"Why didn’t you tell me this before?"
"Before we got married? Why do you think? I knew you wouldn’t marry me!"
"You weren’t fair to me. You weren’t honest."
"Have you been honest with me, Kurt? Have you? Haven’t you wished things were better than they are? Haven’t you, once in a while, when you’re holding me, wished I was someone else?"
"Don’t try to distract me. You married me yesterday knowing full well you had made up your mind about not having this child."
"Yes, I did!"
Cold and hard as metal in the shade, she put cold fingers on his, trying to take the hand back he had taken away, but he would not allow it. "Having a child now is a mistake, Kurt. I’m not saying we should never have one."
"Terry, I’m going to tell you the truth now, because you want to hear it. Correct?"
She nodded.
"I don’t know what would have happened with us in the future. I only know, I married you yesterday because of our baby. Whatever I thought about it in the beginning doesn’t matter, because now I have pictures of it toddling around in my mind that I can’t just forget. If you decide to get rid of it, I’m out of your life."
"This is so wrong, Kurt. You shouldn’t make me have this child."
"I can’t make you! You have to decide. But I’m not going to pretend it’s okay with me for you to have an abortion. It’s not."
"So that’s the choice. You and baby or nothing."
"Your decision."
"You bastard!" She stood up, so he stood up. Making fists hard as stone, she beat on his chest and shoulders. "God damn you for making this so hard!"
"Terry, please, stop. Don’t cry."
"You don’t love me."
"I love you both. I’ll do my best to love you both forever, if you give me the chance."
Thanks to his parents, Kurt and Terry were able to stay in the small cabin on the fringes of Tahoe City, up a steep hill on the side of a mountain. They moved in after a disastrous honeymoon in which they did nothing but fight.
Almost immediately after speaking the words, Kurt realized he had made what might be an irrevocable error in telling Terry he would leave her if she didn’t have the child. He had put things wrong, he knew that, but he found it impossible to put them right. No matter what he said or did, no matter how concerned and caring he was, she rejected the feelings he offered her. She never let him forget that he was forcing her to do something she didn’t want to do.
He could never see it her way. Soon after their marriage, his father died, followed closely by his mother, and Terry attended the funerals with him. She stood by him. He would do the same. The baby would make up for everything wrong between them, he told himself
As time passed, and her pregnancy progressed, he did everything he could to make it easy on her. He took over the majority of the chores, which was easy, since he had an undemanding part-time job with the U.S. Forest Service that held them together financially while he searched for something in his field. He cleaned, cooked, shopped, and did the laundry while Terry sank into an exhausted stupor.
She had the child in November, at home, which had been her wish, with a midwife in attendance. She screamed and cried for a full day.
Kurt named the child, a girl, Lianna, after his mother.
Lianna and Kurt developed a deep relationship from the start. Terry refused to breastfeed, so it was Kurt who got up to rock and change the crying baby, and Kurt who, at four months, was favored with Lianna’s first real smile, a smile of great regard and charm that made him into her willing slave.
Terry never took to her. During the day, while Kurt worked, they hired sitters. At night, Kurt kept the baby propped on his knees while they watched television, or played with her on the floor, endlessly amused at her antics. Terry watched them.
He and Terry quit having sex during her pregnancy. After the baby was born, they tried a few times, but everything had soured between them, including sex.
In the spring following Lianna’s birth, Kurt quit trying with Terry. He harbored resentments that had grown over the months. All conversations about sex ended with them blaming each other. Yet she was so possessive, she had to know where he was every minute, and constantly accused him of being with other women.
And, most disturbing, he couldn’t stand the neglect of Lianna. What kind of a person could ignore her child so utterly? He had caught the fleeting glimpses of repugnance on her face, when, forced to touch her own child, she would hold the curly-haired baby in her arms, squeezing too tight, pinching or prodding, laughing when Lianna cried.
He knew he had to leave her.
He took her to the Christiania Inn for dinner.
"Isn’t this wonderful?" she said, looking around happily at the white tablecloths and bustling waiters. "Just us. It’s like it was before." She put a hand up to his cheek. "Maybe there is life after baby. Let’s drink a toast." She raised her glass. "I’ve signed up for a summer course at UCLA film school," Terry said. "I’m leaving next week."
"What?" Kurt said, unable to believe what he had heard.
"Only for six weeks," she said. "This is just too good an opportunity to pass up."
"You never said a word about it."
"I didn’t know I’d get in. I filled out the forms months ago."
"It’s a good idea, Terry," he said, adding quickly, because he could sense her wariness, "it’s what you’ve always wanted."
"I arranged for the sitter and a backup, so it shouldn’t disrupt your working routine too much."
"Thanks."
"We’ll talk every day. You won’t even notice I’m gone."
Guilt at the relief he was feeling washed over him. Maybe this was his way out. Where her career ambitions were concerned, he and Lianna did not fit in. If she got going in that direction, found a substitute for him in her work, found him useless and peripheral to what she really wanted out of life, he would be free.
"Terry, we need to talk. Things aren’t working."
"I warned you that having a kid wasn’t going to be easy," she said, sipping her wine, looking out at the lake in the distance, smiling. "Just don’t expect me to pick up the slack. Now it’s my turn again."
What was she talking about? "This isn’t about the baby." He intentionally didn’t use Lianna’s name. He found that, with Terry, just mentioning the child by name, lending her human being status, could degrade an ordinary conversation into a painful scene. "This is about the fact that we have no sex life—"
"Oh, Kurt, is that what you’re all worked up about? I told you, that’s not a problem. We just need to give ourselves plenty of time, plenty of opportunities, get to know what we both want."
"You don’t understand, Terry. I don’t want to try anymore. Our relationship is over."
"Jesus, you men. Such a catastrophe! You can’t get it up a couple of times. Big deal. Why don’t you grow up and get over it."
"Our marriage is over." He took the time to make her understand, using the exact words he intended, saying them slowly and solemnly enough to penetrate the defensive walls of her fortress.
The idea got through. She had a look he’d seen a few times over the past year, a look that worried and unnerved him on more than one occasion. Her face collapsed onto itself, the whole thing vacuum-sucked, the skin stretched over her cheekbones, her eyes protruding unnaturally, as if she had to implode, preparatory to exploding.
"Over my dead body!" she said, throwing her glass to the floor.
A couple passing by their table turned to eye them, but when they maintained a silence punctuated only by Terry’s ragged breaths, they went on without comment.
"Can you cool it with the hysterics? This can’t be a surprise to you."
"We have a fabulous marriage. The best!"
"Terry, we don’t sleep together. We don’t laugh anymore. There’s no there there."
"Ha! Gertrude Stein, turn in your grave! Here’s a man using your words to dump his wife!"
"I’m not dumping you, Terry. This is not a situation that demands blame. I’m just stating the obvious. We have no marriage."
"Well, let’s see. Maybe if you were more than half a man. Maybe if you hadn’t insisted on having a child when I never wanted one. Maybe if you could just love me like you love that damned kid—"
"Don’t bring her into this," he warned. "This is about you and me. Let’s concentrate on that."
"How can we have a conversation that doesn’t include the third party who intrudes on everything? Every evening we deal with her needs, her hunger, her dirty butt, her wheezing, her sniffles. Every evening I wait for you to turn to me, to need me, to need something from me—"
"This is not another lover you’re talking about! This is our child! She needs both of us. Maybe if you had some attention to spare for her instead of some obsessive love story spooling around inside your head all the time—"
"I spend plenty of time on her! What the hell do you know about it? What about all the times the sitter is late? Or sick? Who’s gonna be there when the school calls a few years along the line because she’s skinned her knee or gotten into trouble?"
"Me. That’s what I’m trying to tell you." Her words, her demeanor, everything conspired to tell him what he didn’t want to know about his wife—how much she hated their child.
"You? An excuse for a man who can’t even keep his wife happy in bed? You’re going to be both mother and father to our child?"
"Right. Why would you want a man like that, Terry? What use am I to you now? If you really let yourself think about it, you deserve better."
"I deserve a man who loves only me! And that’s the way it was with you and me, remember? Whole days in bed together. I can satisfy you better than anyone, if you’ll only let me!"
"Why would you want to? Even if the sex was good, Terry, that wouldn’t be enough." He wondered how Lianna was doing with the sitter. He wondered if she was still awake. He felt tired and unhappy. He wanted to go home to his daughter. "This is not an argument, you know. This is not a situation where you can win a debate and persuade me that I’m wrong."
"You don’t even want to give me the common courtesy of dealing with my pain."
"I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t believe I am hurting you. The circumstances are painful. Our marriage is over. Now we need to move forward and past a lot of broken-up hope."
"What a weasel. That’s so irresponsible. ’The circumstances are painful,’ ha!"
"I have plenty of responsibility here. This has been a mistake since the beginning."
"He admits it! We never should have had a child!"
"That’s the only thing we’ve done I’m proud of."
"What about how much we’ve meant to each other?"
"Terry, it’s not real. There’s never been much more than sex between us, and now that’s not working out either."
"Don’t deny you love me. Don’t you dare."
He got up to leave. She followed him outside.
"I want a separation. This trip to L.A. is a good time to try one," Kurt said.
"Don’t leave me, Kurt, please." She tried to kiss him, but he turned from her, hurrying around to the driver’s side of the car. "I can be a better mother, if that’s what you want."
"You’re a good mother," he said, unwilling to kick her while she was down, as if his faith could make it so. "I’ll never say you didn’t try your best.’’
"But you insist that we separate."
"Yes."
On the ride home she leaned her head on her arm, resting it across the open window of the car door. "Wait until I get back before you do anything drastic, okay? Don’t move out. We’ll see how you feel when I come back," she said. "Six weeks is a long time. You’ll see then how much you need me."
He helped her pack her car. At first, he could hardly believe Terry was gone. He could breathe again. The house settled and calmed, the baby slept through the night, and he and the sitter cleaned the place thoroughly, exorcising the last of her frantic, disturbing presence.
Thank God she had gone. He realized how sick he felt, how afraid he was of her, how lonely and isolated he had become.
He began looking for another place for him and Lianna.
A week later, he met Nina over at Fallen Leaf Lake.
Terry returned on a weekend in August. Kurt waited for her in the cabin. She brought her bags in and threw them on the floor, opening her arms for a welcome home, which he made an effort to deliver. Then he sat her down on the couch.
"While you were gone, I moved out, Terry."
"What?"
"I rented an apartment in Incline Village."
"Wait a goddamned minute. My leaving you was supposed to be temporary, and I had time to think. I decided to come back. We can have it all, Kurt. Work, baby. Everything you and I both want."
"I don’t see it that way." Let her think she had left him. He didn’t care how much she lied to herself anymore.
She shook her head, frowning. "This is a very bad thing you’ve done."
"I’ve got a room set up for the baby over there. I mean, she’s here today. She’s sleeping at the moment. I thought you’d want to see her. But she’ll be better off with me. I know you must agree with that."
"Who is she?"
"Who?"
"Who’s the bitch you ran off with?"
When he didn’t answer, she continued. "You’re not the type to make it on your own. You’ve gone from one woman to another without Terry to keep you warm at night, but sweetie, you forgot one thing. Nobody breaks a promise to Terry. You’re not going anywhere."
He stood up. "I established residence in Nevada while you were gone. I’m getting a divorce. Now, you can take this well, and continue to see your child, or you can blow it, and get hurt."
"Kurt, why are you doing this?"
"We’ve said everything. I’m going to get the baby. You can have a little visit, and tell her good-bye for now. We’ll work out some kind of deal so you can see her, when you know better what you’ll be doing."
After a pause Terry said, "I would like to see Lianna."
"You’re taking this well," he said. "I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it." He had played the scene a dozen times in his mind, and it had always been much more dramatic. He walked with her toward the hall, feeling reluctant to turn Lianna over to Terry, but unable to think of what he could do about it.
"Let me get her, Kurt. I want to see her face when I wake her up."
He agreed, holding back the instinct to say no. She was Lianna’s mother.
He sat on the couch in the living room waiting for them to return. He waited longer than he wanted to, trying to be fair, giving her the time she needed to be alone with her child, to make her peace with what might be a long good-bye.
"Terry!" he called finally, but there was no answer.
He peered down the hallway, giving her another few seconds to come out. She hadn’t left. She couldn’t get past him to the door. A minute, then two minutes ticked by. He knocked on the bedroom door. "Everything okay in there?"
"Well, I don’t know," Terry’s voice said, sounding annoyed. "She just ..."
Why couldn’t he hear his daughter? "Let me in, Terry. Unlock the door."
"I don’t understand it," Terry said, coming out at last to stand in the doorway. She moved her shoulders in a funny half shrug. "She just won’t get up."
He flew into the room. Lianna lay in her crib, facedown, a light knit blanket floating over her tiny body. He watched her for a moment. He touched her back. Still. Still as his heart.
The paramedics came, and then the coroner. He fell apart. Between his sobs he told them that Terry had killed their daughter. They listened to his story, and Terry’s story. Before long, he knew she had won. He had witnessed nothing. They had no evidence. They patted his shoulder, and comforted his grieving wife, who sat so pale and quiet on the couch that they gave her a shot to prevent a shock reaction. Nobody knew the cause of sudden inf
ant death syndrome. Nobody could have done anything to prevent it.
Kurt Scott died that day, along with his daughter.
That pillow in the corner... He knew she had done it.
The next day, at his new apartment, while he sat in the living room engulfed by rage and sorrow, someone had knocked at the door until he could ignore it no longer. He opened the door. Vivid in a bright red dress, her face twisted with possessiveness and hate, Terry pushed her way in.
"Now, let’s talk about this bitch you’re seeing," she said.
He had turned his back on her and walked out. He ran away from Tahoe. He ran away from Nina, who was in danger because of him.
And Terry began looking for him, as he had known she would.
17
NINA SAT ON A ROCK UNDER A SHADY SPRUCE TREE, looking out over Emerald Bay, waiting for the horror of what Kurt had just told her to diminish so she could think.
Farther down the rocks, a young Japanese man took a picture of his friend. Her black hair blown back by the breeze, she smiled into the sun, leaning with one hand on the warm granite. Behind her, Lake Tahoe, miles of cold, deep water, glittered in the afternoon sun. They saw only the beauty of it, not the awful, unknown depths.
She knew she had to make a choice. Believe him, or not believe him. If she believed him, the responsibilities that would follow were so heavy, she wasn’t sure she could bear the weight.
If she believed Kurt, he had suffered a blow from which few people could recover. He had tried to escape, but like some harpy Terry had sought him, her revengeful hunger still unsatiated. Over the years, he had made himself a sort of life in exile, which Terry had again shattered with her death. Terry had murdered their child, and tormented him almost to insanity. He ran, not just to protect himself, but also to protect Nina. And she had been ignorant of his sacrifice. She had despised him.
While Nina had continued her own life all these years, changed by knowing him and the suddenness of losing him, he had been out there living too. She had only a few years on this earth, and her time and Kurt’s time ran parallel. How could she ever have thought she wouldn’t see him again!
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