“Okay, so mine are luckier. Maybe I am too. Maybe I won't be lucky forever. Like my father.”
“Are you afraid of that happening to you too? Losing everything?” It was an intriguing side to him, and clearly a motivating factor.
“Maybe. But he was a fool … a nice fool …but a fool. I think it killed him when my mother died. He gave up. He lost his grip, he was like that when she was sick too. He loved her so much that he just couldn't handle it when she went. It killed him.” He had long since decided that he would never let that happen to him. He would never love anyone enough to let them pull him down with them.
“It must have been awful for you,” Alex said sympathetically, “you were so young.”
“You grow up fast when you're the only one you have,” he said soberly, and then he smiled sadly, “or maybe you never do. My friends say I'm still a kid. I think I like that. It keeps me from getting too serious. There's no point getting too serious in life. It's no fun when you start to do that.” But Alex was, she was serious about her work, and her life. She had lost her parents by then too, although less dramatically than Sam had. But in her case, it had sobered her, made her feel more responsible. She had to be more grown up, more alert about her career, more intense about her work. It was as though she felt obligated to live up to their expectations of her, even now that they were gone. Her father had been an attorney too, and he had been so happy when she'd gone to law school. And she wanted to be the best attorney she could now, for him, even though he wasn't there to see her do it.
They were both only children, they both had important careers, they both had a lot of friends, which for both of them replaced family in some ways, though Alex spent a lot of time with friends of her parents', and families of her friends from law school. Sam's friends were mostly bachelors, people he worked with, clients, or women he'd gone out with.
He had kissed Alex for the first time on their walk down the beach in Malibu, and he had slept most of the way back to New York, with his head on her shoulder. She had looked down at him pensively, thinking that he looked like a long, lanky boy as he lay there beside her, but she was also thinking how much she liked him. Too much probably. She wondered if she would ever hear from him again, if this was a beginning or an interlude for him. It was hard to tell with Sam, and he had admitted that there was a young off-Broadway actress he was currently going out with.
“How come you didn't take her to L.A.?” Alex had asked candidly, shy, but never afraid to ask important questions. It was too much a part of her makeup not to.
“She was busy,” he said honestly, “and I thought it would be more interesting to get to know you.” He hesitated and then turned to Alex with a smile that melted her heart in spite of her best efforts not to let it. “To tell you the truth, I didn't ask her. I knew she had rehearsals all weekend, and she hates baseball. And I really wanted to be with you.”
“Why?” Alex had no idea how beautiful she was when she asked him.
“You're the smartest girl I've ever met … I like talking to you. You're bright and you're exciting, and you're not exactly hard to look at.”
He had kissed her again when he dropped her off at her apartment, but there was no commitment in the kiss, no promise. It was quick and casual, and in a moment the cab was gone, and Alex felt strangely let down as she walked into her apartment with her suitcase. She had had a wonderful time, but she figured that he was in a hurry to get back to his off-Broadway girlfriend. It had been wonderful, but she knew it didn't mean anything. It was just another fun weekend in the life of Sam Parker. She didn't think there was much room in his life for Alex Andrews.
Until he sent her a dozen red roses at the office the next day, and called her that afternoon and asked her to dinner. Their romance began in earnest after that, and in spite of the heavy cases she had to prepare, she could hardly concentrate on her work during her four-month courtship with Sam.
He asked her to marry him on Valentine's Day, almost four months to the day of the first time he'd taken her out to dinner. She was twenty-six by then and Sam was thirty-three. They got married in June, in a small church in Southampton, with two dozen of their closest friends in attendance. Neither of them had families, but their friends provided the warmth and celebration to make it an extraordinary day. They had gone to Europe on their honeymoon, and stayed in hotels that Alex had only read of. They went to Paris and Monaco, and spent a romantic weekend in Saint-Tropez. Sam had a client who was dating a minor movie star there, so they had a fabulous time, and went to a party on a yacht and sailed to Italy and back by morning.
They went to San Remo, and then on to Tuscany, Venice, Florence, Rome, and then they had flown to stay with a client of his in Athens, and then to London for the last few days, where they went to Annabel's, and all of Sam's favorite restaurants and nightspots. They looked at antiques, and jewelry at Garrard's, and he bought her all kinds of fun clothes in Chelsea, though she said she had no idea where she'd wear them, surely not to the office. It was the perfect honeymoon, and they had never been happier than when they got back to New York, and she moved into his apartment. She'd been staying there anyway, but she had kept her own apartment until after the wedding.
She learned to cook for him, and he bought her expensive clothes, and a beautiful simple diamond necklace for her thirtieth birthday. He could have afforded to buy her a lot of things, but there was very little she wanted. She loved her life with him, their love and romance and friendship, their mutual respect, and passion for their work. He had asked her once about giving up her career, or at least putting it on hold to stay home and have kids, and she had looked at him as though he were crazy.
“What about not retiring, and having kids?” he had modified his previous offer. They had been married for six years by then, and he was thirty-nine years old, and once in a while he thought about having children. Most of the time, it would have cramped their style, but still, he thought it would be too bad if they never had them. But Alex had said she wasn't ready.
“I just can't imagine having anyone be that dependent on me, I mean all the time. I'd feel guilty working as hard as I do now, I'd never see the kids, and that's no way to bring up children.”
“Can you see yourself slowing down eventually, working less?” he asked. But he couldn't see her doing that, and neither could Alex.
“Honestly? No. I don't think you can be a part-time lawyer.” She'd seen other women try it, and they always drove themselves crazy. Eventually, they either came back to work full time, and felt guilty as hell toward their kids, or retired completely. And she didn't want to do that either.
“Are you saying you don't want children at all, ever?” It was the first time she had ever really thought about it, that seriously, and she wasn't ready to say that either. Their conclusion was “not now, maybe later.”
The subject came up again when she was thirty-five, and by then it seemed like everyone they knew had had children. They'd been married for nine years by then, and they were very comfortable with their life as it was. She was already at Bartlett and Paskin, she had made partner, and Sam was something of a legend. They flew to France every chance they got for holidays, and California at the drop of a hat for a weekend. Sam still had a lot of business in Tokyo, and quite a lot in the Arab states, and Alex found his life fascinating, but her career wasn't unimpressive either. And there just didn't seem to be room in either of their lives for a baby.
“I don't know, I feel so guilty about it sometimes …like it's unnatural of me … I don't know how to explain it to anyone, but it's just not for me, at least not now,” she concluded with him, and they put the subject away for another three years, until she was thirty-eight and he forty-five. An alarm had gone off on her biological clock, albeit briefly, and this time she brought the subject up to him, after another partner at the office had a baby, and this time she conceded it was just adorable, and her friend seemed to be handling both career and child well. It had made Alex think serious
ly, for the first time, about having children.
But this time, Sam could no longer imagine it. Their life was too set, too well regulated, and too easy without kids. After twelve years of marriage to her, he thought it was too late, and it would no longer enhance anything. He wanted her to himself now. He liked things just as they were, and she surprised herself at how easily she gave the idea up again. Obviously, it was just not meant to be. She had an enormous trial to handle right after that, and the subject of children in their lives went out of her head completely until four months later.
They were coming back from a trip to India, where she had never been before, and she was feeling seriously ill, and afraid she had caught some dread disease, when she went to her doctor. It was the first time she had felt really sick in years, and it scared her. But what he told her of her malady scared her even more. And that night, she looked at Sam and told him the news in bleak desperation. She was pregnant. She had really put it out of her head, this time permanently, after the last time the subject had come up, and so had he. And they looked at each other like two victims of the crash of ‘29 when she told him.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” she said miserably. It was the first time she'd ever been pregnant. And she now knew what she'd never been completely sure of before. She didn't want children.
“It's not cholera or malaria, or something like that?” A near fatal disease would have been more welcome news to either of them than a baby.
“He says I'm six weeks pregnant.” She had been late on the trip, but she'd thought it was from the extreme heat, or the malaria pills, or just the rigors of travel. And she had never looked as miserable in her life as she did now, staring unhappily at her husband. “I'm too old for this, Sam. I don't want to go through it. I just can't.” Her words surprised him too, but he was relieved to hear them. He didn't want the baby either.
“Do you want to do something about it?” he asked, startled by her adamant dislike of the situation. He had always suspected that she might want kids someday, and lately, he had begun to fear it.
“I don't think we should. It seems like such a spoiled rotten thing to do. It's not like we can't afford to have a baby … I just don't feel I have the time, or …not the energy,” she thought about it carefully, “but the interest. The last time we talked about it, I just figured that was it. The conversation was over. We're happy like this …and then, blam …we're pregnant.”
He grinned ruefully at her. “It's ironic, isn't it? We finally decide not to, and you get pregnant. Life certainly has its little curve balls.” It was one of his favorite expressions, but it was true. And this was a doozy. “So what do we do?”
“I don't know.” She cried when she thought about it. She didn't want an abortion, or a baby. And after two weeks of agonizing about it, they decided to go ahead and have the baby. Alex didn't feel that they had a choice, morally, and Sam agreed, and they tried to be philosophical about it, but they were anything but enthusiastic. Alex was depressed every time she thought about it, and Sam seemed to forget about it completely. And when they did discuss it, which was as seldom as possible, they sounded as though they were discussing a terminal illness. This was certainly not anything they looked forward to. It was something that had to be faced, but they were clearly dreading everything about it.
Exactly four weeks later, Alex came home from the office early one afternoon, throwing up uncontrollably, and with such acute pains in her abdomen that she was literally doubled over. The doorman helped her out of the cab, and carried her briefcase inside for her. He asked if she was all right, and she insisted that she was, although her face was the color of paper. She got upstairs in the elevator, and let herself into the apartment, and fortunately her cleaning lady was there, because half an hour later, Alex was hemorrhaging all over their bathroom and barely conscious. She had taken Alex to the hospital herself, and called Sam at his office, and by the time he got to Lenox Hill, Alex was already in the operating room. They had lost the baby.
They both expected it to be an enormous relief. The source of all their anguish was gone. But from the moment Alex woke up in a private room, crying miserably, they knew that it wasn't that easy. They were both consumed with guilt and grief, and everything she had never allowed herself to feel for their unborn child, she felt now, all the love and fear and shame and regret and longing she had never felt before. It was the worst experience of her life, and taught her something about herself she had never known or suspected. Maybe it had never even been there before, but it was there now. All she wanted, to fill the aching void the miscarriage had left, was to fill the void with another baby. And Sam felt it too. They both cried for their unborn child, and when Alex went back to work the following week, she was still feeling shaken.
They had gone away for a few days over a long weekend, and talked about it, and they both agreed. They weren't sure if it was a reaction, or real, but they knew that something major had changed. Suddenly, more than anything, they wanted a baby.
Sensibly, they decided to wait a few months, to see if the feelings stayed. But even that was impossible to do. Two months after the traumatic miscarriage, Alex sheepishly told Sam the news with barely concealed glee. She was pregnant.
And this time, unlike the first, it was a celebration. A cautious one, because there was always the possibility that she would lose this one too, or that she would never be able to carry a child to term. She was thirty-eight years old, after all, and she'd never had a baby. But her health was excellent, and her doctor assured them that there was no reason whatsoever to anticipate another problem.
“You know what? We're nuts,” she said, lying in bed one night, eating Oreo cookies, and getting crumbs all over their bed, but she claimed they were the only things that settled her stomach. “We are completely crazy. Four months ago, we were suicidal about having a kid, and now we lie here talking about names, and I keep reading articles in magazines in the doctor's office about what kind of mobiles to buy to put over the crib. Have I lost my marbles or what?”
“Maybe.” He smiled tenderly at her. “You're definitely harder to share a bed with. I had no idea that cookie crumbs would be part of the deal. Do you think you'll have this fixation for the whole time, or is this just a first trimester addiction?” She giggled at him, and they cuddled in bed. They made love more frequently than they had in years. They talked about the baby as though it were real, and already part of their lives. She had an amnio, and as soon as they knew it was a girl, they decided to call her Annabelle, after their favorite club in London, but it was a name that Alex had always loved, and it had good memories for them. This pregnancy was completely unlike the first one. It was as though they had learned an important lesson the first time, and felt as though they had been punished for their indifference and hostility to that baby. This time, there was no question of anything but unbridled excitement.
Alex's partners gave her a shower right after the New Year, and she left the office reluctantly that week, only two days before her due date. She had wanted to work right up until she went to the hospital, but it didn't make sense to continue working on cases she couldn't complete, so she left on schedule, and went home to wait for their little miracle, as they called her. Alex was afraid that she'd be bored, but found that she enjoyed setting up the nursery, and was surprised herself at how much time she spent folding little undershirts, and arranging diapers in neat stacks in the changing table. For a woman who struck fear into most lawyers' hearts when she entered a courtroom, she seemed to have changed in a single instant. She even worried sometimes that it might dull her skills when she went back, maybe she wouldn't be as tough, or as focused, but in spite of her concerns about that, all she could think of now was the baby. She could imagine holding it, feeding it, she wondered if she would have red hair like her own, or dark, dark hair like Sam's, blue eyes, or green. Like a long-awaited friend, she could hardly wait to see her.
They had arranged to have the baby i
n a birthing room at New York Hospital, Alex wanted everything to be natural. She was planning to savor every moment of the experience. At thirty-nine, she couldn't imagine doing this again, so she didn't want to take any of it for granted. Despite Sam's aversion to hospitals, he went to Lamaze classes with her, and was going to be at the delivery with her.
And she and Sam were having dinner at Elaine's three days after her due date, when her water broke, and they left quickly for the hospital, and were then sent home, until labor had started in earnest. They did everything their coaches had told them to do. She tried to sleep for a little while, then she walked, Sam rubbed her back, and it all seemed very pleasant and very easy. There was nothing difficult about this, nothing they couldn't handle, or she couldn't do. They lay in bed and talked, about how amazing it was that after thirteen years of marriage they had come to this, and Sam glanced at the clock, and tried to guess in how many hours they'd have their baby. They both fell asleep eventually, and when the contractions woke Alex again, she took a warm shower, as she'd been told to do, to see if labor would stop or get harder. She stood in the shower for half an hour, timing the pains, and then suddenly, with no warning, hard labor began for real. She could barely stand as she got out of the shower, and when she went to wake Sam, he was dead to the world, and she started to cry in panic as she shook him. He awoke finally, and gave a start when he saw the look on her face.
“Now?” he said, leaping out of bed, with his heart pounding, looking frantically for his trousers. He had left them on a chair, but suddenly in the dark, he couldn't find them, and Alex was doubled over in pain, gripping his arm, and crying.
“It's too late …I'm having it now …” she said, panicking, forgetting everything they'd told her. She was too old for this, it hurt too much, and she no longer wanted natural childbirth.
Lightning Page 2
