White Elephant

by Julie Langsdorf

  No wonder he found TV so entertaining. Had he been high at Annie Get Your Gun rehearsals? Maybe that was the real reason the show had been postponed—indefinitely, according to Allison. There were other reasons too. Apparently Rainier thought it was absurd that the town had considered granting Suzanne and Grant an emergency exemption to the moratorium guidelines, an opinion he voiced at rehearsal. An opinion to which Grant took offense. Grant had done a nasty imitation of Rainier, making his Austrian accent Hitleresque, and Rainier had stormed out—for good, he said.

  Ted wouldn’t have cared that Grant smoked if he behaved like an adult. A lot of people did now, often out in the open. In some D.C. neighborhoods it was as common a smell as cigarette smoke, and who cared if you didn’t make a public nuisance of yourself? But Grant was a houseguest. He was supposed to be a role model for Jillian and Adam. Instead he broke the household rules and lay around, letting everyone else pick up the slack. The more Ted thought about it, the more furious he got.

  Grant shook the sweet potato chips bag under Ted’s nose. “Better help yourself before I finish them off.”

  Ted punched the bag out of Grant’s hand. Bits of orange chips skittered across the coffee table and onto the rug.

  Grant laughed. “Good one!”

  Ted opened his mouth to tell him off. “They deserve better than you’re giving,” he wanted to say, and, “No wonder Suzanne doesn’t confide in you.” She didn’t. Grant had been as surprised as Ted to learn that Suzanne was going to the hospital for a procedure the other day. What kind of clod didn’t know his wife was having difficulties with the pregnancy?

  Grant looked at him with red, pleading eyes, waiting for Ted to speak. He looked so pathetic. One of his eyes looked oddly puffy, and he looked like he was starting to cry. Ted’s anger shrank back to pity. “Oops,” he said, scooping up the chips. Grant helped him, wiping down the crumbs on the coffee table with his sleeve.

  “Well, good night,” Ted said, taking the potato chips bag and his admonishing words along with him.

  His phone rang. Terrance, no doubt. Ted had had enough for one day, but if he didn’t pick up, Terrance would keep calling.

  “I’m going to get an ice scraper,” Terrance said.

  “But you don’t have a car.”

  “Tomorrow. On my day off. I’m going to go to the hardware store.”

  “Okay.”

  “Willard Park Hardware is giving them away to the first fifty customers.”

  “Go for it. You can get me one too.”

  “It’s going to be for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m going to take the bus.”

  Seniors and the disabled rode for free, a source of infinite delight to Terrance, who sometimes rode the bus around for hours, sightseeing.

  Ted brushed his teeth after they hung up, looking at himself in the mirror above the sink. He was looking at a good man, a decent man. A man who was there for his less fortunate brother. A man who helped his down-on-his-luck neighbor. If that wasn’t true charity, what was? He was surprised Grant had cried. He must trust Ted, to cry in front of him.

  It was only later, when he woke up to the sound of laughter, that Ted realized it wasn’t tears, but pot that had made Grant’s eyes red. He felt like putting a pillow over Grant’s face, smothering the laughter and the man along with it. Instead, he put a pillow over his own head and tried to get back to sleep.

  SUZANNE SAT AT THE KITCHEN TABLE RECOUNTING HER RECENT MISFORTUNES by the light from the kitchen-range hood. It was nearly two in the morning, around the usual time she woke up each night, but it was restlessness rather than hunger that had roused her tonight. Her uterus had been roiling for hours, as if it had a life of its own, she thought—before remembering that it did. It was only Braxton-Hicks contractions, she told herself, false contractions, practice for the real thing. She’d had them with Adam too.

  But what if they weren’t false? It was a question she could hardly bear to ask herself. She had taken Dr. Fielding’s advice and had the cerclage, but it turned out that that wasn’t the end of the matter. Hers was still a high-risk pregnancy. The doctor told her to “take it easy.” No heavy lifting, plenty of naps. Naps? She hadn’t taken a nap since she was four years old. She was trying her hardest to be good, but her efforts were complicated by the fact that they no longer had a home of their own.

  She couldn’t lose this baby. She felt so close to her. She toyed with names at night, French names—Claire, Francoise, Solange—soft names, floating names, the names of a child not tethered by gravity. She imagined rocking her, nursing her, holding her close. Adam had no use for Suzanne now that he had Jillian. That was misfortune number one: she’d lost Adam to a twelve-year-old girl.

  Her second misfortune was that the insurance company was blowing them off. They had sent out a number of inspectors to examine the house but they had yet to make a decision about how much, if any, the policy would pay out. If any! That house was teeming with mold! Well, maybe it was. There might be a little mold. Most houses had at least a little mold, didn’t they? She called the office daily, but it seemed as though a new agent, unfamiliar with the case, answered every time, forcing her to go over the story again and again like a recording. She threatened to come to the local insurance office and raise hell, but they were evasive about their location. Thus she, like Sisyphus, was condemned to push her boulder up the mountain—for eternity, she feared.

  Misfortune number three: the town had turned down their request to rebuild the house before the moratorium expired. Were they complete idiots? Didn’t they read the articles she gave them about the dangers of mold? They didn’t know there wasn’t any. Only she, Nick, and Grant knew that, and they were keeping their mouths shut. She’d forwarded dozens of links in addition to having her research spiral-bound at the copy center to make the information easier to read, a copy for the mayor and each town council member, as well as a stack for the insurance company, which they’d requested she send to their main office in Michigan, where they probably had a bonfire with them. She would have given them Adam’s health file, but the latest results—either luckily, or unluckily, depending on how you looked at it—did not further her case.

  The allergist’s skin-prick tests showed that Adam had a slight sensitivity to eggplants and cashews, which might possibly have explained the headaches if he ate eggplant or cashews, but he didn’t. “What about environmental allergies?” Suzanne had asked the doctor at the follow-up appointment.

  “Nothing.” He showed Suzanne the section on grasses and trees on Adam’s results.

  “What about mold?”

  “Nope.”

  “Dust?”

  “No.”

  “Lead paint?” Suzanne asked.

  “That’s not an allergy.”

  “But there might be some allergens you missed, some rare ones?”

  “This is a pretty comprehensive list.”

  Suzanne had stood up, realization tumbling down on her. She yanked the test results from the doctor’s hands. “Are there other copies of this?”

  “That one’s for you to keep.”

  “I want the file on the computer.”

  “We’d be glad to send a copy to his pediatrician.”

  “Don’t you dare!” Suzanne said.

  The doctor took a step backward, his eyes shifting uneasily toward the door. Rightly so. When Suzanne looked down at her hands, she saw that they were fists.

  No one else must ever know about the test results. Not Grant. Not Allison. Not even Adam. Not ever. For the rest of his life Adam would have to write “mold” on forms that asked whether he had any allergies. All anyone needed to know was that his headaches were improving, and this, Suzanne must convince them, was because he no longer was being exposed to mold from their house in Willard Park.

  So what was causing the headaches? Suzanne now had a probable answer thanks to the neurologist, who had received the results of the blood tests she’d ordered: Adam had Lyme dise
ase.

  Suzanne knew about Lyme disease, of course. A tick bite followed by a bull’s-eye rash and flulike symptoms—none of which had happened to Adam, Suzanne argued, but lab results were lab results. Apparently not everyone who got Lyme had flulike symptoms or a bull’s-eye rash. Who knew? The neurologist theorized that the headaches, neck ache, and joint pain were probably the result of Lyme meningitis, which was similar to aseptic meningitis, but caused by the Lyme bacteria. He’d probably gotten the bite when they went to Chincoteague Island at the end of the summer, home to myriad pastoral, tick-infested deer.

  It was good to have a diagnosis at long last, even better to know that he didn’t need further treatment. The Lyme titers showed that he had had Lyme, but no longer did, thanks to the double dose of antibiotics the pediatrician prescribed, which, coincidentally, worked to combat not only sinus infections, but Lyme disease. Symptoms could last a long time with Lyme, months or even years, but they had lessened somewhat and would continue to abate, Suzanne was told.

  Suzanne wanted to feel relieved, and she did, of course. Adam was becoming himself again. He’d returned to school after winter break, and was catching up on what he’d missed. Suzanne would have begun to get her life back again had she not destroyed her house.

  If only they were rich, they could rent a nice house until the insurance company came through with a big check. That was misfortune number four: their impoverished-ness. Suzanne was loath to take out a loan on top of the one they owed her mother. It didn’t matter if the house was no longer habitable. They still owed her. They might have used their own stocks to pay the rent if they hadn’t invested so much in Sweet Dreams. And so they were stuck living at the Millers’ for the time being, stuck in a tiny cottage, all three of them sleeping in one attic room. Six of them sharing a bathroom, she and Grant sharing a futon.

  Which brought her to misfortune number five: number five was a doozy. It was funny, nearly, until you realized it was tragic. At first Suzanne thought they had somehow brought the mold with them from their house, but—get this!—she now understood that the fuggy, weedy odor she’d so often smelled these past few months, the smell that she attributed to mold, the smell that had been a pivotal reason for bringing Nick Cox in to demolish their house, rendering her and her son homeless, well, that fuggy weedy smell was . . . weed. Grant reeked of it when he came to bed at night. She couldn’t deny it anymore. His attempts to wash off his sins were a joke: he was permeated through and through.

  And, well, weed was one thing, wasn’t it? Even she had to admit smoking wasn’t such a big deal anymore. If he could smoke socially, the way people drank socially, be successful at work, and be a good husband and father, she could, perhaps, learn to live with his occasionally getting high, but he was acting like the druggies she’d known in high school, off in a land where a sleepy “Peace, dude” sufficed as conversation. She and Grant had had a weird exchange the other night, when she told him about the cerclage. She caught him in a lie, but she suspected there was a deeper lie beneath that lie. She wondered if he’d been fired. Would he tell her if he had? That was the tragic aspect. He couldn’t seem to learn from his mistakes.

  She didn’t trust him anymore, she thought with a shiver. Had she ever? He’d always been a chameleon, transforming himself from lawyer, to lover, to husband and father. He was an actor, much of his act designed to “get the girl.” Well, he’d gotten her all right. He’d gotten her good.

  She hadn’t meant to complicate her life this way: the Life Plan was designed to prevent this sort of collapse! She was going to spend her life in high-rises, in pencil skirts and high heels, buying and selling businesses until she dropped. Instead she was trapped. As trapped as Cinderella, as Rapunzel in her tower, as Snow White in the dwarves’ cottage—an analogy that continued to serve. Her uterus squeezed tight, painfully this time. Suzanne took a deep breath against the pressure.

  Ted appeared at the kitchen door, his expression shifting from pleased to concerned. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, forcing a smile.

  He tossed a bag of Oreos on the table. “Contraband.”

  She nodded, trying to look appreciative, but afraid the pain made her look ghoulish.

  “Can I be honest with you?” he said.

  She nodded.

  “You don’t look so good.”

  “They’re only Braxton-Hicks contractions. False alarms.”

  He poured two glasses of milk, toasting the baby’s and her health, and sat across from her.

  “Some snowball fight you had out there tonight,” Suzanne said.

  Ted set a cookie on a napkin. “This is Nick Cox,” he said, and slammed his fist down on it. Bits of cookie crumbled under his hand, but the cream filling kept it mostly intact. He shrugged, popping what was left of the cookie in his mouth.

  “Want me to kill him? I could blame it on raging hormones,” Suzanne said.

  Ted shook his head, serious. “Killing isn’t—”

  “I was kidding.”

  “Oh.”

  Ted was such a sincere fellow, someone you could depend on. She imagined that he’d been like a middle-aged man even when he was a child—sensible, organized, conscientious. “Did you collect stamps when you were a kid?” Suzanne said.

  “Coins. Want to see them?”

  “No,” Suzanne said.

  “Okay.”

  “Now, if I’d asked you if you wanted to see my coins, would you have said yes?” Suzanne said.

  “I’m interested in coins.”

  “What if you weren’t? What if I collected bugs? Would you say yes anyway?”

  “I like collections.”

  Suzanne laughed. “What’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told?”

  He considered.

  “There must be something.”

  “I couldn’t watch Jillian being born. I told Allison I did, but I closed my eyes.”

  “Grant made a video of my delivery. I asked him not to.”

  The overhead light went on. In walked Allison in her bathrobe. “I thought I heard a party. Can I join?”

  “We were complaining about our spouses. Well, one of us was,” Suzanne said.

  Ted took Allison’s hand and kissed her palm.

  Suzanne wanted that. The comfortableness they had between them. She would never have it with Grant. They approached life’s demands so differently: She took action. He ran from it. It was becoming more and more obvious with time. She smiled at them, wistful.

  Allison took a sip of Ted’s milk and a bite of a cookie. “Mm. Chemicals.”

  Suzanne could feel a contraction starting up again. It solidified and seized hold. She held the mound of her belly with her hands, but she couldn’t hold back the tide.

  “Are you all right?” Allison said.

  “Braxton-Hicks,” Ted said. “False alarms.”

  Allison looked impressed. “Since when are you an obstetrician?”

  Suzanne’s midsection radiated pain. It crawled around to her back, making her cry out.

  “You sure they’re false alarms?” Allison said.

  “No,” Suzanne cried, her mouth becoming a tiny O.

  18

  JANUARY 11

  Grant practically ran down the hospital hallways toward the exit, his breath hard, his throat and jaw tight from a night full of stress and absent of sleep. He’d been wanting to leave all night, to call Marie—the texts weren’t enough. He needed to hear the voice of someone sane, someone who was not caught up in this nightmare, but every time he tried to slip away to call her, Suzanne called for him to come back. “Hold my hand,” she said, fear stamped on her face. He couldn’t remember ever seeing her afraid before. Furious, excited, frustrated, desperate—yes, but never afraid. He was afraid too.

  She’d gone into premature labor and the cerclage hadn’t held. She’d dilated too much to be stitched up again. She would be on bed rest for the next several months, on medication to keep the contractions under control. Th
e doctors would do all they could.

  We’re going to lose the baby, he thought, even as he thought, Don’t think that! What would happen if they lost the baby? The world would fly off its axis. It was spinning too fast as it was. He still could not really picture them with another child, but he couldn’t imagine losing it. Losing her. Adam and Suzanne, already so serious, would grow even more serious, their sad house even sadder.

  He was a jerk to leave the hospital after Suzanne finally fell asleep and he knew it, a jerk to tell Allison he had to get to a deposition when there was no deposition to get to. He’d left Allison with coffee and the newspaper, peace offerings. Well, he was just taking a break. He’d be back as soon as he rested up; he’d return restored and steady, able to be the husband his wife needed him to be.

  It was a relief to see sunlight beyond the lobby doors. He slid his parking ticket into the machine to pay and was rewarded with the message: “Thank you! Come again soon!”

  The revolving doors took him from the clammy warmth of illness to the cool of morning, the sun rising with incongruous beauty over the parking lot. He took a deep breath, his first real lungful since Ted woke him to tell him Suzanne needed to go to the hospital late last night.

  He’d felt a similar breathlessness the other night, when Suzanne told him she needed a cerclage and that Allison could drop her off before the procedure, but that he would have to pick her up.

  “A what?” he’d said.

  She’d known she had an incompetent cervix for weeks, but she hadn’t told him. Didn’t he have a right to know? As the baby’s father?

  “My body, my choice,” she said, and he didn’t know what to say to that. It was as if she considered herself the only parent, the queen bee, with him a mere drone.

  Instead of apologizing for withholding this crucial news from him, she’d wrinkled her brow as if she didn’t quite recognize him and said, “Are you wearing makeup?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Yes you are.”

  “No. Well. Maybe a little.”

  She frowned. “Why?”

  “The . . . play.”

  She looked even more puzzled. “It’s been canceled . . . Is there something you need to tell me?”