She Poured Out Her Heart

by Jean Thompson

  He was unhappy. She was supposed to feel sorry for him but she didn’t. Maybe it was the pills. What was that supposed to mean, anyway, a husband? A man you lived with. The one who went to work in the morning and needed food and conversation when he returned. The one who jollied up the children or yelled at them to clean their rooms. One half of the genetic contribution to said children. In such ways the species preserved itself, and they were no different from swarming bugs, each bug self-importantly believing that its own little bug-life, its own bug happiness or lack thereof, was necessary to some greater good. That would be something she could tell the next round of doctors when they asked her how she was doing, and could she describe her feelings: I am a bug.

  They had been here three days, with three more to go. While she rested, Eric took the children out on excursions, on a pirate boat ride, and to a sugarcane plantation. See? he seemed to be telling Jane. See what you’re missing out on by being so stubborn about not getting better? He bought them hand puppets and T-shirts and picture books about tropical fish. He bought guavas and soursops and papayas, all of which he encouraged the children to eat, without success. The local drink was rum, dark and strong, and he took to drinking it as the locals did, rum and Coke, rum and orange juice, rum and water, rum and rum. At night, once the children were tucked in and Jane too was asleep, he went down to the hotel bar. Maybe he went other places as well. She couldn’t have said. The room had two double beds and each of them slept in their own. In the same bed she might have been able to tell more, by his smell, or his unquiet dreams.

  When Eric came out of the bathroom, Jane wasn’t quick enough about closing her eyes, and he saw that she was awake. He hesitated, then sat down on the edge of her bed. He said, “I’m trying to think of what we should do once we get home.”

  “Do,” Jane said, as if not understanding what he meant, although she did. “I expect you’ll go back to work.”

  “If you won’t . . .” He corrected himself. “If you’re still going to need time to get better, then we have to decide some things.”

  A pool of spreading panic beneath the surface of the pill-calm. “Like what?”

  “Like, if you still can’t take care of yourself. Or the kids.”

  He waited for her to ask the next question, and when she didn’t, he said, “You could go to someplace private. A nice place, with a lot of support services. A good facility.”

  He seemed embarrassed by the word facility. It hung suspended in midair, like a cartoon anvil about to drop. “Just until you felt up to it again. Somewhere you can keep getting better.”

  “Then you think I am getting better,” Jane said, and watched him try to make that into what he wanted to say. He had changed from his beach clothes into the shorts and linen shirt he’d bought here. None of them had the right clothes to bring. He’d picked up enough sun that his winter skin had turned a bright brown. Unlike Jane and the children, he didn’t burn. The new color in his face made its lines and loose flesh even out. The retreating hairline he was so worried about wasn’t any big deal. She said her thought out loud. “You’re still a good-looking man.”

  He was startled, disbelieving, cautious. What? Does she really think? Why? “Thank you,” he said. He rested one hand on her leg before he remembered himself and took it away. “That’s a nice color for you,” he said, meaning Jane’s sky-blue caftan.

  “Thanks.”

  “Grace was really cute today. Every time the tide went out and sucked the sand from beneath her toes, she’d squeal and do this little up and down dance.”

  “Ah.” Jane nodded. Remembered to smile.

  “So.” Eric trying to recover the thread of his talk. “I just wanted you to be thinking about it. In case you had any questions. In case that ends up being the way we decide to go.”

  “In case,” Jane repeated.

  “That’s right.”

  “I wasn’t trying,” Jane began, but she had trouble getting any air behind her words, and Eric had to bend closer to hear her.

  “I wasn’t trying to hurt myself,” she said, with a new effort. “I just wanted to be out in the snow.”

  “We’ve talked about this,” Eric said. He had dropped into doctor mode, a way of sounding patient and engaged without actually being either. “You said you didn’t remember.”

  “Well I remember now.” She had not been talking very much lately and the words felt like a mouthful of bees. “I needed a break. From the party. I put my face against the glass. It was so nice and cool.”

  Eric was waiting for her to go on. “That’s really it,” Jane said. “I went outside. The rest of it was a mistake.”

  “Some mistake.”

  “It was colder than I expected. I was dis . . .”

  “Disoriented.”

  “That’s it,” she agreed.

  “You took your shoes off right by the back door.”

  “Yes, I believe that’s how it happened.” She could tell from his face that she had not succeeded.

  “I’m sorry,” Eric said. “I have to think about Robbie and Grace. I have to think about their safety.”

  Jane gaped at him. “You think I’d hurt them? You honestly think that?”

  “I don’t want to think it. But I can’t stop worrying, because this thing happened, this very dangerous, dangerous . . . Jane, you were either trying to kill yourself or you had some kind of psychotic break, and I don’t know which is worse, or what else it could be. Or how to explain it. I mean I know you were unhappy a lot of the time, I don’t know why but you were, and I know you had a lot of work with the holiday, with the party and all. OK, too much work, I should have helped more, I see that now. But none of that adds up to . . . Jane! It wasn’t a normal response to normal problems! We have to take it seriously. We have to get you the help you need.” He stopped to catch his breath. “We have to work this through together.”

  “I am taking it seriously.”

  “All right then.” Eric nodded as though they had decided something important. “All right.”

  “It might be this other . . .” She was still getting the hang of talking. “This other thing. Condition.”

  “What other condition,” Eric said, back to doctor mode.

  “What if I had a brain ah, what if I had,” she tried the word out, “epilepsy.”

  Instantly his attention sharpened. “Why would you think you have epilepsy?”

  “The doctor in Atlanta, what was his name . . .”

  “Dr. Cohen?”

  Jane pretended to remember. “Yes, that was it. He thought it was a possibility because I had these, he called them, episodes . . .”

  “What kind of episodes? What did you tell him?”

  She didn’t want to say more, but it was too late not to. “I didn’t think they were any big deal, I mean, not any big, huge . . . It was more like, I’d just space out.” She shrugged. “So, I don’t know, maybe that’s what happened, I went outside for a moment and had one of these . . .” Again she trailed off.

  Eric stood up. “Did Dr. Cohen run any tests? Scans? Anything like that?”

  “No. I was supposed to go back, but I didn’t,” Jane admitted.

  “I don’t believe this, why not? Why the hell not go back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He shook his head. Words insufficient to express the vast depths of his disbelief and gobsmacked incredulity. How could she be so irresponsible foolish irrational, etc.

  “I stopped having the, whatever you call them. Episodes. Seizures. I thought they were gone. And there were all those problems with Gracie.” If only she could stop talking, explaining things, forever and ever. “I’m sorry. I guess I was too embarrassed to bring it up.”

  “Jane, honey. You take the cake. The absolute, triple layer chocolate frosted cake.”

  She had made him happy. He was so pleased
and relieved, thinking there might be a name for what she was, what was wrong with her. Here he was explaining things, as he liked to do. How it was nothing to be ashamed of, since epilepsy—if in fact that’s what it was—was only a disease like any other. With many treatment options available. Advances in research. Of course there would be a process, a thorough medical process. As soon as they got back, he’d make some calls. Tempering his relief with serious talk.

  She had hoped not to say anything. Because now she was ashamed of herself for her weakness and foolishness.

  He said, “I think we should go out to dinner tonight. Just you and me. If you feel up for it?”

  He wanted to celebrate her impending diagnosis. The receding prospect of a facility. And she would be happy along with him, she would try. She had to be a real mother to her children, not some moony invalid. “I can rest this afternoon.”

  “That’s great. Lucille can stay with Robbie and Grace.” He stood over the bed, not sure what to do with himself, then stooped and gave her a quick kiss. “I’m going to go ask about restaurants.”

  “Eric? No more of the pills.”

  He considered this, then agreed. “I’m sure there’s something that would be better. We’ll get you a thorough work-up.” He smiled and closed the door behind him.

  And still she had not told him all of the truth. How she’d walked out of the kitchen door and hoped she would be struck, as if by lightning. How she’d wanted the beautiful white nothing, if only for a moment, because the ordinary awfulness of her life had closed in so completely.

  At dinnertime, Jane put on an old summer dress, left over from college, that someone, Eric she guessed, had packed for her. It was thin and green and left her arms bare. She didn’t like the look of her jutting collarbones and too-pale shoulders. She was limp, pallid, like something embalmed. Instead of lying on the beach all swaddled and shaded, she should have gotten some sun. Well, too late now. Here was a cotton shawl bought from a beach vendor, red and green and yellow. Although she wasn’t clever about such things, she managed to tie it around her shoulders in an approximation of tropical flair. She found some makeup in the bottom of her purse and did what she could with it, applying bits of pink and beige. She arranged her blond hair so it fanned out around her. Eric told her how nice she looked. “Thank you,” Jane said. She assumed he was encouraging her for making an effort.

  Of course she had not intended the rest of it. All these consequences. Who would have thought that stepping out into the backyard would result in so many serious doctor conversations, not to mention hotel rooms and sand castles and the rest of it. Had she really taken her clothes off? She didn’t remember that part. She didn’t want to remember it.

  Robbie and Grace were plied with hamburgers and videos and left in the care of the nanny. Eric and Jane walked across the hotel lobby and out to the street. Eric said, “There’s a nice restaurant at the resort just down the beach. It’s not very far to walk, if you’re up for it.”

  “That would be fine.” Both of them making an effort. Maybe there was something to the idea of a vacation, of getting away from your same old habits and patterns. Maybe she could manage it. Try harder, be more of a wife to him. Will herself into normal happiness.

  All along the street were people strolling or jolting along in the little open cars favored on the island. This was the tourist district, so all the world seemed to be engaged in pleasure-seeking. The tourists were American or Canadian or British or German or Japanese, expensively strolling in their sandals and straw hats, their new sunburns making them twitch and struggle delicately inside their clothes. Everything was arranged for them: the open air bars and fine restaurants and tourist buses and souvenir shops. The obliging natives. And of course there were the white beaches and the turquoise ocean and the perfect weather, as if that also had been procured for them.

  Jane said, “I’ve never been anywhere like this before.”

  “You mean, the Caribbean?”

  “Yes,” Jane said, although she had meant, a place where so many people gathered in this hectic fashion, so determined to be carried out of themselves. It was a little frightening, like being caught up in a cattle stampede.

  “I took a couple of spring break trips in college. Of course, that was Jamaica, not here. This is a lot more grown up. Well, I’m a lot more grown up.”

  “Ah,” Jane said. It was useful to learn that this was not Jamaica. She expected that she could find out where they were without coming out and asking. Now that the pills were wearing off, it was embarrassing not to know.

  “There’s the resort,” Eric said, pointing it out. “See? Not far.” He kept wanting to take her arm and guide her, then he’d remember himself and stop. She supposed she’d have to let him, sooner or later.

  The resort was several notches grander than their own hotel, with a white-pillared entry and a circular drive where automobiles could be parked and admired. Flags that Jane did not recognize fluttered on slim poles. There were palm trees and plantings of hibiscus and red, spiky plants; there were valets in white shirts and a doorman in a tall hat and braided coat. Everyone was professionally happy to see them, and guided them out to a dining terrace overlooking the beach.

  Eric said, “I thought, if it wasn’t too chilly, we could eat outside. Or, if you’d rather, they have another dining room inside.”

  “This will be just fine,” Jane said, and let him pull out her chair for her. The dinner napkins had been folded into points and placed in the water goblets like bouquets. It took Jane a moment to recognize what they were. It made her nervous that there might be other such things that would confuse her.

  It was early for dinner and only two other couples were on the terrace. Below them was the resort’s lagoon-shaped swimming pool. It was equipped with what Eric explained was a swim-up bar, so that guests did not have to leave the water for their daiquiris. As they watched, a man in a Speedo with the Union Jack plastered across the seat and a woman in a gold bikini held together by chains appeared on the pool deck, their hands tucked into each other’s waistbands. “It’s not as much of a family place as our hotel,” Eric said.

  The waiter was their new best friend. He brought them calamari and coconut shrimp in chili sauce, crabmeat crepes, beef tenderloin. Side dishes, things like mangoes or caramelized vegetables, kept arriving. It was a great deal of food and they ate slowly, as if not wanting to offend a host by leaving anything uneaten. The tables around them filled. The waiters lit tall propane heaters to keep the chill away. “How are you feeling?” Eric couldn’t help asking her. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “I’m fine.” And she guessed she was, just woozy from overeating. The waiter offered coffee and dessert. They both ordered coffee and Eric said he’d try the crème brûlée. Jane watched the sunset sky. It was so wildly and unnecessarily gorgeous, a pool of gold light intersected by bars of purple clouds, that she had to keep reminding herself it was the same sun as back in Chicago.

  Eric said, “I know this is coming a little late, but Happy Anniversary.”

  “Happy Anniversary,” Jane said in turn. It was the kind of thing you toasted to, but all they had in front of them was coffee. They smiled at each other, though they were awkward about it and their eyes glanced away.

  Eric began speaking, keeping his voice low in an attempt at privacy, although he had chosen this public place to speak: “I want to make it work for us. We can go on from here. Things can be better than before. I really believe that.”

  “I would like to think that too,” Jane said. But where was the name of the island? She didn’t want to ask anyone.

  “A lot of it’s been my fault. I accept responsibility for that.” Here he paused, as if waiting for Jane to make some similar speech. When she stayed silent, he had to go on. “I’ve been too preoccupied with work, and I guess some of that is inevitable because medicine is what it is. The demands on your time.�
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  Again he waited. “Sure,” Jane said. “It is what it is.”

  “And the kids, don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have it any other way, but they do take a lot of energy. No wonder we get crossed signals sometimes.”

  “I guess I worry about them too much,” Jane allowed. “Get too wrapped up in all the day to day kid needs.”

  “That’s because you’re a great mom.”

  She liked hearing it. “Thank you.”

  “You just need to dial it down a little. Not make it so hard. For your own sake.”

  “I can work on that. Yes.”

  “I know you can. And we’ll figure out this seizure thing, I promise.”

  He made it sound so easy. How things like brains could be fixed. How they would resolve to do better and then move on. He wanted it to be that easy. Eric saw her looking at him and stopped himself. “What?” he asked.

  She shook her head. It was something he would not say. It was stuck far down in his throat. Or perhaps she was just imagining. She both knew him and she didn’t know him. “Never mind,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “No, what?”

  He leaned forward, waiting. When she didn’t answer, he said, “There’s times you’re a million miles away. You know?”

  The waiter appeared at the table, inquiring after their well-being. Everything was fine, Eric told him, and Jane too said it was fine. The waiter left and now they were both embarrassed at having such a conversation, saying things they did not usually say. “I’m sorry,” Jane said. “I know I get distracted. Spacey. But it’s not like I’m thinking these involved, complicated thoughts. It’s more like I’m thinking . . . nothing.”

  It was a feeble way to talk about it. She could tell that Eric was disappointed. “Nothing?” he repeated. “I guess that’s better than some dark, scheming plot.”

  “I meant, nothing as in, a quiet mind,” Jane said, annoyed that he seemed to be making fun of her. “Letting yourself be open to whatever comes to you.”