Great With Child

by Sonia Taitz

  “You mean now that we—? Of course—”

  “No, before that. Nothing big, but—”

  “Yes, I remember you. We’ve met before,” said Richard. “We used to be in the same firm,” he went on, finally sitting down beside her, on the edge of the big bed.

  “I remember you, too,” she said. “You used to wear wire rims, and your hair was a lot shorter.”

  “That’s right,” he said kindly, and smiled.

  Abigail looked into Richard’s eyes. Their soft, honest gaze seemed to take her back to a better time. She remembered his slow lope down the carpeted hallways, his calm greetings. He had seemed different from the other partners, even then. That aura of goodness, packaged in the alluring form of a mature, responsible man.

  Looking at Richard now, Abigail saw that the goodness in his eyes had only deepened since that time. The deep yearning opened up inside her again.

  It wasn’t just that they’d now slept together. It was that in the years they’d been apart, she’d only grown more and more sure of her utter aloneness in the world. The few inadequate relationships she’d had had only confirmed that.

  “What do you remember about me?” she ventured. She knew he might hurt her by saying, “Not much.” But she needed to know if he’d felt anything that day. Did he know, for example, that he’d started the process that made her leave Jed? By the time she finally did, Richard was long gone, under a cloud of secrecy. Dark things were said about him for years. She remembered having a drink with Jed and some of the associates one night, a few days before their final breakup. Jed had called Richard Trubridge a “loser.” But then, to men like Jed, most people were losers. Her mother was probably a “loser” for getting sick and dying.

  “What do I remember about you? Back then?”

  “Yes—if anything.”

  “Well, of course I remember you, but let me think.” Richard closed his eyes and a smile came over his face. “You were ambitious, eager. Always rushing, working—a real go-getter.”

  Abigail did not return his smile. The look on her face was that of a lost soul. Was she that much of a boring, sexless cliché? Just another worker bee?

  “And of course, you were very pretty,” he added. “You still are. More than ever, actually. You’re lovely.”

  Abigail still didn’t smile.

  “Do you really remember me?” she said softly. Because she remembered that electrical charge between them, not only this day but five long years ago. She remembered more and more. It almost hurt.

  “You’re a funny creature, aren’t you?” For a minute, Richard Trubridge looked turbulent, conflicted. But then he turned fully toward her. He ran his hand up and down her leg, inhaled, and pulled her across him.

  “Wow, you surprised me,” he said, completely gone.

  “I surprised you?” He had sort of grabbed her, which she loved.

  “You totally caught me off guard, coming back to me tonight.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, leaning up on her arms, looking down on him. “I’m just fearless.” She looked down at the myopic turquoise eyes, vulnerable beneath her. Then Richard reached up and kissed her, pulling her down with strong arms. She peeled off her top, aware of the power of her breasts. His eyes caught the view, brightened, widened all the way to the pupils—so enormous—then closed again.

  They moved together in surprising synchrony. It was great, more than great. It was a homecoming.

  She heard him mumble a question, “Do—you?”

  “What?” she said. “Do I—what?” But she wanted to answer, “Yes, yes I absolutely and wholeheartedly do.”

  “I don’t remember saying anything,” he laughed, hugging her warmly. “I like being with you,” he added, kissing her all over her face.

  He had smiled, and she had smiled back, and they had continued moving together, pleasing each other, seeking, playing. It was as though they had always been lovers. There was as much comfort as pleasure, and there was a generous sense of sharing in joy.

  Richard gave a lecture the next day, but Abigail had to attend a different meeting—“A Colloquium on the Nature of Honesty.” So they didn’t get together until lunch. When the meetings cleared out, they looked for each other. Abigail hung back, making herself visible, until Richard spotted her standing outside the large dining room. She was looking at the menu, or at least pretending to. Mesclun, kale, salmon, sole. She wasn’t hungry.

  “I’m not leaving,” he said, as though reading her mind.

  “You’re not what?” she replied, looking up and trying to act surprised to see him. Of course, he was all she could think about all morning.

  “I’m not going to leave your side today. You made quite an impression on me, and besides all that, I want you to hide me from these people.”

  “You mean all the big shots?”

  “Big shots, little shots, I gave my talk and now I want to kick back a little.”

  “Wish I could have seen you. I had to do the thing where you let someone lead you blindfolded hither and yon, and you pretend not to be frightened by it.”

  “Did you get a good partner?”

  “I’ll tell you later. He might be right behind us. The whole thing was very creepy, very stealthy. Who thinks of these things? Who thinks trust can be established through fear?”

  “I think you’re right,” said Richard. “Let’s take a stroll, we can grab a snack at the coffee place later. They even have wraps—OK?”

  “I’d love that,” she said. And they opened up a huge double door made of glass and went out into the fresh air.

  There were flowerbeds and fountains on the grounds. Farther off, down a pebbled path, stood a gazebo covered in wisteria. It looked as though grapes hung in heavy, fragrant clusters around it. A bountiful harvest, something sweet and generous. An enveloping light violet color, punctuated by dark green foliage. And all of it wrapped around a wooden bower.

  “Let’s go there,” said Abigail, pointing.

  As they approached, they could both see that no one was around. What a treasure. How odd that they had so easily slipped away from the world. On one side was the clattering cafeteria, buffet-style lunch with every kind of meat to be carved, fish to be sliced, and leaf to be heaped in a salad bowl, and all of it crowded and depressing. And on the other, this gazebo, this nest of stillness.

  It smelled like heaven in there. The bench they sat on was hewn from wood, as though an integral part of the gazebo. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was perfect. The leaves and flowers shaded them, and the fragrance wafted to and fro with the breeze.

  For a long time, they didn’t speak. And it was fine like that.

  And then they spoke, and everything that passed between them was easy, and agreeable, and comfortable. Richard seemed like an angel to Abigail. An old-fashioned gentleman, almost too good to be true.

  He said, “How’s your mother doing?”

  Abigail was stunned that he remembered.

  “She’s—she recently passed away.”

  “Sorry to hear that. I know you—”

  “It was a long battle; we tried everything.”

  “I got exactly that sense. That you would try everything.”

  “Weren’t you too busy being a big partner to notice that?”

  “No, I wasn’t, actually. It made a strong impression on me.”

  “We really tried. We both did. What can you do?”

  Richard gave a big sigh and looked downward. He seemed to be attempting to collect himself. Abigail wondered if he had also faced illness or death in his family recently, but was wary of asking.

  “There’s only one thing we can do in the presence of this—” he suddenly stopped and looked at her.

  “In the presence of sickness, you mean?”

  “Yes, sickness, breakdowns, all of these horrors—chaos happens to everyone, and sometimes when you least expect it.”

  “I’m in estates and aviation disasters, so I know.”

  “You do, Abigail.
Of course, you do.”

  “I wonder if anything can hurt more than losing your mother.”

  “Were you close with her?”

  “Not so much. I mean, I loved her very much, but we were so different. And that sometimes makes the parting worse.”

  “Yes, I think I understand.”

  “It’s an ambiguous thing, when you’re not close but you keep wishing you were so close, you know?”

  “You felt up in the air with her.”

  “Yes,” said Abigail sadly. “And then she floated away from us all. So, anyway, what’s the one thing?”

  “The one thing you can do?”

  “Yes, you said there was ‘one thing.’”

  “Sorry, do I sound like I’m lecturing you? I don’t mean to.”

  “No, not at all. I’d appreciate having your insight here.”

  “Well, I’ve had my own ups and downs. And—well, the one thing we can control is that we behave decently to each other. Help each other. You were kind to your mother, Abigail.”

  “Not all the time. I used to—I’m ashamed to say that I sometimes kind of looked down on her, and I think she sometimes knew it.”

  “You were good to her when she most needed you. And that’s the real and only test.”

  Abigail pondered his words as he leaned over to kiss her. Richard was good to her when she needed him, Abigail thought. When she’d gone to his room, and openly asked him for “more,” he’d given her all she wanted, all he could give. These memories warmed her. She felt both friendship and lust grow and intermingle inside her, a wonderful and unfamiliar combination.

  When they walked back to the main building, it seemed as though hours had passed. They were still able to pick up the coffee and wraps, and they took them to Richard’s room.

  They kept talking.

  “Shall I order champagne?”

  Did that mean he was having as wonderful a time as she was?

  Did he do this all the time?

  Did he do this with everyone?

  “Go on, ask me anything,” he said. Abigail knew her face showed everything. No amount of professional training had changed this. She felt herself flushing, and tilted her face downward.

  “No, I don’t think I need to,” she said shyly. The very fact that he wanted her to open up, that his life seemed accessible to her, was all the answer she needed.

  “I love champagne,” she added. Abigail didn’t know it sounded naïve, as though she rarely had it.

  “Me, too.” Richard, too, was no big drinker. “I love it, too.”

  They made a night of it.

  4

  On the last day of the conference, Richard had designed and would judge a moot court exercise. Abigail had volunteered to write one of the arguments. The topic was whether depriving a father of the right to see his child could be actionable against the state—under a plea of “cruel and unusual punishment”—harming both father and child. After all, it was by now a well-known truism that men loved their children as much as women did, and that it was in the best interest of any child to know and love his father as much as his mother. Pregnancy and lactation did not determine quantities of adoration, and men, though by definition not fecund, incapable of bringing fully fledged, viable fruit into the world, were no less biologically and spiritually bound to their little ones. They bonded, like women; they loved, like women. In that case, why was it not cruel and inhuman to separate a man from his kids, and these kids from their father? And if a state court did so—as it still frequently did—well, then, did it not thereby violate the Eighth Amendment?

  There were, of course, no precedents for a ruling like this. And law, especially appellate law, was nothing if not rooted in the past. But times moved on, and new laws were made. Richard, Abigail saw, was a maverick, trying to create new legal perspectives, penumbras and emanations that the court hadn’t seen for decades. On the other hand, this was just moot court, and moot court on a junket, at that. Golf was more the order of the day than jurisprudence, and this exercise seemed aimed simply at earning the tax deductions, to make the whole thing seem more work-oriented. Bonding experiences—rope climbing and the like—had been done to death, and this old-school exercise was, in its way, fresh.

  Abigail, a daddy’s girl, found the topic compelling. This was why she decided to volunteer for the more innovative (more difficult to argue) position that yes, depriving a father (or mother, for that matter) of the biological imperative to see his or her child was so harsh as to touch the conscience—that it was a punishment, more than a mere decree, and that family courts which so ruled without sufficient grounds were violating not merely statutory regulations but the United States Constitution itself.

  “Can I ask you one little question?” she ventured to Richard after breakfast.

  “You can, but you know I probably can’t answer it. I mean, on ethical grounds. We’re—we’re—I’m partial to you, you know. And—and—I’m the judge of this, you see?”

  “I’m not asking you to help me win. I just had a question.”

  “All right. Then ask away.”

  “You designed this case, right?”

  “Yes, right.”

  “Well, I can tell what side you’re on.”

  “Really, how?”

  “I just can.”

  “Continue.”

  “You’re on the side of the dad who can’t see his kid. And I know that you’re a good man. And why else would you have written things this way? And if that’s the case, how appropriate is it for you—clearly biased you—to judge who wins?”

  “Without addressing your comments in full, I’m—I’m not the only judge. But I can recuse myself if you want to raise the issue. . . .” His tone was mild.

  Abigail couldn’t answer for a few moments.

  She could feel Richard staring at her, and she reddened. This was the man who had known everything about her, just last night. How she smelled, tasted, looked, and acted while lost in sensual ecstasy. And she knew the same about him.

  “You’re blushing,” he said.

  “Yeah, so are you,” she replied.

  “I think if I recused myself, however, people would know more about us than they need to.”

  “I like that word.”

  “‘Need’?” he smiled.

  “Yes,” she said, smiling, too. “Need. And also, and especially, ‘us.’”

  And though it was the morning, and though she really should have been preparing for the moot court scheduled for four o’clock that day, Abigail had the distinct sensation that she harbored fairly rapacious thoughts about Richard. What a complex man he was—with his keen, original legal ideas and his almost mystical bedroom manner.

  “Yeah, we should probably take this inside,” he said, smiling.

  Abigail also loved feeling how tall he was, especially compared to her. Richard was smiling down on her like a benevolent elm. Looking up into his face as though into a warming lamp, Abigail let Richard take her hand and lead her back to the room where they’d begun to know each other. And now it was even more familiar, kinder, slower. More beautiful somehow, and far more sweet.

  Later, Richard did recuse himself. And Abigail did lose the hearing. Some icy woman with a pale yellow bun had declared, in startling reactionary opposition, that fathers, bodies intact, knew nothing and could never know anything of “cruel and unusual punishment.” It was the mothers who knew it, daily, monthly, yearly, always, the endless cycle of menses, reproduction, nursing, and, later, the menopause. What did men know of all this, and how could anyone dare deem a legal decision to be equal in cruelty to that of nature?

  Abigail was surprised to hear a woman use biological imperatives to win a case—but that was often the way, still, in parenting trials, and she took her loss graciously. After all, she knew that she had absolutely won the heart, the mind, the body, and perhaps even the good soul of Richard Trubridge.

  Still later, that night, in the darkness, Abigail awoke, thirsty. She got h
erself a glass of water from the bathroom and slipped quietly back into bed. She and Richard were both naked, and she was tired and happy. She had never felt so protected from the chaos of the world. Even the luxurious small bottles of cream and bubbles in the bathroom had cast a charm upon her. She felt safe and nurtured.

  But then her mood changed, and fear stepped in as she thought about tomorrow. They would be leaving this place in the next few hours. Back to the normal, lonely grind. Abigail leaned over Richard, as though to ask him to change all that.

  He slept exhaustedly, snoring lightly, turning when she hovered too near, seeming to need space and freedom. Sleep made this man feel unreachable again, as though he’d never known her, not before, not at the firm, not yesterday, not mere hours ago. There were moments, Abigail thought, trying to detach, that he looked like a corpse, mouth open, eyes slightly parted. Hospice patients looked like that. They passed away, and you couldn’t tell when the transition happened. But Richard was actively alive. He snorted periodically; a worried moan would emerge, rising up and down the scale like a plea.

  Toward dawn, as she sensed the time running out, Abigail reached for Richard and wrapped herself around his undefended frame. To her great relief, he snuggled closer to her. He rose up, kissed her face, from chin to forehead, then sighed and closed his eyes again. Another hour must have passed.

  At the moment the phone rang, Abigail was feeling as though the room, and everything in it, was hers. The bottles of champagne, his clothing, him. She had it all. She was lucky. She was wrapped in rare comfort and happiness. She got up to pee.

  “Let me get that,” said Richard, at the third jarring ring. He grabbed the phone so quickly Abigail could hear the base fall off the table and clatter to the ground. Then, his tone intimate, she overheard him say:

  “. . . You are? Oh, good! Yes, of course I do. Say hi to the kids for me and give them each a kiss. You’re a trouper, holding the fort like that, you really are, hon. Love ya.”

  A very quick and tender conversation.