The Good Enough Husband (18 page)

***

Ben was whistling and smiling at almost every woman he saw. The obviously pregnant ones made him wonder how Hannah would look a few short months from now. The ones with babies thrust him a little further into the future. He even found himself scrutinizing the little faces in strollers—wondering how their genes would come together. Would the baby have his blue eyes? Her curly hair. His strong nose? Her husky voice. Knowing what he knew about DNA, the combinations seemed endless. It was too bad they weren’t cats.

During a college biology lab, he recalled plugging in eye color, stripe patterns, and other qualities into the feline genetics program during his studies and coming up with results that closely corr
elated what happened in real life. But thinking about the differences between Abbe and himself, and in a generous moment, even Marty, showed him how much variation there could be. He could barely wait the seven or eight more months to meet their baby.

Although Ben wasn’t one to go to the doctor often, he was grateful that Hannah’s first appointment was scheduled at her six-week mark. The anticipation of knowing more was killing him. On the fourth Friday in November, they drove to Arcata to visit with an obstetrician she’d chosen.

As they neared the end of an hour-long drive, Ben asked her, “Are there no closer obstetricians?”

“Not that came recommended,” Hannah responded. “There’s practically a doctor on every corner in SoCal. There are billboards
advertising maternity wards. I never thought about what people did in rural areas.”

Ben had never thought much about it either. He was healthy. And his dad, who did need regular medical care, worked at a teac
hing hospital, in spitting distance of a doctor at any given moment. They drove toward the low-slung wooden medical office that didn’t look much different from his, and the anxiety ratcheted up. What if Hannah had a medical emergency? Was he equipped to handle it? Where was the nearest trauma hospital, emergency room? Would she get there in time?

He was practically shaking when they were finally called into the examination room. Hannah, on the other hand, looked as cool as a cucumber. She was back in her designer sweats and low-heeled shoes. She looked like she did this every day. He didn’t want his anxiety to spill over to her—but he had to wonder why she wasn’t more worried.

After the nurse rolled her blood pressure machine, thermometer, and various other items out of the room on a cart, it was only a few minutes before the doctor joined them. They both shook hands with the competent looking woman in a white lab coat. She had blond hair, streaked with gray pulled back into a tight bun. Her pants were khaki, her clogs brown, and her hands unadorned. She looked sensible and no nonsense. Ben relaxed a bit.

“Dr. Clementine Lacey,” she said, flipping through the chart. Did he do that? Why couldn’t doctors talk to people? Why were they always riffling through something or scribbling on some piece of paper or another? “Our tests indicate that you’re pregnant.
Based upon what you wrote down here, you’re about six weeks along. Is that right?”

Hannah nodded.

“Was this baby planned?”

Hannah reddened a little, but answered in a straightforward manner. “It was a bit of a surprise.”

“That’s fine,” the doctor said, making a note. She asked a few more questions, all of which Hannah answered. Ben stood there feeling nervous and useless. “The nurse is going to come back and prep you. I’m going to do a pelvic exam and an ultrasound, and then we’ll be all done for today.”

The nurse reappeared and helped Hannah cup her heels into the hard plastic stirrups. He took the nurse’s suggestion and sat near the head of the exam table. He held Hannah’s hand tight as she reclined on the cold vinyl.

When the doctor returned, she washed, gloved, and lubricated her hand. Not able to help himself, Ben let loose on the questions about where she went to school, what hospitals she was affiliated with and where in the heck Hannah was supposed to have the baby? There were no hospitals in Shelter Cove.

“Dr. Cooper,” she started, not once taking her eyes away from her tasks. “Women have been having babies forever. None of the three hospitals up here is more than an hour away. Your due date is in July—in the summer. So when Hannah goes into labor, you put her in the car and drive to the hospital. That’s it.”

With calm assurance, she answered every one of his concerns. Having a baby was normal and everything would be fine. Dr. Lacey started the ultrasound, and Ben peered at the tiny blurry picture. Then he noticed the tiniest flicker in the middle of the image.

“That’s the heartbeat, isn’t it?” he asked in awe.

“It is,” Dr. Lacey said then frowned.

Ben’s own heartbeat accelerated with the downturned corners of the doctor’s mouth. “What’s wrong?”

Dr. Lacey’s frown neutralized, and she backed away from her close scrutiny of the monitor. She stood, grabbed paper towels from the dispenser, and wiped Hannah’s belly. Officiously, she snapped off her gloves. “Nothing, that I can see,” she said. “It was probably a trick of the light, but for a moment there, I thought I saw twins. Neither of you have twins in your background though, right?”

Hannah and Ben, gazes locked, both shook their heads.

“That’s what I thought. Ignore my old eyes. It’s that with so many women on fertility drugs these days, I feel like every other patient who comes in here is pregnant with multiples. In nature, you know without Clomid, and FSH, and IVF, twins are rare—probably about one percent of pregnancies. So the odds weigh heavily against it.”

Ben’s gaze broke from Hannah’s and his breathing and heart rate came back to normal. He was almost resolved that this would be a normal pregnancy, they’d have one healthy baby, and all would be fine.

13

Twins.

Hannah tried to clear the image from her head. She’d left the doctor’s office with Ben, and they’d shared a good laugh on the way home. Once Hannah was alone, she wasn’t laughing. She hadn’t been honest with Ben. Lies were piling up like dead flies on a windowsill. She hadn’t been honest with Dr. Lacey either. When she’d answered the questions about the pregnancy being planned, no one had blinked with her negative answer on the question of fertility drugs.

Why would they? It made no logical sense to question her. But of course, she’d been taking Clomid over the summer, right up until she’d left Michael the first time. Dr. Stern had given her all the warnings about Clomid—one of which was the risk of multiple birth. She and Michael had talked about the possibility and the
analog of a selective reduction if too many fetuses were detected. Hannah had tossed away the side effects pamphlet like a used tissue. She didn’t expect them to have any impact on her.

Rather than wringing her hands, Hannah looked around for something to do. She usually spent Saturdays with Ben, but he was working the shift he’d traded to spend a half day with her at the doctor. She’d started looking at some portraits she’d been thinking of using for her upcoming gallery show. She’d probably be very pregnant by that time, but was still very much looking forward to showing, and maybe even selling some of her work.

Her damned cell phone rang. She didn’t have to look to know it was Michael. In a fit of guilt, she’d agreed to one session with a counselor. Even though she’d noted it on her calendar, she had hoped Michael would forget or cancel. But it was scheduled for an hour from now over Skype.

“Michael.”

“I wanted to make sure you remembered our session this afternoon.”

“I’ll be there.”

“You have Skype installed? Is your internet speed high enough? If you’d come home…“

She cut him off. “Michael. I agreed to this one session. I will be there as I promised. See you in an hour.”

Lead weighed in her chest and belly. Michael had crushed her creative spirit in the insidious way he always had.

An hour later, the screen came alight simultaneous with the pinging that indicated there was a Skype call. When she clicked on the answer icon, Michael’s face came on the screen as well as a
man she’d never met before. She assumed he was the therapist Michael had chosen.

A twinge twisted Hannah’s gut. She didn’t know if it was the baby or guilt over Michael’s appearance. He was a proud and vain man made haggard by her actions. The light brown stubble on his cheeks and chin was not that of a Don Johnson devotee. His eyes were red, and his shirt collar looked like it had been chewed by mice. It was shocking to see a man who rarely left the house wit
hout a hair out of place sitting in front of a webcam looking downright disheveled.

The therapist stood in stark contrast to Michael. Dressed so well, he looked downright dandy. The therapist’s camera took a full body shot of the man sitting on a high backed leather office chair, from the bottom of his spectator wing tips to the top of his ascot.

“I’m Hannah,” she said in the friendliest voice she could muster, trying figuratively, to bat away the judgment she was heaping on the two men.

“Good morning Hannah, it’s nice to meet you,” the dandy said. “I’m Russell Deaver.” Hannah tuned out as Deaver recited all of his profession credentials. Michael never hired anyone who wasn’t infinitely qualified. “It’s not my preference to meet you this way, Hannah. But I understand you’re not willing to come back down to Orange County right now.” Deaver paused. “Hannah, can you hear me?”

“There wasn’t a question.”

The tall leather chair squeaked as Deaver leaned back. He put his hand to his lips as if to say, ‘so that’s how you’re going to play it.’

“As you may know, I’ve been meeting in one-on-one sessions with Michael for the last four weeks. He says that you’re finally willing to come to the table and talk about healing your marriage. Is that a fair statement?”

Hannah paused a long time. She looked up at the cathedral cei
lings in the Coopers’ house as if the right answer were going to fall from exposed beams. Guilt warred with reason. “Can I speak?”

Both men nodded. “Mr. Deaver, Michael,” she started. “Our marriage cannot be saved.”

Michael started to speak, but Deaver put out a hand as if to virtually restrain him. “Why would you say that? What are your reasons behind that statement?”

For the first time ever, Hannah wanted to lay it all on the table. She looked directly into her husband’s bloodshot blue eyes. They were starting to crinkle at the corners. When had she missed that? He wasn’t the young Wall Street wizard she’d met so many years ago. She looked more closely at the screen. There were a couple of gray hairs interwoven in the blond. Michael was going to age like Drake, going from blond to gray so gradually that no one would notice until the blond was all gone. “I think the marriage may have been a mistake.”

Deaver’s virtual hand moved to restrain Michael again. “Can you elaborate?”

Her gaze locked with her husband’s. “Michael, I married you because you were,
are
, a dear friend. I thought all we needed to build a family was mutual respect, shared values.” Her stomach twinged again when Michael winced at her use of the word ‘respect.’

Deaver jumped in. “Hannah, marriages built on friendship o
ften outlast those built on passionate love. It’s one of the reasons arranged marriages can work so well. Studies show that lust and passion can die out between two and four years. After that, couples that have friendship to fall back on, make it for the long haul.”

Hannah sighed, hoping the hissing of her breath wasn’t too loud. She knew all this, but wanted to take a chance on the love and passion. A life with nothing more than perfunctory sex, duty, and responsibility didn’t sound all that appealing.

“What parts of your marriage work?”

Michael finally spoke up. “Russell, Hannah and I have always gotten along great. We have a certain synergy. When we put our heads together, all turns out well. We got Hannah’s new realty business up and running and successful almost off the bat. We got this great house at a bargain basement price. It’s an absolute show place—and that’s all from us working together.”

“Hannah, do you agree with Michael?” Deaver asked pointedly.

“Yes, he’s right. All this works. But the way Michael describes it sounds like a great business partnership, not a great marriage.”

“Alright,” Deaver said. “Then what doesn’t work for you, Hannah?”

Hannah took another deep breath. This, this attempt at therapy, this attempt at saving what was already lost.
This
wasn’t working. She wanted to spare Michael’s feelings. An amicable split of their relationship, money, and assets was all she was looking for. Introspection, examination of every detail of their marriage wasn’t going to go well. “Michael, I really don’t want to talk about this. Can we agree to dissolve our marriage without all this? I think that would be the best thing that we could do.”

“Hannah, I really think we can save this,” Michael said.

They weren’t listening. It was if they had an agenda which didn’t take her thoughts, feelings, wants, or concerns into account. “Mr. Deaver, I’m doing this session to appease Michael, but I feel like nothing I’m saying is getting through,” Hannah started. She cleared her throat and made her voice as forceful as she knew how. “So here goes: Michael, our marriage isn’t working.

“I hate living in Orange County. I don’t fit in there—whether it’s my politics, beliefs, race, whatever. I don’t want to live there—but your family and business are there. I don’t love you enough to make any more of an effort at this. I can’t continue with our sex life. I hated it. I felt humiliated every time we got undressed. Your disinterest in intercourse—your obsession with those airbrushed models who look nothing like me make it impossible for me to come back to that. I want passion and love and a family and I’ve found all that here in the North Coast.

“I’m in love with someone else.”

There was silence as their collective images flickered on her laptop screen.

“Michael, were you aware that Hannah had gone outside the relationship?” Deaver asked. Michael nodded. Apparently he hadn’t mentioned that little fact to the therapist. “I was unaware of this. It certainly puts a different spin on things.” He directed his next question to Hannah. “Is this a serious relationship?”

“I’m pregnant,” she said before she could think to hold it back. “I think I’m in it for the long haul.” Michael’s hand barely covered his gasp of surprise. His eyes turned glassy with unshed tears. She hated the devastation on Michael’s face. This is not at all how she wanted to end things. Maybe it had been right to get the truth out there. Maybe now Michael would understand that they were over. That she and Ben had a future together where Michael and she did not.

The session ended quickly after that. She imagined that Michael was going to be spending a lot of time with Deaver hashing out her betrayal. She could only thank the legislature that there was still no fault divorce, and no court would delve into her infidelity while dividing their possessions. Because all that was left was figuring who took what stuff.

***

The phone rang again only minutes after she’d disconnected on Skype. It was Michael. Her hope that her words would put some distance between them was going to go unfulfilled.

“Is the baby mine?” No ‘hello.’

“How could it be, Michael?” Was he delusional? They’d been trying for years and nothing had happened. He was infertile and would have to come to accept it.

“I got a call from Dr. Stern.” Michael acted like he didn’t even hear her question. Maybe Deaver wasn’t worth all his fancy cr
edentials. The point of therapy was learning to listen.

“Why are you telling me this? After the session we had, I don’t think there’s really anymore we can or should say to each other. I
don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have, Michael. I want us to be happy—even if that means we’re happier apart.”

Michael persisted. “Stern wants me to come in for new tests. There was a mix up in the lab the day my sample went in.” It was as if he didn’t hear a word she had said in the last five minutes or fifty. What difference could his fertility make now? She heard the rustle of paper in the background. Without any prompting from her, Michael started reading. “We regret to inform you that your test performed on September 18
th
may have been compromised by our outside laboratory. Pacific Center for Reproductive Health recommends that you come in for a new semen analysis. In order to assure the results you received were correct, we ask that you make an appointment for complementary testing with our new lab. The new results will be made available as soon as is practical.”

If Hannah hadn’t already been sitting, she would have fallen to the floor. Her knees turned to water. Suddenly, her back couldn’t hold up her head, much less her five foot ten body.

“Are you going in?” she asked hesitantly. Hannah didn’t want to ask too many questions of Michael. He probably needed to do this for himself. Male infertility was emasculating. She was one hundred percent sure that the results would be the same. They’d tried for years and nothing had happened. She looked down at her thickening waist. She was healthy, and obviously fertile.

“Of course. If there was a mistake and I’m able to…” Michael left the rest unsaid. Hannah carefully placed the phone down on a table, disconnecting the call. If he were able to have a child, she could come back and they could…. They could do what? She was already pregnant. The baby couldn’t be his anyway. His penis had
barely made contact with any part of her body that could result in a baby. In the week she’d been home, none of the encounters they’d had had been consummated. Hannah’s hand slipped from the phone she was going to use to dial Dr. Stern herself.

There had been that third time that she’d banished from her mind. That middle of the night, early morning encounter when Michael had taken her from behind—when she’d been half asleep. He was always horny if he woke in the wee morning hours. She always slept facing the edge of the bed, and he facing her. If she wasn’t wearing sweats or underwear, he could often arouse her. After their years together, he knew how to make her wet even if he didn’t always try. That last morning, his fingers had worked magic on her flesh, and he’d taken what he wanted. Her body had b
etrayed her, and she hadn’t put up a protest. It was done in a few minutes. Sleep had crowded out guilt.

Hannah flicked and scrolled through her phone like a woman possessed. The call confirmed what she didn’t want to believe. There really had been a mix up. It was possible that Michael was fertile after all.

***

Ben emerged from the BART station at the corner of Market and Kearny Streets. It had been a long time since he’d been to San Francisco. The streets were still jammed with rush hour road co
nstruction, too many cars, and a million tour buses.

New York was supposed to be the biggest tourist destination in the country, but it had always felt like San Francisco should hold that title. Crossing Geary Street and heading toward Union Square, he counted no less than four tour buses in lime green, turquoise, red, and orange. Double-deckers full to bursting with visitors and
their cameras though the weather was downright blustery. The lineup to get on arriving buses was even longer. Zipping his own jacket against the damp chill, he walked the short blocks toward Union Square and the jewelry store, its’ two story shop window decorated with its’ signature turquoise boxes and white satin bows.