Accelerated (30 page)

“I … bad reception.”

“You’re so late,” she said, continuing to straighten.

“Minor disaster at the office,” he said, feeling the lie catch in his throat. “We lost a story and I had to pull something together quickly.”

She looked at him and frowned. “Where are the flowers?”

“What?”

“The flowers. For the table.”

He couldn’t win. “I can get some now.”

“No, never mind,” she said. He could tell she was trying not to be annoyed. “It doesn’t matter. Why don’t you put out some cheese and crackers?”

He emptied some Triscuits and cheddar onto a plate and examined two decent bottles of wine Ellie had left on the counter. Through the open kitchen wall he watched her like he had for years. He recognized the dress, which she must have dug out of the closet. It was cut lower than he remembered and it actually showed a lot of cleavage. The pile of magazines she’d just made slid off the table and she let out a frustrated groan. She sunk onto the couch, defeated. “I am so not in the mood for this.”

He let out the breath he’d been holding. “Tell me about it. Let’s keep it short.”

She was nodding. “They just want to see that Toby’s okay. That we’re okay.”

He swallowed. Should he remind her they were not okay? That this was all for show?

“After they spend some time with Toby, we can say we’re meeting friends for dinner.”

“We’re not meeting friends for dinner,” Toby said, walking into the living room.

“Just don’t mention that, okay?” he said, scooping up Toby. “I missed you today.”

“Where were you?”

“I had lots of work to do.” He felt lightheaded from all the lying. How did people live this way?

When the doorbell rang, Toby hopped up, opened the door, and gave Maureen and Dick a genuine smile. “Hi Grandma. Hi Grandpa.”

Their faces melted. “Oh my lovely boy,” Maureen exclaimed. “You look wonderful. Healthy.” She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him gently, like she was afraid he might break.

“What a handsome young man,” Dick agreed, shaking his hand. “Very impressive.” For Ellie’s parents this was an outpouring of emotion.

Toby smiled selfconsciously. “We have snacks.”

Maureen was easily charmed by her grandson. “For us? You shouldn’t have.”

“Hi Mom and Dad.” Ellie hugged her parents. “Come on in.”

Sean grabbed a wine bottle from the kitchen and twirled it nervously. “Hey.” Sean gave a wave. “Great to see you. How about some wine?”

“Here.” Dick plucked the corkscrew from the coffee table. “Let me.” He popped the cork and poured. Sean handed the glasses around.

“Ellie, honey,” Maureen said examining her glass. “Didn’t you get a nice set of crystal for your wedding?”

Ellie ignored the comment. “We’re glad you could come over,” she said and put a hand on Sean’s leg, like they were a real We. She took a sip of wine. He saw her recoil ever so slightly and put down the glass. He wondered if the wine had turned or if it had been crappy to begin with. Either way, bad wine wasn’t going to go over well with Ellie’s parents. He took a sip to see how bad it was. He took another. He didn’t know much about wine, but it tasted fine to him. He checked Dick’s glass, which was almost empty.

“You don’t like it?” he whispered to Ellie.

She shook her head. “You can have mine.” It was not like Ellie to pass up wine or anything that might numb her to a visit with her parents.

“Next time we’ll cook for you,” she went on. “But we’re seeing old friends tonight for dinner.” She was good. He almost believed her. He almost believed they were a We.

Dick poured himself another. Maybe Ellie wasn’t drinking because of the health kick or maybe she was coming down with something. She’d been sleeping so much. He found himself staring at her chest. It wasn’t just the dress. Ellie’s boobs were bigger, he was sure of it.

Panic flashed through him when he put it together. His eyes went to her belly. She didn’t look pregnant. But she was breaking out. She always had perfect skin. Except when she was pregnant.

Maureen was saying something, but he couldn’t focus. He was doing math. Forget the fact the doctors said it wasn’t possible. She had to be pregnant. But they hadn’t even had sex since she’d come back. How long had it been since she left?

“Dick and I are planning a golf vacation in Palm Springs,” Maureen repeated cheerfully. “We’ll be going for ten days at the end of the month.”

Dick smiled.

“You should all come with us!” Maureen said. “We’ll have a family vacation!” She was excited as the idea formed. “Remember when we went to Bermuda when you were a teenager and we swam with the dolphins?” she asked Ellie.

Ellie smiled and reached for the wine, but then reconsidered. “The doctors want to make sure Toby is okay to travel. As soon as we get the go-ahead, we might go on our own vacation,” she vamped. “Just the three of us.”

He counted on his fingers: September, October, November, December, January. Could she be almost six months pregnant? He couldn’t think straight. He began to sweat, but made sure to keep Ellie in his peripheral vision, looking for evidence to prove he was wrong. He tried to get a better view of her stomach.

“Oh, that sounds lovely.” Maureen smiled at the idea of their happy family. “Doesn’t it Dick?”

“I’ve got to hand it to you,” Dick said, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe it. “You two really came back from the edge of the abyss. Most people can’t do that.” He raised his glass and drank to them.

Ellie reached for Sean’s hand and his entire life flashed before his eyes.

“Toby, I’m going to teach you how to play golf this summer,” Dick announced.

“Okay,” Toby said. “That sounds cool.”

“I’ll get you some clubs and we’ll go out to Wapatuck. This summer it’s you and me on the course.”

Another baby would mean he’d be trapped with Ellie, with a baby, with a life he didn’t want. His pulse quickened. Didn’t anybody else notice the room was stultifying?

“Why don’t we all play Sorry?” Toby said, carrying over the box.

“What a wonderful idea,” Maureen said.

Dick raised his empty glass. “Is there more wine?”

Ellie hopped up to get it, and Toby slid into her seat.

“Move over, Grandma.” Maureen scooted over and shifted uncomfortably. She reached behind the pillow and pulled out the foreign object that had been bothering her: a balled-up sheet.

Maureen raised her eyebrows accusingly.

“Sorry ’bout that.” Sean took the sheet and shoved it under his chair.

Ellie was back with the wine. “So,” she said, nervously. “Who wants more?”

“That’s a funny place for a sheet.”

“This is like my dad’s bed.” Toby rolled the dice. “I go first.”

Maureen turned to Ellie. “He’s sleeping on the couch?”

“Mom,” Ellie said. “It’s really not a big deal.”

She pressed her lips. Toby handed her the dice and she rolled them without another word.

After the game, Ellie said they had to get going.

“Oh,” Maureen said, disappointed.

“Let’s do it again soon,” Dick said. He looked more than ready to go.

“Next time I’m sure it’ll be longer,” Maureen said.

“Dad, can I ring the bell for Grandma and Grandpa?” Toby was shoving his feet into his slippers.

“Sure, I’ll come with you.”

“I’ll start cleaning up,” Ellie said, and kissed her mother and father. “See you soon.”

When they’d successfully deposited Dick and Maureen in the elevator and returned to the apartment, the cheese plate and wine glasses hadn’t been touched. Ellie was nowhere to be found. The bedroom door was closed. He peeked in and saw Ellie napping. Again.

She used to nap all the time when she’d been pregnant with Toby. He began to pace the length of the living room. On his second or fifth or tenth lap, he stopped. The baby wasn’t his. Obviously. He was sleeping with someone else; why wouldn’t she be? A jolt of something like jealousy shot unexpectedly through him.

Toby looked up from the floor where he was playing with a rubber band he’d found down there. “Why are you doing that, Dad?”

“Doing what?”

Toby rolled his eyes. “Never mind.” He sat up. “What’s for dinner? I’m hungry.”

There was no way he could cook now. He wasn’t sure he was even capable of boiling water for pasta. “Chicken fingers?”

“Yes!” Toby exclaimed.

Sean dialed the Metro Diner. When the food arrived twenty minutes later, he took the top off the plastic container and brought it to the table.

“Can I have one?” he asked, lifting one from the box.

“Okay,” Toby said, grudgingly. “One.”

Ellie was not waking up. It was the longest nap ever. A pregnancy nap. He gnawed on the chicken finger. Maybe the baby was his after all. It was possible. And if it was, what would that mean for them? For
him?
He didn’t remember what to do with a baby. It would be years before a baby could talk or walk or even eat real food. There would be years of changing diapers.

“Dad, leave some for me.” Toby moved the last three pieces onto his napkin.

“What?”

“You’re eating them all,” he said, accusingly. “And they’re my favorite.”

“I know,” he said, ashamed that he’d scarfed his child’s dinner. “They were your first favorite food.”

“Can we watch me in the movie?”

In her Super Mom phase, Ellie had burned their home movies onto discs that stayed in a file box on a high shelf in the kitchen. “Why not?” It would give him something to focus on other than the end of life as he knew it. He climbed on the counter to reach the box, then flipped through the volumes of their life until he found the one Toby wanted to see.

He opened the disc on his computer. The first entry showed Toby, wailing at his third birthday party.

“Why am I crying?”

“You got a blue balloon.” Sean smiled, remembering the crisis. “You wanted the pink one.”

Toby’s eyes widened and then pinched into a frown. “But pink is a girl color.”

Sean shrugged. “You wanted pink.” He fast-forwarded to Toby in water wings, held afloat in the ocean by Ellie in a bikini he hadn’t seen in years. He wondered when she’d stopped wearing bikinis. She was smiling, encouraging Toby to kick. He wondered when she’d stopped being happy.

Finally, he found Toby’s favorite part, his moment at the Metro Diner. The Toby on the screen had rounder, less defined features. His limbs hadn’t unfurled yet. In only a matter of years, Toby had changed dramatically. “Chicken fingers are my first favorite food,” three-year-old Toby announced to the camera, with a hint of a lisp he’d lost long ago. He took a bite. “Delectable.”

“You and Mommy look different,” he said, watching.

Younger
, was what Sean had been thinking. They looked open, happy, in sync. They looked like they were in love. He tried, but couldn’t remember who had filmed them that day.

Ellie finally emerged from the bedroom in sweats, squinting at the light.

“That was a long nap.” Sean checked obsessively for signs of pregnancy through the sweats.

She nodded groggily and sat next to Toby to watch the familiar clip, a wan smile on her face. “Look at you.” She kissed the side of Toby’s head. “You were so little!”

Toby rested his head against Ellie’s shoulder.

“Come on, sweetie,” she said. “Let’s get you to bed.”

He followed Ellie toward his room, then twisted back around. “After Mom puts me to bed, can you read to me?”

“You bet,” Sean said, wondering if Ellie had been hurt that he’d been chosen as designated reader.

A few minutes later, he settled in next to Toby to read, but Ellie didn’t leave. Instead, she curled up at the bottom of the bed and listened. He couldn’t remember the last time the three of them had been on a bed together like this, and it felt familiar, warm, confusing.

After Toby had been tucked in and kissed and tucked in again, Sean followed Ellie into his bedroom.

“Ellie.” He sat on his bed.

The fact that he’d come in the bedroom wasn’t lost on Ellie. She looked worried. “What’s wrong?”

There was really no leading into it well. “Are you pregnant?”

“I knew I shouldn’t have worn that dress. It made my boobs look huge.”

He could hardly breathe. “So you are?”

She sat next to him heavily. “I’m not,” she said. “I gained some weight. It always goes straight to my boobs. You know that.”

He wasn’t sure if he did know that. Or if he believed her. “But you’re tired, you didn’t like the wine. Your skin …”

She touched her chin where she was breaking out. Her eyes flitted away from his to the other side of the room. “I took a test yesterday.”

“A pregnancy test?”

“No, a driving test.” The sarcasm was fleeting. “Yes, a pregnancy test.”

“And …” He held his breath.

She shook her head, a little sadly. “Not pregnant.”

“But … the naps. The wine …”

She looked him in the eye now. “Definitely not pregnant.” She paused, as if deciding whether to add more. “I was … I was late so I thought maybe … but a few hours after I took the test I got my period. So I’m definitely, you know, not … pregnant.”

A rush of relief was quickly followed by the realization that she was testing to see if she was pregnant with some other guy’s baby. His initial reaction had been knee-jerk jealousy, but now all he felt was a current of sorrow somewhere deep inside him. None of it was reasonable. But there it was.

She smiled but not because she was happy. “That would be pretty ironic, wouldn’t it? If I were pregnant?”

“That’s not the word I would have picked.”

“Yeah, more like tragic.”

There was nothing to say for what felt like a long time. “I remember that day in the Metro Diner like it was yesterday,” she said, her face softening at the memory. “We always did make the best of naptime.”

At the mention of naptime, it all came back to him: They’d had two hours of hot afternoon sex before taking Toby to the diner that day. “We certainly did.”

She reached out and rested her hand on his chest. “I think about you,” she said. “About us.”

“Me too,” he said, but instantly regretted it.

In slow motion, she took his face in her hands and kissed him on the mouth. Gently, testing the waters, seeing how he would react. He thought about pulling away, telling her to stop, but his body was switching on and he wanted her, suddenly and completely. He reached for the side of her waist and pulled her toward him.