Great With Child

by Sonia Taitz

  “I love you too much,” he explained. “And you don’t care, do you!”

  “Of course I care!” she’d howl.

  Both of them played this scene over and over, as though they enjoyed it. And then, one day, he told her they were through.

  Because of him, Abigail had come close to committing suicide. “Where I come from, that is not so unusual,” said Anders, refusing even then to melt, even a little. Abigail had suffered even more, unable to stop loving this ineffable man who finally went back to Bergen and, she heard, committed suicide himself. Over a different woman, nothing like herself. Some Norwegian singer he’d heard at a café.

  She seemed to like unstable people. Abigail’s best friend that same year was a gorgeous, tortured bulimic, Sydney, who, despite her habit of vomiting into the plastic bags she carried everywhere, grew so fat that her parents had her institutionalized in Bedford Hills. By the time Sydney was released—slim, serious, and ready to study the history of art—Abigail had decided to do pre-law. That “big bucks” motif had spoken to both her despair and her wish to escape it. This way, I don’t feel. This way, I don’t need anyone.

  Since then, she had marched along the straight and the narrow, with the occasional boyfriend who never entrapped her. Abigail’s real goal, like that of her infrequent dates, was long-term and practical. It was ordinal, sequential, like a well-wrought video game. You got one diploma, then another, and then you got a job. You got raises, you got promoted. It was all as rectilinear as the corners of her office, as her hard, wooden desk. It was doable if you worked hard and didn’t fall down.

  Her mother’s sickness, however, her mother’s slow death, had put some crazy, free-form lines into the picture, some retrograde motion and infinite loops. No one should have to shovel clods of earth onto their mother’s coffin. Thud. Like the most horrible winter—a winter of hailstorm and mud. But that was her mother’s tradition, and Abigail and her sisters followed it. Just after she had seen her mother obliterated by dirt, in a grave, finished, Abigail had experienced some of the old, strange hunger. And she’d felt herself drop into longing, a hole so deep it had no earth below to end it.

  This past March, not long after the burial, Abigail Thomas had fallen hard for an older man. The death of her mother had opened up a bottomless need, and this man had seemed to satisfy it. He was a lawyer—a senior partner at Murdock & Hill. One of the best firms in the world.

  Richard Trubridge was tall, subtly handsome (in a way that had crept up on her), and just beginning to gray. He appeared to be in his early forties. His glasses were thick black Peter Sellers/Dr. Strangelove frames that suited him. Abigail had encountered Richard on a golfing weekend. Senior associates and partners of several equally prestigious firms were sent on a junket with the purpose of honing their handicaps on a Palm Springs course. Abigail had stood alone with a borrowed set of clubs, astounded by the vista. A calm, planned greenness went on for rolling miles, just to entertain them. Outside of her mother’s graveyard, she had not seen such a vast expanse of weedless lawn. The breezes ruffled her white shirt, cooling her back, down the spine.

  Richard Trubridge had noticed her solitude and momentary stillness. In a quiet tone, he had offered to coach her game. His actual words were:

  “Do you need some help there?”

  “Yes,” Abigail had admitted, finding that phrase very tempting. She did need help.

  The scene was, as lawyers say, paradigmatic: the mentor’s arm around her shoulder, helping a girl through the moves. Richard wore a pleasant outfit: peach Lacoste shirt, crisp white pants, brown-and-white golfing shoes. She smelled his nice bay rum as he lingered behind her. His breath tickled her ear. She heard his deep voice, kindly: “Hey, that’s not too bad.” The voice was familiar from somewhere.

  “Really?” She turned around and looked at him searchingly. Richard’s salt-and-pepper hair was long, curling at his neck. There was a touch of pomade, an old-fashioned gloss. She recognized him with a jolt. He had briefly worked at her firm.

  “Now, just a little bit more like this.” He swung her arm again, at the sky, and over her shoulder, and over his, behind her. They walked on to the next hole. Their steps seemed to fall into rhythm together, the length of the strides, the tempo. There was a harmony of bodies as he taught and she learned.

  Hours passed, and the skies began darkening. Abigail could feel Richard looking at her lips. She hoped she looked pretty in the twilight on the fairway. He suddenly kissed her, and she let him, and she sensed that he sensed he could go on. His lips felt full as they sank deeply into hers. The kiss became possessive, questing. Richard held Abigail, his hands on her cheeks. He asserted his right to this kiss, to that touch, and she gave it, over and over.

  As the orange sun slipped downward, Richard and Abigail walked to the short green grass by a water trap. Just beside a fecund pond, covered in algae, surrounded by swaying cattails. Abigail knew that he wanted her to lie down. She did, and she held her arms up to him. He looked down at her and sighed, and sank.

  Yes, Richard sank, as though prayerful with gratitude, to his knees. She saw him sway above her. Then he stretched his length across and blanketed Abigail, pressing his weight into her, and into the earth. And then he came in, deep and slow, as though driving a shot. Richard Trubridge took his time, whether drafting a brief, talking matters over with an associate, or making love. As the world disappeared into a dizzy darkness, Abigail felt proud of herself somehow. Nothing sentimental, no fear, no prudery. A mutual agreement. She tried not to think too tenderly about the person, Richard Trubridge, who smelled of the sun and bay rum. This was just sex with a man, rough and ready. And yet he was so tender, even awkward at times.

  Afterward, back in her own room, Abigail reflected. She had not been with a man since she’d broken up with an old law school classmate, Jed Tayler, a long and disappointing on-and-off relationship. When her mother had begun to radically decline, Jed had pulled back, refusing to come to the hospice with Abigail. True, she hadn’t spared him any details. As though threatening him to look away, she had forewarned him, told him that the cancer had now gone to her mother’s bones, lit them up with poison, and that there were tumors in her brain as well, making her alternately stuporous or frighteningly blunt.

  he had warned Jed that her mother might scream. One time, she had told him, her mother had said to her, to the daughter she’d served for over three decades: “I hate you, really! You snob, du falsche katz! What good you are to me? Du kenst mir nicht! You don’t know me, all right? Now go away from me, go far, you tricky puss!”

  Abigail could not go far, but Jed could. He had looked away, begged off, changed the subject. Finally, with a forced calm (as though it were Abigail who was ill), he had said he couldn’t “take women when they were emotionally upset.” From that time, she had soldiered on alone.

  If Abigail could handle this, helping her mother suck from an orange as her lips trembled and the juice spilled over them both, if she could take the sight of her sunken eyes, lifeless as a snapper on ice, or ablaze with ferocious lunacy, if she could take in the sound of her mother’s mouth bursting into fierce, disappointed German, then why couldn’t macho Jed? Jed, who had always called her “darling,” and “sweetheart”; Jed, who was currently facing down adversaries in the Federal District Court like a warrior, two briefcases and a mean mouth—what good was he to her? When Jed had no words to describe or rebut, no words to fight with and win, he got out of the ring.

  The skill came gradually, but in the end Abigail grew inured to horror. She was able to stroke her mother’s oval head and her knobby, aching feet. She could lay her ear next to her mother’s sunken heart (loyal, Abigail felt, despite the cruel words) and listen to the weak but steady beat. Abigail had finally felt she didn’t need anyone. She was working then, of course; she was always working. She could check her watch, leave the terminal ward, put in the hours at her job, then go right back to her mother’s failing life.

  As she got dr
essed up in her evening attire, Abigail reflected on how privileged her life was now. Yes, she’d come from an immigrant family. Yes, her mother had died a lingering death that nothing anyone did could avert. But she, Abigail, had worked hard all along, and that work had paid off. And here she was, on a flashy junket in Palm Springs. All expenses paid. Abigail felt ravenous as she anticipated the evening’s elegant four-course meal, the cocktails, the cassis sorbet, the cognac after dinner. This was the expense-account life, and she was determined to sup with passion, like those to the manor and country club born.

  At the same time, she had misgivings. How unreal it all seemed—and how easily it might still be taken away from her. Earlier that day, as Richard Trubridge’s body lay upon hers, shudders waning, Abigail had felt how tenuous her grip on fortune was. As they’d parted, each walking off in a different direction, she had actually thought of grabbing some of the hotel stationery, the pens, perhaps a small white towel to lay, cool and wet, upon her face when she returned to her little apartment. She suspected that what she and Richard had experienced, however beautiful (the sunset and his touch), had most likely meant nothing to him. After all, unlike her, Richard Trubridge was certainly used to trips like this.

  And she was right to be cynical. Her tender new lover had not even shown up later, skipping the lavish supper she’d so looked forward to. Not that Abigail would have dared sit with him at his partner’s table—she was too smart for that kind of exposure (already a few observant associates were making smarmy cracks). But she would have enjoyed merely sharing a secret across the room, and the promise of more to come. (Yes, more “nothing,” but still better than actual, literal nothing.) The conference wasn’t over. They’d have to weather not only this night but other days; wasn’t there some sort of tacit agreement about how these things went?

  There was far more to it than manners. Abigail remembered how they’d met years earlier, and how different Richard Trubridge had seemed, even then, from other men. So different that she’d never forgotten him. So different that he’d really hurt her now.

  Tender, old feelings began to return. Abigail had felt oddly attached to Richard, connected in some way, from the time she’d first laid eyes on him. He seemed like a decent person, someone who had a soft, pliant heart—and these were few in the corporate-law business. In those early years at the firm, still dating callow boys like Jed, Abigail had wondered about men like Richard Trubridge. Thrillingly, he caught and held your glance when you spoke to him. There was an electric connection there, along with the sense of a personal gift. She’d asked him something in the reference library once, and he’d actually put his book down and considered how best to help her. That quick availability, that submission, the sudden access—it had been somewhat erotic. And not in any of the ways she’d felt before. It was as though he’d gently cast a spell.

  There was also a sensuous, almost languorous quality to Richard’s movement. While other lawyers raced purposefully through the hallways, as though translating the importance of their work into velocity and pushiness, Richard walked slowly, almost humbly. His tread was graceful. He let people pass him. He stopped here and there to look in on another lawyer, to chat. Even with associates. He was especially considerate to the support staff, and would often be seen simply listening to them talk about their children, their hobbies, their weekends. He always seemed to have more time than other people. To make time extend a little. He’d made time extend for Abigail, and it had stretched generously before her when she’d first met his eyes.

  Yes, she remembered that sense of how good he was, how he’d linger in attention in a rare and moving way. But he seemed to act that way with everyone. Had he ever really noticed her? Yes, he’d helped her in the library, of course he must have “noticed” her. But associates like her, even attractive female ones, were many—and Richard was one of the partners. There was an aura around him, even if he seemingly did nothing to maintain it. It drew her in, from the bottom of her feet to her scalp. But had she done the same to him? It was foolish to think so.

  Abigail remembered their first conversation. She’d asked him about finding a precedent to extend the scope of “undue influence”—the phenomenon in which a signatory to a contract, usually elderly, is thought to be coerced by a biased party. Richard had carefully asked her about the facts of her case, then mulled them. It was as though he wanted to see if there actually had been undue influence. This was strange and new, because in law firms you typically just took the side you were given. Abigail had not been asked to decide if there had been any undue influence; she was supposed to show that there was. She was supposed to find a precedent that would push the fact pattern her way, to that predetermined conclusion.

  Richard had wanted to hear the story—her story—fresh. He’d wanted to hear it without the “undue influence” of his professional position, the “side” the firm wanted to take, or anything else that was extraneous or contaminated by bias. Richard actually seemed interested in the truth of the matter. When his eyes had met Abigail’s, when she realized this man wanted to simply know what had happened, something else happened. It happened inside Abigail, deep inside her. A tiny revolution. A lurch out of the ordinary orbit.

  She’d almost started crying. It had been a fleeting moment, but Abigail had been moved to tears by an honorable man who seemed strangely irresistible to her. Not only did he arouse sensual fantasies (imagine his attentions on the horizontal plane), but these were coupled with a sort of hero worship that felt as delicious as blind trust. She felt—she knew—that Richard Trubridge was one of the few who cared about the right things. And he would take his sweet time to set them right, to make them go in the right direction, however slowly, however long it took. In the end, this was a kind of power, Abigail thought, longing to know this power.

  When her mother was diagnosed with cancer, Abigail had thought of telling Richard about everything that was going on in her personal world. She wanted to know how a kind person should act and would act. She wanted to pour her heart out to him, and to have his own good heart receive—and heal—the painful aspects of her life.

  But she and Richard Trubridge were not friends, or even professional peers. They had simply had a moment together—one that was now sparking deep feelings in Abigail—but perhaps only she had experienced it as special.

  Having just made love to that very Richard Trubridge, Abigail’s dormant attachment came back, full blast. The man’s absence from dinner invited even more emotion. She had taken so much care to wear a gorgeous dress and the very uncomfortable shoes that made her legs look longer; she had taken great pains with her hair and her makeup, shy to be seeing the man after sweating with him on the greens. But he wasn’t there. Was he actually avoiding her, or was he sick of rich, long meals?

  This confusion created energy: as quickly as she could escape the banquet, Abigail began searching for Richard. But to her consternation, he wasn’t at any of the bars, either. Keeping her voice businesslike, Abigail asked the front desk for his room number. When she rang Richard Trubridge, his line was busy. She took it as a direct rebuff; it inflamed her with need.

  She wasn’t sure how to act now. She felt lost. She wasn’t used to doing nothing. Letting go. Instead, she turned fierce, as though that meant she was strong.

  There she was, then, knocking on his door, the sound reverberating.

  “Is someone there?” Abigail heard Richard’s voice call out. Despite herself, it thrilled her. She hesitated, wanting to run away and desperately wanting to stay.

  “It’s me,” she said, finally, her voice rising up like a wail.

  “Who is it?” She realized he might not even know or remember her name.

  “We played golf together earlier. Remember, we stopped—for a while—near the water trap?”

  After a moment, Richard Trubridge opened the door.

  “Abigail,” he said, and the sound of her name in his mouth, and the way his warm baritone voice said it, reassured her even as it
made her hungrier. Richard was wearing a white hotel bathrobe, his dark hair glinting as though he had just showered. A room-service tray sat off on the side table, the dome of the main dish glowing by lamplight. Richard’s face was tired. It was now ten fifteen. Abigail took a step toward him.

  “Uh, listen, I was just about to turn in,” he said, too polite to take a step backward. He loomed over her, so close she could smell the elegant hotel soap, and murmured, “Long day, don’t you think?”

  “It’s not my bedtime, kiddo,” she heard herself retorting, as though she were in a bad forties movie.

  “You should get some rest.” He spoke quietly, and not unkindly.

  “Can’t I just come in and stay for a minute?”

  She hated the way this was going. Now she sounded like some kid whose parents are heading out on a Saturday night, leaving her behind with a game of Life and a dish of Mott’s applesauce.

  After a minute, Richard nodded. Abigail brushed into his suite, past the small living area, and into the bedroom. A great big bedroom, much nicer than hers. A huge bed, bigger than king-size, a four-poster. She propped up a pillow and impetuously flopped down on it, kicking off her heels. They tumbled on the floor with a clatter. After a momentary standstill, Richard followed her inside.

  “What’s going on?” he smiled, just a bit. Abigail’s feet were tiny, the arches high and vulnerable. Richard wasn’t standing at the doorway, but he wasn’t moving all the way to the bedside, either. He stood apart and somewhat frozen.

  “I seem to need more of you,” she said quietly. “Just for tonight. I can’t seem to let you go for now.” She spoke to her own small feet.

  Richard took off his black glasses and rubbed his eyes. Now, looking up at them, Abigail could see their color for the first time: a surprising ocean blue, with lots of teal.

  “I feel like we have kind of a history together,” she said. She felt an unusual ache, the pain of missing something precious, something lost.