The Whole Golden World (19 page)

He doesn't want the mess, Morgan realized. How would he explain that? And obviously he had no notion of pulling over, or allowing her to sit up.

Morgan tried to breathe as he ordered, not wanting to throw up either.

Finally, the car stopped. “Hang on,” he told her, and he hopped out, leaving her flat in the passenger seat. She heard keys rattling nearby, and then he popped the car door open and held out his hand. “Coast is clear. Quickly, get inside.”

She felt shaky as she stumbled out of the car and up some cement porch steps. He almost threw her across the threshold and she stumbled, grabbing a kitchen chair for support as he slammed the door behind them.

“Aaah. Now we're alone,” he said, his voice blooming with relief.

Morgan sank into the chair, wanting to feel relief herself, still feeling sick, still reeling in fact, as if she'd been on an ocean voyage.

He was locking the door behind her and busying himself with something by the kitchen counter. She swept her eyes across his home—
their
home. There were afghans and framed photos of nature scenes, and seashells on shelves. The room had a disarray about it that was homey and familiar. Not unlike her own home, Morgan realized. She looked down at the faux-wood dining table.

“Here,” he said, handing her a jelly glass filled with ice water. “Take little sips. I'm really sorry about that.”

“I hated that,” Morgan blurted, taking a sip and then pressing the cool glass to her cheek. “Like I was something disgusting to hide away.”

She finally raised her eyes to his. She almost gasped. His eyebrows were lowered, his stare hard. “We cannot be seen together. Do you know what that would do to me? What that would cost me? Do you know what risk I'm taking having you here at all? In my house?”

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you mad . . .”

“I mean, if my wife found out, the school . . . my whole world would be over.”

The queasy overheated feeling was leaving her, and Morgan felt then as if she were growing colder by the moment, freezing slowly from the toes up.

“But . . . you said . . .” Morgan tried to remember his exact words from the night at his brother's house. Something about being patient. But didn't that mean waiting for something good in the future? “I thought . . . after graduation . . . I know this is . . . unusual, but you feel it too, don't you? That it's special? Meant to be? Won't they all find out sometime that . . .”

He raked his hands through his dark hair roughly, staring down at the table.

Morgan's heart thudded, and the chilled feeling spread to her limbs and fingers, and she began to tremble. “You . . . love me. Right? Don't you?”

He jumped up roughly from his chair and grabbed her close, covering her mouth and neck with urgent kisses. He began to caress her with one hand in her hair, the other roaming all over her back, and inside her skirt. She was wearing a thong and when he discovered it, he groaned into her mouth as they kissed. He picked her up, doll-like, and much as he'd done before, he carried her up the stairs.

“No,” she said, panting. “Not in the bed . . .”
Not your wife's bed.

In the bedroom, he set her down on her feet then lifted her again, facing him. In moments he'd hoisted her up, pressing her back against the wall, and pushing her skirt up and out of the way.

“I love you,” he breathed into her ear as he crushed her hard against the wall. “I do love you.”

She tried to say she loved him too, but she could barely catch her breath.

 

They ended up on the floor again, next to the bed. He'd fetched a spare blanket, and she was resting her head on his muscular arm, her leg thrown over his. The warm, languid feeling was back, all the earlier carsickness and nausea nearly forgotten.

And he'd said he loved her.

She sighed deeply, feeling emptied out of all her stress, care, and worries, which now seemed minute and petty indeed.

He kissed her temple and whispered, “I have to get up for a minute. Sorry.” She reluctantly moved her head and allowed him to rise. She followed the progress of his naked, strong body across the room to the bathroom and smiled. Then she rolled to her side.

Her eyes landed on a pair of women's slippers, under the bed.

They were moccasins, lined with puffy fleece, the kind that you would wear after a long day, on a cold night, watching TV, snuggled up next to your husband. Morgan turned to her other side and saw, sticking out of a dresser drawer that was not all the way closed, a piece of silky ivory cloth trimmed with lace.

She sat up, aware suddenly of how naked she was, and she snatched up the blanket around her chest. On the wall across from her, the wall where just moments before they'd been having sex, was a wedding photo. She hadn't noticed it, though it must have been just a few inches from her head.

The bride was wearing a simple white gown fitting close to the body until the hips, where it swept away, ending in a small train. It was an off-shoulder gown, exposing her delicate collarbone. The bride's bouquet of white tulips drooped down, loose in her hand as she gazed up at her new husband.

And he, the groom, the man who'd just nailed Morgan against the wall, was staring with fierce, wild love at his bride, a half smile on his face like he could hardly believe his luck, one arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her close.

The bathroom door opened, and he came back into the room, following Morgan's gaze.

“Don't look at that,” he barked.

She dropped her eyes to the blanket, wondering suddenly if he and the wife bought it as a couple, strolling through Bed Bath and Beyond with their fingers laced together.

He said, “Maybe it was a mistake to be here.” He pulled on his underwear and jeans roughly, as if he had somewhere urgent to go.

“Don't say that,” she replied. “It wasn't. I . . . I'm happy to be here with you.”

He stopped dressing, slumped a bit. “I know. It's just . . . too hard. Worlds colliding. It was just convenient was all. She'll be back early though, so . . .”

“Early? Early when?”

“Early in the morning. She's coming back first thing.”

“I thought . . .” Morgan realized she'd assumed another overnight visit, when he'd only been referring to the evening.

“I'll take you back to your car in a little while. Want a snack? I've got some wine,” he said, dressing again, pulling on his socks, a shirt, an old baseball cap. He started handing her clothes back to her.

“Um. Sure, I guess.”

She dressed and started running through her choices. She'd told her mom she'd be gone all night. She could claim to have come home sick, but this also meant getting Nicole to adjust their story, and what if she couldn't reach her? What then?

“Shit,” he muttered, as his phone vibrated on the nightstand. He snatched it up, and Morgan watched him pale as he read the screen.

“She's coming home tonight. Like, now.”

“Oh, no.”

“Hurry up! She said she's not feeling good, and she's coming home right now. I have to get you out of here and straighten this place up.”

Morgan was throwing on her clothes now, taking three tries to get her arm into her sleeve. “Where is she driving from?”

“Lansing, so it won't take her that long. She was at some book signing for some yoga dude, and I thought she was going to stay the night in town with Beverly . . . shit.”

He started jamming the blanket into folds. Morgan tried to help him, but he yanked it away from her. “Go find your shoes and meet me by the back door.”

In a matter of minutes they were driving off into the evening. She'd started to lower the seat, but he told her not to bother, it was dark out anyway. He drove fast and hard, taking sharp corners that almost threw Morgan into the door. He pulled up next to Sears in the mall parking lot, away from any parking lot lights, and looked at her pointedly, hitting the “unlock” button.

Morgan looked back at him and opened her mouth to say something, but he cut her off. “I have to get going. Quick, before anyone sees us.”

She hopped out and slammed the door just in time to watch his car pull away with the flow of traffic, leaving her standing alone, exactly as she'd been just two hours before.

29

R
ain wasn't sick. She was feeling fine. She was feeling, in fact, far too fine. She had been praying for morning sickness, for fatigue like other expectant mothers talked about. Her breasts were even less sore than before. She had snuck into the bookstore's bathroom to squeeze them. They felt completely normal.

She then suffered something in the bathroom stall at the book signing that she could only describe as a panic attack: She'd slammed her fist into the wall behind the toilet hard enough to bruise her hand and screamed silently in such a way that turned her throat raw.

Rain left the bathroom stall trembling and convinced the baby within her had disappeared. She texted TJ that she was coming home and made her apologies to Beverly. Fortunately they had driven separately.

By the time Rain had gotten onto the highway, reason had started to edge its way back in, and she understood, in her higher brain functions, anyway, that she had not lost the baby just because she wasn't vomiting.

She might have to quarantine herself from pregnant women, Rain thought, as a light mist started to fall—in February?—and she flipped on her windshield wipers. There had been a pregnant woman next to her at the book signing, opining about how miserable she was with heartburn, how pregnancy was such a trial and she wished she could hire out someone to do this part of the job. How she'd thrown up so much in the first trimester she'd subsisted on ginger ale and saltines. That's what started it all.

As the woman carried on this way, Rain's hand drifted to her flat stomach, and that's when she was overcome with the urge to squeeze her breasts and check for soreness. And she went to the bathroom and did just that, and she found none.

Rain tried again, in the darkness of the car. Still fine.

As she drove, she tried to recover the joy she felt when the nurse gave her the news. Rain had known the moment she'd said, “We have the results of your pregnancy test!,” because the nurse's voice had an unmistakable brightness reserved only for good news. It had come like a burst of sun, the kind that hits you in the face when you drive out of a tunnel.

The joy had quieted some as she tried to find the perfect time to tell TJ, and then it receded like a tide going out in the face of his muted reaction.

Since then she'd begun to feel numb. Not depressed, nor joyous.

“Why can't this just be normal?” she shouted into the car's interior.

The only answer was the slapping of the wipers and the spitting of rain on the windshield.

When she walked back inside the house, she found TJ looking flushed and frantic, coming down from upstairs.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing. I'm fine. Just worried about you.”

He came forward to hug her, but his embrace was quick and stiff and he released her quickly. His hair was damp and he smelled like soap. He said, “Can I get you something, honey? Some tea? You said you're sick?”

“More like tired,” she said. “Did you take a shower?”

“I was bored so I worked out on the elliptical and got all sweaty.”

“Oh. Okay. I feel a little sleepy, I might turn in early.”

Rain walked upstairs, conscious of TJ following her. She was impatient then with his hovering, making her wish she'd stayed at the hotel in Lansing with Beverly rather than come all the way home.

At the doorway to the bedroom she paused, and he bumped into her from behind. “What gives? Can I have some space?”

“Forgive me for being concerned about my pregnant wife who came home sick from a trip,” he barked. “What if you passed out on the stairs or something and broke your neck?”

Rain pinched the bridge of her nose. “Your kindness is so overwhelming.”

“What does that mean?”

Rain's armor was already worn thin and brittle. Her emotional fortitude to carry the burden for the both of them as a couple had eroded as well, and she almost relished this rare moment when she couldn't help herself: “Yell at me a little more so I'll feel even better.”

He stomped down the stairs, leaving Rain bracing herself in the door frame. She heard his angry progress through the kitchen, heard a chair get slammed against the table or the wall, and then heard more pounding down another flight of steps to the basement. As Rain tried to breathe slowly to steady her pounding heart, she heard the
whoosh whoosh
of the elliptical.

Odd, she thought as she peeled off her pants and rooted in her dresser for a nightgown. Normally he wouldn't do the elliptical twice in one night. His knees were in bad enough shape from his old track-star days that even the smooth oval action would be too much after a time.

She dropped her cotton nightgown over her head and in the act of turning back the sheets on the bed, she paused. Something felt off-kilter in the room.

It was a scent, something vaguely floral with a dash of citrus. She frowned and scented the air again like a wild animal.

Her phone chimed from the pocket of her jeans, now crumpled on the floor. She stretched down to pull it from the pocket. Two messages: one from Beverly, hoping she felt better. And a picture from Fawn of a smiling, drooly Brock with the message, “First tooth!”

Rain dropped the phone back on the floor, where it landed with a quiet thunk.

 

In the morning, Rain still felt fine. Her jeans still buttoned with no strain or effort.

She approached the bathroom with the same old infertility cocktail of fear laced with anticipatory sadness bubbling up within her.

She stepped into the bathroom and steeled herself. She sat down, looked down, and gasped.

Blood.

Not much, but more than a speck. A dirty reddish brown. Rusty, almost.

Her head swam. Despite last night's panic and despair, somewhere there had been a shred of optimism. At the sight of blood she found herself somehow—improbably after all that failure—shocked.

Rain peed, found a panty liner. Washed her shaking hands. In the mirror a ghost of herself stared back. She whispered to her paling reflection: “Spotting is normal. Some spotting is normal.”

She lowered herself carefully to the edge of their bed and dialed Dr. Gould's after-hours emergency line on her cell phone. She knew the clinic would be open at least part of the day on a Saturday: A woman's eggs and uterus didn't care about weekends, and timing was everything.

She left a message with a bored-sounding nurse, and then she put the phone carefully down on the rumpled comforter next to her and put her face in her hands.

She didn't look up when she heard his footsteps.

“Babe?”

“Yeah,” she said through her hands.

“What's wrong?”

“I'm bleeding.”

She didn't look up from her hands, not daring to see if he seemed concerned, or frustrated, or even angry.

Instead she felt him settle next to her and wrap his arms around her. She allowed herself to be pulled close. “Is it . . .” he ventured. “. . . bad? Is it, I mean it's not . . .”

“I don't know,” she said, staring across the room now at the blank pale blue wall. “I called.”

He squeezed her. “I'm sorry I was such a dick last night. I'm stressed out. But that's not fair to you.”

He turned her to face him, and she finally met his eyes. They were red rimmed, and the whites were run through with cracks of red like rivers on a map. He had shaved at some point, but hurriedly, so that his face was reddened and he had a nick near his jaw. She reached up with her thumb and pressed the dot of blood, wiped it away. His eyes welled up, and he pulled her in tightly. “I'm so sorry,” he said. “I don't want to lose you. I can't lose you. Please don't let me lose you.”

“Why would you lose me?” she said, half muffled by his T-shirt and tight squeeze. “I wouldn't leave you over one snappish remark. I'm not my parents who split up every other week.”

“I don't deserve you,” he said.

“Yes, you do.”

“Trust me. I definitely do not.”

Whatever he might have said next was cut off by the ringing of Rain's phone, lighting up with Dr. Gould's number.

 

Rain lay back on the vinyl cushion, her eyes trained on a small screen facing her. Ultrasounds at this early stage were no simple affair of a wand over the top of a swollen belly. “Transvaginal” they were called. Uncomfortable was what they were.

To her right, in a chair with her pants and underwear folded neatly in his lap, was TJ, also staring at the screen.

Dr. Gould was silent. A clock ticked in the room, and dull voices murmured outside. The waiting room had been busy, full of women with creases across their foreheads or nails bitten to the quick. Rain had looked away from the Success Wall of baby pictures.

“Ah!” Dr. Gould said. “There. Look . . . see that tiny flashing motion? That's a heartbeat. Baby is just fine and snug. A little spotting is perfectly normal, but I'm glad you could come in and we could check to put you at ease.”

The screen winked dark as Dr. Gould concluded her work and held out a hand to help Rain sit back up.

“Now,” she continued, “the spotting is harmless, but if it's alarming to you and you don't like to see it, you should put your feet up and rest for a few days. If it changes in amount, or turns bright red, or you feel cramping, you call me back immediately. But so far I see no cause for alarm and no reason to believe anything like that will happen. I'll leave you to get dressed and see yourself out. I have two IVF transfers this morning!”

Rain watched the door close behind the doctor and finally exhaled. She had been braced since that moment in the bathroom to be told it was all over, and now that there had been a reprieve—they'd seen their baby, even! Tiny tadpole of a thing with a flashing bright heart—she felt confused, at loose ends. She was glad she didn't have to drive herself home; she might not remember how to start the car.

She finally remembered she was nude below the waist so she turned to TJ to collect her clothes. She did a double take; his eyes were shining, and a wet track of tears was reflecting the yellow overhead lights.

“Hon?” she said.

“I'm so happy you're okay. That everything's okay.”

“That's nice, honey. I need my panties, though.”

He chuckled and sniffed and handed her the clothes. Rain dressed quickly now, wanting to get the hell out of that clinic, which had made her dream come true but was a reminder of all she had to endure for something supposedly so natural.

As she made to leave, TJ clasped her hand and pulled her back. He did something so unexpected, she would have laughed if not for the earnestness in his face: He knelt down on one knee, proposal fashion. He hadn't even knelt when he actually proposed.

He took her hand in both of his. “I'm going to be better for you. A better husband, a good father. I swear.”

Rain chuckled, uncomfortable now that they were hogging this room away from someone about to have a life-changing procedure. She tugged at him, but he stayed stubbornly on his knee.

“I mean it,” he said, sniffing hard, more tears leaking out now.

“Okay, okay, get up,” she said. “I love you, too, and we're all going to be fine.” She snatched a tissue from a box near the room's sink and dabbed at his face. “Let's get the hell out of here and get a pizza.” Rain smiled and cracked her first joke in weeks. “The baby wants pizza.”