Four: Stories of Marriage

by Nia Forrester

  He blinked lazily, stared as though seeing nothing at all and did not smile, or react at all when Keisha leaned in close to speak to him. With the doctor’s approval and supervision, Keisha tried to feed him from a bottle, but he didn’t take it. The formula drooled out of the side of his mouth and down his cheek while he lay there, disinterested and with unfocused eyes.

  When they tried to make him sit up just a little, he cried but almost desultorily, like he couldn’t quite muster up the energy to give a good showing. It had been the same the night before, when they had taken him for the spinal tap. Keisha tried not to think about some of the more troubling effects of meningitis that Dr. Chen had mentioned—brain damage, learning difficulties, developmental challenges. She hated to say it, but of the three doctors that had treated her son so far, she liked Dr. Betty the best.

  Dr. Betty, who at one time, intruded into her marriage in the way only women like her could—stealthily and with a generous helping of denial; pretending to themselves, just as Jay had pretended to himself, that something else entirely was going on. But Keisha couldn’t think about something like that now. She needed to feel like the person looking after Lee actually cared. Not just as a professional, but as a … friend? She didn’t even know what Dr. Betty was to Jay now. They hadn’t had contact, that Keisha knew for sure, because since that time when he almost strayed, she had paid closer attention and knew her husband was faithful.

  But last night, even while she was herself in something close to a panic, when she looked at Dr. Betty, beneath the other woman’s polished and professional exterior, Keisha detected a sliver of personal investment. A hint that this case, certainly not the first of its kind she had encountered, was just a little bit different. And because she was and had always been attuned to even the most carefully concealed signs of attraction to her husband, Keisha knew that Betty was not completely over Jayson, and that on some level, she was feeling his pain. But to invite her back into their lives, when there were other, perfectly capable doctors on hand would be to ask for more trouble for what felt like an already troubled household.

  They inserted the feeding tube at around one-thirty, and by then Lee was too weak to do much more than thrash a little, kicking his chubby little legs and momentarily lifting his hands, instinctively wanting to remove the intrusion into his nose and throat. Keisha looked away for a second, then forced herself to bear the sight of it, because her baby had to bear much more than that.

  And then she cried, but silently, because she didn’t want him to hear her and be frightened at the sound.

  “Baby.”

  Keisha opened her eyes to find Jay leaning over her. There were smudges under his eyes and he was unshaven. Behind him, she saw out the window that the sky was a dark, inky blue. It was nighttime, and she couldn’t recall the passage of time, or what she had done with it.

  “I can sit with him. You should go home. Shower and get some rest.”

  “No,” she said, wrenching her shoulder from his touch.

  “They just told me, he’s … stabilized. You can leave. I promise he’ll be okay.”

  She wanted to scream at him.

  Does he look okay? Does he fucking look okay to you? With the tubes and the needle in his arm and lying there like a rag-doll?

  “I’ll stay here. There’s a shower …” She pointed at the private bathroom. “I’ll shower in there. Did you take the clothes from last night … the bag out of the car?”

  He shook his head.

  “So, I have something to change into. Could you get that?”

  Thinking about the previous evening made her think of Kat. Jesus. Kat. She hadn’t called her to tell her anything. Nor had she called her father, Rey, to let him know his only grandchild might be …

  “Jayson, get the clothes from outside, please,” she said.

  He nodded and stood upright, looking relieved to have something to do for her.

  When he left the room, she found her phone. It was dead, and she had no charger. She would use Jayson’s when he got back, to call her father, to call Kat. And then she would take a shower. Those were small things, but small things were about all she felt equipped to accomplish.

  Jay returned but without the bag. He looked helpless.

  “I think I must have taken it out,” he said. “This morning when I went home, I think I must have …”

  “Then I’ll shower and put this stuff back on,” she said.

  “Key. No. I called Chloe. She’s coming by, so I can take you home and you can eat and shower, and he won’t be alone. Then we’ll come right …”

  “No. That’ll take too long. What if he wakes up and I’m …”

  “We’ll be gone an hour, tops,” he said.

  She could get her charger. She could call Kat and her father. And she could take something for the headache that felt like it was splitting her head in two. She would shower, so she wouldn’t smell like a field hand.

  “Just one hour,” she said.

  Jay nodded.

  They said nothing for the entire ride back to the house. And the closer they got to home, the greater the feeling of dread in the pit of Keisha’s stomach. She had never been home for any significant length of time without Lee, she now realized. She and Jayson didn’t leave him with anyone for longer than it took to go to the grocery store, and then they went to get him right away. They had never left him at Chloe’s for an entire weekend, just to be alone, nor had they gone out to dinner as a couple, leaving him with a sitter for even three short hours. He was always with them.

  Something that just two days ago, she believed was the source of her greatest frustration now felt like her greatest comfort, her greatest joy. Quite likely it had always been all those things at once.

  Once they were home, and sitting in the driveway, Keisha took a breath, steeling herself to go in. Jay didn’t move either. They sat there for so long, she turned to look at him. He opened his mouth to speak, then seemed to think the better of it. He looked down at his lap and bit his lower lip. Finally, he looked at her.

  “Key,” he said. “I have something to tell you. And it’s not good.”

  She waited, wondering what he could possibly say that would shake her more than the past twenty-four hours had.

  “When I took Lee to the store? When I … You told me not to let anyone hold him. Y’know like you always do.”

  Keisha nodded.

  “I did. I mean … I let people hold him.”

  Keisha narrowed her eyes. So what? What did that have to do with …? Then realization dawned.

  Bacterial meningitis. Bacteria. Germs …

  Jay rushed on. “I don’t know if that’s wh…”

  Her face and then her entire head seemed to grow hot.

  “Jayson,” she said, her voice controlled, but tight with rage. “If anything happens to him, I mean if there’s … if this is because of you, because of you letting one of those skanky-ass bitches who come into the store looking to suck your dick hold my kid, handle him … If this is because of you, I will never forgive you. Never.”

  Wrenching the door open, she got out of the truck with the intention of storming inside, and only once at the door remembered that she didn’t have her key. She kicked it once, hard, in frustration, and couldn’t make herself stop kicking it, even when the toe of her boot caved in and a sharp pain shot up her foot.

  She was still kicking when Jay grabbed her from behind, his arms around her, holding her in a bear hug. She screamed expletives at him—she didn’t even know what exactly—and struggled as hard as she could to release herself, until her screams became wails, and the wails turned into sobs and finally, a rush of a million tears.

  Jayson held her there, outside in the cold while she cried. And when she thought she might be able to stop, there was more. He held her all through that, and through her hard, stubborn resistance to his holding her. He held her until she was tired of resisting and turned and held him back and cried into his chest.

 
He held her until he, too, was crying and neither of them wanted to let go.

  6

  How are you?”

  Jay looked up and smiled. The bells on the door tinkled, and Betty entered just as he was about thinking about shutting it down for the day and heading back over to the hospital. The days seemed endless lately, merging one into the other so that he wasn’t even sure which was which. He thought it might be Thursday but couldn’t be certain, and remembered from way back that if it was, this was Betty’s day off.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m good.”

  She smiled. Her expression skeptical.

  “Okay, maybe not good. But hanging in there.”

  Betty came closer. In a yellow parka that complemented her deep brown complexion, and jeans, she looked fresh as a daisy and as pretty as a picture. Jay almost felt guilty for noticing such a thing. She was carrying a tray with two Starbucks cups, which she set down.

  “Do you want my prognosis?” she asked leaning on the counter between them. “As a non-treating physician?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s going to be fine, Jayson.” Betty reached out and took his hand. “His recovery is going to feel slow, if he was a happy, chirpy, healthy boy—which I’m betting he was—but he’ll be fine. Chloe brought him in early, and …”

  She had placed her right hand on top of his left, and now, rested her left hand on the counter. On her index finger was a diamond solitaire. As she spoke, Jay looked down at it and Betty fell silent.

  “Last month,” she said in answer to the question he hadn’t asked. “We’re getting married in the spring.”

  Jayson nodded. He checked his gut, examining it for jealousy, or anything that would inhibit him from feeling something other than happiness for her. And finding nothing, he looked up at her and smiled.

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.” Betty withdrew both hands and picked up her coffee cup. “I haven’t forgotten how you like your coffee.” She nodded toward the other one.

  Jayson picked it up and took a sip. “Thanks,” he said. “This’ll help me power through the night.”

  “How’s …Keisha?”

  “Scared. Tired. Angry at me.”

  “At you? Why?”

  Jayson explained his reasoning, describing the people who paraded in and out of the store, the women who always wanted to hold Lee, and how he never refused.

  “Well, that’s not ideal,” Betty said, confirming his worst fear that it was possible that he was responsible for his son’s illness. “Especially if you generally keep him home. New germs … all of that … But there’s no way to know that that’s what happened.”

  “I know. She knows. But still … I feel like now she won’t trust me with him anymore. I feel like maybe I don’t trust me with him.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You’re both obviously incredibly devoted parents. And your son …” Her voice broke a little, and she swallowed it back. “Your son is as gorgeous as I would have expected any kid of yours to be.”

  Jay’s eyes held hers. “Thank you. Key might have had a little to do with that as well.”

  “I’m sure. She’s beautiful. You have … you have a beautiful family.” Betty took another long sip. Then she took a breath and straightened, preparing to leave. “Anyway, I just wanted to stop in … see how you’re holding up.”

  “Thanks for …”

  “Stop thanking me, Jayson.” She sounded weary. She turned and was almost out the door.

  “Hey,” he called after her.

  She paused, hand on the doorknob.

  “Will you invite me to your wedding in the spring?”

  Betty gave a small, sad shake of the head. “No, Jayson,” she said her voice barely above a whisper. “I won’t.”

  Laughter resounded down the hallway. It was the first thing Jayson heard as he stepped off the elevator and headed toward Lee’s room. Keisha’s laughter. Picking up the pace, he shoved open the door, and saw Kat, his wife’s best friend sitting on one of the hospital chairs, her feet propped on the edge of Lee’s bed. Keisha was in the bed, her body arranged around their son’s cocooning him.

  The tubes in Lee’s mouth and nose had been removed and he had a little more color. His lips, which over the past several days had been almost purple, were pink once again, and his skin had lost the greyish, sickly pallor, restored to its natural nut-brown.

  “Jay!” Keisha sat up at the sight of him. “He smiled at me. He woke up and smiled at me.”

  Jayson went over to the bed. Lee’s eyes were closed, and his face relaxed. He touched his son’s forehead. It was cool to the touch, not in a clammy, feverish way but cool from the air in the room.

  “He’s sleeping now, but he woke up and even had a bottle.”

  Jayson stared at Lee, unsure about whether he should risk the optimism he was beginning to feel.

  “Hey, Jayson.”

  He turned to look at Kat and offer her a smile.

  “Hey,” he said. “When did you get here?”

  “This afternoon. You know I had to. Once I heard my little bunny wasn’t well, I had to come.”

  Kat, much to Chloe’s chagrin, was Lee’s godmother but Jayson felt strongly that a mother had the right to make that choice. And Kat was the only friend of Key’s that Jayson had ever liked.

  “But as soon as she got here, he woke up,” Keisha said. “Like he was waiting for her or something.”

  “We weren’t persuasive enough for him, huh?” he said. “He needed Kat to get him to wake up?”

  “Looks like it.” Keisha reached down and stroked their son’s hair, raking her fingers through his curls and smoothing them against the pillow. “Anyway, she says she can stay for a little while, so I can go home and get something to eat, and shower before I come back for the night.”

  “You want to go home?”

  For the last few nights, it had been a struggle to get her to leave Lee’s side. Even though he prevailed in the end, getting her to leave for even an hour or two had been a minor battle. He had been prepared to go to war again tonight.

  “Yeah, and we have to go now because Kat needs to be on the eight-ten train back to the city.”

  He nodded dumbly.

  “Maybe bring him some more clothes,” Kat suggested. “When they move him, he’ll probably get to take a bath or something, right?”

  “Oh yeah. Right.” Keisha looked at Jay again. “They said they’re moving him out of the ICU in the morning.”

  “Seems like I missed all the action, huh?”

  Keisha kissed Lee on the forehead, then carefully climbed out of the bed, and grabbed her jacket off the nearby chair. Then she paused to hug Kat before turning to Jayson.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  Giving Kat a tipped chin in acknowledgment as they left, Jayson tried to reconcile the mood in his son’s room with the one he had seen when he left that morning.

  This drive home, unlike the others over the past few evenings was peppered with Keisha’s chatter. She gave him the blow-by-blow of the moment Lee’s eyes fluttered open and focused on her face, her voice breaking when she described how he smiled at her.

  “And it was like he was almost too tired to smile, y’know? But he did. He smiled anyway, and then he reached for me.”

  Jay nodded. “And then he ate something you said?”

  “Yeah. The doctor said I could try the bottle and so they took out the tubes, which was …” She grimaced. “Just feel lucky that you weren’t there for that.”

  Except he didn’t feel lucky. He hadn’t been there when the tubes went in, either. And he hadn’t been there for most of the difficult moments. He’d been at the fucking store. So, she had done it all alone. Except for tonight, when his son had opened his eyes, and smiled. And he’d missed that too. That moment, his wife had shared with Kat.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Keisha said. “That I’m getting overly excited, and he might not be out of the woods yet, but I really fee
l like …”

  “No, I’m not thinking that. Betty said she thought he’d be fine as well. I just …”

  “Betty? You saw her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When?”

  “She stopped in the store tonight. Just as I was leaving. Wanted to see how things were going.”

  “Did you thank her for me?”

  “I thanked her, yeah. She asked after you.”

  “That’s nice of her,” Keisha said, but her voice had lost some of its buoyancy.

  And then she said nothing more.

  When Jay unlocked the door, she unloaded her pocketbook and jacket at the door and headed straight for the stairs.

  “I’m just going to take a quick shower,” she said.

  “You want me to make you something before we head back?” Jay called up. “A sandwich or something?”

  “Thank you,” Keisha said without looking back. “But not a sandwich. Something hot. Just like … ramen noodles or something like that.”

  Jayson stood at the foot of the stairs. After a moment he headed after her.

  He found Keisha in the middle of their bedroom, her jeans in a puddle on the floor at her feet, pulling her shirt up. Jayson advanced toward her, and she paused, looking at him quizzically. He held the hem of the shirt, helping it the rest of the way over her head.

  Keisha’s eyes never left his.

  Reaching behind her, he unfastened her bra and slid the straps off her shoulder, so it too fell to the floor. Her nipples, suddenly exposed, hardened as he watched her. He didn’t even have his next move in mind. All he knew was that there was a painful gulf between them, and now, especially now that the most tangible symbol of their connection was in peril he couldn’t stand that distance. Not for another second.

  Keisha reached for him. She pulled the hem of his shirt, lifting it as far as she could, until he had to get it the rest of the way. Then she reached for the waistband of his jeans, tugging them down, and his underwear with it. She crouched so she could pull them all the way to his ankles. And once there on her knees, she paused.

  Thinking she might be about to take him in her hands and mouth, Jayson pulled her up. He didn’t want that. Not now. This wasn’t about sex. This was about being close to his wife again. His skin on her skin. His mouth on her mouth, nothing between them.