The Good Enough Husband (22 page)

She picked up the landline on the desk and dialed. After the r
eceptionist’s long and perfunctory greeting, she got down to business.

“Hi, this is Hannah Keesling. I’m calling about the retesting r
esults for my husband, Michael. He was part of the lab mix-up.”

“Oh, hi, Hannah. Lilly here. We’re so very sorry about that. Let me put you on hold for a bit. I’ll get the nurse to get your file and she’ll pick up the extension. Thanks.”

Tuning out the softly voiced ads for surgical and non-surgical conception methods, she looked around the room. Despite the years and moves with Michael, there wasn’t much she wanted to keep. A few framed photographs, maybe. Some knickknacks that her mother had sent from Copenhagen joined the mental list.

The familiar voice of the nurse they’d met several times came on the line. “Hannah?”

She snapped to attention. “Yes. Thanks. I was calling about Michael’s results.”

Static filled the line as the nurse hesitated. “Due to doctor-patient confidentiality and HIPAA laws, I can’t discuss Michael’s medical file with you.”

“What are you talking about?” Hannah asked. “We’ve both called and gotten results in the past. I’m sure that Michael was the one that called about the uterine fluoroscope…” she fumbled at the unfamiliar words “…thing.” Unseen by the nurse, she waved her hands emphatically.

“I’m sorry.” The nurse’s voice got faint as if she were moving the receiver from her ear to the cradle on her desk.

“Wait! Didn’t we sign some kind of form that allowed you to share medical information?”

The voice came back to the line, strong again. “Michael r
evoked his waiver. Again, I’m sorry.” The nurse disconnected the call. Michael had revoked his waiver? How in the hell was she going to find out if he was really infertile? Shit, fuck, damn. Hannah cursed, calling herself all kinds of a fool. She slammed down her receiver when the insistent bleat of the broken dial tone pierced her haze of anguish.

Okay, that was a problem for another day. Setting aside pate
rnity, she could still get her stuff. Michael hadn’t yet revoked her right to be in their house. Hannah advanced on the bedroom like a woman hell bent on an important mission. Why was it so dark in here? Flicking on the light switch, and moving to draw open the heavy curtains, she was shocked to find a hand on her wrist. Shock gave way to fear. Hannah screamed.

“Michael! What the hell? You didn’t answer the doorbell. I thought you weren’t home.”

Pulling her hand away, she pulled open the curtains and lifted the blinds behind them. Harsh southern California sun flooded the room. Michael folded his lanky body on the severely mussed bed. He must have been in there all along. Looking at him more closely, she noticed that he was fully dressed. Though his clothes looked like they’d done ten rounds in a boxing ring.

“You came back,” Michael said, hunching over. He eased off his shoes and dropped the heavy leather onto the thickly carpeted floor. They barely made a sound.

“I’m here to get my stuff. That’s all, Michael. I’m not staying. I won’t be back again.”

“I love you. Hannah. I’m sorry about Thursday, that was…that was kind of crazy. Deaver warned me against it, but I couldn’t…can’t let you go.”

“What happened at Dr. Stern’s office? The semen analysis?”

“The baby could be mine, Hannah.”

The deep thudding in her chest slowed. “Are you saying the first result was a mistake?”

“Why do you love him more than you love me?”

“Michael, I can’t. No, I won’t answer that question.” She sat on the bed, grabbing his upper arms in earnest. “Are you fertile? Tell me. I need to know.” When he didn’t answer right away, she shook him a little.

He eased her hands from his arms, and laid back down, turning his back on her. If he wasn’t going to answer her most pressing question, Michael was a waste of her time. Hannah got the giant suitcases down from the top shelf in the walk in closet and started putting her remaining clothes in. She moved the luggage to the foyer, and grabbed the very few things that were important to her, half-finished songs and camera lenses. When her broker’s van pulled up to the driveway, it was probably the only time she was grateful that she’d been a real estate agent. Her broker staged houses, and always had ready transportation and storage. They loaded the van, she locked the front door, and left her life with Michael behind once and for all.

***

Hannah thanked her lucky stars that Grady Martinez could see her that day. While she waited in the subtly decorated reception area, she filled out the intake form.

Grady stood when she entered, embracing her and bussing her on the cheek. “Hannah, I haven’t seen you in a while. Not since that mess with the Hendersons, I think. I was so glad you got them to agree on a price for that house. What brings you here?” he asked, sitting and leaning back in his high backed leather chair. “Don’t tell me you need a divorce,” he joked.

“Actually, Grady, that’s exactly why I’m here,” she said, sitting down in one of the two wooden seats when he forgot his manners.

The easy smile fell from the attorney’s face. Instantly sober, he said, “I, uh, didn’t expect that. I assumed you were here about a client. Okay.” He stood again to close his office door. “Is that my form in your hand?”

Hannah nodded, and proffered the clipboard. He separated p
aper from wood, and left the single page form on his desk, unread. He then gave her the spiel about confidentiality. She’d already had a big dose of confidentiality that day. She didn’t know if she could take any more secrets.

“So what’s the story?” he asked expansively.

“Michael and I…” she started. That wasn’t true. No more lies. “I want to end my marriage to Michael.”

“Why?”

“I thought ‘why’ didn’t matter in divorce anymore.”

“You’re right,” he acknowledged with a slight nod of his head. “I like to get all the facts on the table.”

“It was a mistake to get married in the first place.” The truth, laid out like a corpse on a metal gurney.

Grady looked unsatisfied with that explanation. “Is there som
eone else? For you, for him.”

“I met someone, yes. But I was going to leave regardless.”

“How does Michael feel about this? Does he want a dissolution?”

“No. Does that matter? I assumed…”

“You assumed right. One person can dissolve a marriage. Even if the other party objects, the court will end it. I like to know what we’re up against. When a spouse isn’t ready to end it, they can make a lot of trouble.”

He picked up the form. They ran through the litany of questions about the where and when of the marriage, the property they owned together. “You didn’t check any boxes. But I know you don’t have any kids, unless you’ve gone all Angelina Jolie on me. And you’re not pregnant right?” he asked, getting his pen ready to tick the little box that had caused her so much consternation in the waiting room.

She started to speak. He paused, his pen hovering over the small square on the bottom of the form.

“Are you pregnant?” he asked, disbelief in his voice.

“Yes.”

“Is Michael the father?”

“No.” Even she could hear that her voice lacked conviction.

“Are you sure?” She could hear the phone ringing in the rece
ption area, cars starting and stopping outside, the heat turning on, then off. “Hannah?”

“I’m sure the baby isn’t Michael’s.” Then the whole tale spilled out, about them trying to get pregnant for years, about the confi
rmation of Michael’s infertility, about Ben, about the possible lab mix up.

Grady listened, rapt. “Um, okay. I can file the papers and start the proceedings, but you won’t be divorced until the baby is born.”

“Why?”

“Courts like clean breaks, and children are messy,” he said. Then he shook his head as if clearing away the cobwebs. “Let me explain it this way. The court is going to start with the presumption that the baby is Michael’s.”

“What?” Hannah was sure her outrage could be heard in every office in the suite.

“I’m not saying we can’t rebut that presumption. And in many, many cases, the husbands don’t want the responsibility of a child who is not theirs, but I don’t think you have that here. So…unless Michael is willing to disclaim paternity, or unless there’s concl
usive testing and the court determines that the baby isn’t his—you’re in this until—when is your due date?”

“July 4
th
of next year.”

“Well, perhaps July 4
th
will be your independence day.”

***

Ben ignored the knocking on the door. His parents broke one of their lifelong rules and came in anyway. He was sitting in the same wingback chair his father had occupied on Thursday night.

“What’s this, an intervention?”

“Kind of, Benji,” his mother said. She straightened the bedcovers, and threw open his windows letting in the winter chill. “You haven’t left this room in days.”

“I’ll be out of your hair tomorrow morning.”

“What about Hannah?”

“What about her?”

There was silence among the three of them for a long time. Then his mom spoke.

“I’m really sorry, Benji. I thought it would be different this time. She was from New York. She seemed like such a nice girl.”

“Why would it be different?” He pointed to his dad accusingly. “I’m probably hard wired for this sort of thing. It’s like a fucking family curse.”

Abbe came into the room. “Ben, this is not Dad’s fault.”

“Why do you always take up for him? He cheated on Mom. He betrayed us. He wants to share his legacy with some bastard child.”

“Hannah’s child may be your bastard child very soon, Ben,” his father said quietly. “People in glass houses,” Walter stopped, shrugged, and left the Chaucerian reference incomplete.

“That’s not fair. None of this.” He jabbed a finger first at his father, then Abbe. “None of this is my fault.”

“Oh, woe is you,” Abbe said, her voice full of exasperation. “The common denominator in all this is you. Excluding Dad, this is as much your fault as it is Hannah’s.”

“It’s my fault that Hannah is as much of a lying witch as Samara was?”

“Obviously you’re attracted to duplicitous women. Everyone and their brother knew Samara was cheating on you. How in the hell you didn’t notice is beyond me. And what did you really know about Hannah before you got her pregnant? Did you ask about her marriage? Did you even look her up on the ‘net?”

“So now I’m an idiot if I don’t investigate the women I love. I’m a fool for trusting them?”

“If the shoe fits.”

“You’re blaming the victim? For a supposed feminist, that’s rich.”

“Thank goodness I’m not a fragile fucking flower,” Abbe said, taking the insult in stride. “All I’m saying, Ben, is that you’re blaming Dad or Marty or Samara or Hannah. Except for Marty, I’m not saying that you were in the wrong. All I’m saying is that if you keep winding up in the same situation—you must be doing something. The definition of insanity is—”

“Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result,” he finished. Maybe he was plain crazy,
loco, fou
. What was the word for crazy in Danish? He was probably that too.

15

Brooklyn. The never changing smell of piss, shit, vomit, and body odor greeted Hannah at the airport. New York City. At its core, it never changed. Despite the smell, Hannah took a deep breath while wheeling her carry-on luggage through the boarding ramp. For the first time in months Hannah’s heart and mind were quiet. Dorothy was right. There is no place like home.

On the long cab ride down Atlantic Avenue from Jamaica to her father’s house in Brooklyn Heights, she recounted the neig
hborhoods she’d spent much of her childhood in, East New York, Williamsburg, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Cobble Hill. So much had changed since Brooklyn’s much maligned reputation though the 1980s. Gone were the crack houses and vacant lots. Infill housing and lots of yuppies had changed the community. Sometimes she missed the edginess of the gang and drug infested years. ‘Giuliani Time’ had changed the city forever. Nowadays, it was too many sushi bars, coffee shops and hipsters in fedoras for her taste.

As good as his word, her dad was waiting on the stoop when her cab pulled up. He’d been gone a lot of her childhood. But he’d more than made up for it in the last few years. He was there whe
never she needed him.

“Daddy!” she cried. It was her first word when she was an i
nfant. She hugged Shay, enveloped in the all-too-familiar smell of cologne and cigars. Tears leaked from her eyes. “You’ve got to stop smoking,” she admonished.

“Hannah, banana. I’m too old to stop. I’ve all but given up scotch and fast women. Let me have this one thing.”

She pulled back, wiped her eyes, and looked at her dad. When had he turned into an old man? She’d been taller than him since she was sixteen, but he looked even shorter than the 5’6” he’d always been. She suspected he was nearly bald under the beaten leather driver’s cap he wore tilted at a jaunty angle. His neatly trimmed moustache and beard had turned gray years ago. But underneath the jowls, gray hair and hat, his coffee brown face creased with a smile letting her know she was wanted unconditionally, and loved. She pulled him in for another tight hug. His hands smoothed her hair and patted her back, giving her much needed comfort without judgment.

“Have you really given up booze and women?” Hannah asked doubtfully. She pulled away and they carried her bags into the house.

Shay shook his head. “Maybe I haven’t given up everything. But I am slowing down a little.”

Hannah didn’t care if he smoked, drank and played the field. She only wanted her dad to live a long and healthy life. As he led the way into her childhood home, she pushed past her father and ran into the main rooms on the first floor, sighing in satisfaction. Everything was the same. The butter yellow walls of the living and dining rooms may have been refreshed with new coats of paint, but in every respect that mattered, everything was as she remembered it. Her father’s mahogany grand piano stood prominently by the tall front windows. His turntable stood to one side of the black marble fireplace. Incongruously, an iPod dock stood quietly next to it.

“Daddy, I thought you said you’d never listen to electronic music,” Hannah said in surprise.

“Ah, shit. I had to change with the times. Can you believe that releasing an album on vinyl is now considered an ‘artistic’ choice? I had to get this to hear the new stuff coming out these days. Some of it’s even good.”

The kitchen was a surprise. The old red enamel rotisserie oven she’d grown up with was still there, but a new stainless steel refrigerator and dishwasher were fitted into the freshly painted cupboards.

Her dad followed her in, his leather slippers scuffing along the floor. She looked at him questioningly. This was a man allergic to change.

“What? I listened to what you said about keeping it fresh, saving on the electric and water bills with more efficient appliances.”

“Oh Dad, that was my now retired Realtor talking.”

“Well, I have been thinking of selling.”

Hannah’s heart, which had been calm for the first time in weeks, sped up again. Tears pricked at the back of her eyes. Though she hadn’t been here in years, this was the place she a
lways thought of as home. She tried for a light tone. “What? Seriously? Dad, why would you sell? This is a great place.”

“It’s a big house. I don’t have a wife or child living here an
ymore. I’m paying to heat a lot of big rooms. They’re doing some new co-ops in Williamsburg that I’ve been keeping an eye on.”

“Williamsburg? I rode by on the way in. It looks better than I remember. But in my mind, it’s still a lot of burned out buildings and muggers. Cupcakes and coffee shops couldn’t have changed it all that much.”

“It’s not like here, but it’s certainly not the boonies. I played a couple of gigs there this year.”

“Oh, God. Was it all twenty year olds in flannel and facial hair?”

Her father had to laugh. He nodded. “Maybe.”

Hannah went back to the living room and plopped down on one of the green tufted couches in the room. Williamsburg and Times Square may have changed, but at least the furniture here hadn’t.

Her father put Jackie McLean on the turntable, and sat across from her on a twin of the couch she was sitting on.

“Where’s Michael?”

“I left him.” She hadn’t given her father any reason for coming to New York, except she wanted to see him during the holidays.

“Mmmm,” her father replied. He got a cigar from the box, but seeing her frown, resisted lighting it. Instead, he nestled it in the pocket of his button down shirt.

“Have you seen Jackie lately?” she asked.

“He died seven years ago, honey. A lot of the old cats are gone. Hard living and longevity don’t mix.”

“I’ve been singing.”

“I’d heard.”

“ASCAP?”

He laughed, a genuine belly laugh. “Those payments take a year and a day. Nope, an ear to the ground is all. Joe Sheppard and I used to jam back in the day. Funk Fiesta has done some arrang
ements of my stuff. My daughter performing was a big deal. Even if it was out in the sticks. And I had to hear it from somebody else.”

“I’m not as good as you—or Mom even.” Suddenly shy, Ha
nnah got up and retrieved her music folder from her bag. She thrust her two songs at him like a child showing homework for inspection.

Sheet music in hand, Shay moved to the Bechstein and started plinking out her tunes. He nodded. “Sing these for me.”

With him accompanying, she stood stiffly next to the piano like she’d done as a teenager, and sang the two songs she’d performed with Funk Fiesta in Eureka. First, the song about a troubled woman, then the song she wrote for Ben. Professing her love was as embarrassing the second time around as it had been the first.

“This song wasn’t for Michael.”

“I’m pregnant,” Hannah announced without ceremony. She leaned against the piano for support.

Her father shot forward, his elbow striking a discordant note against the ivory keys. “And you left Michael?” His voice was filled with confusion. “Should I congratulate you?”

“Michael’s not the father,” she said.

Her father’s face was inscrutable. The Wall Street wizard and Brooklyn musician had never seen eye to eye.

“Who is the father?”

“Ben Cooper.”

“This is the first I’m hearing of this.” The gossip from Eureka had been limited to music. “Is he worthy of you?”

“Daddy!” He’d never thought anyone she’d dated had been good enough for her.

“Seriously.”

“I think he’s the one.”

“Which one?”

Was he being deliberately obtuse? “The man I’m meant to be with.”

“I thought your mother was the one, and she’s in Copenhagen. If he’s not here with you now, something’s wrong. Wouldn’t you say?”

Hannah started crying again, this time from sadness and de
spair. She blubbered out the whole story while her father nodded, pulled the cigar from his pocket and lit up. She confessed. He filled the room with thick smoke.

“I’d never thought Michael would have put up a fight. Gotta give him props.” Shay shook his head ruefully. “Bigger balls than I’d have expected on a white man.”

“It’s not funny, Dad. He completely ruined things with Ben.”

“Look, I was never a fan of Michael. You know that. But he’s always loved you. He married you. He’s never betrayed you. Why should he step aside?”

“It wasn’t a real marriage.”

Shay jabbed a thumb toward the open window. “I was there at your wedding right around the corner. Seemed real to me.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.” Hannah had barely admitted the truth to herself. It was a struggle to tell the truth to anyone else, much less her father. She’d always wanted him to think the best of her. “I settled.”

Her father put out his cigar, and rose to lift the sash on one of the huge front windows. She watched the smoke curl and seep around the old wood, thick with decades of paint. Shay leaned against the windowsill.

“So Michael Keesling wasn’t ‘the one?’”

Hannah shook her head slowly.

“Why did you do it, baby? Your life was okay here. Maybe you weren’t meeting the right guys, but you were taking pictures and singing. You seemed happy.”

“I didn’t want to be forty and single, and childless. I was afraid of ending up alone. Like aunties Carol, or Mary, or Joyce.” She’d grown up with these women, friends of her parents. They were strong, single women living in New York. They never seemed lonely, but they were certainly alone. “I wish I’d met Ben first.”

“I’m alone. It’s not so bad.”

“But you had Mommy and me first.”

“That’s true, I guess. Your mother never wanted to be alone.”

“Axel is nice enough, but she loved you best.”

“And I still love her, dearly, Hannah. I treated her badly and I lost her. I hope you weren’t following my example.”

“It wasn’t like that,” she said, ducking her head. They had ne
ver had a straight on conversation about his road trips or his infidelity. From the arguments and insinuation, she put together that he was easily swayed by backup singers and groupies while on the road. “I was planning on leaving Michael anyway.” When her father’s eyebrows rose, she continued, “No, really. We’re not compatible in any way that counts.”

“You didn’t know this before you stood before God and cou
ntry at First Unitarian?”

She nodded. She did know it. “I thought it would be, he would be—good enough.”

“A lot of people do it that way. Your mother Freja’s doing that now. But you were never that girl, Hannah. You always lived life to the fullest. How long did you think you’d be able to live in the little box that a day job and kids put you in?”

“It was really, really stupid. And I think I hurt Michael really, really bad. And I hurt Ben worse, and the whole thing is a fucking mess.” The tears came in earnest again.

Her father got up and came back with a glass of seltzer. “Can’t have anything stronger these days, I guess.”

She drank thirstily, then burped loudly. It broke the tension and they both laughed a long time. They ordered in Chinese from her favorite restaurant and talked about other things. When she was bustling around the small galley kitchen, throwing away boxes and tucking the leftovers in the fridge, she heard Shay’s voice from the dining room.

“You know you’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”

She came into the room, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. “Thanks. I hope it’s okay if I stay through Christmas. After that, I want to go to Copenhagen. Mor,” she self corrected, “Mommy said I could stay with her and have the baby there.”

He nodded, suddenly looking a little sad. “I guess girls need their mothers at times like this.”

Hannah wearily climbed the creaky wooden steps to the top floor of the four-story building. Her dad had never changed her childhood bedroom except to remove the posters, pictures, and stuffed animals. She’d moved up to the attic space in her teens, happy to spread out away from the scrutiny of her parents.

All her books were still there and her plastic cube of a Mac from high school had stayed in its prominent position on her desk.

She looked at the bedside clock. It was only nine-thirty in Cal
ifornia. She lifted the receiver of the novelty phone she’d thought was so cool twenty years ago, watching the neon glow. It still had a dial tone. She wondered if her dad had kept her separate number her parents had gotten out of desperation. No matter, she dialed the number she’d memorized the first time she’d called it.

Ben answered on the second ring. She could hear Cody whi
ning in the background. Ben had probably figured out that she spoiled the dog with nightly treats. A painful squeeze gripped her chest. She missed the man and the dog desperately.

“It’s me.”

There was a long pause on the line. “I can’t do this, Hannah.”

Do what. Talk to her? Love her? Forgive her? “Please don’t hang up,” she said. He hung up. There was nothing but a dial tone. The sound that had been so welcome moments before, mocked her
now. A digitized voice advised her to make a call or put down the phone. She placed it back in the cradle.