She Poured Out Her Heart (26 page)

They decided that Robbie could go to school, although he said he wanted to stay home too. “You're fine,” Jane said, although if one child was sick, it was usually only a matter of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Jane took a shower and made up the bed that Eric had left rumpled. Then she went back into the spare bedroom and slept there.

Grace came home with antiviral drugs and Pedialyte. Jane put her to bed on clean sheets and with a plastic wastebasket next to the bed in case she couldn't make it to the bathroom in time. Eric sat on the bed next to her and took her pulse and listened to her heart and lungs with his stethoscope. He told Grace that she was a silly monkey and that she had the monkey flu. Grace, pink-cheeked and teary, said that she didn't want to be a monkey. Eric told Jane to call Dr. Jarling if the fever didn't break or if she got dehydrated. “Call me too, I'll make sure they know to come and get me.”

“How worried should we be?”

“Not worried, just cautious. Jarling doesn't think it's the flu. More like a stray enterovirus. Check and see if she gets a rash, or mouth sores. We should be able to keep her at home.”

Jane, parsing this, understood that there might indeed be reason to worry, but that Eric, like all doctors, was wary of getting too far ahead of himself. He put both hands on Jane's shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. “So. Push fluids, once you're sure she can keep them down. Check for fever. And rash. Any breathing difficulties, you get on it.”

“Yes,” Jane said, feeling off-balance. From lack of sleep, from anxiety over Grace. And like a reflection floating over a glass door, this other condition, in which she and Eric were
husband
and
wife
, and another reflection on top of that one, what people meant when they said those words, the weight of expectations and history, and yet another layer that had to do with bodies, the curious things that people did with them, the incongruity of those private episodes compared with the public ones, just as it was incongruous to think of their tired and worried selves, she and Eric, as bodies that might come together, break apart, and come together again. So that if she tried to keep the idea of Eric having sex with another woman in focus, she had to fall through different layers of seeing and knowing, each one blurring into or obscuring the other. And what would that have to do with her sick child? How could you hold any other thought but that in your mind? Sometimes Jane thought this was what was wrong, or at least different, about her: the world broke itself into these disconnected and jarring fragments that she could not assemble into a whole.

“What is it?” Eric said, and Jane said it was nothing, which she knew annoyed him, but for now they were both intent on their daughter instead of each other, and so there was no argument.

Eric drove away. She had almost three hours before Robbie would be home from school and would have to be entertained and catered to and kept out of Grace's way. She took Grace's temperature, which had fallen by half a degree, then brought her a soft-boiled egg and buttered toast cut into soldiers. Grace said she wasn't hungry and Jane said to eat just a little of it. “Wait, first let me see the inside of your mouth.” Grace obediently opened her mouth and let Jane inspect its small, smooth
walls and pink scallop tongue. “Do you have any itches? Pull up your pajama top.”

There was no rash, so Jane left her sitting up in bed with a picture book. When she looked in on her again, Grace was asleep. She was sick, but not in danger. One portion of her worry, at least, could ease.

Any time her daughter was ill, Jane found herself thinking back to her own childhood and the heart condition that she did not know she had. Jane told herself that Grace was her own person and she was not doomed to fragility or ill health or neurotic fussiness, was not doomed to anything at all. Nor would she have to marry a man who would deceive her, stop. Stop thinking about herself for once.

She was being ridiculous, worse, she was being one of those parents who thought of their children as some reflection of themselves. It was true that Grace resembled her, just as Robbie mostly resembled Eric. She was quiet, obedient, unassertive. She liked imaginative play, setting out her dolls or stuffed bears and constructing nests or hiding places for them while she made up stories under her breath. Just as Jane had shrunk away from all the jolly sports her father had pushed her into, Grace moped and dawdled through kid gymnastics, putt putt golf, swimming lessons, anything designed to build confidence and increase hand-eye coordination. “Come on,” Bonnie had said once, when Jane had mentioned her worries. “Relax, this isn't
Wuthering Heights
. She's not doomed.” Jane had acquiesced, although it was true she did not remember
Wuthering Heights
as clearly as she might have.

But no one was doomed, ever. Even herself.

While Grace slept, Jane carried some of the storage items in the back bedroom down to the basement. Most of it was outgrown toys and all the other gear you needed to raise children, the car seats and bath pillows and toddler gates, the different slings and carriers that often overwhelmed her with feeling, remembering when her babies were small, but now only spoke to her of excess and exhaustion. She cleared out space in the closet and transferred some of her clothes, the ones she wore most
often. She made up the bed with a blue coverlet she had always liked and found a small lamp she put next to the bed. There wasn't room for much of anything else, and that pleased her.

When Grace woke up she said she was thirsty, and after she drank some water, Jane gave her Pedialyte and orange juice and a bowl of lime sherbet. Grace, a fussy eater at the best of times, waited until the sherbet melted and then slurped some of it up. She still had a temperature just above a hundred. By the time Robbie came home from school, Grace was tired of being in bed and so was allowed a spell of sitting on the couch in the family room bundled up in a blanket so she could watch videos. Because she was sick, Grace got to pick the videos, which bored Robbie. He escaped to the backyard, where he spent some time thunking a ball against the wall of the garage.

All day Jane carried on a silent, furious conversation with Eric, and finally he called to see how Grace was. Jane said she thought she was better, and went through the details of temperature, appetite, and so on. “Good, that's all good,” Eric said. “I'll try to get home early.”

“Your time management problem keeps getting more and more complicated, doesn't it?”

Pause. “What do you mean by that?”

She couldn't stop herself. “This is what it takes, a sick child, for you to try to fit us in. No promises.”

“We've been through this before.” They had. “There are things that are beyond my control. Surgeries go on longer than expected. Patients have problems. Patients need emergency procedures. I wish you would try not to have resentments.”

“I guess I'm talking about the things that are within your control.”

“I'm not in the mood for this, Jane.”

“I was just wondering, when do you find time to see her?”

He was silent. After a moment Jane said, “Don't bother saying anything. Just don't think I don't know. All right, fine. See you later.”

Jane hung up, feeling rattled, second-guessing herself for saying
anything. She could have kept quiet, and instead she'd declared war. But he needed reminding that she was still there, not just an obstacle he had to maneuver around or evade, someone to be ignored, tolerated, lied to.

And just then it came over her. She was standing at the foot of the stairs, her hand on the bannister, damp spring clouds sweeping across the sky outside, her head aching from all her bad and poisonous thoughts. The next instant there was the floating, falling sensation of limitless white, of blessed nothingness, of peace and ease and everything else that her life no longer was, and it did not last long—Robbie's ball still made its monotonous noise against the wall—but it filled her with such longing she could have wept. She could not, she could not, she could not allow this. Eric had made that clear enough. If she retreated from them, if she absented herself, if she did not do all that was expected of her and more. Supermom! She would be taken away, subjected to more and worse therapies, her children bereft at first, then forgetting her. She had to steel herself, live alongside them without arousing suspicion.

Now she was engaged in a war with Eric. How stupid she'd been to fall into it, to have taken up the sword, to care what he did one way or the other. Why not let him carry on his secret life just as she did hers? It had been nothing but vanity and weakness on her part and now it was too late.

Eric did get home, if not early, at least on schedule. Robbie butted his head into Eric's knees and announced that he wanted to play Battleship, and that when he got a police dog it was going to be named Mike. Eric said that was a fine name, and maybe they could play Battleship later, he had to go see how his sister was doing. He had not spoken to Jane when he walked in, but once he'd been upstairs he came back down to the kitchen and said, “Her fever's 101.5.”

“It's been just over a hundred most of the day. I told you.”

He looked around the kitchen in an irritated way, as if the room itself
displeased him. “Did you use the forehead scanner or a real thermometer? The forehead scanner's crap.”

“Well that's what I used. And I've used it before and you never said anything, so I don't know why it's a problem now.” He was scowling and ready to start in again, so Jane asked, “How is she?”

“She seems dehydrated.”

“She hasn't thrown up since this morning. She's had Pedialyte and orange juice and ice water and I'm making her chicken noodle soup right now. I've watched her all day, Eric. I'm going to go give her some more Tylenol. There's lasagna in the oven and salad and rolls, please make sure Robbie eats.” Jane left him, aware that he was picking a fight because she had picked a fight, trying to turn his own guilt inside out, to blame her for everything wrong, sad, and failed between them. She understood how that worked. But it was disgusting of him to try and beat her up over Grace's health and care. Just disgusting.

She brought Grace her soup and some soda crackers, gave her the dose of Tylenol, and sat with her while she ate and read her a story about a squirrel and a rabbit and a baby deer who all lived together in the forest. Grace's skin had a whiff of sour, bed-bound sweat to it. “How about after you finish your supper, I'll give you a nice warm bath.”

“Mommy? Why do people die?”

“Honey, what a question! Is it something you're worried about?”

“I don't know.” The all-purpose kid answer, half-sulky, half-fearful.

“Nobody's going to die for a long, long time. Not you or me or Daddy or Robbie. So don't fret.”

“What about Grandma and Grandpa and Granny Alice and Grampy Bob?”

This was harder. Jane tried to gauge the extent of Grace's curiosity, or worry. The little girl was still flushed from fever. She looked serious but not distressed. “Well, older people usually die before younger ones. But your grandparents are fine and nothing's going to happen to them
anytime soon. And you are going to feel so much better by tomorrow,” she added, thinking that this had to be the source of the anxiety.

“But why do people die?” Grace repeated. Jane couldn't remember Robbie asking such a thing. Then, Robbie was a different kind of kid.

Jane said, “Because our spirits go away and our bodies aren't needed anymore.” It was the best she could do when put on the spot. They weren't religious; the kids went to a Unitarian Sunday school on occasion, so they would not be ignorant of cultural traditions. “You know what a spirit is, right? The things you think and feel and believe.” The Sunday school had come up with a helpful pamphlet.

“Where does your spirit go away to?”

Jane understood now, as she had not before, that one value of organized religion was that it provided answers you could dole out to children. She could hardly start in with some glib explanation of heaven and Jesus, let alone hell, even if she believed in such things herself. Grace and Robbie had been told that Christmas was Jesus' birthday and everybody got to celebrate it because Jesus was nice about things like that. Easter was for candy and colored eggs. Churches were places like school, except you went there on Sundays. Really, when it came to indoctrinating their children with belief systems, she and Eric had been total slobs.

So Jane took a breath and waded in. “Well, nobody knows exactly where, sweetheart. Some people say we go on living, but in a different place, where everybody's always happy.”

Perhaps she had been insufficiently enthusiastic? Grace looked unconvinced. “Then why don't people want to die and go there?”

“Because, it's not a real place, honey. You can't get in a car and drive there or anything like that. It's more of an idea.” Jane thought she heard the sound of plates, silverware from downstairs, Robbie asking something, Eric's rumbling answer. At least they were eating. She turned back to Grace, who had given up on her soup but was still pushing her spoon around in the bowl. “I'm sorry, that's not a very good explanation. It's not easy to explain.”

“OK.”

“Even grown-up people can't agree about it.” Especially grown-up people. “You have plenty of time to think about it.”

“Does everybody die?”

“All right, let's stop talking about dying. Let's eat a little more soup.” Rattled in spite of herself, Jane spoke more sharply than she intended. She was going to have to come up with some better Mom-answers for some of the hard questions. And whatever was she going to say about sex? About marital discord? Would she and Eric get a divorce? Is that what happened next? She had not thought such things through.

“But do they die?” Grace prompted her.