The thought of it made me want to giggle, and to hug him. “So you'd have a rendezvous at your apartment?"
“Usually. Once or twice the kids were away and I'd go back to the house."
“Did you ever bring her here?” I asked, gesturing across the lake to his retreat.
“No, not after we decided to divorce."
Somehow that made me feel better. “But you don't do this anymore?"
He shook his head. “I've been celibate for months. You can't just sleep with anyone."
My eyebrows rose. “No? You were prepared to sleep with me."
“That's different."
“How?"
“I'm not sure. Your long-term marriage, my special attraction to you, our being here together."
Though I didn't find this a completely satisfactory answer, I decided not to press him any harder. For a while I nibbled at my sandwich while he poured each of us a cup of coffee. When he handed it to me, he asked, “Why were you going to sleep with me?"
“Because I wanted to. I'd felt turned on since the drive up and ... I was just going to do it."
“But you couldn't."
“Of course I could have,” I contradicted him, feeling indignant. “It was you who misunderstood my tears and changed the outcome."
“So what were your tears about?"
He had been extremely open with me, but I found that I could not equal his honesty. “It's hard for me to explain."
“Try, Mandy."
Instead of finding a way to explain the circumstances without making Nigel and me look ridiculous, my eyes welled up with those stupid tears again. I waved aside his look of concern. “I'm fine, I'm fine. I shouldn't ... My tears don't mean anything. You must think I'm trying to manipulate you or something. I don't mean to. Just give me a minute. I'll be fine."
Which was true enough. While I finished the sandwich I stared across at the row of docks and the attractive houses beyond them, thinking only of the setting and the weather and the birdsong. After a while I said, “It has to do with my weight."
“What about your weight?"
“Nigel finds it unattractive."
“Weren't you overweight when you met?"
“Yes, but I've gained more over the years—childbirth, aging, eating too much, not enough exercise, the usual."
“And Nigel hasn't aged, or suffered from lack of exercise?"
My shoulders rose and fell. I wasn't quite able to meet Jack's gaze. “He's naturally thin, and he's one of these people who believe that all you have to do is exert a little willpower and you can be as thin as he is. Well, I guess most people believe that, especially doctors. And it's bullshit, Jack."
“How do you know?"
Never in my life have I been able to discuss this issue with someone close to me without feeling devastated. Any hint of criticism feels like a veritable avalanche to me. I can discuss weight rationally, even professionally, with other people, but not with people whose opinion means a great deal to me. Jack was beginning to fall in that category.
“Will you really hear me if I tell you?"
“Of course."
I grunted. “Of course, nothing. People have their minds made up about this. They don't really hear what you say. Have you ever told a patient to lose weight?"
“That's hardly my province, Mandy. Their weight has nothing to do with their need for brain surgery."
“So would you if you were a pediatrician, or an internist?"
“I don't know. There are some conditions that are exacerbated by weight. I'd encourage patients with those conditions to lose, I suppose."
“But your average, healthy patient who was overweight, would you talk about it with her? Or don't you think a patient can be healthy if she's fat?"
He shook his head and laughed. “You're spoiling for a fight, Mandy. You're just waiting for me to take one wrong step so you can decide I'm full of it, and you don't have to pay any attention to my opinion."
I glared at him. “You didn't express an opinion."
“I think overweight people can be healthy.” He regarded me intently, then, with his brows slightly raised. “But you aren't really interested in my opinion as a doctor. You're interested in my opinion as a man, and not about health so much as attractiveness."
That was partially true. Right now my main concern was whether Jack could possibly find me attractive. And was there a difference between sexual attractiveness and just general gosh-you're-pretty attractiveness? Hell, what did I want him to say?
When I didn't say anything, Jack added, “I'm betting you know you're desirable. You've as good as said other men have found you sexy and have come on to you. You radiate some kind of excitement, this special glow, that announces you're a woman with vigor and passion.” His eyes traveled the length of my body, and his lips twisted ruefully. “And you are definitely voluptuous."
My heart pounded uncomfortably when he said that. If we'd been at the house ... Well, we weren't. “Thank you,” I said. “I'm glad you think so. But I'll bet you've never found a heavy woman sexually attractive before. It's just because you're depressed."
“An interesting assumption,” he mused, leaning back against the seat. “Now Karen is certainly on the thin side. Mmm, let's see. Have any of the ‘see but don't touch’ attractions to other women been to larger women?” He seemed to consider this point for some time, squinting against the sunlight that had decided to pour down on the lake. “I don't think so. Does it matter?"
“Of course not.” I stared at the forest of newly-leafing trees at the curve of land ahead. “Were you always faithful to your wife?"
There was a short pause before he answered. “Yes, but I admit to a couple of flirtations the last few years. Nothing adulterous, just a few stolen kisses and lunches. Another reason why I consider myself to blame for the divorce. I had just gotten so restless, so disappointed and frustrated. I thought the flirtations might let some steam off."
“Did they?"
“Not really, because they didn't solve any problems.” He shifted irritably on the wooden boards, a frown darkening his face. “Even though I'd chosen women who seemed to enjoy the spice of that kind of relationship, I couldn't justify it to myself. I kept thinking I might hurt one of them."
“Well, you might have,” I said, feeling very defensive.
“Not with the women I chose, apparently."
I could feel my chin stiffen. “I'm not like that."
“Mandy, you've got to stop intertwining subjects here. We weren't talking about you, were we?"
“No, but I'm another one of these women you've chosen to have a flirtation with."
“But I'm not married anymore, and we also didn't have sex sex."
“We would have."
He smiled a lazy smile at me. “Yes."
“So what was that all about?"
“Pure and simple sexual attraction, between you and me, consenting adults. We chose to play with fire and I don't think it's burnt us. The real question isn't why we did it, but whether we're going to do it again."
My chest had begun to ache. “Are we?"
His brow wrinkled in a perplexed frown. “I'd guess you have a lot to think about before that question gets answered, Mandy. Not that I don't have some thinking of my own to do—about this depression and other things—but the way I'm feeling right now, there's no question that I'd rather be in bed with you than out in this canoe."
My sentiments exactly, but I knew from the set look on his face that he wasn't going to pursue that desire until I made an assessment of my situation. He was a forty-three year old man with a great deal of sexual experience, not a teenager fumbling his way toward his first achievement of intercourse. If I told him right then that I had no conflicts about sex with him, and that we could simply go back to the house, he wouldn't believe me. And obviously, considering my tears, it wasn't true, as much as I wished it was.
“Okay,” I sighed. “I'll do some heavy-duty thinking."
“I'm
off for a week's trip on Tuesday. That might be a useful separation.” Jack shifted back onto his seat, retrieved his paddle and winked at me. “Let's move this baby along a little faster, Mandy, and get some real exercise."
Chapter Twelve
Jack and I became pals. God, I hate being buddies with a man. At least Nigel and I weren't buddies. We were sort of friends, but not buddies. What buddies do is hang out together fairly often, and tease one another, and not have any serious or sexy exchanges. They keep it light. Women have more sense than to maintain the emotional distance men do with their buddies.
From the time we left Oconomowoc until Jack departed for his trip to Seattle, and then after he returned a week later, we spent time together, but it was carefully regulated time. We rode bikes, we often sat beside each other in the dining room, we spent time in the living room with the other boarders, pontificating on topics we wished to impress each other with. But we spent no time alone in any situation where we could possibly become intimate, accidentally or on purpose.
This was not my choice, and yet I suppose it was what had to happen. I was finding it difficult to think about my relationship with Nigel. We didn't actually have a marital relationship. Being married was something different. Though we were technically married, we might have been reasonably compatible roommates, sharing an interest in this child we had created a long time ago.
When I had called home the week following my trip with Jack, Nigel was there but he was distant. Abstractedly he asked about my work at the University and inquired about my enjoyment of my trip, but he had little to say for himself. Everything was okay. The house was okay, the garden was okay, London was okay. He hadn't accepted any invitations to dinner from neighbors; he was much too busy.
Trying to elicit a personal remark from him, I said, “Sounds like you don't even have time to miss me."
“It's turning out to be a very good time for you to be away,” he said earnestly. “I'm getting an incredible amount of work done, just an amazing amount."
“I wanted you to tell me you missed me, Nigel."
“Well, of course I do. You know that."
But I didn't know it. In fact I suspected quite the reverse. His life went a great deal more smoothly when he didn't have to be home to share dinner with me, when he didn't have to hear about my day, when he didn't even have to explain about his own. Nigel had probably been meant to be a loner. He would have popped some frozen dinner in the oven and let it burn while he read a report, or lingered over his meal considering some problem until every bite of his food was stone cold.
Earlier, when Cass was a child, Nigel and I had joined forces to do our best for her. We had, to the extent we could, planned our lives around her. That goal had held us together. Our relationship to each other had disappeared somewhere along the way, without explosions of anger or noisy recriminations.
But I had felt anger, and shame.
Because the earliest and most noticeable change in our relationship was that Nigel no longer touched me, no longer made love with me. I had thought he must be having an affair. What other excuse was there for such behavior? Never one to keep my thoughts to myself, I had accused him of having a mistress, and he had laughed. His laughter had devastated me.
Not only was he obviously telling the truth, but my impeccable logic insisted that if the problem wasn't another woman, then it was me. Nigel was still living with me, and assured me he had no intention of ending our marriage. So the logical conclusion I had to reach was that my body no longer appealed to him.
Gradually I came to believe it was my weight that had sapped any desire from him, though he would half-heartedly deny it when I asked. He insinuated that he no longer felt much sexual desire at all, but I found this argument unconvincing. We were young and healthy, and I certainly had lost none of my sexual desire. Obviously it was my size that repulsed him.
For a while I hated my body, which I had never previously paid much attention to. In my family having a hearty appetite was considered a healthy attribute, even if one became rounded and overweight. Somehow my full limbs and breasts and hips and buttocks had seemed lush to me. This was the size my body was intended to be, and I always thought of myself as having the courage to satisfy my appetites, both for food and for life.
Denying myself the food my body seemed to require had never occurred to me, but in the desperate desire to win back Nigel's ardor, I decided I would lose the extra weight. Nigel was unfailingly encouraging, urging me to lose more and more, delighted as the pounds fell away. And he was patently disappointed when I never reached the chart weight for my height.
“But you look so much more attractive this way,” he'd said as he stood behind me one morning, surveying me in the mirror. “You're wearing more elegant clothes. You look healthier."
“And am I more desirable?” I'd asked.
He'd turned away, adjusting his tie. “That's not the issue, Mandy. You're losing the weight for yourself—for your health and your appearance."
The weight loss changed nothing between us physically.
And soon, my weight increased. I watched in dismay as pound by pound it returned.
Maybe if I'd never tried to lose weight and then to keep it off, I would never have felt the shame. But there was something mortifying about failing in such an important (and seemingly simple) undertaking. My marriage and my future happiness were at stake, weren't they? Obviously I didn't have the necessary willpower, or the determination, to succeed.
The issue of weight, which had previously been a non-issue with me, became an open wound in my marriage. Professionally I espoused the view that I was the size I was intended to be, and I could cite studies like the ones Sarah's folder was full of, to prove it. But at home I was always vulnerable to that shoulder-tingling, face-burning mortification of being a woman whose weight, and whose personal life, were out of control.
Like unfinished, and unfinishable, business, I seemed tied to Nigel by my failure. I knew it made no sense. I knew it was contradictory to my whole rational insistence that I was a perfectly acceptable person in my round body.
But that drastic emotional split existed in me. I had lived with it for many years. And even for the joy of being in Jack's arms I could see no way of resolving it. So I remained buddies with Jack, giving him the companionship and support he needed while he worked to reestablish his equilibrium—and I longed to establish a more intimate relationship with him.
One day when Jack and I were having lunch together at the hospital cafeteria, he left his pasta salad to answer a page. Standing by the wall with the phone in one hand, his expression became intense and distant. When he frowned, the dark line of one eyebrow came down lower than the other. I found this asymmetry as endearing as his lopsided smile.
“Sorry,” he said as he returned to the table. “Nastor's got food poisoning or something. I'm going to have to fill in for him. They already have the patient prepped in the O.R.”
He began to lift his tray and I motioned him away. “Don't worry about that. I'll take care of it."
“Thanks. See you later, Mandy.” Jack took two or three steps away from our table, then suddenly turned. “Would you like to observe?"
“The operation?”
He nodded. “This is a pregnant woman with a spina bifida fetus. We're doing in utero surgery to see if we can repair the problem."
I wasn't even sure they were doing that in England. Of course I wanted to observe. “You're on,” I agreed, jumping to my feet.
“Good thing no one's depending on you to be in your office this afternoon,” he teased as he grabbed up both of our trays, with all that uneaten food, and delivered them to the tray return window.
“Yeah, I'm really lucky."
Apparently there were often observers at neurosurgery operations. No one questioned my being there. Jack handed me over to the circulating nurse when we arrived, and she saw that I had the appropriate scrubs. I joined two medical students who were already there.
&nb
sp; The neurosurgery operating room was much like the OB/GYN ones. Smaller, perhaps, but even with the extra observers it didn't feel crowded. Bright light bathed the sterile surfaces of metal and tile. There were glass-fronted cabinets with shelves and shelves of supplies. The surgical tray being overseen by the scrub nurse had wildly different tools than those I was accustomed to.
Jack spoke with the patient, a pregnant woman in her early thirties, before allowing the anesthesiologist to put her under. Then he began to recite the facts of the case, for the medical students and resident as well as for me. His voice, deep and unmuffled by the surgical mask, quietly filled the small chamber. He worked as he talked, explaining everything as he went along.
My eyes were glued to his hands, hands that seemed amazingly adept as he got into the real work of the operation. On a routine ultrasound, he explained, the developing fetus had been identified as suffering from spina bifida. God, I remembered the first time I'd delivered a child with that unfinished spinal cord. My heart still trips when I think of it. In those days it was a surprise, and we hadn't the options we have now.
Though the operation was a tense one, Jack never lost his easy calm. He described for his audience what the problems were and how he was attempting to solve them. “If we're lucky,” he said at one point, “this will sufficiently repair the defect that the child will develop normally. In any case, there will be no scar."
That's one of the fascinating things about in utero surgery. The incisions heal perfectly, as if they never occurred, like a miracle. Nothing after birth leaves so little mark of its happening.
“Dr. Potter,” Jack said suddenly, out of the blue.
“Yes, Dr. Hunter?"
“Can you recall the incidence of spina bifida in England?"
“Not with any precision,” I admitted. “Is it different from in the States?"
“I believe it's slightly lower, but I'd have to check the record. Have you delivered children with spina bifida?"
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