, could see the challenge in the smile. She was surprised that the sexual message Mary was transmitting hadn’t made the entire group turn and stare at her in amazement.
Steve rose from the sofa and walked away.
Mary turned her head and saw Sara coming toward her. Mary’s eyes narrowed like a cat’s or a vampire’s and she did not smile and she did not look away. She is a witch, Sara thought. She is a witch and she is cursing me. It seemed centuries before she arrived at the end of the hallway and entered the crowded living room.
Everyone was laughing, dancing, talking, but the magic had gone out of the party for Sara and it was with effort that she played her part. She danced until the stickiness between her legs made her realize she would embarrass herself if she didn’t do something. She made her way back to Annie Danforth’s bathroom. Locking the door behind her, she opened the big cupboard in the wall, looking for Tampax or a maxi-pad. She found both, and also found, with a frisson of delight, a First Response kit, a kit used to tell exactly when ovulation will occur.
So perhaps she wasn’t alone. Perhaps Annie Danforth was having trouble getting pregnant, too. Annie was in her early thirties and had no children. She would have to have Annie to lunch; they could drink wine, get confidential. What a relief it would be to know one other woman who was having the same problem! A wave of real relief swept through Sara, counteracting the despair that was rising in her body like a well of tears. Someone else was having a problem. She was not unique, abnormal—she was not so terribly cursed or flawed.
Sara put Annie’s things back in the cupboard. She washed her hands, combed her hair, refreshed her lipstick, stared at herself in the mirror. Did the pain show in her eyes?
When she came back into the living room, she found the party mellowing. Only Jamie and Sheldon were dancing. Everyone else was sitting now, sprawled on the floor or on the sofa and chairs, smoking cigarettes or pot, finishing beer or glasses of champagne. Everyone was there except Steve.
Sara went into the kitchen. No one was there. Even Bill Bennett had disappeared from his guard over the booze.
She went back into the living room, sank down next to Annie, and waited until she had finished talking with Carole to ask, “Where’s Steve?”
Annie yawned. “I was supposed to tell you,” she said. “He took Mary home.” Seeing the look of surprise on Sara’s face, she went on, “Where have you been? We’ve had quite a little drama in the past few minutes. Mary wanted to go home, I think, anyway she went into the kitchen and was talking to Bill, and the next thing we knew Bill was cursing and shouting and we all thought he was going to hit her or something. What an asshole he is. Anyway, he stomped out of here so fast he forgot his jacket. And then Mary asked Steve if he would drive her home; we saw Bill drive off in their car. Steve said he’d be right back.”
“Oh,” Sara said, feeling her voice come small and weak from her throat. “I was in the bathroom. I guess, with the music I didn’t hear—”
Carole leaned forward. “I just hope Bill’s not waiting at home when Mary gets there. He can be such a mean drunk.”
“No, it’s early yet, he probably went off to a bar,” Annie said. “At least I think that’s his pattern. I don’t think Mary’s afraid of him. I don’t think he’s violent or anything. He just says such awful stuff. Poor Mary.”
Carole looked at her watch. “You might think it’s early, but I don’t,” she said. “We should go home, too.”
Sara looked at her watch. It was just after midnight. She had been in the bathroom for perhaps ten minutes, she thought—the Bennetts didn’t live very far from here, no more than a five-minute drive. Steve should be back any minute.
Annie had risen to see Carole and Pete to the door. Other couples were getting ready to leave now. Women gathered casserole dishes and salad bowls. Sara watched from the sofa as the group clustered in the doorway and, couple by couple, disappeared into the night.
She was left alone with Annie and Wade. She did not need to look at her watch to know that Steve should be back by now.
“God, I’m beat, I’m going to turn in,” Wade said, stretching.
“Go ahead,” Annie said. “I’m just going to clean up a bit.”
“Let me help,” Sara offered, glad for a chance to do something that would make the time pass, so that she wouldn’t be sitting there awkwardly, abandoned. As she carried overflowing ashtrays and empty beer bottles into the kitchen, she thought about asking Annie about the ovulation test but decided against it; it was too late, they were too tired, Steve would surely be back any moment and their conversation would be interrupted. But what was Steve doing? Why wasn’t he back? Damn, why wasn’t he back?
A half hour passed intolerably slowly. The two women cleaned the living room, dining room, and kitchen, chatting all the while, dissembling. Just when Sara thought she could stand it no longer, that she would tur
n to Annie and let tears streak down her face while she bawled out her worst fears, there was a sound at the door and Steve came in.
“Hi,” he said. “Where’d everybody go?”
“The clock struck twelve,” Annie said, grinning. “They all turned into pumpkins.”
“What took you so long?” Sara asked, keeping her voice casual. She wanted to scream the words at him.
“Well, I had to take the babysitter home,” Steve said, “and then I stayed a few minutes to talk to Mary. Poor kid. Bill has such a temper.”
“I know,” Annie said. “Even when he’s not in a bad mood he’s scary. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him be really pleasant.”
“I guess he thinks that artists are exempt from ordinary rules,” Steve said.
“Was he home? Is Mary going to be okay?” Annie asked.
“No, he wasn’t home, and Mary said he probably wouldn’t wander in until early in the morning. He’s got drinking buddies he hangs out with. She’s fine. She’s not afraid of him, she just gets tired of him sometimes.”
On the way home in the car, Sara waited for Steve to say something else, to give her a fuller explanation. Surely he owed her that. He knew how she felt about Mary. And he had been gone a long time. But he said nothing. He drove in silence, occupied with his thoughts, and his silence was like fuel to the flame of anger that burned in Sara’s stomach and finally blazed up when they entered the house.
“Did you kiss her?” Sara asked, her voice accusing and grim.
“What?” Steve said, looking surprised.
“Oh, come off it,” Sara said. “You heard me.” Cramps spread in waves across her body and down her thighs. She could feel the heavy blood pushing its swollen way through her. Just so was her anger mushrooming its way upward from her body, expanding into a black cloud of wrath she could no longer contain.
“No, I didn’t kiss her. Jesus, Sara,” Steve said. He walked away from her, up the stairs to their bedroom.
Sara followed, feeling her body shaking with rage. “Well, did you hold her? Comfort her? Did you ‘comfort’ poor Mary?” Her voice was twisted with sarcasm.
Steve sat on the foot of the bed to take off his shoes. “No, I didn’t comfort her,” he said, his voice even and martyred. “I did talk to her. I mostly listened to her. She’s unhappy.”
“And she thinks you can make her happy. Right? Right?” Sara stood in the doorway, glaring at her husband. One part of her mind lifted up and away from her body, and, hovering somewhere in the north corner of their bedroom ceiling, stared down at Sara in amazement. Where did this harpy come from? What did she think she was doing?
“Sara, I’m tired. I wish you would just drop it,” Steve said.
“You go off and leave the party, leave me alone at the party, with all your friends knowing you’ve gone off with your old lover, you go off alone with her for over half an hour, and you want me to just act like nothing happened?” Sara said. Suddenly her anger became all confused with fear and she began to cry.
“Oh, Sara.” Steve sighed. “I hate all this so much, don’t you know it? I hate it when you’re jealous. Why can’t you trust me? Why can’t you believe me? I love you. I don’t love anyone else. I don’t love Mary. I just feel incredibly sorry for her. But I wouldn’t do anything with her. It’s just stupid of you to be jealous this way.”
Sara crossed the room and sat on the bed, as far away from Steve as she could get and still manage to find purchase. She huddled up against the headboard. “I can’t help being jealous,” she said. “When I see the way she looks at you. I saw her with you tonight. The way she took your hand and put it on her stomach. The way you smiled at her. The way she smiled at you.” She looked up at Steve, who sat at the end of the bed, his elbows on his knees, his head lowered into his hands. She waited, but he said nothing. His silence goaded her on. “Did you feel the baby move?” Sara asked accusingly. “Did you like touching her? Did you wish she were your wife and that were your baby?”
Steve didn’t answer. He only sat, head obscured in his hands.
Sara stared, tears streaking down her face. Then, startling herself, she grabbed a book from the bedside table and threw it across the room. It thudded against the wall and fell to the floor. “Goddamn it!” she screamed. “If you’re going to go off alone with your old lover, the least you can do is talk to me. If you want me, that is! If you don’t, then at least have the decency to tell me. Or I swear I’ll leave. I’ll pack my bags and leave and you’ll never see me again. That’s what you would like, isn’t it? Then you could be rid of me, and you could marry Mary and have babies with her. She could give you all the children you need.”
“Shut up, Sara,” Steve said. “Please just shut up.”
Sara was so astonished that she did go quiet. Steve had never said anything like that before. She rose, went into the bathroom and changed her pad, which was soaked with blood, rinsed her face with cold water, trying to regain some kind of control, then calmly went back into the bedroom. She took her suitcase from the closet and opened it on the bed. She would leave him. It was all over. She couldn’t believe it was happening.
“Sara,” Steve said. “Look. There’s something you should know. Christ, Sara, would you stop packing and sit down and listen to me?”
Sara looked at Steve. His face was strangely contorted. She didn’t think she had ever seen him look quite so sickened. She sat down on the bed, looking at Steve, not touching him.
“When Mary and I were going together,” Steve began, then stopped. When he spoke again, his voice took on the cramped tone of a man holding back tears. “When Mary and I were going together,” he said again, slowly, “she knew I didn’t want to marry her. I had told her, often, that I wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment with her. I was always honest about that. You have to believe me. I never led her on. I told her I didn’t love her anymore. But we kept on—going together—now and then, out of, oh, habit or convenience, I don’t know. Anyway, I got her pregnant.”
Sara’s heart was scalded with pain. The fire of all her anger turned back on her now and she burned at the stake of this new knowledge.
“It was an accident,” Steve was saying. “On my part, at least. I mean, I thought she was using birth control. We had talked about it, and she didn’t like me to use condoms; she said she would be responsible for it, she said she was on the pill. Then one day she came to me and said that she was pregnant, that she had done it on purpose, that she had been off the pill for months and hadn’t told me, that she wanted to get pregnant, she knew she was trapping me, but she wanted to marry me, she loved me enough for both of us, it would work out.”
Grief, misery, anguish, jealousy burned through Sara, blistering and scorching her heart.
“I told her I wouldn’t marry her.” Steve was silent awhile then. “I told her I absolutely wouldn’t marry her. I told her I didn’t love her, that we didn’t have that much in common, that I never wanted to touch her again now that she had tricked me—I said some pretty awful things to her that night. I called her a conniving stupid bitch, I called her … awful things. I told her I wouldn’t marry her. That I didn’t want to see her again. I told her the only thing I would do for her was to pay for an abortion.” Again, the silence. Then, his voice lowered, Steve went on. “She went to Boston and had the abortion. I gave her the money for it. And I never spent any time with her alone after that—and then I met you. So you see, Sara, if I had wanted children so damned badly, I could have had them. But I wouldn’t marry a woman just for children. I didn’t marry you for children. I married you because I love you, because I want to spend my life with you, however it works out. I can’t believe you could doubt that for a second. It makes me feel sick at my stomach when you say the things you say.”
“Oh, Steve,” Sara said, and moved across the bed, kneeling behind him. She wrapped her arms around him, leaned against his back and nuzzled her forehead against the back of his head. “Oh, Steve, forgive me. I’m sorry. I’m s
orry I’m so jealous. I didn’t know. I didn’t suspect. And I’m so nutty with not getting pregnant, it’s turning me into a crazy woman. Steve, I’m starting my period again. And I feel like such a failure.”
To her wonder, she felt Steve’s shoulder shaking. “I sometimes think,” Steve said, and she realized that he was crying, “I sometimes think it’s my fault, Sara. Oh, shit. I didn’t want to have a child aborted. I felt like a monster. A murderer. But I couldn’t marry Mary, it would have been hell for us both, it just wouldn’t have worked. I didn’t love her. But I didn’t mean to get her pregnant, and I’ve always felt guilty that I was the cause of an abortion. And I sometimes think … that this is my punishment. That we can’t have a baby, that I can’t have a baby with the woman I love, because fate, or something, God, whatever, is punishing me for causing an abortion.”
Sara could feel Steve’s body shaking and tensing as he fought for control. She kept her arms wrapped around him. When she could find the power to speak, she said softly, “Oh, Steve, it doesn’t work that way. It really doesn’t. You’re not being punished. It’s not your fault. It’s not really my fault, either, it’s not anybody’s fault, it just is. Oh, Steve, I love you. Don’t cry, oh, darling, don’t be sad. You didn’t do the wrong thing. You did the right thing. Steve, I’m so glad you told me all this, I know it was hard for you, but it will help me, don’t you see how much it will really help me? I won’t be jealous again like I was, I promise you that. It’s made things clearer for me, it was all blurry and suspicious, you and Mary, but now I can understand. Oh, Steve,” she said.
After a while Steve pulled away and went into the bathroom. Sara caught a glimpse of his face, which was red and blotched with emotion and embarrassment. She turned off the lights and took off her clothes. When he came back, she reached for him as he got into bed and put her arms around him like a mother around a child. It seemed to Sara that she had never loved him so much and so completely.