Читать книгу The Lies We Told - Diane Chamberlain - Страница 12

THEY KEPT ME OVERNIGHT AFTER THE D AND C BECAUSE Elaine was concerned about the amount of bleeding I was having, but by morning I was doing much better. Physically, anyway. The nurse wheeled me outside to the sidewalk deck where two other women sat in wheelchairs, waiting for their rides home. I was relieved that neither of them had a baby in her arms. I would have lost it.

The woman in the next chair looked vaguely familiar, and I wondered if she was the mother of one of my young patients. I often bumped into them without having a clue who they were, although I would recognize their children anywhere.

Adam pulled up in his silver Volvo and got out. He was pale, his face drawn and tight. The nurse bent over to lock the brakes on the wheelchair, and just as I was about to stand up, the woman who looked familiar spoke up.

“Adam!” she said, and I instantly realized who she was: Adam’s ex-wife, Frannie. The one who’d decided she didn’t want children. I’d seen pictures of her in Adam’s old photo album. She lived in Boston, though, and I couldn’t imagine what she was doing next to me on the parking deck. I sank back into the wheelchair.

“Frannie!” Adam exclaimed with his usual effervescence in spite of the circumstances. The tight expression on his face vanished with a smile. He walked to the side of my chair, resting his hand on my back. “Maya, this is Frannie, my ex-wife. Frannie, this is Maya, my—”

“Current wife.” Frannie laughed. She had pretty teeth and thick, curly brown hair, but she looked as exhausted and pale as I felt. “Nice to meet you, Maya,” she said. “Though I feel like I’ve been run over, and you probably do, too.”

I nodded with a small smile. All I wanted was to get home and into my own bed.

Adam left my wheelchair to open the passenger door of the car. “So …” He looked at Frannie with a puzzled smile. “What are you doing in Raleigh?”

“My husband, Dave, put in for a transfer with IBM,”

Frannie said, “and we moved here last year. Better weather. Better for the kids.”

“Kids?” Adam had been reaching for my arm to help me stand up, but his hand stopped in midair.

Frannie laughed again. “I know, I know.” She ran a hand through her curls. “Don’t give me a hard time about it. I changed my mind about having them after all. We’ve got two. Just had my tubes tied, though. Two is plenty. They’re a handful.”

“Adam,” I pleaded, and he reached down again to take my arm. I let him guide me into the car, the muscles in my thighs quivering. He closed the door behind me, shutting out the rest of his conversation with the woman he’d left because she wouldn’t have children and who now had two while I—and he—had none.

It was another minute before he got into the car himself. He turned the key in the ignition, then glanced over at me. “Seat belt,” he said.

I buckled myself in and he pulled away from the curb.

“How do you feel?” he asked. “Do you want me to stop at the store for anything on the way home?”

I shook my head. The ache in my throat dwarfed the dull pain in my uterus. “If you’d stayed married to her, you’d have children now,” I said.

“Maya, don’t.”

“How can I not?”

“I’m not married to her. I don’t love her any longer. I love you.”

“But if you’d stayed married to her—”

“Stop it.” He turned the corner with such force that we nearly ran over the curb, and I reached reflexively for the dashboard.

I pounded my fist against the car door. “What’s wrong with me?” I asked the air. “Why is it so hard for me to have a baby when every other woman on earth can have as many kids as she likes?”

“That’s bullshit. You have plenty of company and you know it. Please stop beating yourself up over this.”

“Every single one of my friends has kids now,” I said. “I’m cut off from all of them. I buy them baby gifts. I try to keep up the friendships and I know they try, too, but it’s impossible. They have nothing in common with me anymore. They pity me.”

“Right now, you’re pitying yourself,” he said.

“Well, so what?” I snapped, hurt. “When do I ever pity myself? Let me have five minutes of self-pity, okay?”

We never argued. Never. Yet this felt strangely good and necessary. Cleansing, in a way. But when we came to a stoplight and I glanced over at him, I saw how tired he looked. I saw the lines that creased his forehead. The pink cast to the whites of his eyes. This was not only my loss.

I reached over. Rested my hand on his biceps. “Adam,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right, My,” he said with a sigh. “We’ll get through it.”

Adam tucked me into our king-size bed and handed me an ibuprofen and a glass of water. I swallowed the pill, then sank back into the bed. He leaned over and kissed my forehead. “I know this has been much harder on you than I can even imagine,” he whispered. “I know that, and I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I said. I opened my mouth to say more, although I wasn’t sure what words I expected to come out, but he pressed his fingers lightly to my lips.

“Get some sleep,” he said.

I was asleep before he had even left the room, and in my dreams, I saw Frannie sitting in her wheelchair, smiling at Adam.

I have eighteen children now, Adam, she said. Too bad you didn’t stay married to me.