Bed Rest

by Sarah Bilston

  I examined Alison over my Earl Grey and wondered if we’d ever grow up.

  42

  Friday 1 P.M.

  I woke up this morning and glanced over at the empty place beside me in the bed. The large expanse of white sheet looked back at me, innocently, defying the resentful thoughts gathering at the back of my just-conscious mind. It’s hard to be angry with a bare white sheet.

  Then my gaze traveled across the room, to the wooden chair by the door to the master bathroom. A pair of Calvin Klein underpants were slung across the padded seat, legs uppermost, a sloppy figure eight in gray wrinkled cotton. Come over here and pick us up and put us in the laundry basket, they said to me, irritably, and hurry up, we’ve been here two days already. You just lie around all day while we get up, go to work, and do all that important stuff. Come on, why don’t you do a little something to earn your keep?

  Sod you, I told them sullenly as I levered myself out of the bed. You can find your own way, I have my own things to do, as it happens. You’re not the only ones with a job.

  After breakfast I opened the computer and cracked my knuckles. Time for research.

  Once upon a time, an investigation into rent control, rent administration, and the procedures required for demolishing buildings in New York City would have meant a day in a musty library scaling vertiginous shelves for huge tomes with gold-tooled bindings, tissue-paper pages, and microscopic print. Today, armed with a trusty Westlaw password, a woman on bed rest can figure out a surprising amount in about three hours.

  The first discovery came quickly. I cut and pasted into a Word document: The law prohibits harassment of rent regulated tenants. Owners found guilty of intentional actions to force a tenant to vacate an apartment may be subject to both civil and criminal penalties. Owners found guilty of tenant harassment for acts committed on or after July 19, 1997, are subject to fines of up to $5,000 for each violation. I saved the paragraph in a brand-new file called “Fuck Randalls” and then, as an afterthought, created a folder to house it titled (genteelly enough) “Randalls Discoveries.”

  Then I worked my way through the procedures “pursuant to the rent regulation code for the filing of an owner’s application to refuse to renew leases on the grounds of demolition implementing emergency tenant protection regulations.” (I’ve always rather liked lawyer’s English, the Shakespearean use of words like pursuant makes me think of dark foggy alleyways, rapiers at night, a twist of parchment in a dead man’s hand.) I highlighted, and cut, and pasted; I searched, I followed links, I created subsection upon subsection in “Fuck Randalls,” and a pretty list of documents to nestle beside it in “Randalls Discoveries” (to wit, “Sod You Randalls,” “No Way Randalls,” “Randalls Are Dead Meat,” etc. etc. etc.). To summarize: Randalls’ buyout offers fall woefully beneath the stipends required by law, and the tenants have not been given the requisite paperwork. And while we’re on the subject of paperwork—I pondered to myself, picking up the telephone at last—just where is that approval notice from the DHCR?

  It took me a while and a few vaguely deceitful assertions (I am technically still an employee at Schuster, so it wasn’t much of a lie) to discover what I’d long suspected—that Randalls’s application to tear down the apartment complex has not yet been approved. In fact, it’s due to be heard next month. Which means that there will be ample opportunity for the tenants’ legal representatives to contest the application and to make the landlord’s execrable behavior public. Time to find the tenants reliable legal representation.

  I picked up the phone and called Fay. This is the situation, I told her. I want Schuster to take on a case pro bono. I’m going to e-mail you a letter, and I want you to sign it, and then send it to a company called Randalls. We’ll also send a copy to both Smyth and Westlon and Crimpson Thwaite, their legal representatives. We’re going to threaten everything from thunderbolts to the electric chair, and we’re going to do it for a group of little old Greek ladies and gentlemen, for absolutely no money at all. Okay?

  What Fay said is not worth repeating, but at the end of the conversation, my point was won.

  I’ve never been terribly good at standing up for myself. And frankly, I’ve never been particularly good at standing up for my clients either; if I’m truthful, I’m not an especially gifted firm lawyer. Which is odd, because I did well at university and law school, better even than Tom, but he’s the one who ended up at Crimpson. Why is that? It’s struck me these last few weeks, as I’ve been lying here, that I’ve never managed to care very deeply about the people I’m supposedly helping. I find it almost impossible to worry about a client who’s already doing well: if they can afford to hire Schuster, well, they can’t be suffering that much. But these old people are different, they are suffering, and they have rights; the law is expressly designed to protect them. I won’t stand by and see their rights ignored.

  Well, that’s the pitch I’m going to make to Tom, anyway. Once the conversation with Fay was done, thoughts of my absent husband slipped unbidden back into my mind. Let’s face it, one day—soon—he’s going to know about all of this. He’s going to think I’m meddling in things I don’t properly understand, he’ll say I’m foolish and sentimental. He may even think I’m working with Mrs. G and Alexis deliberately to get back at him, to derail his client, to embarrass him with his partners.

  I can’t help that.

  If, when he gets back from his trip, he asks me what I’ve been up to, I will tell him. I’m not a deceitful person by nature. Certainly not. I’ll tell him everything—if he asks. But I’m not going to say anything unless he approaches me first, unless he says “Q, we’ve had some silly fights recently, but I love you, we’re having a baby, I want us on the same page. So what’s up with you?” If he says those words, then fine. If not—not.

  43

  Monday 7 A.M.

  I’m thirty-three weeks’ pregnant today. Tom has been gone for four days. Alison has been here for ten days. I’ve been awake for three hours. I last threw up twenty minutes ago.

  Tom called late yesterday evening, from Baltimore; Alison was in the room at the time, so I conjured up my brightest smile, asked after my in-laws, and tried to conceal from my sister the fact that I was shaking with a cold nausea, a horrible shivering sensation deep in my gut.

  Tom’s almost hysterically cheery tones told me that his parents were within hearing distance as well. “The baby’s good, yeah? Everything’s going fine?” he asked, painfully upbeat. Alison’s presence notwithstanding, I rolled my eyes. Why do people think a pregnant woman has some mysterious insight into how her fetus is doing? “Well, I asked him this morning, you know, and he said he was doing swimmingly, bit bored though,” I told him sarcastically, and then (conscious of Alison’s sharp little eyes), I laughed. “Haha. My joke. I mean, I felt him kick this morning, if that’s what you mean. And how’s that lease coming along?” I asked civilly, adding, as if compelled, “have you managed to screw any local residents down there? Destroy a few landmarks with a redbrick box? Hahaha! My joke!” I added, to cover up the venom. I smiled hugely at Alison as if to say, really, it’s just nonstop lively repartee in our household.

  Tom took a sharp breath. “Fuck you, Q,” he said, low, furious, and then, as if someone had just walked into the room, “hahahaha! My joke. Funny, funny. That was sooo funny.”

  Things suddenly seemed to have gone too far. We discussed the arrangements for Tom’s flight home in extensive detail and with extraordinary politeness for the next fifteen minutes while Alison flicked through her magazine pages (thwack! thwack!) and tapped her foot rapidly on the wooden floor. “Well, darling, I can’t wait to see you,” I finished, blandly.

  “You too, my love,” he replied, with equal blandness. “Really, I can’t wait to be home.” Click.

  Mrs. G came to see me yesterday afternoon after church, accompanied by Alexis, who asked, with evident discomfort, if he’d caused trouble between me and Tom. He realized at the party that my husband didn’t
know about my involvement with the residents’ action group (not, of course, that he realized the other thing, the fact that Tom himself represents Randalls, that I’m sleeping with the enemy, so to speak). I laughed lightly, cheerily. Of course it wasn’t a problem, I said, conscious once again of Alison’s needling eyes; Tom doesn’t mind, no really, it’s not a problem. Not a problem at all. Alexis was still looking anxious, but I firmly changed the subject to basketball—I’ve been watching it a lot these last few days, it annoys Alison no end—and he fell in with my lead. We talked about the kinds of skills Europeans bring to the NBA while Mrs. G snoozed and Alison drummed her sheared fingernails angrily against the table.

  After about ten minutes, Alison got up to take a bath. Casting an eye at his still-sleeping aunt, Alexis leaned his dark-golden head forward and said to me, in a conspiratorial whisper, “That girl I met here the other day, your friend, Brianna…I hope you don’t mind me asking, but is she single?”

  I breathed in his smell of soap and skin, of dry-cleaned laundry and peppermint shampoo. (The smell of man. I miss that smell.) “You know, I think she is,” I told him, leaning slightly closer. I could see the pink beneath his golden skin, the one long hair in his right eyebrow, the tiny scar on his forehead, an inch or so below his hairline. “Why, are you interested?”

  He blushed and gave me an embarrassed half-grin. “I am, actually. I mean, I was thinking of asking her out to dinner, but I didn’t see her at your party. I was sort of hoping—Well. If you can maybe give me her phone number, then I—y’know—” He trailed off as his face flushed deeper and deeper red.

  I smiled at his awkwardness, then quickly scribbled Bri’s number down; I told him I thought he should get in touch with her as soon as possible. Bri is obviously resisting Mark’s attentions, so now is a good time to approach her, before her resolve weakens. Not that I explained this to Alexis, of course; I told him simply that I approved of his taste in women and, as his aunt snorted herself awake, that I was confident Brianna would agree to have dinner with him.

  There’s something very sexy about helping two people get their relationship started. It’s got something to do with all that pent-up desire, I suppose, waiting to explode. It makes me remember those incredible first few days with Tom. (The first time I touched his skin, smooth as caramel. The first time I unbuttoned his cotton shirt and felt the hard warmth of his chest. The first time he kissed me until my bones shook. The first time I kissed him until his blue-green eyes lost focus and turned slate gray.)

  I reread Austen’s Emma over the weekend. I can’t think why she had such trouble with matchmaking; it’s a piece of cake. I think I’m going to go ahead and check the “unite lonely, single friends” box on my Modern Woman’s List today. This one’s definitely in the bag.

  10 A.M.

  Or—not.

  I’ve just had a phone call from Brianna. She wants to get back together with Mark.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” she began, “but it turns out you know my ex-lover!”

  Really, I said, wearily slipping back into the role of kindly-but-oblivious friend. You do surprise me.

  Yes, she told me; I saw him at your party. His name is Mark Kerry.

  Heavens above. Good lord. I’m staggered.

  “I knew you would be,” she said. “Well, it’s like this: he’s been calling me for a week, ever since your party. Every day. Many times a day, actually. I haven’t been returning his calls, not because I don’t want to, but because I want to make sure he really wants me. I wouldn’t go back to him if this is just an impulse thing, it’s not fair to his wife, is it? But you know, I think he really loves me. In a message yesterday afternoon he told me he adores me, he said there’s something he wants to tell me—what do you think it could be, Q? Do you think he’s going to leave his wife after all? I mean, maybe I’m jumping the gun here, but the way he said it, I couldn’t help wondering…”

  I listened to her speculations with rising horror. (And, if I’m going to be frank, some concern about my own reputation for truthfulness. If they get back together, Brianna’s going to realize that I’ve known about her relationship for a week now, she may even guess I’ve known about it for longer. Not that this is the most important thing on my mind right now, but still.)

  Brianna, I cut in, I know his wife, okay? I know Lara. She’s a friend—well, almost. I can’t sit by and watch you take off with her husband. She’s pregnant and she’s got two kids, and—and look (with rising desperation), Alexis was here earlier today, he asked for your number, he’s going to call you, and he’s so hot, he has gorgeous eyes, lovely hair, and he’s really nice, too—

  “Q,” Bri said, surprised, “sounds to me like you have a crush on this guy, but as for me, I’m afraid it’s no good, I’m not interested, Mark is The One. I’ll understand if you feel like you can’t stay friends with me, but when Mark calls next, I’m going to pick up the phone and say yes to whatever he asks of me. Whatever he asks of me,” she repeated, slowly, meaningfully. I hung up the phone.

  But as soon as I did, I started to panic. Brianna is a good friend; she’s also, let’s face it, my most devoted visitor. Who will bring me yummy lunches and afternoon cookies, if not Brianna? Who will whisper details of sexy nighttime dalliances, if not Brianna? Who will ask my advice on the intricate steps in the romantic dance, if not Brianna? And who will listen sympathetically to my problems, if not Brianna?

  Without Brianna I’m left with Alison. I picked up the phone and called her back.

  Bri, I said, we’re friends, right? I don’t want to judge too hastily. Come and see me this evening and we’ll talk things through. But then she told me she couldn’t. Mark had left a message on her voice mail while she and I were talking, asking her to meet him for dinner at Le Bernardin.

  What am I supposed to do now? Call Lara? Call Mark? Call Tom?

  5 P.M.

  Tom is due home from Baltimore tonight. Alison leaves tomorrow for England. So my husband and I will soon be together, alone, once again.

  I feel like a taut string, like the E on a violin, bright silver stretched to the very edge of snapping. The peg turns and turns, the notes rise higher and higher.

  My left index finger is bleeding heavily; I’ve spent the last half hour watching the blood soak through a succession of pink tissues. I cut it the other day trying to open an apple (it’s hard to use a paring knife while lying on your side). I need a new Band-Aid, but there’s no one to fetch it for me. Alison is shopping again. I seem to be falling apart.

  44

  Tuesday 6 P.M.

  Alison’s flight departs from JFK at 9 P.M. this evening. She left here a few moments ago with two new Louis Vuitton suitcases overflowing with luxurious purchases—a Dior evening dress in green silk, cashmere sweaters in every hue, an ebony bangle and a pair of earrings from Tiffany, an array of gorgeous silk ties for Gregory, stuffed toys for the kids, and that’s just the contents of case number one. Her meddling advice, I hasten to add, has stayed here with me.

  “I think you married Tom because you thought he was the kind of man Mummy would like,” she said over breakfast this morning. Ha—that shows what you know, I said, as I worked my way through a battered, buttered croissant. Mummy absolutely loathed Tom in the beginning, I told her, embarking on a flaky oversize pain au chocolat.

  “I know,” Alison replied, meditatively, “but still, I think part of you wanted to find a professional man to get her approval, while the other part wanted someone she’d absolutely hate. What did you end up with? An American lawyer. You’ve always been split, Q, in your relationship with Mummy. You’re half-desperate for her love, half-desperate to make her hate you so you don’t have to feel guilty about hating her. You’ve been like that ever since we were little girls.”

  “How much is your counselor costing you?” I asked, solicitously. “I mean, I take it that’s the source of all this psychological claptrap?”

  “You’re so aggressive,” she said, evenly. “Y
ou’re aggressive because you’re deathly competitive with me. It was incredibly confusing when we were kids, Q. You were sweet to me when you wanted to make Jeanie feel bad and awful when Mummy made you feel bad. I’ll admit it, as it happens, I have been seeing a counselor, and I was sad to hear you stopped seeing your therapist last year, Q. I think you have a lot of stuff to sort out, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  I did mind it, as I tried to tell her, but she was already well into the topic of “how are you going to bring up a child with a husband who’s never home.” “Thing is, Q,” she went on seriously, “I was here for ten days and I saw him—what was it? For about three consecutive hours. He uses this place as a hotel. Is that really acceptable to you, darling? How are you going to cope on your own when the baby’s been screaming for five hours straight?”

  “Is there anything about my life you approve of?” I asked her sarcastically, wondering why on earth a woman with no discernable talent, a lumpen deadweight of a husband, and two unbearable children was lecturing me—again—on the state of my existence.

  “I’ll be interested to hear what Mummy has to say,” she said severely, and my eyes rolled back in my head. Oh God, why did I ever think I wanted the woman here—is it too late to stop her from coming?

  Alison was still talking. “I know you don’t think much of Gregory, dear, you’ve made that perfectly clear, but we have an arrangement that suits us beautifully, and he supports my sculpting one hundred and ten percent. We have a peaceful home, I see my children all the time, and I enjoy my profession. Really, Q, I don’t think you’re on strong enough ground to be as judgmental as you are. And while we’re on the subject, you’ve been horrid to Jeanie about Dave. He’s not as bad as all that, and as far as I can tell you’ve spent very little time in his company.”