Authors: Elyse Douglas
I continued my exercise routine, in New York and in Hartsfield.
I was deliriously happy and, at the same time, utterly terrified. I felt like a man on the run, dodging the inevitable bullet, hoping and praying that the medication, exercise, and positive thinking—all of my serious attention and discipline—would result in Rita becoming pregnant.
Rita was always waiting for me on Friday nights, wearing something naughty or sexy. I brought her necklaces and earrings from Tiffany’s, perfume from Saks Fifth Avenue. I stunned and delighted her with a Cartier tricolor interlocking diamond ring, set in 18Karat gold. She wept when I slipped in on her finger.
Rita’s body, ripened with love, invited love, glowed with a hunger to be filled with love; and so our love-making deepened, occasionally becoming a giddy madness or a high-spirited adventure when she created a saucy role or a playful new position. She found new scents for her neck and hair, new lipstick, new sexy bras and panties. She cooked gourmet dinners, bought me shirts and underwear, and reawakened the house with her light spirit and flowers from the garden. She often escorted me on tours of the gardens where swelling tomatoes ripened, cucumbers lengthened and snapdragons and petunias blossomed. “Everything will ripen soon, Alan James. Very soon. Don’t worry.” She winked at me, knowingly. “I’m getting stronger and healthier.”
We discussed marriage and agreed that as soon as the divorce came through, we’d have a simple, private ceremony at the Episcopal church Darla had attended. Rita felt comfortable with the minister, and I didn’t want another lavish spectacle of a wedding, as my first had been.
Summer expanded us; freckled us; made us reckless with hope; frightened us and made the world incongruous. We braced ourselves against the heat, skipped through the lawn sprinklers in our underwear and fled from the thunderstorms and hard rain that swelled the pond and nearly flooded the cellar.
One Sunday morning, in late August, Rita awoke with a start. “Alan James…”
I stirred, wiping my eyes. “What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
I got up to my elbows, startled. “What?”
She felt her stomach, flushed with joy. “I am. I know it. I feel it!” She grabbed my arm, holding it. “I am, Alan James! I’m pregnant! I told you we would. I told you it would happen, didn’t I?”
“…Yes…”
“God, I feel it, Alan James!”
I swallowed anxiety. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure! I know my body. A woman knows when she’s pregnant, Alan James. At least this woman does.”
Rita bounced out of bed and hurried to the mirror. She was naked, breasts firm and round, body full and superbly majestic. She turned sideways to view her stomach in profile, rubbing it with her hand. “Just think, Alan James, in a few months, your woman’s gonna be fat and beautiful.”
She came to me in a rush, wrapping her arms around my neck, kissing me hard and long. “Alan James, another reason I love you so much is because I know you’ll always love me, even when I’m old, wrinkled and stupid.”
I reached for much-needed humor. “When you’re old, yes. Stupid, yes. Wrinkled…never.”
She playfully slapped my face. I grabbed her, pulled her down and kissed her. If Rita truly was pregnant, then it was worth all the sleepless nights and battering anxiety. In a flurry of nervous hands and scattered actions, Rita ran off and snatched her cut-off jeans.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She pulled the jeans on. “Drug store. Pregnancy test.”
“Rita…”
She stopped, looking quickly and intensely at me, with a sudden realization. “That’s right. You’re a doctor.” She charged me, stopping inches from my face. “Should I buy one of those pregnancy tests?”
I was scared. I leaned back against the bedpost and shrugged one shoulder. “…I guess.”
“Are they really that accurate? I mean, will we know?”
“Yeah, they’re pretty accurate, but they can vary. I mean, the test has to be done right. You’ve got to check the package and make sure it’s not past the expiration date…and you have to repeat the test in a few days, no matter what the results are.”
Rita drifted away and found a yellow T-shirt. She struggled into it as she sat down next to me on the edge of the bed, conflicted. “I don’t know then, maybe I should wait.”
“Maybe... If you use the test too early, you may not have enough pregnancy hormone in your urine to get a positive result.”
I saw fear well up in her eyes. “Yeah…right. I took one of those tests about eight years ago. I knew I was pregnant, but it came out negative the first time. I tried again a week later and it was positive. What about medication? Can that affect the results? I’m still taking some medication.”
“No, it shouldn’t, only if you’re taking drugs that have hCG in them… but you’re not, right? Well, I mean…” I fumbled, fighting to get the words out. “…I mean, they’re used for treating infertility. I mean, I’m taking something, but you’re not.”
“No. I don’t need that. I’m very fertile…used to be anyway.” She faced me, worried. “You could give me a test, couldn’t you?”
“Well…yes, but I don’t have the right stuff with me. I’d have to take it to a lab.”
“Would it be more accurate?”
I squirmed. I was too cautious and scared to be excited. “I’m not an OBGYN, Rita.”
“But it would be more accurate?”
“…Yes. A blood test can measure the exact amount of hCG in the blood. It can tell if you’re pregnant 6 to 8 days after you ovulate.”
Rita folded her hands tightly in her lap. “So it becomes a simple yes or no? I am or I’m not.”
I nodded. “That’s right.”
She drew a breath. “Okay, I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow morning.”
I stroked her hair. “I’ll go with you.”
Rita brightened. “Really? You won’t go back to New York tonight?”
“No. I’ll wait for the blood test. I’ll ask your doctor to put a rush on it.”
Rita shook her head vigorously. “No way, Alan James. I’ll ask her. She’s pretty. I don’t want you two meeting.”
She twirled in place, ecstatically happy. “Oh, Alan James, I feel alive again. I feel life growing in me again. I’ve got to give life again, nurture and protect it. It’s my way back, don’t you see. It’s my way back to life!”
I swallowed. “Yes…”
“Back from the past; back from this town; back from the death I used to feel all around me. That damned depressive cloud.”
She danced out of the room, leaving me in a ringing silence, feeling too heavy and clumsy to push out of bed. I didn’t feel good. I didn’t feel bad. I didn’t feel anything.
Chapter Nine
Later that morning, I suggested we call Ms. Lyendecker. We needed a good distraction, both being edgy and anxious. Ms. Lyendecker was surprised and delighted to hear from us. She invited us over “for coffee” at three o’clock that day.
We said little while we drove the 25 miles along hot shimmering back roads and open land, as the recapitulation of summer was drifting toward the overture of autumn. We drove across a covered bridge and down a low road, nearly lost in shadows. I recalled, with a mounting dread, that the anniversary of Rita’s tragedy was only two weeks away. If the pregnancy results were negative, I was deeply concerned that Rita could spin off into a towering depression and I would need to summon a strength I wasn’t sure I possessed. We listened to the radio: an oldies station played Seals and Crofts’
Summer Breeze
.
We approached a little town, still and old in the afternoon hush. There was a country store with a sad-looking gas station, both closed, the white spire of a Methodist church, a red-bricked drug store, closed, an old cemetery surrounded with a heavy wrought-iron fence, and a group of two-story homes nestled in a sloping green valley across a six-foot rocky stream. I drove across a rattling wooden bridge, over the rushing water and flat stones, and followed Rita’s pointing finger toward the gray shingled three-story house, near an open pasture with fieldstone fences. To the left of Ms. Lyendecker’s home, beside a bank of tall trees, stood an old dilapidated and abandoned home. Crows hung out in the trees and on the rusty tin roof, like thick black blots of paint, cawing.
“How did she wind up here?” Rita said. “Didn’t she grow up in New York City?”
We turned into the driveway, hearing the tires pop across the gravel, and stopped. Ms. Lyendecker appeared from the screen door, a hunched gray shadow, stepping gingerly down to the porch into sunlight, with the flat of her hand shading her eyes. She was snowy and stiff with age, wearing a blue and white cotton print dress and chunky black shoes. Wire-rimmed glasses were perched on her nose; blue-gray eyes peered at us, lively, bold and curious. We started toward her and she opened her thin arms wide, beaming with pleasure. “Come here, you two. Here’s your little old English teacher.”
She first hugged Rita and then me, with a trembling strength, smelling like coffee and rose. She escorted us into the house, an old comfortable place, neat, but shadowy, as if natural light were gradually retreating from it.
We sank into a deep cushioned couch, while Ms. Lyendecker insisted on serving coffee and cookies, and doing it independently.
“Not tea, mind you,” she said, before she left for the kitchen. “Coffee. I don’t drink tea and I don’t keep it in the house. I don’t even like the sound of tea. Coffee! It’s a good strong word that draws a good strong image. You stress the first syllable though… CAW…fee. Tea is weak and flaccid and I don’t like the color. I’ll be back. You two sit.”
Rita and I exchanged grins, as Ms. Lyendecker shambled off to the kitchen. We noticed the glinting green eyes of a black cat stalking us from behind a brown tweed recliner. Rita called to it, but the regal head ignored her.
The room was filled with bookshelves and books, all neatly stacked. The furniture was minimal, an afterthought. The tapestry green and brown couch we sat on was old but in fine shape; the ladder-back chairs near the fireplace were elegant, and the Burberry carpet, sturdy and functional. There were visible plaster cracks on the off-white walls, but the lack of cobwebs in the dim high corners, and the shiny window sills and end tables, all suggested that our teacher was still a good housekeeper. The Tiffany and Victorian lamps were undoubtedly antique, and my mother would have had a field-day examining them. Rita approached them with her newly acquired knowledge, and studied them, hands locked behind her back, head thrust forward in close examination.
“Good stuff,” she said, impressed.
Ms. Lyendecker soon returned, shuffling toward us with a silver tray that supported a silver coffee pot and various assortments of cookies. Rita helped her ease the tray to the coffee table before us. Rita poured coffee into gilded cups, while Ms. Lyendecker tossed treats to the black cat. We chose cookies and sat.
Ms. Lyendecker settled in the recliner opposite us and, as if on cue, her black cat sprang to the arm of the chair and hunkered down next to her, contented, half-hooded eyes glowing. In the country silence, the purring motor was loud.
Ms. Lyendecker adjusted her glasses and looked frankly at Rita. “You’re prettier, Rita. You truly are.”
Rita looked away, toward the fireplace. “I’ve got wrinkles, Ms. Lyendecker, and some gray hair. I’m not a girl of 18 anymore.”
“No, you’re not, Rita, nor am I. I am time grown old. A little ole’ granny. I was once an attractive woman—not
very
pretty, like you, but attractive. I had boyfriends and lovers. I was married once, for four years.”
Rita leaned forward. “What was he like?”
“Tall and serious. He was a history teacher.”
“Did you have children?” Rita continued.
“Yes. One, a boy. He died at 3 years old of pneumonia. We didn’t recover from it. We blamed each other. We grew bitter. We did not ascend.”
“Ascend?” I asked, setting my cup down on the blue enabled coaster.
“Yes. When I first began teaching, I always required the class to memorize a very simple poem by John Greenleaf Whittier. I thought it set a good tone for the year. I stopped that requirement by the time you two came along. Anyway the poem says ‘I’ll lift you and you lift me, and we’ll both ascend together.’ Howard and I divorced a few months later and we never kept in touch. I heard that he died about 10 years ago.”
Her eyes held sadness, as they briefly roamed the room.
“Why did you move here?” Rita asked.
“This is my sister’s house. She was sick and I came to take care of her. She died five months ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Rita said.
Ms. Lyendecker took a drink of coffee. “It was her time. She died peacefully. I have grown to love the place. It’s so quiet and comfortable here.”
“Do you have friends?”
“A few…A retired math teacher, Russ Horton, lives just a mile or so down the road. He comes by sometimes and flirts a little. He’s two years younger than me.” She winked at us. “I’ve always been attracted to younger men.”
The room filled with the cat’s rhythmic purr and the sound of coffee cups. Ms. Lyendecker’s face softened. “Rita…I am truly sorry about what happened. It broke my heart. I sent you a card and a note, but I was sure you were not reading or wanting to receive anything.”