“Toby, your mother and I were dating and now we’re not.” The vacuum stops and Ted quickly lowers his voice. “So I can’t be involved with you guys. I’m sorry. I know it’s hard when kids get caught in the middle of stuff like this.” Ted looks at the stack of medical journals on his desk. He’d been trying to read an article called “The Anti-Inflammatory Debate,” but he couldn’t concentrate.
“No, you don’t. You don’t know. That’s what everybody says. But what matters most is what makes grown-ups feel better. They get to decide everything. Like where I live, and who might be my stepdad. How come I don’t get to decide anything?”
“Toby, I know your mother includes you in her decisions. She can’t influence your father’s decisions, unfortunately, buddy. It’s a bum rap. I’m not going to tell you otherwise.” Ted remains standing, his way of not committing to a lengthy talk. Toby has an unnerving knack for drawing you into a conversation and holding you there. “What are you working on in math now, sport?”
“We’re computing the volume and areas of objects.”
“That sounds fun.” Ted gazes out his office window. It’s Sunday, and a stream of dog walkers and runners and families parades down the street. The days are getting shorter. The weak, watery light depresses him.
“I’m flunking!” Toby snaps. Then his tone softens. “Hey, I think this tutor guy has a crush on my mom. I mean, she makes guys so crazy. She had to file a restraining order on Shane. And you know that guy Barry keeps buying her jewelry. He got her a really fancy diamond ring.”
Ted feels a spark of jealousy as he imagines Barry presenting Gina with a ring in a velvet box. He’s alarmed by the realization that perhaps Toby knows that jealousy is a weakness of Ted’s. Maybe he knows that Ted’s weakness is jealousy and Gina’s weakness is a big heart and each of them has a lingering weakness for the other. Maybe Toby is smarter than any of them, even though he’s only ten years old. Ted collapses into his chair. This kid should respect people’s privacy, damn it.
“Well, you know your mom’s a great lady and she’s going to find somebody wonderful who you’ll really like.”
“Yeah, Barry got me tickets to see the White Stripes. Hey, you want to go with me?”
Ted laughs. “Toby, even if I could go with you, I don’t even know who the White Stripes are.”
“Me neither. Kids in my class like them. Barry said I could invite someone from my class. I want to ask this girl, Melanie? But I don’t think she knows who the White Stripes are, either. She plays the violin.”
“Well, that’s good, buddy. Maybe you could invite her to something else.”
“Yeah. I’m going to marry somebody totally smart. Not a dumb girl, like my mom.”
Ted lowers his voice again. “Toby, listen to me, your mother is not dumb. And you’re not being nice to her or giving her a fair shake. She’s doing everything she can for you. I’ll bet you can think of five nice things she did for you this week alone right off the top of your head.”
“Like blowing my room to pieces with a leaf blower?”
“What?”
“Yeah, her new way of clean—”
Ted stands. He’s getting sucked down by Toby’s undertow again. “Toby, I have to go.”
“Okay. Are you going shopping for your baby?”
The question makes Ted stop breathing until he’s dizzy. He inhales deeply, smelling artificial pine in the cleaner Elinor’s using. He slumps in his chair again. “Mrs. Mackey and I aren’t going to have a baby after all, Toby, I’m sad to say.”
“What do you mean?”
“She had a miscarriage.”
“A what?”
“We lost the baby.”
“Where?”
“Well, at the doctor’s office, sort of. We found out that the baby was no longer alive.”
“Oh.” The enthusiasm drains out of Toby’s voice. “You mean the baby died inside of Mrs. Mackey? How come?”
“Well, sport. We don’t know. Sometimes nature takes a different course. Like when you plant tomatoes or flowers, not all of them make it, right? Usually this happens with a baby because something wasn’t right to begin with. Something chromosomal. So it’s kind of a blessing.” Ted hasn’t really been able to convince himself of this.
“What are chromosomes, anyways?”
“They’re a string of genes inside the nucleus of a cell. They’re very small. You can’t even see them without a microscope. And Mrs. Mackey is very sad. We have to be considerate of her, which is why I have to ask you not to call anymore.”
“Okay.” Toby sniffles.
“Toby, you’re a great kid. You know all about history, and you make people laugh. Everything is going to work out for you. You can’t see that now, but I really believe things will.” Ted wishes he could help make things work out for Toby. He feels guilty that he wishes he hadn’t lost this opportunity.
“Yeah, that’s what my mom says. Like, You can’t do anything you want to, but everything will work out! You guys need to believe that so you feel better.”
“Tobe, I have to go now, okay? Be nice to your mother. And invite that violinist to the movies.”
Ted hears the click of the telephone on the other end. He looks back out the window. A young couple pull a child in a red wagon down the sidewalk. Their heads are bowed as they discuss something. The kid—a boy or a girl, Ted can’t tell which—throws bits of food from a Baggie out behind the wagon, shrieking with glee. Suddenly Ted understands why Elinor retreated to the laundry room. Not that it wasn’t understandable before—the need to hide in a warm, dark place. But for the first time he experiences pain at seeing a couple with a child. He was going to be a father. He focuses on the window, instead of the street. He notices that the muntins between the two thick panes of weatherproof glass are made of aluminum. They’re expensive windows, designed to keep out cold and rain and burglars. Yet Ted wishes he lived in an old house with windows that had real panes and muntins. He wonders if he and Elinor should move. Get away from this place.
Elinor takes a long sip from her cup of Darjeeling, closing her eyes and savoring the warmth and sweet honey. She slides a basket full of folded laundry off the kitchen counter and balances it on her hip on the way to the bedroom.
As she passes Ted’s study, she sees him standing at his desk holding up the phone, staring into space. He turns to her. He looks stunned, as though he just received bad news. Maybe the doctor called with the results of the pathology report. But what could be worse than you’ve lost the baby?
“What?”
“Nothing.” Ted puts the phone back on its charger and smooths over his khakis with his palms.
“Who called?” She shifts the laundry basket to her other hip.
“Toby.” He rubs his face. “Sorry. I think this time I convinced him not to call again.”
Elinor drops the basket on the floor and leans in the doorway. “He still wants to babysit?” She’s irritated, yet touched by Toby’s attachment to Ted.
“Nah. I told him we lost the baby.”
It’s comforting to hear Ted say we. The late-afternoon sun filtering through the window makes his hair shine like mahogany. He takes after his father in that he doesn’t have a single gray hair yet. Elinor married a man who has aged beautifully. How lucky. No matter how tired or despondent he is, no matter how mad she might be at him, Ted is always handsome to Elinor. Yet her love for him seems altered somehow. It’s more like the love she feels for Kat, and for her mother. Maybe this is how marriage is supposed to be—how it evolves. She wishes she were certain about this.
Ted rubs the back of his neck and studies the floor. Elinor should cook for him. Filet mignon, maybe. She should take cooking lessons. It would be much smarter to focus on food than laundry.
“Toby wants me to meet his new tutor to talk about his math.” Ted looks out the window. “I told him I couldn’t.”
What difference would it make at this point? Elinor wonders. She can’t shake the feeling th
at she’s already lost everything there is to lose. Every morning when she wakes up, she tells herself no, this isn’t so: They could lose their house; Ted could lose his practice (patients sue sometimes!); one of them could have cancer. Thoughts of these dire scenarios propel her out of bed, fueled by a manic gratefulness that deteriorates into sadness as the day wears on. “You know what?” Elinor hugs her waist, bracing herself for what she’s about to propose.
Ted looks at her.
“Go. Meet the tutor. See the kid. One time won’t hurt. Talk about math with the tutor and take Toby out for an ice cream cone.”
“I don’t know,” Ted says. “It’s a slippery slope.”
A slippery slope careening into what? Toby’s heart or Gina’s bed? Elinor shrugs. “He’s going to keep calling here.”
“We could get an unlisted number.”
Elinor shakes her head. “Something tells me you really make a difference in this kid’s life. I mean, our hearts are broken, but maybe we don’t have to break his heart, too.”
Ted rubs his eyes. “He’ll be okay.”
Elinor knows Ted won’t call Toby. But she also knows that he wants to. Toby must seem to Ted like the only thing that he might be able to fix right now. She doesn’t want to be the one to take this away from him. She crosses the room, grabs the phone from Ted’s desk, and punches *69. Her pulse speeds up as she realizes she may be calling her husband’s ex-lover’s house. Then she thrusts the phone at Ted and steps out of the room, leaving the laundry behind. “Just promise to tell me if you’re fucking her,” she calls out over her shoulder. The words shock her as they echo in the hallway. Really, it’s all she wants to know. She pivots in her stocking feet and turns back to Ted’s office. Standing just outside the door, she listens.
“You sure I shouldn’t call this fella?” Ted asks. “The mall? Okay.” She can hear Ted writing on one of the little drug company pads from his desk. “By the movies. Okay. Okay. His name’s Stan? Got it. Tell him I’ll be there.”
Elinor hurries down the hall toward the kitchen. She’s going to make a real dinner tonight for her husband. Chicken cordon bleu and steamed asparagus with hollandaise. It’s pretty easy. Kat showed her how once—pounding out chicken breasts between waxed paper with a rolling pin, then layering on ham and cheese and rolling it all up. She remembers how. You just have to wrap up the pieces tightly.
In the marriage counselor’s office, Ted squeezes Elinor’s hand in his. While he’s known his wife for five years, he’s still astonished by how small her fingers are—like a child’s.
“An important part of recovering from the loss of your baby is to allow yourself time to mourn,” Dr. Brewster says. “It doesn’t happen overnight.”
They both nod. Tell me something I don’t know, Ted thinks.
“Right now it may feel as though all hope is lost,” Dr. Brewster continues. “But once you’ve allowed yourself time to grieve, I’d like for us to discuss other options you have.”
“Right,” Elinor says wearily. “Adoption. Donor eggs. Stealing a baby from the mall.”
Dr. Brewster smiles. “And the concept of living child-free versus childless,” she adds.
“Yeah, I don’t love that term,” Elinor says. “It sounds like living money-free or food-free or air-free. I just don’t feel so free.”
Ted’s not big on pop psychology, but he finds the turn of phrase positive. A sort of resolution that allows you to move forward. When they first decided to take a break from in vitro, he bought a book called Sweet Grapes: How to Stop Being Infertile and Start Living Again. He thought he could read a few pages to Elinor each night before bed. But the book just made her cry.
Ted’s surprised when Elinor stands and begins to speak to Dr. Brewster firmly, as though she’s trying a case in court. “I want grandchildren. Do you understand that? It’s not about having a baby, it’s about having a family.”
“Absolutely,” Dr. Brewster concurs. “Let’s discuss this in future weeks.”
Future weeks. The words sound like a prison sentence to Ted. Why are he and Elinor in a hole again, and why can’t he dig them out? And why isn’t Elinor bringing up the fact that he’s going to meet Toby’s new tutor? It troubles Ted how much he’s looking forward to this—to the opportunity to find out how Gina’s doing. He’s promised himself he won’t press the guy for too much information about her.
“I’m going to meet Toby’s tutor,” Ted blurts. He rubs his knees, relieved by this confession.
“Toby?” Dr. Brewster looks perplexed.
“You missed that chapter,” Elinor tells her. “Ted’s ex-lover had a kid. Has a kid. Anyway. The boy’s got a real thing for Ted. I told Ted he should go see him.”
“Do you think it’s healthy to maintain this relationship?” Dr. Brewster asks Ted.
“What is healthy,” Elinor interrupts, “when you get right down to it? What, other than green tea, is healthy?”
“I asked Ted,” Dr. Brewster says.
Elinor sits down, bites her lip.
Ted coughs, chooses his words carefully. “I care a lot about this boy. I want him to succeed in life. For some reason, I seem to have a positive influence on him. And I’m just going to meet his tutor for now.”
“How does this make you feel?” Dr. Brewster asks Elinor.
“I don’t think it’s possible to feel any worse than I already do,” El says. “I can’t see how it’ll make a difference.”
Ted reaches out to rub the back of her neck. She doesn’t relax at his touch.
“He’s going to keep calling the house either way,” Elinor adds bitterly.
“You have every right to be angry about this,” Dr. Brewster says.
Elinor gets up again and paces the room. “I’m sick of having every right to be angry!”
Dr. Brewster slides forward, perched on the edge of her chair.
“I’m sick of having every right to be sad,” Elinor continues. “I want to have every right to be happy!” She runs a hand through her hair over and over, tugging at the cropped ends. “For the past two years everything’s been a mess, and I’m always angry.”
Ted grabs Elinor’s hand as she passes him, giving it a squeeze and gently tugging her back into her chair. In the past, Elinor has told Ted that she thinks the marriage counselor encourages her to maintain her feelings, instead of getting over them. “My anger pays the mortgage on her house in the mountains,” she complained. “Oh, now,” Ted had said. “She’s doing her job. We’re not paying her to just sit on the sidelines.” But he’d agreed. Sometimes at Dr. Brewster’s office—maybe it was that slick, scooped leather chair—he had the distinct sensation of sinking or sliding backward, of their problems being insurmountable.
“And you know what?” Elinor continues now. “Maybe talking doesn’t help. Maybe it just exacerbates the present by trapping us in the past. By constantly reminding us of all that’s gone wrong, and what we could have done differently, and why we’re mad at each other. Oh, yeah! I remember now why I’m mad at you!” She lowers her voice, regaining her composure. “Maybe you don’t have to talk everything through.” She looks to Dr. Brewster, then imploringly at Ted.
Ted nods in awe, reaching out to stroke her hair. She’s doing that thing she used to do all the time, where she’d say exactly what he was thinking. Only she always had a funnier, more articulate way of vocalizing his sentiments. “What she said!” he’d joke.
“I’m sorry,” Ted says.
“I know,” Elinor says. “Me, too.”
“You didn’t do anything,” he tells her.
“Let’s not start,” she replies.
“Okay,” Ted agrees.
“Listen,” the therapist says after another long silence. “You’re right. It’s not good to always feel like you’re in crisis mode. You two have been through a lot. You have to give yourselves more credit for how hard you’ve worked and how well you’re doing.”
“Thank you,” Elinor says. “Really, I mean it. I didn’
t mean to attack you personally. I think you’re very good at your job.” She looks at her watch. “But you know what? Our time is up.”
19
The overwhelming smells of the food court at the mall remind Roger that he hasn’t eaten lunch. Bombarded by the aromas of cookies and waffle cones baking, popcorn burning in fake butter, and something greasy frying on a grill, he feels hungry and nauseated at the same time. He checks the paper in the palm of his hand: Gina Ellison, 2:00, food court. It’s two ten. So where is this lady? Jesus, he’d do anything Mrs. Mackey asked. Good thing she’s not running a cult. Roger paces by the movie ticket windows, where Gina said they should meet. He didn’t even know they had movies at the mall now. A nearby escalator churns up to a second level with multiplexes, and the box office is surrounded by a huge seating area of tables and chairs, circled by fast-food places offering everything from sugar to fat to caffeine.
“Roger?” He turns to see a thin woman with long hair approaching some other guy—a scraggly-looking dude wearing a woolen cap pulled over his ears and baggy pants with a chain dangling from them.
“No,” the kid mumbles.
Damn, she must be glad. Roger looks like Clark Kent compared with that derelict.
“Are you Toby’s mom?” he asks. She looks young for a mom. “Mrs. Ellison?”
She turns and nods, relieved. “Gina.”
Roger feels more comfortable calling his clients Mr. and Mrs.
She extends a hand. Everything about her is kind of long. Long arms and long fingers and long hair that sweeps down to her waist. Guys probably dig this. But she’s not really his type. He’s, like, the least athletic person on the planet, for one thing.
She’s wearing a light blue sweat suit and flip-flops with sparkles on them. The sweatshirt is short and her stomach shows. It’s pretty and flat, but Roger tries not to look at it. Maybe he’ll tutor the kid, but he’s not going to ask her out.
“Hi.” He tries to make his handshake seem businesslike—quick and firm.
Gina clutches a notebook to her chest. “Let’s sit down.” She surveys the rows and rows of tables.
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