CHAPTER
SIX
My head throbs. A sour taste coats my mouth. I reach for the water glass on my nightstand, but it is empty.
As if in defiance of my mood, the sun shines brightly through my open blinds, assaulting my eyes. My clock informs me it is nearly nine. I need to call in sick again, making it another day of work—and of commissions—I’ll miss. Yesterday I was so hungover that my raspy voice convinced Lucille I really was ill. I stayed in bed and drank my second bottle of wine, then polished off the half bottle left over from Aunt Charlotte’s salon, and when the visions of Richard entwined with her refused to be blotted from my mind, I took a pill as well.
As I reach for the phone, my stomach heaves and I stumble toward the bathroom instead. I fall to my knees but can’t throw up. My abdomen is so empty it feels concave.
I pull myself up and twist the sink tap, gulping the metallic-tasting water greedily. I splash handfuls on my face and look at my reflection.
My long dark hair is tangled and my eyes are swollen. New hollows have formed beneath my cheekbones, and my collarbone stands out sharply. I brush my teeth, trying to scrub away the taste of old alcohol, and pull on a bathrobe.
I fall back into bed and reach for the phone. I dial Saks and ask to be put through to Lucille.
“It’s Vanessa.” I’m grateful that my voice still sounds gravelly. “I’m sorry, but I’m still pretty sick. . . .”
“When do you think you might be back in?”
“Tomorrow?” I venture. “Definitely the day after.”
“Right.” Lucille pauses. “We’re starting presales today. It’s going to be very busy.”
She lets the implication hang. Lucille has probably never missed a day of work in her life. I’ve seen the way she appraises my shoes, my clothes, my watch. The way her mouth tightens when I come into work late. She thinks she knows me, that this job is a lark; she is certain she waits on my type every single day.
“I don’t have a fever, though,” I say quickly. “Maybe I can give it a try?”
“Good.”
I hang up and reread Richard’s text, even though every word is branded into my memory, then force myself to get into the shower, turning the knob as far left as possible to make it steaming hot. I stand there while my skin flushes red, then I towel off. I dry my hair and pull it into a twist to hide the roots, promising myself I’ll cover them tonight. I slip on a simple gray cashmere sweater set, black trousers, and a pair of black ballerina flats. I pat on extra concealer and blush to camouflage my sallow complexion.
When I go into the kitchen, Aunt Charlotte isn’t there, but she has set a place for me at the counter. I sip the coffee and nibble the banana bread she left me. I can tell it’s homemade. My stomach protests after a few bites, so I wrap the remains of my slice in a paper towel and dump it in the trash, hoping she will think I ate it.
The front door closes behind me with a metallic clank. It seems that in the past two days the weather has undergone a seismic change. I realize immediately that I am overdressed. It’s too late for me to put on another outfit, though; Lucille is waiting. Besides, the subway stop is only four blocks away.
The air slams into me as I head down the sidewalk: hot, muggy, rank with smells from the waffle vendor on the corner, the garbage that hasn’t been picked up, the wisp of cigarette smoke drifting toward my face. Eventually, I reach the entrance to the subway and descend the stairs.
The sun is blotted out instantly and the humidity feels even thicker down here. I swipe my MetroCard and push through the turnstile, feeling the hard bar resisting against my waist.
A subway car thunders into the station, but it’s not my line. The crowd presses forward, near the edge, but I remain by the wall, away from the lethal electric rail. Some people fall to their deaths here; some are shoved. Occasionally, police can’t determine which has occurred.
A young woman comes to stand beside me by the wall. She is blond and petite, and very pregnant. Tenderly, she rubs her stomach, her hand moving in slow circles. I watch, mesmerized, and it is as if a centrifugal force commands my thoughts, spinning my mind back to the day I sat on the cold tile of my bathroom floor, wondering if one blue line or two would emerge on the pregnancy test.
Richard and I wanted children. A baker’s dozen, he liked to joke, though privately we’d agreed on three. I’d stopped working. We had a maid come every week. This was my only job.
At first I’d worried about the kind of mother I’d be, the unconscious lessons I’d absorbed from my own role model. Some days I’d come home from school to see my mother using a toothpick to excavate crumbs from the cracks in our dining room chairs. Other times, the mail would still be scattered on the floor beneath the slot in the door and dishes would be piled in the sink. I learned early on to not knock on my mother’s bedroom door on her lights-out days. When my mother forgot to pick me up from after-school art classes or play-dates, I became adept at making excuses and suggesting that my father be called instead.
I started packing my own lunches when I was in the third grade. I’d see other kids dip spoons into thermoses of homemade soup or Tupperware containers of pasta shaped like stars—some parents even included notes with jokes or loving messages—while I tried to gobble my daily sandwich fast, before anyone noticed the bread was torn because I’d spread the peanut butter on while it was still cold.
But as the months passed, my yearning for a child surpassed my trepidation. I’d mothered myself; certainly I could care for a child. As I lay beside Richard at night, I would fantasize about reading Dr. Seuss books to a little boy with those long-lashed eyes, or clinking miniature teacups with a daughter who had his endearing lopsided smile.
I’d watched, feeling numb, as a single blue line emerged on the pregnancy test, as vivid and straight as the slash of a knife. Richard had been in the bedroom that morning, easing one of his charcoal wool suits out of the dry-cleaning bag. Waiting for me to emerge. I knew he’d read the answer in my eyes and I’d see the echo of disappointment in his own. He’d stretch out his arms and whisper, “It’s okay, baby. I love you.”
But with this negative test—my sixth in a row—my time was officially up. We had agreed if it didn’t happen after six months, Richard would go for a test. My ob-gyn had explained it was less invasive to count sperm. All Richard would have to do was stare at a Playboy and reach into his pants. He’d joked that his teenage years had prepared him well. I knew he was trying to make me feel better. If Richard didn’t have any issues—and I was certain he didn’t, the problem lay within me—then it would be my turn.
“Sweetheart?” Richard had knocked on the bathroom door.
I stood up and smoothed my sleeveless pale pink nightgown. I opened the door, my face wet.
“I’m sorry.” I held the stick behind my back, as if it were something shameful to hide.
He hugged me as tightly as ever and said all the right things, but I felt a subtle shift in the energy between us. I recalled how we took a walk in the park near our home shortly after our wedding and had seen a father playing catch with his son, who looked to be about eight or nine. They wore matching Yankees baseball caps.
Richard had paused, staring at them. “I can’t wait to do that with my boy. Hope he has a better arm than I do.”
I’d laughed, aware that my breasts were just the tiniest bit tender. It happened before my period, but it was also a sign of pregnancy, I’d read. Already, I was taking prenatal vitamins. I filled my mornings with long walks and I’d bought a beginner’s yoga video. I’d stopped eating unpasteurized cheeses and drinking more than a single glass of wine at dinner. I was doing everything the experts recommended.
But nothing worked.
“We’ll just have to keep trying,” Richard had said early on, back when we were still optimistic. “That’s not so bad, is it?”
I’d thrown the sixth pregnancy test into the bathroom trash can, covering it with a tissue, so I wouldn’t have to see it.
“I was thinking,” Richard had said. He moved away from me to look in the mirror above the dresser as he knotted his tie. On the bed behind him was an open suitcase. Richard traveled frequently, but usually just short trips, for a night or two. Suddenly I knew what he was going to say: He was going to invite me to come with him. I felt the darkness start to lift as I imagined escaping our beautiful, empty home, in a charming neighborhood where I had no friends. Of putting distance between me and my latest failure.
But what Richard said was “Maybe you should stop drinking altogether?”
The pregnant woman moves away from me and I blink hard, reorienting myself. I watch as she heads toward the tracks and the roar of the approaching subway car. The wheels screech to a halt and the doors slide open with a weary exhale. I wait until the crowds have pushed inside, then I walk forward, feeling a tinge of unease.
I step over the threshold and hear the warning chime signaling the doors are closing. “Excuse me,” I say to the guy in front of me, but he doesn’t move. His head bobs in time to the music blasting over his headphones; I can feel the vibrations of the bass. The doors close, but the train remains still. It is so hot I can feel my trousers sticking to my legs.
“Seat?” someone offers, and an older man stands up to give his to the pregnant woman. She flashes a smile as she accepts. She’s wearing a plaid dress; it’s simple and cheap looking, and her full breasts strain against the thin fabric as she reaches up to lift her hair off the back of her neck and fan herself with one hand. Her skin is flushed and dewy; she is radiant.
Richard’s new love can’t be pregnant, can she?
I don’t think it’s possible, but suddenly I imagine Richard standing behind her, his hands reaching around to cup her full belly.
I suck in shallow breaths. A man in a white undershirt with yellowed armholes is holding on to the pole by my head. I tilt my face away but I can still smell his pungent sweat.
The car lurches and I fall against a woman reading the Times. She doesn’t even look up from her paper. A few more stops, I tell myself. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen.
The train rumbles along the tracks, sounding angry, threading through the dark tunnel. I feel a body press against mine. Too close; everyone is too close. My sweaty hand slips off the pole as my knees buckle. I collapse against the doors, crouching with my head close to my knees.
“Are you okay?” someone asks.
The guy in the undershirt leans close to me.
“I think I’m sick,” I gasp.
I begin to rock, counting the rhythmic whirring of the wheels along the track. One, two . . . ten. . . . twenty . . .
“Conductor!” a woman calls out.
“Yo! Is anyone here a doctor?”
. . . fifty . . . sixty-four . . .
The train stops at Seventy-ninth and I feel arms around my waist, helping me up. Then I am half carried through the doors, onto the solid platform. Someone leads me to a bench a dozen yards away.
“Can I call anyone?” asks a voice.
“No. The flu . . . I just need to get home. . . .”
I sit there until I can breathe again.
Then I walk fourteen blocks back to the apartment, counting all 1,848 steps aloud, until I can crawl into bed.