Babyland

by Holly Chamberlin

  I thought of Jack. I thought of his hand around a coffee cup, of his hand on my elbow.

  “I can’t.” It was all I could say.

  72

  The Unhappy Couple

  “Are you giving me an ultimatum?”

  I stood there, hands at my side, looking at the stranger who was my fiancé.

  “It’s not an ultimatum,” I said. “I just think that maybe we should go to counseling together. Because we’re not talking about what happened.”

  Because we’re falling apart and I don’t know what to do about it.

  Ross had called earlier that morning. All of the fixtures in the master bathroom had been installed; the room was ready for painting. He wanted to know if I cared to see the mini marble palace. I told him that of course I wanted to see it. Hadn’t we chosen the marble together at the stone yard?

  He’d greeted me at the door to the loft with barely repressed hostility.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  “No, I’m not,” I replied. And then I checked my watch. “Oh. I’m sorry, I am. My watch has slowed down. I’ll replace the battery.”

  Ross stepped back to let me enter. “It’s not good to keep people waiting.”

  “Yes,” I said, wondering suddenly why I was really there. “I know.”

  I admired the marble. I admired Ross’s final choice of paint color. And then I suggested that we see a therapist.

  “The whole idea is ridiculous,” Ross said dismissively. “Therapy is not for people like us. At least, it’s not for people like me.”

  “What does that mean?” I demanded. “Don’t you want to work things out between us? Grief doesn’t just go away, Ross. You can’t just pretend everything’s okay. You can’t hide—”

  “I’m not hiding anything.”

  Looking at Ross then, at his blandly handsome and oddly closed face, I believed he was telling the truth as he saw it.

  I shook my head in amazement. “My life,” I said, “is becoming a soap opera.”

  “Only because you’re letting it,” Ross snapped. “Why are you doing this to me, Anna? Why are you ruining everything?”

  “I’m not ruining anything,” I cried. What was there to ruin? A fantasy? A construct? The notion of a perfectly fine life? “This is life, Ross. Bad things happen for no good reason, for no reason at all. Stop blaming me.”

  Ross stalked out of the master bathroom. I followed him into the kitchen. And for the very first time I wondered if I was the great love of Ross’s life. Was I really loved? I didn’t have the nerve to ask.

  “Do you realize this is the first time we’ve ever fought? Ross, we never even really talked until we lost the baby. I mean, really talked. About the big stuff.”

  Ross slapped his hands on the shiny counter. “What was there to talk about? Everything was fine. Everything still would be fine if—”

  Ross looked down at his hands.

  “If what, Ross?” I said finally. “If I hadn’t lost the baby? Or if I hadn’t gotten pregnant in the first place?”

  Ross continued to stare at his slim, manicured fingers. “Never mind,” he said. “Look, my mother wants to have us for dinner this Sunday. Can I count on you to be there?”

  “Can I count on you to talk to me about what’s really going on between us?”

  Ross said, “I’ll pick you up at six.”

  73

  Beauty

  “Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to snoop?”

  I’d heard Jack come into the studio, but unlike the last time I was there alone, I didn’t care. I continued to gaze at the darkly lit black-and-white nude studies spread out on the table before me.

  “Jack, they’re beautiful,” I said. “And I wasn’t snooping. They were right here for anyone to see. I’m sure the UPS guy who was just here thinks they’re wonderful, too. By the way, I signed for the package.”

  Jack began to slide the prints into a rough pile. “You’re not a professional critic,” he said. “Not that I have any use for the majority of them.”

  “I never claimed to be a professional critic. And might I remind you that you sought out my opinion on that student’s work that afternoon at the café. And don’t tell me you did it out of pity, or I’ll be furious.”

  Jack gave me a dirty look. “I don’t do anything out of pity. I don’t believe in pity. You know that.”

  I did know that.

  “Why haven’t I seen these before?” I asked. Jack was now holding the stack of black and whites protectively against his chest. Did he really think I would make a grab for them?

  “I don’t show you everything I’ve ever worked on.”

  “These are new, aren’t they? I thought you’d given up on personal projects.”

  Jack slid the photographs into a flat file and locked the cabinet.

  “Time to go, Anna. I’ve got work to do. Heather-Marie Rich’s Sweet Sixteen party shots are due to the wealthy spineless daddy and artificially ageless mommy first thing tomorrow morning.”

  Why did I have to push him?

  “You know they’re good, don’t you?” I said. “There isn’t a humble bone in your body, and you can’t be so disingenuous as to pretend you don’t know serious art when you see it.”

  There was a deadly silence. Jack’s expression was dark.

  “Okay,” I mumbled, “I’m going. I’m sorry I think you’re the most talented photographer I’ve seen.” I snatched up my purse and headed for the door.

  And still Jack said not a word.

  Part Three

  74

  The End

  The last of the baby gifts had been returned, with carefully worded notes of thanks. Even the awful sweater, the one that had afforded me some comfort just after the miscarriage, had gone back to Mrs. Davis. The childbirth books and parenting magazines—all were gone. There was nothing in my apartment to remind me of what had happened—nothing except me.

  I checked the clock over the stove. Ross was due in half an hour. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing him, not really—how sad!—but I had to. Once last time I had to try to reach him, try to make some connection to this person I was taking on as my life partner.

  Life partner. Husband. Those words had come to sound ugly, confining, murderous.

  I sat on the couch and opened one of the coffee table books, a collection of Ansel Adams photographs, but for the first time the images held no appeal. I went to my computer and checked e-mail; nothing but SPAM. The latest headlines from Reuters made virtually no impression on me: another car bombing in Palestine; another midnight wedding for another drunken starlet; another storm off the coast of Florida.

  Twenty minutes. In twenty minutes Ross would be at my door and maybe, just maybe, this misery would be over. What did I mean by ‘over’?

  Our official engagement portrait, framed in Tiffany silver, stood on a small table by the couch. I picked it up and studied our smiling faces, Ross’s and mine. And try as I might I just couldn’t recognize either of us, not really. The woman in the portrait wasn’t me, not now. And the man ... With a rush of anger I realized I had never known the man because there wasn’t much of a man to know. All along I’d wanted to believe that there was more to Ross than met the eye. But I’d come to know there was less.

  Without care I set the portrait down; it fell glass first onto the floor. I let it stay there.

  The dreams. I thought about the dreams. Increasing blindness, loss of voice, choking, abandonment. Even if I could ask questions of Ross, would he be able to answer? Was he even capable of listening?

  I took a few deep breaths but my heart continued to race. Ten minutes. Ross would be at my door in ten minutes. And then...

  Ross wanted to know when we could start trying to get pregnant. Why had he assumed I wanted to get pregnant? And even if I did, wouldn’t I need time to mourn the loss of our child? What, what, what was Ross thinking?

  I walked to the kitchen and poured a glass of wine. Ross was thinking nothing.
Ross wasn’t capable of real thought, not beyond what suit to wear to what function or what new diet fad to try next.

  Why, I wondered, couldn’t Ross ever admit to being confused or distressed? Why, I wondered, couldn’t Ross ever admit to being human?

  I put the empty wineglass in the sink. Five minutes. I held my left hand before my face and studied my engagement ring, the sign of my commitment to Ross, the sign of my retirement from life.

  Four minutes. And everything was a mess. Ross blamed me for messing things up. He blamed me for bringing the sweaty chaos of life into his cold and ordered world.

  How, I wondered, could I ever trust him to be there in the hard times? How could I ever trust him to be there for me if I got sick with cancer, especially a disfiguring kind, like breast cancer, something that would cause him public embarrassment? How could I trust him to support me if I had a nervous breakdown, if I lost my self-confidence, if I got fat?

  I looked again at the kitchen clock. It was time. The doorbell rang. Calmly, I walked into the foyer; calmly, I opened the door.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Ross hesitated a moment before stepping inside. “Hi.”

  We stood there in the foyer of my apartment, facing each other, too far apart to touch.

  “What did you want to see me about?” he said. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “Why did you stop having sex with me when I got pregnant?” I asked.

  Ross didn’t answer. His eyes darted back toward the door. I wondered if he was going to bolt.

  “Was it because you found me disgusting?” I went on. “Or was it because you thought I was too precious? Pregnant women are women, Ross, they’re people, but maybe that’s the problem—”

  “Anna,” Ross said angrily. “Stop.”

  My voice became higher, thinner. “No, I won’t stop. You don’t like women very much, do you Ross? Not really.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Anna.”

  “Then answer the question,” I said. “Why wouldn’t you have sex with me?”

  “Look,” he said, with some emotion, “I don’t know, all right? Can we just drop it? What’s done is done.”

  He was right. What had been done to us had been done to us. And this was what we were left with.

  Suddenly, we both seem to have lost steam. Ross leaned against the foyer wall. I sat heavily on the couch.

  “Everything’s that happened, Anna,” he said, shaking his head. “I just don’t know—”

  I looked at the fallen portrait. “It’s okay, Ross,” I said. “I understand.”

  But it seems that I didn’t understand, not entirely.

  Ross pushed away from the wall; his arms seem to hang loosely at his side. “It’s just that I want a family. I can’t be with someone who doesn’t want what I want. I want a family, Anna.” Ross said it simply, matter-of-factly, like what he was telling me was nothing more important than his saying, “I like my coffee black.”

  I shot from the couch; my skin was tingling; I wondered if I were having a heart attack. “Since when?” I spat. “When did you decide you were a family man?”

  “I’ve wanted a family for a while now,” Ross said, evasively. “I mentioned the pill. The other day. Remember? But you didn’t want to talk about it. You just don’t want to be a mother and I can’t live with that.”

  I looked at his pretty face and wanted very badly to slap it. Ross was even more obtuse than I had imagined. “All this time wasted ...” I laughed. Suddenly, it all seemed so ridiculous. “Why, Ross? Why the big change of heart?”

  But to answer the question required more creativity and self-awareness than Ross could manage. “I want a family,” he said again. “Can you tell me you want the same?”

  “I don’t know, Ross,” I said, honestly. “I can’t make any promises right now, not to anyone. You see, I’m suffering.”

  And that repulses you.

  “Okay. Fair enough.” Ross ran a hand through his perfectly groomed hair. It was something I’d never seen him do. “So, this is it, I guess. It’s just—over.”

  It was just over. There was no way to negotiate such a black and white issue. There was no way I could forgive him for his gross lack of understanding.

  “Ross,” I said, “you should go now.”

  I slipped the engagement ring off my finger and took a step toward him. Then I held out my open palm and offered him the ring.

  Ross’s face was drawn, unhappy, tired. “Anna, you don’t—”

  “It doesn’t belong to me anymore,” I said, and it didn’t hurt at all.

  Slowly, Ross put out his hand and took the ring. When his fingers touched mine I felt nothing, no spark of desire or tenderness, nothing to make me take back my ring and in doing so, my life with Ross—and his children.

  When he was at the door I said, “Ross? I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t turn; his hand remained on the doorknob.

  “I’m sorry, too, Anna,” he said. “I really am.”

  And then it was really over.

  75

  Revelation

  You think you’re living your own life and then something happens to jolt you into the awareness that all along you’ve actually been living someone else’s life.

  The engagement was off. The wedding was off. The marriage was off.

  I wasn’t unhappy, not exactly. But I wasn’t happy, either. I wondered, How do you define happiness? The absence of pain? Or the presence of—of what? The presence of a feeling, a thing, a person in your life?

  Maybe happiness is knowing you’re right where you should be, doing what you should be doing, sharing time with the people you should be sharing time with. Maybe happiness is knowing that you’re finally living your own life.

  And maybe the first phase of happiness is owning up to your own brand of heartache.

  In those days right after the end, a line kept running through my head, a song lyric, and at first I couldn’t place it. And then I did.

  “Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.”

  But it isn’t all that easy.

  76

  Breaking It Down

  The dismantling of our lives began. Ross and I agreed that family would hear a brief, sanitized version of the truth. Our story was this: We realized we just weren’t right for each other. The end.

  Our intentions were good, but parents are parents. My father decided that Ross had left me cruelly and threatened to “have a talk” with him. By which he meant “punch him out.” My mother lamented all the time and money she’d spent—now gone—on planning for various aspects of my life—wedding and baby—and in doing so made me feel even more like a dismal failure. What did I expect from her? Sympathy beyond a throw-away sentiment?

  I never learned Mr. Davis’s reaction to the news of the disintegration of his younger son’s wedding plans. I assume he said something to the effect of “There are a million girls out there. Forget about her.”

  Ross’s mother, on the other hand, was very vocal with her feelings. I don’t know for sure if Ross kept to our agreement, but even if he did it wouldn’t have mattered. Some evil woman had broken her baby’s heart, and she wasn’t about to take that lying down.

  First, there were the phone calls. I was smart enough—or just plain scared enough—not to answer the phone when her name appeared on the Caller ID screen. But I did listen to the messages, afterward. They were largely incoherent and always angry. After a while there were letters, and the real shocker, e-mails. I didn’t know Mrs. Davis had ever seen a computer up close, let alone knew how to use one.

  Alexandra and I met for coffee late one afternoon a few weeks after the breakup. I told her about my angry ex-future-mother-in-law.

  “Wow,” she said. “I’ve never gotten hate mail. You’d expect someone like me would have, wouldn’t you? I tend to make enemies.”

  I smiled weakly. “Nothing from Luke’s soon-to-be-ex-wife?”

  “Not yet. So, what does Ross’s mommy
say to you? You can omit the foul language.”

  “The worst she’s called me is bitch. But it stings. Anyway, first she just yelled about how no one these days respects the sanctity of marriage.”

  “But you and Ross weren’t even married yet!”

  “I didn’t say Mrs. Davis has been coherent. Eventually, she got around to telling me in no uncertain terms that God was punishing me for losing the baby by taking away Ross, who, she believes, is the best thing that will ever happen to me.”

  Alexandra’s normally pale complexion darkened. “My blood pressure is dangerously high at this moment. I want you to know that in case I spontaneously combust.”

  “Anyway,” I said, “in a bizarre new twist she’s decided that Ross and I should get back together. I know she’s upset but—”

  “But nothing,” Alexandra said firmly. “It wasn’t her relationship that broke up. Mrs. Davis needs to get her own life, and pronto.”

  “Well,” I said, “I doubt that will ever happen. You know, from this perspective I am so glad she’s not going to be my mother-in-law. I used to think she was harmless, if a little annoying. But now I see that as Ross’s wife I would have been at her mercy for the rest of my life.”

  “Tell Ross to call off his mommy,” Alexandra commanded.

  “I don’t think I should mention it to him.”

  “The woman is harassing you. I think you have to mention it to him. And make it very clear that you’ll take legal action if she continues to invade your home via telephone, e-mail, and angry notes under the front door!”

  “I can’t press charges against the woman who was going to be my mother-in-law!”

  “Why not? She’s behaving like a criminal.”

  “Because—because it just wouldn’t be right.”

  Alexandra looked utterly disgusted with me. “Okay, okay. Fine. If you won’t talk to Ross, then you have two choices left. Ignore the witch, but I don’t see how you can do that when she’s lurking in your hallway. Your second choice is to confront her.”

  “What if she screams at me and things get even worse?”