Читать книгу Making Babies - Wendy Warren - Страница 9

Pencil erasers tasted like gum mixed with sand. Elaine Lowry knew this for a fact because she’d just chewed through one while staring at a large flat appointment book lying open on the desk in front of her.

For two days each week, Elaine worked in the outer office of Harold J. Gussman, D.D.S. She did the dentist’s filing and stuffed envelopes for the “Come-In-We’ll-Make-You-Smile” six-month checkup reminders he sent to his patients.

She’d been working here part-time for five years. Just yesterday, she’d walked the two blocks to Office Max on her lunch hour to buy one of those little plastic water bottles with the sponge tips so she could sponge the envelopes instead of having to lick them all.

Five years, and she’d finally made the switch from tongue to sponge.

It just showed how she felt about change. If she’d been in charge of the pilgrims, the citizenry of the United States would be huddled around Plymouth Rock to this day.

Pushing heavy brown bangs off her forehead, Elaine rubbed a spot of tension over her right eyebrow and sighed. It was difficult to respond to life’s little challenges.

Take, for instance, right now.

She was covering for Sue, Dr. Gussman’s receptionist, who had slipped out for a potty break. In looking at the appointment book a minute ago, Elaine had seen that Steph Lowry would be coming in at four-fifteen for a tooth bonding.

Steph Lowry.

Steph. Short for “Stephanie.”

Lowry. Short for “the vacuous, bubble-headed, plastic-breasted bleached blonde who stole my husband.”

Not that Elaine was holding a grudge. But surely the imminent arrival of her barely ex-husband’s younger, blonder new bride called for some reaction. Something more than the “Oh, you’re having your wisdom teeth pulled? Don’t worry, it won’t hurt a bit” dental receptionist’s smile that felt as if someone had superglued her upper lip to her gums.

That’s me, Elaine thought. No point in making a scene.

She had not been raised to respond in anger, or with any other less-than-gracious emotion.

So never mind that she wanted to write Root Canal in the appointment book next to Steph Lowry’s name. Dignity was eternal.

“Thanks for manning the front, sweetie. I had to pee like a racehorse.” Sue Kelsey, Dr. G’s receptionist for the past nine years, elbowed Elaine away from the desk and ran a porcelain nail down the column of afternoon appointments.

“We’re double-booked with two fillings at six,” she groaned. “What a pisser. I won’t get out until seven.” The permed red curls she wore down to her shoulders bounced when she shook her head. “Rats. It’s a total waste of daylight savings time. I crave at least a little sunlight when I go home, you know? Are you out of here soon? Are you?” Sue slapped Elaine’s forearm with the back of her hand. “Hey.”

“Hmm?”

“Are you leaving soon?”

“Leaving?”

“Yeah. Going home. Sayonara. Hasta la vista. Outta here, suckers.” Squinting behind gold glitter-rimmed glasses, Sue studied her officemate. “What’s the matter with you? You look like you shot yourself full of Novocaine.”

Elaine struggled to focus. Novocaine sounded kind of nice right about now. A little afternoon respite. Like high tea, only numbing.

“I’m fine.” Elaine forced some cheer into her voice even though her stomach felt like it wanted to climb out through her mouth. A glance at her Timex—the one Kevin had given her three years ago on their tenth anniversary—told her it was four-thirteen. Unless tardiness was one of the new-and-improved Mrs. Lowry’s downfalls, she would be here any minute.

So typically sensitive of Kevin to recommend his first wife’s dentist for his second wife’s teeth.

Sue must have taken the appointment when Stephanie called. Had she noticed Steph’s last name? Elaine dreaded the thought of questions. Sue didn’t know about Stephanie. No one at the office knew that her husband had left her for a younger and depressingly firmer woman. All Elaine had told her co-workers was that she and Kevin had decided to split, they were both getting on with their lives and wished each other well…yadda, yadda.

Granted, diplomacy like that could be considered the coward’s way out, and, no, she didn’t expect Dr. Phil to ring her doorbell offering kudos on her outstanding coping skills. But it was easier this way. It was. She rarely saw her co-workers outside of work, anyway. And the truth was, it didn’t matter how nice you were: When your husband left you for the Tae-Bo instructor at your coed gym, people talked.

Elaine’s stomach gurgled, ulcerlike. If she could simply hide until this little quirk of fate had passed…

Grabbing her work, she retreated to the file cabinets against the far wall. She kept her head down and her back to Sue and the reception window, but she knew the moment Stephanie arrived. The hair on the nape of Elaine’s neck stood up and her bare ring finger started to spasm.

“Hi, I have a four-fifteen with Dr. Gussman.”

The high, nasal voice was unmistakable. Steph Lowry sounded like a canary with a sinus infection. It was her only unattractive attribute. Well, that and the fact that she stole other women’s husbands, but why quibble?

“Do you have a key for the little girl’s room?” Steph chirped after Sue asked her to sign in.

Elaine gritted her teeth hard enough to ruin all of Dr. Gussman’s fine work. Little girl’s room. Puh-lease! Like anyone needed a reminder that the bloom was still on Stephanie’s rose.

Apparently Sue handed over the key, because Stephanie cooed, “Ooh, thank you,” then giggled. “I have to go all the time now.” She spoke confidentially, woman to woman. “I had no idea it was so much work being pregnant!”

Sue murmured something in reply, but Elaine didn’t really hear. Her heart dropped and her stomach lurched. She was going to pass out….

No. She was going to vomit first and then pass out.

Locking her fingers around the cold metal drawer of the file cabinet, she sucked air in shallow breaths and wondered whether anyone would take her side if she remained upright by clasping her hands around the neck of a pregnant woman.

Elaine didn’t have to see Stephanie to be able to picture her. The image of the sunny California blonde who had been her casual acquaintance and her husband’s lover was printed indelibly on her mind.

Stephanie warbled another “thank you,” then left the office in search of the bathroom, and Sue went in back to tell Dr. Gussman his next patient had arrived. Elaine stood very, very still and tried not to toss her cookies. All at once she started to shake. Hanging on to the file cabinet, her arms tingled and her heart began to race. She felt dizzy and hot and clammy.

“I’ve got to get out of here.”

She didn’t stop to think twice. Wanting only to leave before Sue returned to her desk, Elaine took the few remaining files and shoved them behind the W’s in the bottom drawer. Grabbing her purse and the blue cardigan she’d brought with her this morning, she scribbled, “Finished early. See you tomorrow.—E.” on a yellow Post-It and stuck the paper to the appointment book. As calmly as she could, she moved through the waiting room then flew out the door and down the hall.

The elevators in the seventy-year-old building moved like sap down a maple tree. Unwilling to linger when Stephanie might emerge from the little mistress’s room at any moment, Elaine opted for the stairs.

Pregnant. Pregnant. Preg-Nant. The word repeated with every click of her heels down the cold, concrete steps. Kevin and Steph Lowry were with child. Divorce had only been the legal end to her marriage. This news was coup de grâce.

A chill ran through her. Struggling into her sweater twice—the first time, it was inside out—Elaine hung her purse over her shoulder, stuffed her balled hands into the cardigan’s deep pockets and continued down the stark stairwell.

All she had ever wanted was to be a wife and mother. She had loved her home, her yard and her neighborhood, her part-time job at Dr. Gussman’s and her volunteer work for the garden club. Kevin had always wanted more and better, but not she. All she had needed to make their life together complete was a child. But Kevin had said, “Let’s wait.” So they’d waited.

And waited. And waited.

The timing had never been right. There had always been something else Kevin thought they should do first, someplace he had wanted to visit, a new career move to focus on. Something. And she’d let it go, trusting in the day her husband would want a baby as much as she did. She’d wanted everything to be perfect.

Now she was thirty-seven with a biological clock that screamed “Cuckoo” every hour, and Kevin was off building a nest with Mrs. More and Better.

Elaine’s mind and feet began moving like the chorus in Riverdance as she ran down three flights of stairs. She was moving downhill, but with each step her chest seemed to grow tighter and heavier, her breath becoming more labored. Her skin felt hot; her head swam. Finally at the stairwell to the second floor, she started to stumble, catching herself just before she fell by bracing her palms on the wall. Her rubbery legs would not carry her another step.

Turning around, her back against the cold, flat concrete, Elaine allowed her quivering body to slip slowly down until she was seated with her knees to her chest. Bunching her sweater in her hands, she pressed her face into its folds…

And screamed.

And screamed…and screamed…and screamed.

Elaine howled with the pain of long-broken dreams. She howled because, in the final analysis, it was she who had allowed them to break. The sound of her rage was muffled by an off-the-rack acrylic-wool blend but nothing could suppress her grief.

When she was finished, she wiped her eyes with her sleeve, smearing mascara on the cuff. For several minutes, she sat there not thinking of anything, really, until slowly it dawned on her: she felt better. Less stuffed, like a hall closet after spring cleaning, purged of last season’s broken umbrellas and single mittens.

Rising, she tested her legs. Shaky, but not bad.

Walking more sedately down the remaining two flights, Elaine allowed images to waft through her mind, images she’d kept at bay for months. During the years she had wanted desperately to be a mom, she’d had a recurring dream about a female child with toffee-colored hair and light eyes. In the dream the little girl held a bouquet of wildflowers out to Elaine, but each time Elaine reached for the gift, the girl would slip farther away, as if she were being pulled back, and a high but lovely voice would whisper, “Whatever you decide is all right.”

Elaine had never been able to decipher the meaning of those words, but she’d always known that in the dream the sweet girl was her daughter.

Today for the first time, the message made sense.

Whatever you decide is all right. “I can still choose.” The simple but crucial realization nearly made her stumble again. Having a child was no longer anyone’s decision but hers. Sitting on a concrete stairwell, crying into her sweater, she had cleared space in her heart, and she knew without having to think twice how she was going to fill it. Could there be any question?

Family was still her dream. She would not give it up. The head count at her breakfast table might be different than she’d originally planned, but one way or another, she was going to have her baby.

A converted Craftsman in the southeast section of Portland had been Elaine’s home for the past nine months. With its pillared front porch and etched glass built-ins, the two-bedroom duplex suited her well—better, she sometimes thought, than the rambling five-bedroom contemporary she had shared with Kevin. And the rent was amazingly low.

Walking up the broad porch steps, Elaine stuck her key in the lock and let herself in.

Crying had left her with a dull ache behind her eyes and nervous hunger, so she went to the kitchen for aspirin and carbohydrates. Quickly she downed two Extra-Strength Bayers then opened the freezer and summoned a smile for her old pals Ben & Jerry, the only men she’d had in her apartment in the time she’d lived here. Grabbing a carton of Cherry Garcia and a soup spoon, she took the ice cream with her into the bedroom while she changed out of her work clothes. Outside the window, she could hear the rumble of a gas-powered motor.

At first the sound seemed out of context, and she couldn’t quite place it. Then her brain made the connection: power motor…backyard…

Gardener!

Elaine hadn’t seen a gardener in all the while she’d lived here. Her absentee landlord offered outstanding rent and a twelve-month lease, but little in the way of home improvements. The only landscaping was a row of pansies Elaine herself had planted and a lone ornamental cabbage that listed drunkenly to one side, courtesy of one of the neighbors.

Now the presence of a gardener seemed like kismet. If she was going to raise a child here, she wanted the duplex to look and feel like home.

Quickly Elaine stripped off a teal green T-shirt with a huge smiling mouth silk-screened across the front and a pair of stark white, how-wide-can-my-hips-look? nurse’s pants. Reaching down to a dresser drawer, she pulled out a simple cotton jumper and slipped it over her bra and panties. Hopefully, her landlord wouldn’t mind if she had a little tête-à-tête with the gardener regarding fall planting. This would be Step One of “The Baby Preparation Plan.” Granted, it wasn’t as proactive as taking extra folic acid or visiting a sperm bank, but home enhancement felt like a good solid place to start. Very Earth Mother.

Grabbing her Ben & Jerry’s, she hurried to the laundry room and the door that led to the backyard. A lacey half curtain only partially blocked her view.

With a spoon of ice cream stuck in her mouth, she peeked out. The large rear yard still had enough life in it to look fairly decent when it wasn’t totally overgrown.

Hmm. The gardener had done a nice job so far. Most of the weeds were gone, half the lawn was trimmed in neat even rows, and he—

Whoa.

Craning her neck for a better look, Elaine blinked in surprise.

Oh…whoa.

Gardener Guy was half-naked. He had removed his shirt and tied it around his hips. Pushing a power mower toward the far fence, he afforded Elaine a clear view of broad, well-defined shoulders, a trim waist and a jeans-clad tush.

Oh, my. Elaine hadn’t spent much time ogling males, so she was no expert, but as tushies went, this one seemed…darn-near perfect.

He reached the end of the yard, backed up and precisely aligned the machine with the row of lawn he’d just cut. There was something in his manner—in the way he marched across the lawn, the dedication in his bearing, that seemed comforting.

Swirling more ice cream onto her spoon, Elaine allowed her gaze to wander enjoyably up his body again, taking note of lightly tanned skin and a very pleasing amount of dark chest hair over an equally pleasing chest. She sensed she shouldn’t be doing this—it was hardly polite—but what the heck? She’d earned a few ogling privileges! And it was curiously fun. Like live TV for divorcées. When the man paused, raising his hand to wipe his brow, Elaine felt her body flush with a tingly sense of familiarity as she saw his strong neck and clean jaw, a nose with handsome character and—

Oh, dear Lord. That was no ordinary afternoon fantasy trimming her grass, it was—

Mitchell Ryder, Esquire. Chocolate cherry ice cream splattered the window in a fine spray as she choked.

She could only stare, surprised to the point of confusion. It couldn’t be, she thought as he lowered his hand, arched his back in a stretch and looked right at the door.

She didn’t pause to think. With a sharp “Yipe!” Elaine ducked below the level of the smeary window, her back to the door, knees tucked up, Ben & Jerry’s carton clutched against her.

“Calm down,” she whispered to herself. “Calm down.” Her heart was pounding a mile a minute. That was Mitch Ryder, all right, über divorce lawyer, the man known in legal circles—and to anyone he wasn’t representing—as “The Eel.” His reputation for calm, emotionless litigation made him a favorite among judges, a real lawyer’s lawyer. The last time Elaine had seen him he’d been about to make partner in the same firm her ex-husband belonged to.

No, wait a minute. That wasn’t the last time she’d seen him.

Elaine shook her head. Silly her. She had seen Mitch Ryder again in divorce court when he had represented her husband, and managed to make her own hundred-and-fifty-dollar-an-hour attorney look like a very expensive prelaw intern!

It had been so humiliating to have her marriage dissected by someone with whom she’d once shared aperitifs.

Mitch had been to her house several times for cocktail parties and business dinners. What she remembered was that he’d arrived promptly, left early and always thanked her personally as he did so. The year she and Kevin hosted a madrigal-themed Christmas brunch, Mitch had come to the kitchen, where Elaine had been sponging spilled mead off her Italian tiled floor. Wordlessly he had grabbed a towel and bent down to help, literally waving away her protests. Crouched near him on the ceramic tile, their knees almost touching, she’d felt her face flame.

“You like this, don’t you?” he asked when the floor was cleaned.

Elaine released a little puff of inappropriately breathy laughter as she reached for his wet towel. “Wh-what? Wiping spills?”

“Inviting people in.” He held on to the dish towel, surprising her, until she looked up at him. “You have a gift for making people feel comfortable, Elaine.”

Really? That was exactly what she liked to do. And he had a gift for making women feel like he truly saw them. His golden-brown eyes never wandered when he spoke.

Elaine knew she absolutely should not have felt that frisson of awareness when he said her name, and she certainly wished she could forget it now. Unfortunately the memory popped to mind to torment her at the most inopportune times. She’d remembered it vividly, for example, the day Ryder had informed the judge that her husband had fallen out of love years ago, but hadn’t wanted to “hurt” her.

Bastard, Elaine had thought at the time, fairly certain she ought to have meant her husband, but actually referring to Mitch. There had been times during the divorce proceedings when he’d turned to her and she could have sworn she’d seen regret in his eyes. Or maybe it had been pity. The emotion had been little more than a flash, in any case. Most of the time, he’d seemed devoid of feeling, even toward his own client.

To Elaine, though, every word uttered in that courtroom had felt deeply, agonizingly personal. God, she’d hated everything about the divorce. She’d felt drained, pummeled every single day. And, finally, she’d felt that most frightening of feelings: dead indifference.

That’s when she had given up, told her lawyer at the lunch break to ask for half the proceeds from the sale of her and Kevin’s home and to let the rest go. No alimony. He could keep the expensive antiques and the vacation home, the bonds and the stock portfolio. Half of everything should have been hers, but she didn’t care anymore. It cost too much to fight.

Her attorney had been violently opposed, of course, but Elaine hadn’t budged. The day it was all over, she’d walked to a city park near the court building and perched stiffly on a wrought iron bench. Wrapped in a winter coat, numb to the wind chafing her skin, she’d sat and stared at a fountain for who knows how long, until a young couple claimed the bench opposite hers….

In their early twenties, dewy even in frigid December, their giggles were at once intimate yet somehow universal. With the sack lunches they’d brought discarded beside them, they snuggled and kissed, pausing now and again to stare at their own clasped hands as if they had never seen such a romantic sight.

Watching them, Elaine felt her chest squeeze and her throat start to close, and she realized it had been years since she’d known what it was like not merely to be young, but to feel that way. To feel fresh and ripe with plans and giddily, incautiously in love.

Swallowing the grief that surged to her throat, Elaine rose from the bench, turned to walk away and found herself locking gazes with Mitchell Ryder. He stood fifty feet ahead of her, carrying his briefcase. Wearing a wool trench coat, he looked like he belonged in a window seat at Higgins Restaurant, not standing in line at a two-dollar-a-piece Polish dog stand. He stared at her with the same steady intensity with which she’d gazed at the lovers, and Elaine knew instantly he’d been watching her the whole time. The expression in his eyes was different from any she had seen there before. Mitchell “The Eel” Ryder was looking at her with what could only be called compassion.

Embarrassment threatened to drown her. She walked away, moving quickly along the crowded city block, but her wobbly legs wanted to give out. When the Heathman Hotel appeared on her left, she darted in, heading immediately for the bar.

Normally a white wine spritzer gal with a one-drink limit, Elaine sat down and ordered a brandy. She didn’t even bother to take off her coat. At this moment she thought she might never feel warm again.

Her drink hadn’t even been served yet when Mitch Ryder slipped onto the bar stool next to her. He said nothing for several moments, didn’t glance her way, merely called for an expensive scotch and waited for it to arrive. Then still without looking at her, he said in a hushed tone, “Why did you give up? You could have held out for more than you got. A lot more. Your lawyer should have made you see it through.”

He sounded angry, which Elaine thought was a little ironic, considering.

Brandy snifter cupped between her cold palms, she drank quickly, too quickly, but the brandy burned a path to her stomach that at least served the purpose of making her feel warm. She sat, trying not to cough, focusing instead on the heat. After a moment, the drink gave her a pleasantly light-headed feeling, and fortified, she answered, “I don’t want to ‘see the divorce through.’ I wanted to see my marriage through. And I don’t want more money. I just want it to be over.”

In the silence that ensued, Elaine finished her drink, but instead of getting up to leave, which had been her plan, she ordered another. She had a question for Mr. Ryder, too, and it burned like the brandy. “Why did you represent Kevin?”

A muscle jumped in Mitch’s jaw. Beneath the dulcet music and soft murmur in the Heathman’s classic lounge, he answered, “It wasn’t personal. It was business.”

It was an awful answer, and she said so. Her husband had cheated on her. Either you were a person who cared about that kind of thing or you weren’t.

For the first time since he’d sat down, Mitch turned toward her fully. “I am,” he said. The stern masculinity so characteristic of his face seemed even more sober today. “Covington asked me to handle the case.”

Henry Covington was the founding partner of Mitch and Kevin’s firm. Elaine remembered he was also a law professor and that the younger partners thought of him as their mentor.

“If it means anything at all, I regretted that decision every time I walked into the courtroom.” His gaze remained focused and steady.

Elaine stared back a long while without answering. The brandy snifter was still in her hands. Taking a last, long swallow, she set the glass on the bar and opened her purse to pay for her drink.

Without warning, Mitch’s hand covered hers. “Don’t leave….”

Huddled against the back door, out of sight, Elaine closed her eyes.

She now wished she had left. She should have left.

Mitch Ryder was officially her biggest, baddest mistake ever. Her only consolation from that night until present day had been her assumption that she would never see the man again.

Forcing herself to open her eyes, one at a time, she stood up slowly, peeking out the window.

He was gone. The mower stood alone in the middle of the yard. Smooshing her cheek against the glass, Elaine strained to see to her right and caught sight of him as he rounded the corner of the house. Leaving the ice cream on the counter, she ran to the living room. If she lifted the edge of the curtain just a little…

When the doorbell rang, she yelped. Traversing the space from window to door quickly on bare feet, she placed her palms on the door, leaned forward and looked through the peephole.

Feeling her heart flutter as she peered at Mitch Ryder’s face, she thought, Don’t panic, willing her heart to settle into an even rhythm so she could think clearly. There was no need to panic.

Except that six months ago, she had agreed to have another drink with Mitch Ryder and, for the first time in her life, gotten too toasted on brandy to drive home. The next day all she could remember was that they’d gotten into her car that night and she’d awakened in her big king-size bed the next morning…

Alone.

Nude.

And she almost never slept nude.

Lying under three-hundred-thread-count sheets in her thirty-seven-year-old birthday suit she had been hungover, yes, but curiously serene.

Since she had neither seen nor spoken to Mitch since that night, today she had no idea whether he was the second lover she had ever had in her life or merely…the divorce lawyer who had seen her naked. Either way—

That he had shown up today was positively too cruel. First Stephanie with her glad tidings and now this.

Resting her forehead on the door, Elaine barely resisted the urge to knock herself unconscious against the solid wood panel.

Please let this be a bad dream, God. If I wake up and he’s gone, I promise I will give up simple carbohydrates forever.