“But that means losing Maine—and we put down twenty-five hundred dollars for the fourteen days there. Our airplane tickets are nonexchangeable and nonrefundable . . . and, yes, I know I’m sounding like an accountant.”
“You’re right to do so, especially given my behavior in that department.”
I reached out and took his hand.
“That’s all behind us now,” I said.
“Because you forced me to grow up.”
“It wasn’t about you ‘growing up.’ It was about just exercising a bit of restraint.”
“I know I have this compulsion to spend,” he said. “And I know that the compulsion is rooted in the fact that I allowed life to turn out in a way I never truly wanted. Until, that is, I met you. You saved me . . . from myself.”
I kissed him lightly on the lips. “Happy to be of service.”
Just beyond us the sun had been rendered fluid, thawed orange coalescing like spilled paint on the surface of the Atlantic. I shut my eyes and felt tears because I sensed a breaking down of a barrier, an honesty and complicity between us that had been overshadowed by manifold demons.
The next morning was pitch-perfect. An aquamarine sky, cloud-free, faultless. We awoke from a late carnal sleep to a knock at the door. Glancing at the bedside clock I noticed it was high noon. Damn, damn, damn. Soraya had asked if she could organize the lesson earlier today (it was a Friday—the Sabbath day in Morocco), and if it could last only one hour. She had a day off teaching and was coming into Essaouira earlier than usual to catch a 4:00 bus to Marrakesh and a weekend with a friend from university.
“I had to have my friend’s mother phone my mother and vouch that she would keep an eye on me over the weekend. I am twenty-nine years old and am still having to check in like an adolescent,” she told me in a low, confessional whisper.
I had agreed to that midday Friday lesson. And now it was . . . 12:02. Soraya was always punctual. Damn. Damn. Damn.
As I jumped out of bed and scrambled for some clothes, Paul groaned awake.
“What time is it?” he asked, half asleep. When I told him, he smiled and said, “I’m glad you’re succumbing to my bohemian ways.”
Actually it was the first time we’d overslept since arriving here; Paul always wanting to get to the café by eleven to capture the souk at its most manic.
“That’s Soraya,” I said. “I’ll do the lesson downstairs.”
“No need. Do it in the front room and I’ll slip out in around twenty minutes.”
So I quickly dressed and let Soraya in, apologizing for the slight delay. As she set up her books and pens and papers in the small living area, I ran downstairs and asked for coffee and bread and preserves to be brought up. When I returned to the room I could hear the shower going in the adjacent bathroom—and Soraya looking just a little uncomfortable with the notion of a naked man in the immediate proximity.
“Sorry, sorry,” I said. “I should have suggested we go elsewhere.”
“No problem,” she said, clearly relieved to have me back in the room. “Shall we start?”
We began by discussing the verb vouloir—to want—and variations of its usage, especially in the conditional, would like. The great aspirational hope. As in: Je voudrais un café . . . voudrais-tu un café aussi? . . . il voudrait réussir . . . nous voudrions un enfant . . .
At which juncture the bedroom door swung open and Paul emerged, dressed, his hair still wet from the shower. He greeted me and Soraya with a big smile.
“Tout à fait nous voudrions un enfant,” he said, coming over and kissing me on the lips. We would absolutely like a child.
Then, after greeting Soraya, he asked her in rapid-fire French, “And how is my wife progressing?”
“She’s doing fantastically. Really gifted with the language. And she works so hard.”
“That she does,” he said.
“You think too highly of me,” I said.
“She doesn’t think well enough of herself,” Paul said. “Maybe you can help her in that department, Soraya.”
“Breakfast should be here in a moment,” I told him.
But I saw that he had his satchel over his shoulder, stuffed with his sketchbooks and pencils.
“I’ll let Fouad provide that for me. Come find me after the lesson. Je t’adore.”
With another kiss on the lips he was gone.
Once the door was closed behind him, Soraya looked away as she said, “Je voudrais un homme comme votre mari.”
“Mais plus jeune?” I added.
“L’âge importe moins que la qualité.”
I would like a man like your husband . . . But younger? . . . Age is less important than the quality.
“I am sure you will find someone of quality,” I told her.
“I’m not,” she said in a near whisper. “All right: essayer in the subjunctive. Give me an example in first person singular.”
I considered this for a moment, then said, “Il faut que je voudrais d être heureuse.”
Soraya did not look professorially pleased by my answer.
“I must would like happiness,” she said, translating my sentence into her excellent English. “You can do better than that.”
“Sorry, sorry. The problem is the use of the subjunctive with would like. As you noted you can’t must would like something.”
“So if you were talking about wanting happiness . . .”
“Je voudrais le bonheur.”
“Fine. And in the subjunctive?”
“I would sidestep vouloir and use essayer. To try. As in: ‘Il faut que j’essaie d’être heureuse.’ I must try to be happy.”
Soraya then had another one of her thoughtful pauses.
“It is all about ‘trying,’ isn’t it?” she said.
The breakfast arrived. She shared the coffee with me. We worked on for another ninety minutes. Then I paid her for the week and wished her well in Marrakesh.
“Entre nous, there is a man—French—whom my classmate wants me to meet. A banker working at Société Générale. My parents would half approve—the banker, not the French part. But I am getting ahead of myself here, aren’t I?”
Then, telling me she’d see me Monday at five o’clock, she headed off for her weekend and her meeting with the Frenchman who might, or might not, become a conduit into a new life.
When Soraya was gone, I took a long shower and changed into fresh clothes, then checked my watch and thought that, if I moved quickly, I could still join Paul for a late lunch at Chez Fouad. But as Friday was the one day of the week I read my email, I decided to quickly scan this week’s dispatches before heading out to the souk.
The first email I saw had been dispatched just twenty minutes earlier from the ever-scrupulous Morton. It read:
Now that we have your husband’s audit problems with the IRS out of the way I’ve been doing his books in an attempt to bring them up to date so we are not in a bind at tax time next year. You know how he throws all his receipts and invoices and credit card statements into that file box you gave him. Well I started working through it on Wednesday and came across this invoice this morning. I debated about whether I should send it to you now or wait until you got back in a few weeks. But I decided that—as this was something of an ethical/moral call—I should err on the side of immediate transparency.
I clicked on the attached file. I found myself staring at an invoice from a Dr. Brian Boyards, MD, Urologist. The invoice was for a patient named Leuen, Paul Edward. His date of birth—04-11-56—was the same as my husband’s. So too was the home address. And the Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance policy that he used to defray 80 percent of the $2,031.78 charges for the procedure listed on the invoice.
Outpatient Non-Scalpel Deferentectomy.
What is a deferentectomy?
I switched over to Google and typed in that exact word.
And discovered that a deferentectomy is the clinical term for a very common bit of urological surgery . . . also known as
a vasectomy.
And the date on which this Outpatient Non-Scalpel Deferentectomy was performed on my husband? September 7, 2014. Around the same time that we both agreed it was time to start trying for a child.
NINE
I SAT IN front of my computer screen, trying to convince myself that what I just read was somehow false. A fabrication, an invention dispatched by a malevolent individual who wanted to see my marriage thrown completely off-course.
The problem with hard-and-fast evidence—and an invoice from a doctor in the wake of a surgical procedure is about as irrefutable as it comes—is that you can’t negotiate with its black-and-white verities. It’s a bit like a client of mine who had run up around $10K in internet porn charges on his MasterCard one year. All the charges were assigned to Fantasy Promotions Inc. The time code for each of the transactions showed they were all late in the evening. His wife had seen the MasterCard statements and was just a little appalled. My client entreated me to provide him an alibi for these purchases. As I told him at the time, “How do you explain over one hundred and fifty dealings after midnight with an online company called Fantasy Promotions Inc.? There’s no wiggle room here. It’s the smoking gun.”
Strange how that client—who was divorced with extreme prejudice by his wife thereafter—popped into my head as I found myself staring at that document from Dr. Brian Boyards, MD, Urologist. All the facts in front of me. Facts which I must have reread a dozen times, trying to find a way of reinterpreting the irrefutable:
Patient: Leuen, Paul Edward
Date of birth—04-11-56
Home Address: 5165 Albany Avenue, Buffalo, NY 10699
Insurance: Blue Cross/Blue Shield A566902566
Procedure: Outpatient Non-Scalpel Deferentectomy
Date of Procedure: 09-07-14
The seventh of September last year. Around ten months ago. A few days after Labor Day, when we returned from a long weekend in a friend’s cottage in the woods fronting Lake Placid. My husband and I making love twice a day. And me, after a candlelit dinner at some nearby inn, stating that, after two years together, and with my fortieth birthday looming in a few months, I wanted to come off the pill effective immediately . . . though it would be, as my gynecologist told me, at least two weeks until I would be moving into a fertile cycle.
Paul did not blanch or talk about joining the merchant marine when I brought this up. On the contrary, he told me that having a child together was “the essential bonding of a couple in love” or some such line. Paul returned from the gym on a Thursday evening, limping slightly, telling me how he pulled a muscle in his groin and was worried that he’d given himself a hernia. With my complete understanding, he absented himself from sex for several days, saying that he’d be going to the university infirmary the next day to get himself a medical opinion. Then, upon returning that night, he informed me that, though it was only “lightly herniated”—I remember his exact words—he was advised not to exacerbate it and refrain from sex for another week. Which we dutifully did.
Now, here I was, all these absurd months later, on the website of Dr. Brian Boyards, MD, reading all about this seemingly simple, no-fault surgical procedure:
Over 500,000 vasectomy procedures are done each year in the United States.
Vasectomy is a simple, safe surgical procedure for permanent male fertility control. The tube (called a “vas”) which leads from the testicle is cut and sealed in order to stop sperm from leaving.
The procedure usually takes about 10 to 20 minutes.
Since the procedure simply interrupts the delivery of sperm it does not change hormonal function—leaving sexual drive and potency unaffected.
The no-scalpel vasectomy is a technique used to do the vasectomy through one single puncture. The puncture is made in the scrotum and requires no suturing or stitches.
The primary difference compared to the conventional vasectomy is that the vas deferens is controlled and grasped by the surgeon in a less traumatic manner. This results in less pain and fewer postoperative complications.
This procedure is done with the aid of a local anesthetic called Xylocaine (similar to Novocain).
The actual interruption of the vas which is done with the no-scalpel technique is identical to the interruption used with conventional techniques.
The no-scalpel technique is simply a more elegant and less traumatic way for the surgeon to control the vas and proceed with its interruption.
So my husband murdered my chance at motherhood with him by opting for “elegant and less traumatic” surgery.
I snapped my eyes shut, caught somewhere between desolation and pure unalloyed rage.
Tout à fait, nous voudrions un enfant.
The bastard actually said that just two hours ago. Just as, for months, he kept reassuring me that it was only a matter of time before I got pregnant. I slammed the lid of my computer shut and began to sob. I was in free fall. Beyond stunned. As if the entire foundation of this new life we’d created together was nothing more than a house of cards built on the lies of a man I had been dumb enough to trust. How could I—Ms. Forensic, Ms. Extra-Scrupulous, Ms. Exhaustively Thorough—not have sniffed out the con behind all his declarations of intimate commitment?
I knew the answer to that question.
We only see what we want to see.
I understood from the outset that Paul Leuen was, on certain fundamental levels, incapable of proper adult responsibility. But I chose to sidestep such realizations and embrace the bohemian lure, the romantic effluence, the hallucinogenic sex. I was so desperate for love that I shoved all doubt into that mental basement room and plunged right into the delusion of domestic bliss and child rearing with a man who . . .
Who? Who?
Can I even define him now? If he’d betrayed me in such a fundamental way, if he’d deliberately had himself fixed while assuring me so passionately that he wanted a child with me . . .
I went to the bathroom and threw cold water on my face, avoiding the sight of myself in the mirror. I didn’t want to cast a cold eye on myself right now. I returned to the room and went out onto the balcony, staring out at the North African world below. This could have waited until our return, Morton. But decent rabbinical Morton had, no doubt, done a considerable amount of ethical soul searching before deciding to send me the urologist’s invoice. And he finally decided: cards on the table. Leave it to my disorganized husband to have thrown the doctor’s invoice into his box of financial paperwork and forget that I would eventually see it—because I was still his accountant, forever holding him accountable. I clutched the balcony railings, steadying myself, rage trumping sorrow; a certain clinical clarity asserting itself. I returned inside to my laptop. I opened it and wrote a fast email to Morton.
Knowledge, they say, is power. But it’s also often a sorrow beyond dreams. Can you please look around his MasterCard statements for September 2014 and see if there is a payment for four hundred dollars to Dr. Brian Boyards. Then scan it to me. I sense I will be back in Buffalo in a matter of days. Alone.
As I awaited a reply, I dug out our plane tickets and discovered (through some further searching on the internet) that Royal Air Maroc would change my flight before the return date for a charge of 3,000 DM—around $350. Yes, I did pay for the entire month at the hotel, but we were already into the third week. Paul could stay behind and finish his drawings and remind himself what it was like to be alone once more. I was pretty certain that this was the outcome he privately desired. When he’d had his secret vasectomy, part of him must have known that all would eventually be revealed. Surely he had to figure that after, say, a year of trying with no success, I’d insist that we go to a fertility clinic for tests. Bing. An email . . . from Morton.
Found it. Attached as a scan. I am here for you. Anything I can do, just ask. Courage . . .
I started crying again and was interrupted by a light knock at the door.
“Fuck off!” I shouted, certain it was Paul. But why would Paul knock
when he had a key? Instantly I was on my feet heading into the other room and opening the main door to the suite. Outside stood the young girl who cleaned our room and did our laundry. She looked ashen and cowed.
“Mes excuses, mes excuses,” I said, taking her hands. “Je suis . . . dévastée.”
As soon as that last word was out of my mouth I broke away and went inside, attempting to keep down the new sob that was trying to escape from the back of my throat. Don’t break down, don’t break down. The young girl was gone from view, no doubt running down the stairs, unnerved by the sight of this crazy woman in the throes of a nervous collapse.
Back to the bathroom. More water on my face. My eyes were red. I returned to my desk, put on my sunglasses, grabbed my passport, a pad and paper, the printout of my airplane ticket, my wallet, and credit cards. I stuffed it all into my shoulder bag and headed out the door. On my way downstairs I dug out a 100-dirham note. I saw the young girl hovering at the bottom of the stairs, clearly uncertain by my approaching presence.
“I am so sorry,” I told her. “I received some difficult news today. Please forgive me.”
I thrust the note into her hand. Her eyes went wide when she saw the sum—what Soraya told me was two days’ wages—and she whispered, “C’est trop . . . Ce n’est pas nécessaire . . .”
“Si, c’est nécessaire . . . Et merci pour votre gentillesse.”
“J’espère que tout ira bien, madame.”
“On verra.” We’ll see.
And I headed out into the blazing afternoon sun.
There was an internet café two alleys away from the hotel. I walked in and asked the clearly bored young man, cigarette screwed in one side of his mouth, scatting along to some local pop song, if he had a printer.
He pointed to a beat-up machine.
“Two dirhams per page, ten dirhams for an hour on the computer. You can pay me afterward.”
The hotel had a printer and computer for guests that I could have used. But I was concerned that, somehow, the documents I’d be printing would be seen or duplicated. I sat down at the computer, went online, and printed out the medical invoice, the scan of Paul’s credit card statement, and all the details from Dr. Boyard’s website about the non-scalpel vasectomy. Then, on the Royal Air Maroc website, I booked myself on the direct flight at noon the next day from Casablanca to New York, charging it to my credit card. The flight would arrive at 2:55 p.m. (with the five-hour time change). I switched over to the JetBlue website and found a seat on the 5:58 p.m. flight from JFK to Buffalo. Finally, an email to Morton:
The Blue Hour Page 8