The Woman Next Door

by Barbara Delinsky

  “I didn’t. I know when I conceived.” She sat back against the seat and whispered, “I’ve lost so much. I can’t lose this.”

  “Here we are,” Graham announced. Turning into the hospital lot, he drove straight to the emergency entrance.

  Suddenly there were attendants opening the door, helping Gretchen out, settling her into a wheelchair. Her obstetrician—he was Amanda’s own, though not her fertility specialist—was there, too, holding her shoulder, telling her that she would be fine.

  Pushed to the side in the rush of medical assistance, Amanda felt a deep yearning. When Graham materialized beside her, she met his gaze. They didn’t say a word, though the message was there. It should be us, damn it. It should be us.

  ***

  Gretchen gave herself up into the hands of her doctor. She had trusted him from the first, largely because he exuded confidence, and he did now, too, even in spite of the bleeding. Confidence, however, didn’t mean he didn’t act quickly. She was admitted and prepped. She was wheeled into an operating room and given a spinal. They performed a cesarean section, which was just as well, since, lacking a partner, she had forgone Lamaze courses and would have been hard put to know how to breathe.

  A sheet blocked her view of what was happening, but her obstetrician stood tall above it, and she watched his eyes. They were calm and competent, concerned for perhaps a minute or two, though that might have been Gretchen’s imagination. Soon enough there was a smile in those eyes, and the unmistakable sound of a baby’s cry.

  “You have a boy, Gretchen,” the doctor announced, “and he sure looks healthy to me. He sounds it, too. Listen to the little guy go.”

  Gretchen thought that waaaa-waaaa was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard. Not knowing whether to laugh or cry herself, she did both, which meant that when they brought the baby to her, she could barely see him through her tears. But she saw enough. She saw a screwed-up little face, a tiny body, spindly arms and legs with the appropriate numbers of fingers and toes. Then they whisked him away, explaining that they wanted him examined, cleaned, and warmed in an incubator until they determined if there were any side effects of his premature arrival.

  She wanted to ask what those might be. First, though, now that he was in good hands, she wanted to know if she would live.

  “Live?” her obstetrician asked with a mischievous look in his eyes. “I haven’t lost a patient yet to a little run-of-the-mill hemorrhaging. It’s stopped. We’ll just sew you up now. Live? You’ll live long and well with that boy.”

  Gretchen liked the sound of that. Closing her eyes, feeling a tugging at her body but little pain, she let herself relax.

  ***

  Amanda and Graham were at the window of the special-care nursery when Gretchen’s baby arrived. It was swathed in blankets. The nurse held him up and mouthed the words. Amanda felt goose bumps and caught in a breath. “A boy. That’s so nice.”

  Holding her hand in the pocket of his jeans, Graham gave it a squeeze. “You’d say the same thing if it were a girl.”

  But Amanda was enthralled. “Look at him. He’s so tiny.” “Is he okay?” Graham asked the nurse, who, given her salt-and-pepper hair and the ease with which she held the baby, was no doubt experienced at lip-reading, too.

  With a reassuring thumbs-up, she carried him to the pediatrician waiting at the rear of the room.

  Amanda watched until the doctor blocked her view of the baby. Then she looked at the other preemies. Babies born at this hospital with serious problems would have been transferred to larger hospitals, which meant that the ones left were small but healthy. She saw a pink cap, a blue cap, a trio of yellow ribbons. One incubator had a sign that read TIMOTHY. Another had a stuffed rabbit perched on the top.

  “So,” Graham asked, “who did he look like?”

  “Not you,” Amanda replied. “I’ve pictured your baby in my mind a million times. I’ve seen other O’Leary babies. This isn’t one.”

  “Maybe he resembles Gretchen.”

  “Nuh-uh. O’Leary genes are dominant. O’Leary babies have a certain look.”

  “This one’s just a preemie.”

  Amanda glanced up at him. He was either testing her, or teasing her. “Who do you think he looks like?” she asked.

  “Ben.”

  She chuckled. “Mm. Both bald.”

  They were quiet for a while. Gradually the excitement of the night—the exhilaration of a new birth—faded. Amanda didn’t have to look at Graham to know that he was feeling it, too. Standing there at the nursery window, knowing that they should have been looking at their baby by now, she felt the return of emptiness. She wondered if Graham was feeling that also—wondered if he was looking out at those babies in their incubators and thinking that some woman had managed to carry and bear each one. She wondered if Graham was thinking that he had married a dud of a woman. She wondered—

  She caught herself midway, headed into the same old trap. Wondering was dangerous enough. Wondering, and then imagining, had gotten her in big trouble before. She couldn’t just wonder. She couldn’t just imagine. She had to know.

  “What’re you feeling?” she asked quietly.

  He was silent for a minute. Then he put his hands in his back pockets. “Envy.”

  That was honest. She felt it, too. “What else?”

  “Determination.” His jaw showed it. “If we try once more, just once more, it has to work.” His profile was strong—yes, determined. When he turned his eyes on her, though, they held something else. “Dread,” he added. “Not a pretty word. But it’s the truth. I’m not looking forward to starting it all up again. I don’t want to lose what we’ve had the past few days.”

  “Hey, you two,” called a gentle voice. It was Emily, their fertility specialist, coming toward them down the hall.

  Amanda smiled in greeting, but didn’t say anything. Neither did Graham.

  Emily cocked her head toward the nursery. “Is this an attempt to get psyched up again?”

  “No,” Amanda said. “A neighbor’s baby’s in there. Are there any of yours?”

  Emily pointed at the middle of the room. “Those three, the ones with the yellow ribbons tied to the handles. They’re IVF triplets, two sisters and a brother. They’re very small, but they’re well.” Turning away from the babies, Emily braced a shoulder against the nursery glass. “The downside of your problem is that we don’t know its cause. The upside is that because we don’t, there’s lots we can try. The simplest is to up the dosage of Clomid.”

  Amanda wasn’t wild about that idea. The lower dosage had made her hot, bloated, and moody, and according to the tests, the Clomid had worked. She had produced plenty of eggs. They just hadn’t taken to being fertilized.

  Besides, an increased dose of Clomid raised the risk of overstimulation of the ovaries and the development of ovarian cysts. She would have to be closely monitored for that, meaning near-daily tests at the clinic. Should a large cyst develop, it would have to be surgically removed.

  “We can stick with Clomid and add an injection of HCG,” Emily proposed. “That would be done on the fifteenth or sixteenth day of your cycle. It would trigger ovulation.”

  “Ovulation isn’t my problem,” Amanda said.

  “No, but this would coordinate the release of the eggs from their follicles. Consolidate the firepower, so to speak. Or we can do multiple inseminations—artificially inseminate you daily or bi-daily Or we can try Humegon, either alone or with HCG.”

  Amanda shuddered at the thought. Humegon had to be injected. It was awkward and painful. Moreover, since it caused a decrease in progesterone levels, progesterone injections had to follow the Humegon ones, all of which would precede the HCG shot. The whole thing was unpleasant. The side effects were reputed to be as bad as, if not worse than, the other.

  “We can try IUI,” Emily suggested, “or go directly to IVF. My point is that you do have options.”

  Amanda didn’t want options. She wanted a baby. Glancing a
t Graham, she saw that he did, too.

  “I want you guys back in,” Emily said. “What do you say?”

  Graham didn’t say a word. His eyes held Amanda’s, seeming to say that he would go along with whatever she decided. More, they seemed to say that he was in it for the long haul. That gave her a measure of confidence.

  She smiled at him, released a breath, then smiled at Emily. “I’ve had my break. I’m ready.”

  ***

  Gretchen barely slept. She was too excited to sleep, and also too uncomfortable as the anesthesia wore off, but she would only take the mildest painkiller. She didn’t want to be doped up. She wanted to be out of bed as soon as possible and down the hall with her baby. She was all he had. If he was struggling in any way, she wanted to be there with him.

  When she asked, they said he was fine. A nurse even wheeled him into her room, and she was allowed to hold him, but only for a short time. Her milk hadn’t come in, and he wasn’t ready to nurse. After wailing lustily at birth, he dozed peacefully.

  But he was breathing. She looked closely for that. She touched his mouth, touched his nose and his cheeks, and felt their warmth. She whispered a kiss over the soft spot that pulsed at the top of his head. She laid a light hand on his little chest and felt its movement. She touched his palm and felt his tiny fingers close around hers.

  He had yellowed some, which they said was normal for a preemie. He didn’t have a lick of hair, and she couldn’t see the color of his eyes. But he was surely the most beautiful baby she had ever seen. Holding him brought tears to her eyes and a rush of such emotion that it startled her at first.

  “That’s what motherhood’s about,” Amanda said when she stopped by at noon with a balloon bouquet. “At least, that’s what I’m told. Have you decided on a name?”

  “Not yet.” She had chosen a name for a girl, but not a boy. She kept putting that off, thinking that maybe things would change and there would be a man to name the baby after. “I keep coming back to Benjamin. But if I did that, Ben’s sons would go berserk.”

  “You do what you want,” Amanda urged.

  Gretchen loved her for that, as well as for coming to visit. It couldn’t be easy for either Graham or her. “Do you hate coming here?”

  “No. I love babies. Coming here reminds me how much.”

  “You’ll have a baby. You’re a good person.”

  “Those two things aren’t always connected,” Amanda advised, then tipped up her chin. “But we will. Somehow, we will. To quote Graham quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience.’”

  Gretchen let the words sink in. They were soothing. “You’ll have a baby,” she repeated.

  “Well, you have yours. I told Georgia and Russ. They were excited. Is there anyone else you’d like me to tell?”

  “No. There’s no one.” Her eyes shifted to the door and her heart skipped a beat. Oliver Deeds stood there, holding a vase of roses.

  Chapter Twenty

  Gretchen didn’t want Oliver there. He was a reminder that Ben was dead, and that Ben’s sons—technically her stepsons, absurd as it was—would be perfectly happy to put her out of the house and on the street with nothing on her back but the clothes she had worn when she’d first met Ben. She had a baby now. Somehow, she didn’t think that would make a difference. They were a hard-hearted lot, these men who had been so close to her kindhearted Ben.

  Amanda touched her arm and said a quiet, “I have to run.”

  Gretchen felt a moment of panic. “Don’t. Please stay.”

  “I wish I could, but I have to get back to school. Is there anything you need?”

  Gretchen shook her head. “Thanks for the balloons.”

  “No thanks needed,” Amanda said, adding with the intimacy of a close friend, “I’ll give you a call later.”

  Gretchen nodded in gratitude, feeling tears in her eyes and a warmth deep inside. She had wanted a friend. She couldn’t do better than Amanda.

  But Amanda was suddenly gone, and Oliver remained, the lawyer from head to toe in his dark suit and his tense look. He took a step into the room. “The balloons are pretty. It was nice of her to bring them.”

  Gretchen brushed the tears from her cheeks.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Just fine. Amanda and Graham got me here last night.”

  “I know. I stopped at the house to see you this morning. Russell Lange saw me standing at the door and told me. You should have called.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “They said you had a cesarean section.”

  “Many women do. I can still take care of myself. And my baby.”

  Oliver looked away brooding. When he looked back, a swatch of hair fell over his brow. “I saw him. They held him up. He’s a handsome guy.”

  Gretchen remained silent.

  “Listen,” he began, but she found her voice and interrupted.

  “He’s my baby,” she told him. “I have plenty of money. I can take care of him. If David and Alan want to cause trouble because I have a baby, I’ll fight them. You can tell them that.”

  “They won’t cause trouble. I won’t let them.”

  “I don’t need your help, either,” she said, because she couldn’t count on him. He was there one minute, gone the next. True friends weren’t that way.

  “Gretchen, I want to explain.”

  She held his gaze. “There’s nothing to explain.”

  “I didn’t abandon you. But you were a client. I shouldn’t have done what I did. It was unethical.”

  Unethical? He was calling their baby unethical? He was calling the warmth he’d shown her—the gentleness and the caring, the passion—unethical? If that was the kind of man he was, she didn’t want any part of him.

  Her face must have shown it. Either that, or he just didn’t care. He glanced at the vase he held, frowned, and came forward only enough to put it on the tray table. Then he returned to the door. She was thinking that he was going to leave just like that, without another word, in which case she would ring for the nurse and get rid of his flowers, when he turned.

  “Have you decided on a name?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She did it that very minute. “Benjamin.”

  “That’s a big name for such a little boy.”

  Benji wasn’t. She would call him Benji. He might never know Gretchen’s Ben, but he would be raised in the security of a home that the man had provided. Amanda was right. Alan and David didn’t count. Gretchen could do what she wanted to do. She was her own woman. And she had friends now. She didn’t need Oliver. For the first time in her life, she had friends of her own.

  ***

  Graham refused to think about Emily, the fertility clinic, pills, bloating, moods, or masturbation. He refused to think about making a baby. For the first time, he understood what friends of his meant who waited long years to have kids so that they could have their wives to themselves. Sure, it was selfish. But what man didn’t like being the sole center of a woman’s world? Graham sure did. He liked having dinner with Amanda, and went out of his way to come home from work with plenty of time to spare beforehand. He liked watching her make dinner. He liked helping her with it.

  He liked doing things with her, period. She was beautiful; he was proud to be seen with her. She was intelligent; he liked hearing about her work, which she shared more now that they were talking again. And she asked about his, wanting to know the kinds of details she hadn’t in a while.

  He loved the closeness. This was what would remain long after their children were grown and out of the house. When he thought about growing old, he saw Amanda and him on the porch of their dream vacation house. They might be sitting in rockers, or on the wide wood steps. They would be enjoying the soft sounds and the sunset. In time, they would go walking by the water’s edge and pause to look for shooting stars.

  They had lost this closeness for a while. He loved having it back. With Emily breathing down their ne
cks, the trick would be making sure they didn’t lose it again.

  ***

  Amanda didn’t want to think about Emily and the clinic, about pills, charts, calendars, and bated breath any more than Graham did, and the time of the year helped with that. With less than a month left of school, she was busier than ever, meeting with parents and students. Add faculty meetings, and community service assignments, and talks to rising seniors—and wanting to be home by four so that she had all the time in the world for Graham—and she had little time to think about this next fertility round.

  Dorothy went home from the hospital on Thursday, and Amanda strongly felt that they should visit her. Graham argued against it, preferring to let his mother stew for a while, but Amanda refused to let him become estranged from his family, so she dragged him along.

  And then there was Gretchen. They drove her home from the hospital on Saturday, with the baby strapped neatly in the infant carrier that Gretchen had bought months before, and Amanda should have kept an emotional distance. She should have, because being around a new baby was an addictive thing. The smells alone—from the new wooden crib, from baby powder and lotion and baby wipes—made her ache with wanting.

  She should have kept her distance, but she couldn’t. She was drawn to the baby, in part because Gretchen wasn’t much more experienced with one than she was, which made them co-conspirators of a sort—though the fact that he had been born six weeks early and was tiny would have given the most experienced parent qualms. Amanda took her turn changing diapers. She helped give Benji his first bath, and rocked him to sleep when Gretchen faded. But she wasn’t the only one drawn here. Russ came by. Georgia stayed for hours. The neighborhood children rang the bell, wanting to look at the new baby. Even Karen was curious.

  “I keep looking for resemblances,” she reasoned, seeming to need an excuse for standing there with Amanda at the side of the crib.

  Amanda didn’t see any need for excuses. Karen was a caring person at heart. A seasoned mother, she would take pleasure watching a newborn—any newborn.