She Poured Out Her Heart

by Jean Thompson

  They weren’t able to spend that much time with each other, since Eric’s schedule of clinical rotations was taking up more and more of his hours. He was finishing his last year of medical school and everything depended on applying for residencies and where he got in. But they talked on the phone every day and when they did get a night or a weekend together, it had the feel of a holiday. For Valentine’s Day Eric gave her yellow roses edged with coral. Jane gave him a book of funny cartoons about doctors. She grew more used to the idea that he found something about her desirable. And she was crazy about him. Oh yes.

  Jane involved herself in the intricacies of his application process, asking intelligent questions about residencies and offering encouragement. So much strategy and effort went into trying to get matched with your top school, where you might spend the next five years or more, where your career would be molded and minted. There were personal statements, interviews, performance evaluations; there was an implacable computer process that sorted everyone out. Then, on one dreaded day in March, the word came down and people either rejoiced or wept or gritted their teeth and made the best of it.

  Even buoyant Eric felt the stress of it. “Of course everybody wants Johns Hopkins,” he said gloomily. “And Duke. I shouldn’t even have them on my list.” Jane served as his cheerleader and morale officer, telling him she was sure he’d get one of his top choices, and that wherever he ended up, he’d make it work. She couldn’t tell if Eric believed her or even paid attention. “What?” he’d say, after Jane delivered one of her exhortations. “What?” When he came over he sat hunched in front of the computer, searching for one more clue, one more advantage that might help him calculate his future. She found herself looking at him critically, not even liking him very much at such times.

  That was just as well; she was clearly an interim girlfriend, a convenience. Someone to keep him company in his occasional off-hours, before he picked up stakes and headed off to his triumphant future. He didn’t want to stay in Chicago, he said, which Jane took to mean, he didn’t want to stay with her. And why would he? He was on the fast track. He would end up with some Highland Park princess, one of those shiny-haired, high-powered girls who had been smiling nonstop since the eighth grade. Jane would turn into another line in his personal résumé: the one who hung around blood banks.

  Jane asked him if he wanted her there when he got the residency news, and Eric said no, he wasn’t going to put her through that. He wanted to be able to break dishes and curse and sulk. Then he’d suck it up and call her. “You need to be more positive,” said Jane. She found it hard to remember her own last purely positive thought. “You’re going to be just fine.”

  “Yeah, it’s all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows.”

  He was impossible. “Bye,” she said. “Talk to you later.” She hung up. She thought it was unsurprising that Eric would not handle rejection well; he had hardly ever been rejected.

  She waited to hear from him, feeling both nervous and deadened, as if everything reached her through a layer of cotton padding. The phone rang and she picked it up. “How do you feel about Atlanta?” Eric’s voice said in her ear.

  She didn’t feel anything about Atlanta. He sounded excited. “What happened?”

  “Emory. They aren’t top ranked in cardio, I might have to go somewhere else for a fellowship, but they were pretty high up on my list.”

  “Congratulations,” Jane said. She was happy for him, in a sad way. “I told you it would work out.”

  “Listen, I need to hang out with some of the guys for a while, then let’s go for dinner. I’m going to make a reservation someplace killer.”

  “Sure,” Jane said, funereally. “That would be great.”

  “Oh man. What’s that thing they say, the weight of the world . . .”

  “The weight of the world has lifted from you.”

  “That’s it. Seven o’clock, OK?”

  The weight of the world had been transferred over to Jane. It felt about like she expected. She reminded herself of all the things she did not care for about him. His sense of humor could be juvenile. He had a terrible singing voice and never missed a chance to sing. He clearly shared everyone’s high opinion of himself.

  Just for spite, Jane took extra care with how she looked. She had grown her hair out long enough to pull up in a pouf. She chose a black dress that, when properly engineered and arranged, gave her some cleavage. She was surprised at how good she looked, once she got past her usual rituals of making critical expressions in the mirror. She thought she benefitted from the kind of makeup that allowed you to draw an entirely different face over your own.

  “Wow, you look amazing,” Eric said when he arrived. He kissed her, she kissed back. He’d dressed up too, in a jacket and tie, shaved and damped down his curls. Even so, a residue of exhaustion showed in his face, in the gray skin beneath his eyes. She felt sorry for him, in spite of her own sense of dreary grievance. He’d been through a hard few weeks, and plenty of hard weeks and months and years before that, so much work, finally paying off. She wouldn’t spoil things for him. She would be good company, happy for him. Go through the motions. It wasn’t as if anyone ever noticed the difference.

  They went to a restaurant in the city that Jane had only read about, one of several owned by a famous chef, a place that served things like bison, persimmon emulsion, artichoke fritters, saffron-infused desserts. The menu a parade of marvels. “I hope you’ll like it,” Eric said, and Jane murmured that she was certain she would. The only complaints anyone might make would have to do with decadence and waste, since it was all so viciously expensive. You half expected to see the cast of Les Misérables pressed against the windows.

  Jane thought Eric’s parents must have given him money to go celebrate. Eric was always vague about them, but she gathered, from a remark or two, that they were people of means, even if Eric said he had largely (vaguely) financed his own way through medical school. Some of his confidence undoubtedly came from growing up with money, the solid fact of it backing everything up. But the residency was something that he had accomplished on his own, fought his way to.

  He talked about how his friends had managed with their matches. Not bad. He would not have to feel guilty about his own good fortune. “Tell me more about Emory,” Jane kept saying, or, “Tell me more about Atlanta.” He was excited about everything, which was a good way to start out. He said he’d no doubt be working at the huge public hospital, Grady Memorial, the one with the ER called Grady Knife and Gun Club. The prospect energized him. He loved the tough stuff. She felt how dearly she would miss him.

  “When does all this start?” she asked him. Although she knew very well when it started. Graduation was in June, and the residencies began soon afterward. She just wanted to feel good and sad about it yet again. He began to answer, but was interrupted by the waiter, who set in front of them terrines made of different exotic sea creatures.

  When the waiter left, Eric said, “You could go with me, you know.”

  Jane had picked up her fork. Now she put it down again. “What?”

  “There are about a million different health careers there. I mean, the Centers for Disease Control, for starters.”

  He was waiting for her to say something, maybe, “Centers for Disease Control, really?” Jane looked around her. The restaurant was one of those minimalist temples of gastronomy, all tile and sleek leather and industrial lighting. Nowhere soft for the eyes to land. Hunger of any sort unknown here. She burst into noisy tears.

  “Hey, hey,” Eric said. “What’s the matter? Jane?”

  She couldn’t stop. She had invested so much in the idea of her own failure and unlovability.

  “Don’t cry into the terrine. You know, the chef hates it when people add salt.”

  That made her laugh, hiccupping, although she was still bawling. The waiter stationed himself a discreet distance away in case the lad
y needed special attention, a taxi, say, or perhaps she wanted to change her order.

  When she was able to speak again she said, “I thought when you left town, that was it.”

  “Oh come on.” He made a scoffing face.

  “I didn’t know what you wanted. You didn’t say.”

  “I didn’t want to even talk about it until I knew where I was going to end up. Here, drink some water.”

  She drank, and fished around for a Kleenex in her purse. “Am I blotchy? I get blotchy when I cry.”

  “You’re fine.” Eric waved the waiter away. “So . . .”

  “We should talk more about this,” Jane said, picking up her fork once more. She was slowly realizing that she had actual power here, she was free to say yes or say no. Why would she consider no? This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? But didn’t people first decide to be together no matter what? She didn’t like the idea that the computer program had determined her future as well as his, that if it had sent him to Pennsylvania, say, he might not be asking her to come along. But maybe he had wanted to be certain he had been matched, that he had something to offer her. Exactly what was he offering her, anyway?

  Jane called Bonnie the next night. “Eric’s going to Atlanta for his residency and he wants me to come with him.” Although he had not actually said anything about wanting; you had to extrapolate that.

  “Yeah? You going?”

  “I don’t know yet. It just came up last night.”

  “Are you getting married?”

  “That part didn’t come up.”

  “I trust,” Bonnie said, “that you have told him the instructive story about free milk and the cow.”

  “I’m not a cow.” It wasn’t what you’d expect to hear from Bonnie. “Since when did you turn into some marriage booster?”

  “You know I’m not. But if you’re going to up and quit your job, and live somewhere you don’t know anybody else—you don’t, do you?—so that pretty much everything depends on Eric, how do you want this to end up? You want to get married, don’t you? You love him all goo-goo, right?”

  “Yes. Sure. But . . .”

  “But what, tiresome girl?”

  “He hasn’t asked me.”

  “Well go out there and get him to marry you. It can’t be that hard, people do it all the time.”

  “I don’t know.” She didn’t even know what she didn’t know, except for that sense of something sliding away beneath her and life tilting sideways. “If I don’t get married. If I never get married. I’d be this whole different person. Does that make any sense?” Jane waited.

  “Well,” Bonnie said after a time, “I guess so. But that’s how it works. You can’t be everything. Nobody can.”

  “All this is happening just because of his job. His swell career. I’m just a component of it.”

  “It’s never too late to discover feminism, Jane honey.”

  “Dr. and Mrs. Nicholson. It sounds so fifties.” She wasn’t even sure she believed in all her objections, but it seemed important to register them.

  “Then don’t change your name. Marry somebody else. Be a doctor yourself.”

  “What if we get married and move to Atlanta and things don’t work out?”

  “Then you’ll at least get something from it. Train fare back home. Never mind. Don’t get married. Hitchhike on down there with him. Throw caution to the winds.”

  “That’s what you’d do,” Jane said.

  “Need I say more?”

  Jane stood in the apartment’s hallway, her back to the crowd, and tossed the bouquet over her shoulder. There was some whooping and scrabbling, because the men were in on it too, clowning around and pretending they wanted to catch it. But when Jane turned around, Bonnie was holding the roses, wagging them back and forth. “How is this supposed to work? Do I get a prize or something?”

  Everybody gathered around to wish them good-bye, good-bye. Bonnie hugged her and told her she done good, and Jane did not see her again for a long time.

  The rose, the gold, the leaping sunlight: did everyone see such things as she did? The beautiful seeing filling you up so entirely that there was no room for the rest of you? She didn’t think so, but how would you know? It was nothing anyone ever talked about.

  They walked out into a swirl of snow that had already coated the streets and sidewalks. Cars passed by on muffled tires. Veils of moving snow dimmed the streetlamps. It was as if it had all been arranged for them. Their breath sparkled with frost and once they were far enough away from their friends’ apartment they stopped and kissed, the first private kiss of their marriage. It was cold, but not brutally so, and once they reached their car and started it up and the heater began to work, the cold only sharpened their pleasure in being warm and enclosed.

  They went slowly, since you had to drive with care on the unplowed streets. Neither of them felt the need to say anything grand or important-seeming. When they arrived home and climbed the stairs and unlocked the door and went inside, they remembered too late about the carrying over the threshold part, and there was nothing to do but laugh about it. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t gone in and out and in and out, separately and together, for months and months, and any good or bad luck involved must have already been sealed.

  They removed their wedding garments, hanging them in the almost-bare closet. They turned out the lights so that they could open the curtains and watch the snow falling in the high window while they made love. The snow sifted down and down.

  Some trick of reflection made the sky beyond it almost white. After they had finished, they lay quiet, watching, until they both sighed.

  “I hate to say it, but . . .”

  “Yeah.”

  They got up and dressed in their ordinary clothes, jeans and sweatshirts. There was still so much to be done to get ready for their trip.

  It was Jane’s apartment, but Eric had moved in for the last months of school. After graduation he had gone down to Atlanta on his own, taking only what he could fit in his car. It would be easier that way, he told her. He was going to be swallowed whole by the new routine and the new schedule. Better he go alone and tough it out for a little while, sleep in a dorm or on somebody’s couch, then look around for a place for both of them.

  There had been some unhappy discussions. Of course they would get married, he said, when pressed. It was only a question of when. So, when?

  Jane made some trips to Atlanta. Eric went back and forth to Chicago. Their relationship had always had its share of time apart, but inevitably their time together now took on the unnatural quality of needing to pretend the time apart did not matter. Jane was not sold on Atlanta; it was all so brand new and hyperdeveloped, the whole of it could be picked up and set down several hundred miles away without anyone noticing. In October, Eric asked her when she was going to be visiting again, and she said she wasn’t sure. Two weeks later Eric bought a ring and came to Chicago.

  It had all come together in the end. He had just needed reminding that there was more to life than work. He would need further reminding. She knew that. Every marriage had its stress points, everybody signed up for their share of good and bad. You could say she was fortunate to know ahead of time what the issues would be.

  Although she could not help thinking there was a great deal he had taken for granted.

  They still had a lot of the kitchen to pack up, and the bathroom to be cleaned out, and all the cumbersome wedding presents they had begged people not to give them, things like blenders and casseroles, that now had to be dealt with. It did not seem unglamorous of them to be doing this on their wedding night; rather it felt as if the real, serious work of the marriage had begun, and they would undertake it together.

  Jane started in on the kitchen while Eric took the framed pictures and mirrors off the walls, bubble wrapped them, and slid them into oversized boxes. They turned on
the radio for some noise and found a station that played jukebox hits. ZZ Top, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison. Eric sang along in his loud, blissfully out of tune voice: “Cause you doon’t love me, so I’ll aalways be, crahahaing, over you, crahahain . . .” Jane wiped down the refrigerator shelves and pretended they had been married for years and years and Eric’s singing was by now an established joke, something that no longer bothered her.

  She filled a black plastic garbage bag with unwanted refrigerator odds and ends, jars of mustard and half-eaten applesauce, dead vegetables. She carried the bag out the kitchen door to the trash—they were the first floor of a four-flat—and when she turned to go back inside, she found the door had locked behind her. She’d forgotten to flip the latch, which she’d done a time or two before, and as before, she called herself an idiot.

  Jane rattled the back door and knocked, but of course Eric was busy with his oratorio and didn’t hear. She wasn’t too worried; eventually he’d miss her and come looking for her. Or if she had to, with some effort, she could go out of the yard to the alley and around again to the front of the house and ring the buzzer.

  The snow had slackened to a sparse, thready shower. Two or three inches had fallen, not the first snow of the season, but the biggest so far. Colder air was filtering in behind the snow. Jane tried knocking again. Waited, rubbing her arms for warmth.

  She left the back step and walked around to the side of the house where, if she balanced on a window well and pulled herself up, she could see into the living room. The curtains were open and the old-fashioned wooden blinds left plenty of space to see in. Here was Eric, bent over one of the packing boxes, using great gobs of tape to put it together, taping over tape, then reinforcing the seams crossways. So this was what his face looked like, singing without sound. His mouth making shapes, shoulders pumping, tossing his head with rock star gusto. She had to smile; he was ridiculous. And although she had believed herself to be thinking fondly, playfully about him, as if this too were a joke they might tell years later—did you know your father locked me out of the house on our wedding night?—there was a coldness in it too, as she watched and waited for the moment when he realized she was no longer there.