Fly Away Home

by Jennifer Weiner

  “You think I want this damn baby?” Crystal shot back.

  “Yeah, I guess you do, since you’re still carrying it,” said Diana.

  “You don’t know anything,” Crystal said with great finality. “Not anything about anything.”

  “I know they’re going to take your baby,” Diana said again, and Crystal, laughing, slid around Diana and out the door, shouting across the room to the nurses’ station that somebody better find her a damn doctor who could help her, a real doctor, not this worthless white bitch.

  Diana hadn’t been able to fathom it. Addiction had never made sense to her—not Lizzie’s, not Crystal’s, not the movie stars whose troubles she’d read about in the tabloids when she was getting her hair done; not the food addicts or the sex addicts, not any of it. How could a woman, a mother, continue to get high when her own child was at stake? What feeling could be so compelling that you’d risk your son or daughter to pursue it?

  But now, at thirty, she had learned a shameful truth—that there were things in life you were simply powerless to say no to. For some people—her sister, she supposed—that thing was a substance, liquor or powder or pills. For Diana, it was Doug. He was the thing she was unable to resist or give up, even though she knew it was wrong, even though he knew she was married, even though he was her student, even though she was risking everything to be with him, she couldn’t stop or tell him no.

  They did it in her office. They did it in a locked exam room with two of his fellow interns chatting not ten feet away. They did it in the backseat of the Civic, which Doug would park in the farthest corner of the lowest level of a parking garage on Broad Street. They did it in the handicapped stall of the women’s restroom at the Prince Theater. They did it—God help them—in a cemetery in Strawberry Mansion one hot afternoon, Diana leaning back on a tombstone, with her skirt hiked up around her waist, her panties (black lace ones she’d bought for thirty-eight dollars, which was more than she’d ever spent on underwear in her life) down around her ankles, and Doug kneeling in front of her, licking between her legs until she gasped and pleaded with him to stop.

  In bed, sweaty and glowing, Doug would trace the line of her deltoids, her quads, her calves, licking the tender skin underneath her ear, whispering, “I love that you’re so strong.”

  “I love you,” she’d whisper too softly for him to hear, while inwardly thinking, This is the last time. After this, no more. Tomorrow, I’ll tell him goodbye.

  But that was a promise she’d been making to herself on a regular basis—say, every morning. Shaving her legs, blow-drying her hair, loading Milo’s lunch into his backpack for computer camp while Gary readied himself for the day, leaving a trail of wet towels, whiskers, and dirty dishes in his wake, she would list the things that she could lose: her marriage, her job, possibly even Milo. She could imagine Gary, tall and formidable in a suit and tie, standing in a courtroom, making his case for custody: Your Honor, this woman carried on a flagrant affair with a younger man: a med student. Her student. What kind of mother does that?

  What kind of mother, Diana would ask herself, and promise that she’d stop. At the bus stop, waiting with Milo, she’d chat about the weather and the homework assignments and set up playdates with the other moms, some of them in business suits, others in workout wear, all of them ready to begin blameless days that would not involve torrid sex with a twenty-five-year-old in the backseat of said twenty-five-year-old’s mother’s car. Sick with guilt, she’d talk to them, her face a smiling mask as she voiced expected complaints about the school’s tuition and the bus driver’s habitual tardiness, while in her head she’d be promising to change. She’d take up hot-room yoga or Pilates, like Samantha Dennis, who came to the corner every morning in Lycra tights and a hot-pink sports bra that barely restrained her implants. Or maybe she’d quit medicine, pick up an MBA, and go for the big bucks like Lisa Kelleher, who did something with the stock market, and wore a Rolex as big as the Ritz. Diana could make a different life, a better life, a life that did not involve breaking her vows and betraying her husband and sentencing her son to a Wednesday-night-and-Saturday-afternoon father. Her whole life had been scheduled and correct—college and med school and marriage and motherhood, the house, the car, the career. Now she was off the map, off the grid, behaving like someone she didn’t recognize and of whom she would not approve.

  Her resolve to give him up would last her until ten o’clock. That was usually when Doug would find a moment to text her. She’d be in one of the exam areas, scribbling down a history, taking a woman’s blood pressure or listening to a man’s lungs, when her BlackBerry would tremble in her pocket. She’d pull it out and read the words HI PRETTY, and she would melt, her pulse quickening, feeling hot and liquid between her legs. Had anyone ever called her “pretty”? The most Gary ever managed was a “you look nice.” By the time Doug texted can I c u? her mind would be churning with possibilities. Her office? His car? A room at the Society Hill Sheraton, where the clerks always seemed to be smirking at her when she checked in under the name Becky Sharpe and slid cash across the counter?

  Once they went to his apartment. Doug and three other students rented a place on Tasker Street in a neighborhood poised on the border between seedy and hip. That afternoon, after he’d texted come 2 me, Diana pulled her raincoat’s hood over her hair, even though it was barely drizzling, and raced over and up two flights to his place. He opened the door and she threw herself into his arms, and, together, they tumbled through the living room (she caught glimpses of the expected beer bottles, and absurdly gigantic TV on the way) and onto Doug’s bed, breathing hard, so turned on that she could barely take time to do more than pull down her pants. They’d done it fast first, just to take the edge off, and then Doug had undressed her, slowly, sliding off sleeves and straps, nipping at her shoulders, the curve of her elbow, the small of her back, lavishing kisses over every inch of skin he touched. He hadn’t shaved, hadn’t brushed his teeth, either, but Diana found the prickles of his beard against her skin, the slightly sour taste of his mouth, unbelievably arousing. She was so wet, she could feel the insides of her thighs getting slippery with it, so hot she couldn’t keep from touching herself, her fingers gliding between her legs as Doug slid just the tip of his cock into her mouth, then pulled it out.

  “Get on the bed,” he said. It wasn’t a request. Diana lay back on his rumpled sheets, spreading her legs as wide as she could.

  “Please,” she whispered.

  “What?” he asked, his voice rough. “Tell me. Tell me what you need.”

  Diana could hardly believe the words coming from her mouth. She’d never been so aroused in her life, not with Hal, not with anyone. “Please fuck me, please fuck me, I need it so bad …”

  “You want it?” he grunted, kneeling between her parted thighs, one hand sliding slowly up and down his cock.

  Well, I think I made that clear, she thought … but the part of her brain that was thinking that, the part of her brain that still could think at all was a small part indeed. Doug placed his other hand between Diana’s legs, slipping in one finger, then two, then three. “Please,” she panted, raising her hips higher, rocking them back and forth, trying to get him to push harder, more deeply. “Oh. God. Please.”

  He pulled out his hand and slid his cock inside her. She made a high, whinnying sound and wrapped her legs around his waist, tilting her hips, squeezing her eyes shut, thinking that nothing mattered, nothing in the whole world mattered as much as this.

  Twenty minutes later, she’d turned her panties back right-side-in, buttoned her skirt with trembling hands, and stood at the door, her mouth welded to Doug’s. “Tonight?” he whispered when they finally stopped kissing. She nodded. “You’re gorgeous,” he said, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear. She clung to him, unable to speak, practically unable to move, until he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her toward the street.

  She spent every day in a fever, trembling and dry-mouthed as she went th
rough the motions of normal life. She’d tend to her patients and her charting, sit through Wednesday meetings about how to handle a potential flu vaccine shortage and a looming nurses’ strike with her thighs clamped together and her favorite scenes playing in her head. After work, she would push her cart through the grocery store, watching her hands pick up apples and milk and organic chicken as if she’d never seen such items, or even her hands, before. At home as she would unload the bags, restock the refrigerator, do the laundry, make the beds, and cut up apples for her son, she’d be overcome by a memory of Doug: she’d imagine the taste of his skin, the way he groaned “oh, baby,” when she curled between his legs and took his cock in her mouth, the way he looked, kneeling above her, stroking himself, saying, “You want it?” looking down at her as if she was the most gorgeous, the most precious and desirable thing he’d ever seen. She was strong—Doug often praised her body, the muscles of her legs, the grace with which she moved—but he was stronger, she thought, both physically and emotionally. He was the one making the decisions, telling her when they’d meet, and where. When they were in bed together, he’d move her as if she were as dainty as a doll, and it felt good to her, so good she could barely believe it, and could not imagine living without it, to have the man be the strong one.

  Doug knew that she was married—she’d blurted out that information, teary and breathless, after their first night in the backseat. “So what’s your husband like?” Doug had asked. Diana had thought about how to answer that, about what anecdote or example she could give that would sum up the ways Gary had disappointed her. Finally, she came up with, “His fantasy football team is called Double Penetration.” Doug had laughed, and she’d hit him playfully on his chest. “It’s funny! I’m sorry,” Doug had protested, so she’d never bothered mentioning that when Gary commented on YouTube videos, his screen name was ItBurnsWhenIPee, because, probably, he would have laughed at that, too, and she’d never told him about Milo at all.

  Doug didn’t know she was a mother, and she was a good mother, maybe better than she’d been before things had started. When Milo came home from school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, trudging through the door with his heavy backpack over his shoulders, she’d take him on mother-son adventures, the kinds of outings Lizzie had taken him on, although Diana tried not to think about her sister, and whether Lizzie might have been telling the truth about the Advil, and whether Diana had kicked her out not to keep Milo safe but to ensure that her inquisitive little sister wouldn’t learn her secret. She’d let Milo leaf through the pages of one of the free weeklies (after she’d tossed the sex ads in the back) and pick out a place to visit, a museum or a gallery or a restaurant, or they’d go to his favorite, the Academy of Natural Sciences, where Milo would stare, entranced, at the dinosaur bones for as long as she’d let him. She’d loosened up a bit about his diet—she still made sure he got plenty of fresh, unprocessed fruits and vegetables, but she’d take him out for pizza once a week, and let him get the ice cream she knew Lizzie had given him after they stopped by Head House Books for the latest installment of the Wimpy Kid saga. At home, they’d put on their pajamas and watch DVR’d episodes of American Idol, sometimes even singing along. They’d play backgammon or Yahtzee, eating apple slices dipped in peanut butter, while Milo talked about his day. “Well, actually,” he would begin his sentences, or “Well, basically.” She suspected he had a crush on his teacher, Miss Pai, who was young and beautiful and wore gold bracelets and an alluring perfume, and they spent hours making her a card for her twenty-fifth birthday.

  Milo was the only thing that could get her mind off Doug … but eventually, Milo went to bed, leaving Diana awake, moving restlessly through the house, refolding laundry, wiping down already-clean counters, running the half-filled dishwasher just to have something to do. The weekends were almost unendurable. Locked in the bathroom (“Diarrhea again?” Gary complained. “Seriously, Diana, can’t you prescribe yourself something?”), she’d text Doug, and then wait, frantic as a teenager, until he responded. Adore u. Miss u. Can’t w8 2 C u. If he went longer than a few minutes without answering, she was consumed with despair, and with jealousy, especially on Saturday nights, when she was stuck at home and he, she was sure, was out at parties, with beer and music and any number of young, pretty, available, appropriate girls who would love him and want him for all the reasons she did.

  For weeks, she’d fall asleep with her head full of Doug, full of longing and fear, imagining what they’d done and what they’d do when they were together again. When Gary reached for her, as he still did once in a while, she’d make up an excuse: “I’ve got my period,” she would say, thinking that she was lucky it would never occur to him to notice whether or not there were tampons visible in the bathroom. Or she’d tell him she had a headache, ostentatiously swallowing Advil when he was around to see it.

  Nobody knew except her friend Lynette, one of the RNs who worked in the emergency room. Three weeks into the affair—if such a dignified word could be applied to what Diana realized was a tawdry situation—she and Lynette had been on their way to grab lunch at the falafel shop when Doug had walked past them on the street. They’d said hello, nothing more, but Lynette had given her a sly grin. “A friend?” she’d asked. Something on Diana’s face must have given her away, because instead of staying in the shop with their salads, Lynette had tugged Diana back to the hospital and directly into the locker-lined break room, where she’d picked up a pen that read VALTREX, as if she was about to take notes, and said, “Tell me everything. Every single detail. I want to hear every single thing you’re doing with that luscious boy.”

  “Nothing’s going on,” Diana had insisted … but she couldn’t keep herself from smiling. Luscious boy. That was Doug.

  “Come on,” said Lynette, gathering her braids into a twist that she secured with the Valtrex pen. “I am forty-two years old and I don’t think I’ve slept for more than five hours straight in the last twelve years. The highlight of my week is Kevin’s poker night, when I can eat Chinese food and watch Top Chef. Throw an old lady a bone.”

  Diana had perched herself on the edge of the chair. “You know,” she began, “that things with Gary aren’t so great.”

  Lynette had nodded. “Yes, yes, you’ve lost that loving feeling; calls himself ItBurnsWhenIPee; go on, go on.”

  Diana’s blush deepened. Was her marriage that predictable and sad, that easy to sum up? She made a mental note to limit herself to a single glass of wine the next time she joined the nurses for karaoke Fridays, and continued. “Well, the thing is, Doug … Doug and I …”

  Lynette, meanwhile, was curving her fingers into cat’s claws and making mrraow! mrraow! sounds—the universal mating call of the cougar.

  Diana buried her face in her hands. “He’s not that much younger,” she said in a muffled voice. “And I know. It’s awful. But I can’t …” She peeked through her fingers to find Lynette staring at her.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Are you in love?”

  Diana wasn’t sure if this was love or just a desperate infatuation. “It’s pretty intense,” she said. “Pretty …” She was remembering the time in the graveyard, the marble warm underneath her bare thighs, Doug’s tongue quick and hot between her legs. “I’ve never felt like this before in my life,” she blurted.

  “Oh my God,” Lynette said again—she was, Diana thought, turning out to be surprisingly devout. “Tell me about his body. Is he a good kisser? Ooh, I bet he’s a good kisser. Where do you guys go?”

  Diana curled up in her chair and told her—not the gory details, or the embarrassing ones, not about sitting next to her son in bed, reading to him while Doug’s semen trickled out into her panties, but about the in-love feeling that had been absent for so long in her life. From the avid way Lynette listened, she thought maybe she wasn’t the only woman quietly withering away in a marriage that looked all right from the outside—the house, the kids, the cars—but inside felt as arid as a locked room in an abandoned
building.

  “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised,” Lynette finally said. “It happens a lot.”

  Diana nodded glumly. She’d seen it, too: the distinguished cardiothoracic surgeon who had to be almost seventy and who took one of his fellows as a mistress every July and dumped her, firmly but courteously, the following June; the gastroenterologist so notorious for luring nurses into his office and asking them to take off their tops that he was now required to keep his door open at all times. Except in all the examples she could think of, it was always the male docs who treated the hospital as their personal harem, never the ladies.

  She also knew what it could mean if someone found out she’d been messing with an intern. She’d get a reputation, not the kind any lady doctor wanted, and the plum assignments and promotions wouldn’t come her way. Just add it to the pile, she thought bleakly. Add it to the list of things she was willing to sacrifice on the altar of love, or lust, or whatever it was she had for Doug Vance.

  “Just be careful, Diana,” Lynette said, with all the joking gone from her voice. “You’re my friend, and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  Diana nodded. She was, of course, being careful already. She deleted every text she sent and received, and erased Doug’s number from her call log if they spoke on the phone. Theirs would not be an affair of love letters and long weekends and public displays of affection. They couldn’t even share a meal—the times they’d tried to grab a burger or sushi or even takeout Chinese, they hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other long enough to take more than a bite or two. What they had—all they’d have—were snatched moments in semipublic places, afternoons in hotel rooms that smelled like the last person who’d stayed there, and texts that used abbreviations and emoticons to express the words they could not say. There was no future.