The Pillow Friend

by Lisa Tuttle

  “Yeah, you fell in love with Alice.”

  He let go her hand, throwing himself back in his seat. “Alice is nothing to do with it! Alice was coincidence. Look, this isn't one-sided. . . . Our sexual relationship is dead, and you know it as well as I do.”

  She shrugged helplessly. She didn't know what he felt when he touched her; she'd never known. “Just then in the hall it wasn't right, but that's—there are reasons—” She paused to take a sip of her coffee and then shuddered at the sour taste. She kept forgetting there were things she no longer liked. “It's like this coffee. . . .”

  “What?”

  Of course what she was saying made no sense to him; he didn't know she was pregnant. She wished she had told him sooner. Now, in the middle of what seemed to be a memorial service for their marriage, was not the time she would have chosen, but it was now or never.

  “The last time we made love it was all right, wasn't it? Really, better than just all right.”

  He was giving her a look that might have been sympathetic or pitying. “Probably . . . I'm sorry, I don't remember. But that was then, before you went away, before Alice—all right, I'll admit that—”

  “It was only a few weeks ago.”

  “No.”

  “June the fourth.”

  “I don't remember the date, but we haven't had sex since you came back.”

  She leaned forward, fists clenched, quivering. “I can't believe you're saying that! I can't believe you don't remember—you woke me up! It was the middle of the night. I'd been hoping we would make love when we went to bed, because we hadn't done it since I'd gotten back, but you didn't seem interested, and I went to sleep and the next thing I knew you were kissing my breasts.”

  “You were dreaming.”

  “I was not dreaming. You fucked me. We both came. I didn't dream that; I didn't dream the smell of your sperm on me the next morning.”

  “Keep your voice down!”

  “I'm not shouting. I'm just saying the truth.”

  “There is no truth in it. We have not made love since April. It's not something I'm likely to be mistaken about.”

  “Or me. It happened; I know it happened; I have proof.” She stopped herself. “Maybe you were dreaming, and that's why you don't remember. I thought it wasn't your usual style. You weren't very energetic. Maybe you were asleep, maybe you were dreaming I was Alice.”

  “If I had to be asleep and dreaming you were Alice in order to fuck you that's a pretty grim comment on our sexual relationship. I don't know why you'd want to believe something like that.”

  “It's not something I want to believe. It happened; we had sex that night. I don't know why you don't remember.”

  “Well, I don't. What does it matter, anyway, whether we had one final meaningless sexual encounter last month.”

  “Not meaningless.” She held herself where she thought the baby was.

  The corners of his mouth turned down and he shook his head very slightly at her. “I'm sorry.”

  “I'm pregnant.”

  “Don't give me that.”

  “It's true. I should have told you earlier, but I was afraid, and I wanted to be sure.”

  “I'd thought better of you.”

  “For Christ's sake, Gray, you know I'm not a liar! I may misunderstand or get things wrong, but I don't lie. And it would be a pretty stupid lie to tell somebody who has no intention of ever sleeping with me again!”

  She had reached him; she felt as if he was really seeing her for the first time that day. “What makes you think you're pregnant?”

  “I did one of those home pregnancy tests.”

  “Oh, those bloody things. They can be wrong.”

  “They can be wrong on the negatives, not on the positive.”

  “You haven't been to the quack?”

  “Not yet.”

  “So you're not sure.”

  “I am sure. I was going to call for an appointment next week. I know I'm pregnant, I can feel it. Things taste different, I get tired more easily, my libido is completely flat, and of course I haven't had a period. . . .”

  “When was your last period?” His gaze sharpened. “You haven't had one since you've been back. When—wait, I remember. You'd just come on before you left. I remember we stopped at the chemist's so you could get a box of Tampax. So that was . . .”

  With a feeling of dread she watched him making the same calculations she'd made earlier. He came to the same conclusion.

  “So you should have come on again the week you got back, or a few days later. And you didn't. Which means you were pregnant when you got back, but not when you went away.” His eyes were very very cold. “And there you sit, trying to convince me that I've fucked you when I haven't. And no wonder I haven't wanted to, no wonder you seem so strange. There you sit, in my house, with another man's sprog in your belly, and you have the nerve to complain about me!”

  It was the end of their marriage. Gray announced that he was going up to Scotland for a week of solitude and writing, and then he was going to Greece with Alice. He'd be away for just over three weeks, which should be time enough for her to get herself sorted, he said. He gave her £500, enough to cover the costs of an abortion and her return to Houston, although he didn't say that was what it was for. He didn't have to.

  If it was the pillow friend's penis she carried, she didn't know what might happen, but was certain that the outcome would be horrific. It might grow larger and larger until it split her open, or maybe it would never come out at all, but grow into her, transforming her into something else. Or she might give birth to a shapeless mass of flesh, or to him, the pillow friend, an anonymous male creature.

  But maybe Graham was wrong and it was his child. She'd read that former Pill users didn't always have regular cycles—it could take months for the body to recover and resume its natural functions. What if her first ovulation had been on or around the fourth of June? Maybe it was Graham's child, a normal baby, that she carried. She had to find out before she could decide what to do.

  She made an appointment with Graham's GP, whom she'd never met. To her surprise, he did not examine her—he scarcely looked at her, preferring to refer to his calendar blotter to count the weeks before telling her that he would refer her to the ante-natal clinic at the nearest hospital—unless she had some other preference?—and they'd soon be in touch with her.

  Now sixteen weeks from her LMP, as the medical records put it, she sat in the hospital's ante-natal clinic, waiting to be summoned to meet the consultant. She'd already had her history taken by a midwife, been weighed, her blood pressure taken, and delivered a urine sample. It was becoming more real by the minute. Before she left the hospital today they would want to make a tentative booking for a bed to be reserved for her at the time of her expected delivery.

  Her name was called and she went into a small office where a good-looking, youngish man behind a desk looked up long enough to give her a quick smile before turning his attention to her file on the desk before him. He asked her a few questions, the same ones she'd had from the GP and the midwife, responding to her answers in a tone at once distracted and cheery, “Fine, fine!”

  After less than five minutes he stood up to say good-bye. “Nurse will take you—”

  “Aren't you going to examine me?”

  “Why? Is there some problem?” He began to look at her file again, as if the answer would be found there.

  She had grown up seeing films and reading and hearing about women who went to their doctors in all innocence, sometimes thinking they were ill, and emerged from their offices glowing upon hearing the magic words, “You're going to have a baby!” She said slowly, “I guess I just wanted to hear somebody tell me that I really am pregnant, some proof that I am going to have a baby. And—well, that it's all right. I'm not really sure about the date of conception, you see. I was on the Pill, and then I stopped taking it, and—”

  “You're down for an ultrasound scan today,” he said. “We usually
do one at about sixteen weeks. We'll be able to tell how developed the fetus is and have a better idea of when conception was, and also make sure that all the bits and pieces are there, developing normally. You'll be able to see for yourself.”

  She would be able to see the baby. She hadn't thought of that, hadn't realized that scans were routine. She'd imagined the horror reflected on the face of someone else, a doctor or nurse, as they discovered the shapeless mass growing inside her—but she would see it for herself.

  The nurse led her through corridors, took her up in a lift, and through more corridors to some distant part of the hospital. It was much quieter there, practically deserted.

  “I think they're having a tea break; they'll be back soon,” said the nurse. “You sit here and I'll bring you some water.”

  Agnes sat down on a straight-backed chair. On the opposite wall, next to a closed brown door, was a small black and white sign that read ULTRASOUND B303. Next to it a hand-written notice was taped to the wall: DO NOT ENTER UNTIL YOUR NAME IS CALLED.

  The nurse came back with a large plastic jug of water and a small glass. “Here.”

  “Oh, thank you, I am a bit thirsty.”

  “Never mind that. You drink it all. It's to fill your bladder, so they can get a good picture. You must drink it all.”

  It was something to do. When the nurse had gone away she set about drinking. She wondered what was growing inside her, and if she really wanted strangers to see it. She could get up now and walk out, keep her secret to herself—and keep it from herself.

  It was better to find out what she carried now, while it was still possible to stop it being born. If it was so horrible they would surely recommend, probably even insist upon, a termination. She drank another glass of water and then another. She remembered a line from a poem by James Fenton—“Every fear is a desire”—and she drank another glass of water.

  Thinking about the scan, she had imagined a room like a high-tech operating theater, full of people, most of them men, in white gowns. But there were only two women in a darkened room crowded with furniture and machines. One of them, the doctor, was about her own age and spoke with a soft Scottish accent. The other woman, an Asian, looked even younger and almost painfully sympathetic.

  “Should I undress?”

  “No, no, just lie down on the table and pull your trousers down to—that's fine. Now, we're going to spread some jelly—it's warm, Ayesha, isn't it?—on your tummy—terrible stuff when it's cold, a real shock, but I think it feels rather nice like this, no?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Your bladder's nice and full?”

  “Feels like it's about to burst.”

  “Ach, well, I hope we'll be through before that can happen.”

  “How good will the picture be? I mean, what will you be able to tell about the baby?”

  “Oh, we should be able to tell what size it is, and if it's got all its bits and pieces—but you'll see for yourself, on that screen there—Ayesha?”

  She turned her head and saw a television screen. “Never thought I'd be having a broadcast from my womb.”

  “Oh, we've seen them all,” said the doctor. “It's not the womb so much as who's inside.” She was rolling the transducer over her greased belly now, pressing gradually harder than was comfortable. Agnes said nothing, gazing at the screen, looking for her baby. She felt neither fear nor excitement now, only acceptance and a sort of muffled curiosity. But she could see nothing. The screen, to her, appeared completely blank. She'd read, in her pregnancy book, that the video picture would be very blurry and would have to be interpreted for her by someone skilled. Yet she saw nothing which seemed to offer any scope for interpretation, and as neither the doctor nor the technician spoke and the silence, with the transducer being rolled back and forth and around her middle, over and over again, stretched on and on, she felt the faint prickings of alarm.

  “I can't make anything out,” she said. “Where's the baby?”

  “Just what I was wondering,” said the doctor in an odd voice. “That is, there doesn't seem to be a baby. There is no baby. You're not pregnant.”

  It should have been a relief, although not untinged with sadness, but she couldn't believe there was no baby, despite the evidence. She still felt pregnant.

  She went back to Gray's little house and packed a few things: only the most necessary clothes and books, her Walkman and a few tapes, her notebooks. Everything else she left behind, including tapes she knew he would never listen to and dresses he would certainly never wear.

  She was free, whether she believed it or not; she could go anywhere. She had been thinking about the bothy during the past few weeks, and the yearning to be there, to see Knapdale again, had been growing stronger. She had resisted her desire, imagining Graham's anger at the thought of someone else living in his special place, but now she thought: So what? So what if he was angry? She couldn't disappear, cease to be, just to make his life easier, and she needed a place to live. He must be in Greece now, and the bothy would otherwise be empty at least until the spring. Why shouldn't she live there until they worked things out and got officially divorced?

  Money would not be a problem. Besides his £500, she also had $7,000, inherited from her mother. She was sure she could live frugally enough in Scotland to eke that out for more than a year.

  She arrived in Glasgow by train early the next morning, and caught the morning Campbeltown bus from Buchanan Street station. It took her as far as Lochgilphead, where she had an early lunch. She was asking in the hotel bar about the local taxi service when a woman's voice behind her said, “I can take you. It's on my way.”

  She turned and saw a solidly built woman in her thirties, wearing a blue dress that looked like a uniform, and low-heeled shoes. She had curly light brown hair, lively dark eyes and an attractively friendly round face.

  “Is it really? I didn't think Clachan was on the way to anywhere!”

  “Depends on how you define ‘anywhere.' I have a patient to visit, beyond Clachan, at Kilrue, so you're right on my way. I'm Nancy Gates.”

  “Agnes Grey. You said patient—are you a nurse or a doctor?”

  “Midwife. Where is it in Clachan you're staying?”

  “Not actually in Clachan. The house is a little farther along the road, about a mile, I guess. I've only been there once before. It's only small, a bothy, they call it. It belongs to my husband's family.”

  “Which I suppose answers my question as to how an American comes to be in these parts. Your husband's a Scot?”

  “English.”

  “Well, we won't hold that against you. Are you ready to go now, or did you want a drink or something first?”

  “No, I've had lunch. I'm ready whenever you are. These are my bags.”

  “They'll fit in the boot with the messages.” She picked one up, ignoring her protests, and led the way outside. “You'll be here for a long stay, then?”

  “I think so, I'm not really sure. I'd been thinking about staying until the spring, but I might change my mind. It just depends. . . .” She trailed off, unable to say what her plans might depend on, and the other woman did not press her.

  It was a warm, clear day, much better weather than she'd had for her first visit, and she enjoyed the drive and the beauty of the scenery too much to do more than give brief, distracted answers to the various conversational openings which Nancy offered. When Jura first came into view, dark brown and purple against the blue sky and silvery sea, her heart lifted with a joyful sense of homecoming, and she cried out, “Oh, it's good to be back!”

  But when they reached the bothy she discovered that both doors were locked, and, of course, she didn't have a key.

  “Oh, this is so stupid, I should have thought . . .”

  “Shall we try and force a window?”

  Agnes looked at her in amazement. “You're very trusting!”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You don't know me or anything about me, I say I have a right to be
here, but I don't have a key—”

  “Ach, I'm always forgetting my own. Which is why I usually don't bother to lock anything, and leave the keys in the car.”

  Then she remembered. “There's a woman in the village, Mrs. Mac-something, who has a spare key. She runs the village shop.”

  “I'll run you back there.”

  “I'm sorry, I'm taking up so much of your time.”

  “It's no bother, honestly.”

  “I should have thought of it before we came this far.” She worried that Mrs. Mac-something might be less trusting than Nancy, but the shopkeeper recognized her as soon as she spoke, remembering their single meeting of a year ago, and got the key for her without seeming to find it odd that she had come so far without her own.

  “And will you not be wanting a few things, milk, bread, tea?”

  “Oh! Yes, I'd better get some things—I wasn't thinking. There probably isn't very much in the kitchen.” She surveyed the shelves, trying to anticipate her needs for the next few days, and then broke off to say to Nancy, “It was very nice of you to drive me, but you don't have to stick around—I can walk back.”

  “With all your bags? Honestly, I'm in no hurry, and I'm quite happy to drive you the last mile, whenever you're ready.”

  She became a little suspicious of the existence of this supposed patient in Kilrue when the midwife accepted her rather perfunctory offer to come in for a cup of tea. As if reading her mind Nancy said, “There's always time for a cup of tea, and there's no rush to see Mairi, I only told her I'd look in sometime before five. One of my great sins is nosiness. I never could resist an invitation into a house I've never been in. All the times I've driven along this road, passing this wee house . . .”

  “So you've never met my husband, or his brothers?”

  “Not to my knowledge. The only thing I know about this place is that it's owned by some folks down in England, and it stays empty most of the year. There are plenty of other houses the same around here.”

  She had expected the house to be cold, remembering her last arrival, but the sun had been streaming in the front windows for at least half the day, and of course it had been occupied only last week. It felt warm and cheerful. She put the kettle on to boil while she inspected the cupboards and put away her recent purchases. There were a certain amount of emergency supplies as she had expected: tins of soup, fruit, and baked beans, condensed milk, sealed jars of oats, rice and sugar.