The Blue Hour (11 page)

At which juncture the bedroom door swung open and Paul emerged, dressed, his hair still wet from the shower. He greeted me and Soraya with a big smile.

“
Tout à fait nous voudrions un enfant,
” he said, coming over and kissing me on the lips.
We would absolutely like a child.

Then, after greeting Soraya, he asked her in rapid-fire French, “And how is my wife progressing?”

“She's doing fantastically. Really gifted with the language. And she works so hard.”

“That she does,” he said.

“You think too highly of me,” I said.

“She doesn't think well enough of herself,” Paul said. “Maybe you can help her in that department, Soraya.”

“Breakfast should be here in a moment,” I told him.

But I saw that he had his satchel over his shoulder, stuffed with his sketchbooks and pencils.

“I'll let Fouad provide that for me. Come find me after the lesson.
Je t'adore.
”

With another kiss on the lips he was gone.

Once the door was closed behind him, Soraya looked away as she said, “
Je voudrais un homme comme votre mari
.”

“
Mais plus jeune
?” I added.

“
L'âge importe moins que la qualité
.”

I would like a man like your husband
 . . .
But younger? . . . Age is less important than the quality.

“I am sure you will find someone of quality,” I told her.

“I'm not,” she said in a near whisper. “All right:
essayer
in the subjunctive. Give me an example in first person singular.”

I considered this for a moment, then said, “
Il faut que je voudrais d être heureuse
.”

Soraya did not look professorially pleased by my answer.

“I must would like happiness,” she said, translating my sentence into her excellent English. “You can do better than that.”

“Sorry, sorry. The problem is the use of the subjunctive with
would like
. As you noted you can't
must would like
something.”

“So if you were talking about wanting happiness . . .”

“
Je voudrais le bonheur
.”

“Fine. And in the subjunctive?”

“I would sidestep
vouloir
and use
essayer
. To try. As in: ‘
Il faut que j'essaie d'être heureuse.' I must try to be happy
.”

Soraya then had another one of her thoughtful pauses.

“It is all about ‘trying,' isn't it?” she said.

The breakfast arrived. She shared the coffee with me. We worked on for another ninety minutes. Then I paid her for the week and wished her well in Marrakesh.

“
Entre nous
, there is a man—French—whom my classmate wants me to meet. A banker working at Société Générale. My parents would half approve—the banker, not the French part. But I am getting ahead of myself here, aren't I?”

Then, telling me she'd see me Monday at five o'clock, she headed off for her weekend and her meeting with the Frenchman who might, or might not, become a conduit into a new life.

When Soraya was gone, I took a long shower and changed into fresh clothes, then checked my watch and thought that, if I moved quickly, I could still join Paul for a late lunch at Chez Fouad. But as Friday was the one day of the week I read my email, I decided to quickly scan this week's dispatches before heading out to the souk.

The first email I saw had been dispatched just twenty minutes earlier from the ever-scrupulous Morton. It read:

Now that we have your husband's audit problems with the IRS out of the way I've been doing his books in an attempt to bring them up to date so we are not in a bind at tax time next year. You know how he throws all his receipts and invoices and credit card statements into that file box you gave him. Well I started working through it on Wednesday and came across this invoice this morning. I debated about whether I should send it to you now or wait until you got back in a few weeks. But I decided that—as this was something of an ethical/moral call—I should err on the side of immediate transparency
.

I clicked on the attached file. I found myself staring at an invoice from a Dr. Brian Boyards, MD, Urologist. The invoice was for a patient named Leuen, Paul Edward. His date of birth—04-11-56—was the same as my husband's. So too was the home address. And the Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance policy that he used to defray 80 percent of the $2,031.78 charges for the procedure listed on the invoice.

Outpatient Non-Scalpel Deferentectomy
.

What is a deferentectomy?

I switched over to Google and typed in that exact word.

And discovered that a deferentectomy is the clinical term for a very common bit of urological surgery . . . also known as a vasectomy.

And the date on which this Outpatient Non-Scalpel Deferentectomy was performed on my husband? September 7, 2014. Around the same time that we both agreed it was time to start trying for a child.

I SAT IN
front of my computer screen, trying to convince myself that what I just read was somehow false. A fabrication, an invention dispatched by a malevolent individual who wanted to see my marriage thrown completely off-course.

The problem with hard-and-fast evidence—and an invoice from a doctor in the wake of a surgical procedure is about as irrefutable as it comes—is that you can't negotiate with its black-and-white verities. It's a bit like a client of mine who had run up around $10K in internet porn charges on his MasterCard one year. All the charges were assigned to Fantasy Promotions Inc. The time code for each of the transactions showed they were all late in the evening. His wife had seen the MasterCard statements and was just a little appalled. My client entreated me to provide him an alibi for these purchases. As I told him at the time, “How do you explain over one hundred and fifty dealings after midnight with an online company called Fantasy Promotions Inc.? There's no wiggle room here. It's the smoking gun.”

Strange how that client—who was divorced with extreme prejudice by his wife thereafter—popped into my head as I found myself staring at that document from Dr. Brian Boyards, MD, Urologist. All the facts in front of me. Facts which I must have reread a dozen times, trying to find a way of reinterpreting the irrefutable:

Patient: Leuen, Paul Edward

Date of birth—04-11-56

Home Address: 5165 Albany Avenue, Buffalo, NY 10699

Insurance: Blue Cross/Blue Shield A566902566

Procedure: Outpatient Non-Scalpel Deferentectomy

Date of Procedure: 09-07-14

The seventh of September last year. Around ten months ago. A few days after Labor Day, when we returned from a long weekend in a friend's cottage in the woods fronting Lake Placid. My husband and I making love twice a day. And me, after a candlelit dinner at some nearby inn, stating that, after two years together, and with my fortieth birthday looming in a few months, I wanted to come off the pill effective immediately . . . though it would be, as my gynecologist told me, at least two weeks until I would be moving into a fertile cycle.

Paul did not blanch or talk about joining the merchant marine when I brought this up. On the contrary, he told me that having a child together was “the essential bonding of a couple in love” or some such line. Paul returned from the gym on a Thursday evening, limping slightly, telling me how he pulled a muscle in his groin and was worried that he'd given himself a hernia. With my complete understanding, he absented himself from sex for several days, saying that he'd be going to the university infirmary the next day to get himself a medical opinion. Then, upon returning that night, he informed me that, though it was only “lightly herniated”—I remember his exact words—he was advised not to exacerbate it and refrain from sex for another week. Which we dutifully did.

Now, here I was, all these absurd months later, on the website of Dr. Brian Boyards, MD, reading all about this seemingly simple, no-fault surgical procedure:

Over 500,000 vasectomy procedures are done each year in the United States.

Vasectomy is a simple, safe surgical procedure for permanent male fertility control. The tube (called a “vas”) which leads from the testicle is cut and sealed in order to stop sperm from leaving.

The procedure usually takes about 10 to 20 minutes.

Since the procedure simply interrupts the delivery of sperm it does not change hormonal function—leaving sexual drive and potency unaffected.

The no-scalpel vasectomy is a technique used to do the vasectomy through one single puncture. The puncture is made in the scrotum and requires no suturing or stitches.

The primary difference compared to the conventional vasectomy is that the vas deferens is controlled and grasped by the surgeon in a less traumatic manner. This results in less pain and fewer postoperative complications.

This procedure is done with the aid of a local anesthetic called Xylocaine (similar to Novocain).

The actual interruption of the vas which is done with the no-scalpel technique is identical to the interruption used with conventional techniques.

The no-scalpel technique is simply a more elegant and less traumatic way for the surgeon to control the vas and proceed with its interruption.

So my husband murdered my chance at motherhood with him by opting for “elegant and less traumatic” surgery.

I snapped my eyes shut, caught somewhere between desolation and pure unalloyed rage.

Tout à fait
, nous voudrions un enfant.

The bastard actually said that just two hours ago. Just as, for months, he kept reassuring me that it was only a matter of time before I got pregnant. I slammed the lid of my computer shut and began to sob. I was in free fall. Beyond stunned. As if the entire foundation of this new life we'd created together was nothing more than a house of cards built on the lies of a man I had been dumb enough to trust. How could I—Ms. Forensic, Ms. Extra-Scrupulous, Ms. Exhaustively Thorough—not have sniffed out the con behind all his declarations of intimate commitment?

I knew the answer to that question.

We only see what we want to see.

I understood from the outset that Paul Leuen was, on certain fundamental levels, incapable of proper adult responsibility. But I chose to sidestep such realizations and embrace the bohemian lure, the romantic effluence, the hallucinogenic sex. I was so desperate for love that I shoved all doubt into that mental basement room and plunged right into the delusion of domestic bliss and child rearing with a man who . . .

Who? Who?

Can I even define him now? If he'd betrayed me in such a fundamental way, if he'd deliberately had himself fixed while assuring me so passionately that he wanted a child with me . . .

I went to the bathroom and threw cold water on my face, avoiding the sight of myself in the mirror. I didn't want to cast a cold eye on myself right now. I returned to the room and went out onto the balcony, staring out at the North African world below.
This could have waited until our return, Morton
. But decent rabbinical Morton had, no doubt, done a considerable amount of ethical soul searching before deciding to send me the urologist's invoice. And he finally decided: cards on the table. Leave it to my disorganized husband to have thrown the doctor's invoice into his box of financial paperwork and forget that I would eventually see it—because I was still his accountant, forever holding him accountable. I clutched the balcony railings, steadying myself, rage trumping sorrow; a certain clinical clarity asserting itself. I returned inside to my laptop. I opened it and wrote a fast email to Morton.

Knowledge, they say, is power. But it's also often a sorrow beyond dreams. Can you please look around his MasterCard statements for September 2014 and see if there is a payment for four hundred dollars to Dr. Brian Boyards. Then scan it to me. I sense I will be back in Buffalo in a matter of days. Alone.

As I awaited a reply, I dug out our plane tickets and discovered (through some further searching on the internet) that Royal Air Maroc would change my flight before the return date for a charge of 3,000 DM—around $350. Yes, I did pay for the entire month at the hotel, but we were already into the third week. Paul could stay behind and finish his drawings and remind himself what it was like to be alone once more. I was pretty certain that this was the outcome he privately desired. When he'd had his secret vasectomy, part of him must have known that all would eventually be revealed. Surely he had to figure that after, say, a year of trying with no success, I'd insist that we go to a fertility clinic for tests. Bing. An email . . . from Morton.