A Bad Case of You

by Taylor Holloway

  “Eric, I don’t want to be with you anymore.” She looked me right in the eye when she said it, and then an expression very much like relief darted over her features.

  My heart pounded in my chest, it had become almost deafeningly loud in my ears. “What did you say?” I stuttered. I’d never stuttered before in my life.

  She was now looking at the ground. “I don’t want to be with you anymore. I want out of this arrangement. I want to move back to New York.”

  The noise of my beating heart was making it hard to focus on her words. “Why?” I repeated.

  “You aren’t the man I need. Eric, our time has been fun, but let’s face it, you can’t give me what I need.”

  “But I’m in love with you.” I couldn’t seem to find two brain cells to rub together at the moment. It was all I could do to make simple sentences.

  A strange look passed over her features. “I’m in love with you, too,” she said slowly and clearly, “but it’s not enough.”

  I blinked at her. The moment between us lengthened into a cloying, thick silence. A few seconds later, the doorbell rang. I couldn’t move from my spot atop the kitchen stool. I was riveted to the spot in shock.

  Faith looked at me with an unreadable expression on her face. She went to the door, opened it, paid for my Thai food and then brought it back into the kitchen. She set the noodles on the kitchen counter between us.

  “I’ll go,” she said after a few more awkward minutes of silence. “I’m beginning the annulment filings tomorrow.”

  I stared at her. Usually I was good in a crisis, but I couldn’t seem to move. I couldn’t speak. I was frozen. All my years honing the ability to compartmentalize in a crisis, and all I could do was stare at Faith. She was so beautiful.

  “I just wanted you to know why I was doing this,” she told me. “I don’t expect anything from you, and now that Koels is retiring next week, there’s no reason for us to keep up the charade. I just wanted you to know.”

  I wanted to tell her to stop. I wanted to comfort her and hold her and take her to bed. I wanted to push her away and blame her. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I wanted to be something other than the frozen, mute idiot I was. But I couldn’t I was unable to move or speak or even react.

  Faith didn’t wait for me to recover my senses. She had started crying. She just shook her head, turned, and walked away.

  “Wait, I owe you for the Thai food!” It was a profoundly stupid thing to say, but I wasn’t exactly at my best. She shook her head and closed the door softly behind her.

  43

  Faith

  “I’m here to speak with Ms. Carter,” I told the receptionist. “I have an appointment at nine a.m.”

  “You’re, um, Mrs. Carter?” The young woman asked, looking down at her computer and then up at me.

  I nodded warily. “I prefer Ms. McNamara.”

  “Of course. My mistake. Why don’t you have a seat, Ms. McNamara? Ms. Carter will be right with you.”

  I sank down into the waiting room chair and gathered my nerves. I felt like I was on the verge of tears all the time lately. I’d never gone to battle before, but I had a feeling this is what it felt like for soldiers right before a fight.

  “Faith?” Mary Carter asked a moment later, sticking her head out from behind a doorframe. She looked completely shocked to see me. “You really came. Come on into my office.”

  I followed her back into a plush, lawyerly office.

  “You’re a divorce attorney,” I said, searching her face for trustworthiness.

  She nodded. Her green eyes were the precise same shade as Eric’s. I avoided looking at them. “Yes. I specialize in helping Catholics obtain declarations of nullity, so they can marry again in the church.”

  I took a deep breath. “I need your help.”

  She blinked. “You do?”

  “I want my marriage to Eric dissolved immediately. You were right, this was all a terrible idea. And I don’t want to see him until it’s done.”

  Her expression turned confused. “I thought you two were planning on applying for the annulment together. Did you get in a fight? What changed?”

  Those were questions I didn’t know how to answer. “I just… I need someone to help me get this done as quickly as possible. And I don’t want to see or speak to Eric again.”

  A line formed between her eyebrows. “What changed? Why do you want out early?”

  “That’s my business,” I told her.

  “If I’m going to be your lawyer, it will be my business too.” She arched an eyebrow at me, and I wondered if there was any chance of this working. Now that Eric was my adversary, I thought she’d be a natural ally, but maybe I was barking up the wrong tree. I needed to play this conversation carefully.

  “You won’t tell Eric anything I tell you, will you?” I needed to know that she would keep my secrets.

  She produced a form. “Sign this. It establishes that I’m your representative and confirms attorney-client privilege.”

  “You won’t tell him anything I tell you?” I asked again. This was essential.

  She smirked at me. “No. It’s like I told you on the phone, this is like Christmas for me. You’re giving me exactly what I want, and I’ll even represent you for free. I don’t really expect you to trust me, but you can trust me on this: I never betray a client’s confidence. That isn’t something I’d ever do, even if the client is you.”

  “You’re right,” I told her, dragging the paperwork closer to me and skimming it. “I don’t trust you. But I do trust you to do everything in your power to make sure I get unmarried to your brother and out of his life forever.”

  “Yes, you can trust me on that.”

  “Good.”

  I signed the paperwork and slid it across the desk back at her. She signed it as well and then looked at me appraisingly.

  “Alright, I’m now bound by law not to betray anything you say.”

  “Ok, well then I guess I should lead with the fact that I’m pregnant. I don’t want Eric to know.”

  All the blood drained out of Mary’s face. She put a steadying hand on her own, large belly. She had to be getting close to her delivery date.

  “What?” she stuttered. She sank down into her desk chair and stared at me like I’d just produced proof of aliens right there in her office.

  “I’m pregnant and I’m keeping the baby. I need this marriage to get dissolved before he finds out. I’m going to move back to New York, I think. But I need this marriage gone first.”

  She was silent for a long, long moment. “You’re sure he’s the father?”

  “He’s the only man I’ve ever had sex with, so yes.” What a rude question. I guess she had to ask it, but it was still rude.

  Her eyes got even bigger in her face. “How far along are you?”

  “About six or seven weeks.” I really didn’t see how that was relevant. I wanted to start talking about the annulment filings.

  She drew a shaky hand through her hair. “Faith, this is going to be much more difficult than I think you realize. Eric has rights over the baby.”

  “He doesn’t want a baby.”

  “I know but—”

  I interrupted. “I came to you because you want rid of me. This is how you can get rid of me.”

  Her lips parted. “I’m sorry I said those things to you in the hospital. Eric hasn’t spoken to me since that day.”

  I shrugged. “I’m over it. And I get it. He’s got a lot of money. I don’t. I know it looks like I’m after his money, but I’m not. I just want to be free of this situation.”

  Her head bobbed up and down. “You want to keep the baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then under Texas law, he has a right to it once it’s born.”

  “I have no intention of being in Texas when the baby is born, and he doesn’t want that.”

  “Have you told him?”

  I shook my head. “No. I haven’t told him.” I squared my sh
oulders at her. “I’m not going to tell him, and neither are you.”

  Her eyes widened. “You are clever, aren’t you Faith.”

  “I try.”

  “Are you in love with him?” she asked. Her voice had become soft, like she was trying to lull me into a trap.

  “What does it matter if I’m in love with him?” I snapped back at her.

  “He’s in love with you.” She paused. “I can tell.”

  “I really don’t see why it matters,” I told her. Ordinarily I would never be this rude with anyone, let alone a stranger, but my hormones were off the charts and I was desperate to be free of this marriage.

  She shook her head at me. “I can’t represent you in this. Trust me, I thought today was going to be my lucky day when you walked in this morning. I thought you had come to your senses and realized that you were in over your head. But the truth is, I misjudged this situation. I misjudged you, and you’ve misjudged him. My counsel is this: we all need to pause, and then start telling each other the truth.”

  I was beyond frustrated with Mary. So frustrated that my hands were starting to shake, and tears were starting to burn in the corners of my eyes. “I thought you were going to help me get out of this.”

  “I think the path for you to get out of this problem is to tell Eric the truth.”

  “He’ll hate me,” I whispered. That’s what I really wanted to avoid, in my secret heart. I didn’t want Eric to hate and resent me the way he hated and resented his father. I didn’t want him to see me as a trap. I didn’t want to be a snare around his ankle for the rest of his life, binding him to a child he never wanted and a future that was antithetical to the one he’d planned. I couldn’t imagine a worse fate for either of us. Or the baby.

  Mary’s expression was closed. There was something going on beneath her placid exterior, but I couldn’t read it. “He won’t. If you love him, you owe him the truth. You’ll thank me when this is over.”

  I got up and prepared to storm out. “You’re a terrible lawyer.”

  She smirked at me and I hated her more than ever. “Maybe, but I’m a great sister.”

  44

  Eric

  Mary called me two days after Faith’s fateful visit. She made up some elaborate story about needing my help to assemble an IKEA crib for her new baby, but I saw straight through it. She wanted to make up. Considering that my relationship with Faith was now in shambles and I felt like my entire life was imploding, I was open to the idea. I arrived at her door with Allen wrenches and croissants in hand. I came inside wordlessly. I didn’t really know what to expect from Mary. She’d apologized profusely to my voicemail, but I wasn’t sure I was up to any fighting today.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said, leading me up the winding stairs of her house to the nursery on the third level. “I know you’re still mad at me, but Greg is on a business trip and I need to get this done.” She paused on a landing and leveled a sincere look at me. “You know I really am sorry, don’t you?”

  I sighed and nodded distantly at her. I wasn’t up to fighting with her. After so many sleepless nights worrying about Faith, it didn’t seem worth it to push away the only person in the universe that genuinely gave a damn about me. “If it makes any difference, Faith left me without any explanation.” I frowned at my sister. “I don’t know what I did wrong, but annulment paperwork is in my kitchen right now. She got a lawyer.”

  I’d spent a good thirty minutes staring at that paperwork this morning and wondering what the hell I did to make Faith decide that this was the way she wanted to handle things. I knew that our annulment was impending, but I hadn’t expected her to cut me off like a gangrenous limb. Especially with no explanation.

  Part of me knew that Faith had always viewed us as temporary, and that she had no real interest in temporary. She’d made it clear from the get-go that she was looking for all the things I said I wasn’t looking for, and she viewed our relationship as a temporary fling. I’d been banking on making her fall in love with me. Apparently, I’d failed.

  Mary, of course, was oblivious to my thoughts. She nodded her head and led me up the rest of the stairs and to the threshold of the nursery. “Faith called me.”

  I froze, and not just because the crib was in about a hundred pieces on the floor.

  “What?” I asked openmouthed.

  Faith called Mary? Of her own free will? How did she even know how to find her?

  Mary nodded solemnly. “She asked me to be the lawyer that would represent her in the annulment.”

  I blinked in confusion. “I would have thought you’d jump at the chance to get rid of Faith like that.”

  Mary’s expression turned indecipherable. “I can’t tell you any of the details of our conversation, but I declined to represent her yesterday.” Her tone was guarded.

  I stared at Mary. Something about her word choice, and the way she was looking at me, tipped me off. I’d known her my whole life. I knew when she was telling me the truth, and when she wasn’t. I also knew when she was dancing around something. “What are you trying to tell me?” I asked her, suddenly thinking I might actually figure out why Faith was giving me the silent treatment.

  “If there were something, you know I couldn’t betray attorney-client privilege.” She looked frustrated about the fact.

  Coming from Mary, that was as good as a resounding yes. She wanted to tell me something, but she couldn’t because of her professional vow to protect her clients’ secrets. If I hadn’t known her my entire life, I wouldn’t have seen this situation for what it was.

  “Faith told you something?” I asked, suddenly desperate. “What was it? What’s going on?” I begged.

  She shook her head ruefully. “I can’t tell you anything. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself.”

  “How?” I looked around her hallway as if the answers were written on the walls. “I’m not telepathic.”

  Her green eyes flashed in apparent frustration. I was always struck by how much she resembled my mom when she was annoyed. “Let’s just get started on this crib,” she said after a moment. “My ankles are so swollen that I can’t get down on the ground with you, but I’ll sit over here in this chair and supervise.”

  Oh right, I reminded myself. I was invited over to do manual labor.

  Mary settled herself in a chair and propped her swollen feet up on an ottoman. Faith had been complaining about her swollen ankles lately, too. They looked so uncomfortable to me, and she wouldn’t even let me give her foot rubs (Faith hated having her feet touched). I hoped she was doing ok today. Just the thought of her made me feel sick. What had I done to drive her away?

  I sunk down on the ground and started looking at the pieces arrayed in front of me. There were so many.

  “Are there any instructions?” I asked, scanning the surroundings and seeing nothing but more parts.

  “Babies don’t come with instructions,” Mary said significantly. “Apparently cribs don’t either.” She shrugged her narrow shoulders.

  I raised an eyebrow at her incredulously. “Greg wouldn’t just leave this for you to assemble.” He was usually quite the do-it-yourselfer, which was a bit odd for a lawyer. He claimed it was stress relief to mow grass and oil hinges. I chalked it up to needing an escape from two small kids.

  Mary’s expression was indulgent. “I think he meant to do it himself but didn’t get around to it. He’s a bit overwhelmed lately.”

  “That’s understandable, I guess.” I’d be overwhelmed if I had a baby on the way, too. Although you’d think Greg would know what to expect on baby number three.

  Mary nodded. “Yes. It’s very understandable to be overwhelmed about a baby.” Her tone was peculiar. “Anyone would be overwhelmed.”

  I groped around at the pieces on the ground and started looking for something that looked like a base. That would be a good place to start. “I have no idea what I’m looking for,” I grumbled. I suspected that Mary had set up this entire puzzle on my behalf but w
asn’t sure what it was supposed to mean.

  “Maybe you should take an inventory first,” she suggested from her comfy chair. “See if there’s anything obvious that you’re missing.” She made an elaborate, long-suffering noise. “Between my swollen ankles and my morning sickness, I’m not going to be much help.”

  Faith had also been sick, a few times after breakfast lately. She’d been complaining that maybe she was developing a lactose or gluten intolerance.

  Wait.

  Wait a minute.

  Wait just a goddamn minute.

  Like I’d just been hit over the head with something heavy, my vision narrowed into a long, thin tunnel. It was good that I was already down on my hands and knees. With effort, I turned at looked at Mary, openmouthed.

  “No,” I managed to stutter.

  Mary raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

  “She can’t be.”

  “I don’t know what you’re babbling about,” Mary replied, although her eyes were dancing with something between excitement and victory. She’d led me to the answer.

  “She’s pregnant. Faith is pregnant,” I managed, biting out each word like I was paying by the letter. “That’s why she’s doing all this.” My entire world realigned.

  Her face was very still, but I wondered if she was hiding a smile. “I didn’t tell you that. I didn’t even suggest that. You’re coming to that conclusion entirely on your own.”

  “No, you didn’t tell me anything.” I took a deep breath and dragged my fingers through my suddenly sweaty hair. I felt weak in the knees and unreal. The pieces of the crib laid out around me suddenly told a very different story than they had a moment ago. They told my future. “I figured it out.”

  Mary’s smile was smug. “Congratulations.”

  45

  Eric

  I spent the rest of the afternoon at Mary’s, but I couldn’t remember a moment of it. She’d probably given me lots of good advice, so that was really a shame. The problem was that I was much too shell shocked to absorb anything. I don’t even remember how I got back to my apartment, what I ate for dinner (if I ate dinner), or what I did that evening.